Coup to remove cancer-stricken Putin underway in Russia, Ukrainian intelligence chief says (Copy)

BY ERIN PRATER. Fortune, May 14, 2022 10:46 AM EDT

A coup is underway to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is "very sick" due to cancer, according to Ukraine's head of military intelligence. "It will eventually lead to the change of leadership of the Russian Federation. This process has already been launched and they are moving into that way," Ukrainian Major Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told the UK's Sky News in an exclusive interview.

An interviewer asked if a coup is underway, to which Budanov replied, "Yes. They are moving in this way and it is impossible to stop it." Putin has cancer and other ailments, he said, dismissing the suggestion that he was spreading propaganda. The Sunday Times recently reported that Putin has blood cancer, citing an unnamed Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin. And a video recently resurfaced showing Putin shaking while welcoming Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in mid-February, according to The Independent, fueling speculation that the despot has Parkinson’s disease. Vladimir Putin’s health under fresh scrutiny as video shows him ‘shaking uncontrollably’ Speculation is growing over the condition of the 69-year-old president but Kremlin denies he is in bad health.

Thomas Kingsley, The Independent, Wednesday 27 April 2022 15:38

A resurfaced video showing Vladimir Putin shaking uncontrollably has sparking fresh concerns about the Russian president’s health. The footage shows him seemingly suffering hand and leg tremors as he welcomed Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko to a meeting in mid-February, just days before he launched his invasion of Ukraine. Mr Putin is seen holding one hand to his chest while the other is in a fist, sparking speculation online that he may have Parkinson’s disease. As his hand begins to tremor uncontrollably, Mr Putin pulls it close to his chest, in an apparent attempt to stop the shaking. However, as he walks toward his longtime ally, he wobbles as his leg also tremors.The Russian president has been dogged by claims of his failing health in recent months, fueled by footage of his bloated face, slouching posture, and constant gripping of objects for support. A clip from last week showed the Kremlin leader grabbing hold of the corner of the table with his right hand as soon as he sits down for the meeting, and keeps hold of it for the entirety of the 12 minute clip. Mr Putin can also be seen intermittently holding the edge of the table with his left hand while speaking to defence minister Sergei Shoigu.

Visegrad24, which first published the footage online, said it was “probably the clearest video of something being wrong with Putin’s health”. Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s former technology correspondent, who announced in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s himself, also said he believed it to be symptomatic of the disease. Sir Richard Dearlove – former MI6 head – and Professor Gwythian Prins – previously a Nato adviser – have claimed that Mr Putin has shown signs of the progressive nervous system disorder.

Moscow has repeatedly denied reports that Mr. Putin has suffered from severe ill health. Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Mr Putin had undergone surgery for thyroid cancer, and said that the president’s health was “excellent” and that he had not dealt with any illness more serious than a cold. The footage comes as Vladimir Putin met with UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in Moscow on Tuesday in the first meeting between the two since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the Russian leader and Mr. Guterres discussed "proposals for humanitarian assistance and evacuation of civilians from conflict zones, namely in relation to the situation in Mariupol." They also agreed in principle, he said, that the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross should be involved in the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel complex where Ukrainian defenders in the southeastern city are making a dogged stand. During the meeting, which the UN said lasted nearly two hours, Mr Putin and Mr. Guterres sat at opposite ends of a notably long white table in a room with gold curtains bordered in red.

Dispatches From the Mariupol Siege

‘It’s hell,’ says Bohdan Krotevych as the Azov Regiment makes its stand at the Ukraine city’s Azovstal steel plant.

By Jillian Kay Melchior, The Wall Street Journal, May. 11, 2022 12:17 pm ET

Bohdan Krotevych, chief of staff of the Azov Regiment. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE AZOV REGIMENT

A photograph shows Bohdan Krotevych in a helmet and fatigues, looking weary but peaceful. The big-eyed dog that sits beside him in the picture was later “killed by a Russian mine,” he says. “Kids and women are dying. They are being killed and raped. . . . It’s hell in Mariupol. . . . It’s difficult for me to talk about it.”

Mr. Krotevych, 29, is chief of staff of the Azov Regiment, a unit of Ukraine’s National Guard. Since late April he has periodically sent me text messages from the bombed-out southeastern city, which now resembles Grozny or Aleppo. But Mariupol hasn’t entirely fallen. Surrounded and outgunned, Mr. Krotevych and his “brothers in arms,” as he puts it, have refused to surrender.

Vladimir Putin covets Mariupol for its prime location. Before the war, commodities from eastern and southern Ukraine were shipped to the global market through this port city on the Sea of Azov. A key highway route runs through Mariupol that could link Russian territory with occupied Crimea.

The city has also taken on symbolic significance. “How can the second strongest army in the world not be able to capture a city defended by 2,000 service people for over two months now?” Mr. Krotevych says. “Azov has dealt too heavy a blow to Putin’s ego and, at the same time, showed Ukraine that we can overcome the overwhelming forces of the enemy.”

The Azov Regiment is known for its courage—and controversy. U.S. media has reported that some members espoused neo-Nazi ideology, a claim the Kremlin has taken up. I asked Mr. Krotevych about the unit’s reputation. “Like in other units, including military units of the U.S. army, there are some individuals who hold Nazi views,” he says. But labeling the entire regiment neo-Nazi “is like calling all Americans racist because the KKK exists in the U.S.” He adds that extremists have been “dishonorably discharged without the right to wear the uniform or chevron.”

The regiment is now making its last stand at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. The structure offers significant protection against tank rounds, artillery and aerial bombs; built to handle molten metal, it also has extensive bunkers. “It’s a wonderful place to defend and a very difficult place to take if it’s held by determined defenders, as this one is,” says Fred Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.

The heavy fighting has precluded much of the foreign press from reporting on the ground in Mariupol, and disinformation abounds. To prove his whereabouts and identity, Mr. Krotevych sent me video of himself outside the plant. Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs reviewed the footage and confirmed it was him. Storyful, a social-media intelligence service owned by News Corp, the Journal’s parent company, matched the background in his video with other images of the steel plant.

Conditions there are dire, Mr. Krotevych says. The wounded have been “literally rotting away because of the underground conditions, humidity, and unsanitary conditions,” he said in mid-April. “The injuries are grave: amputated limbs, torn-out muscles, lacerations, serious burns.” He couldn’t comment on remaining food and ammunition supplies, but medications like painkillers are “in critically small amounts.”

Mr. Krotevych also said in late April that more than 300 civilians were taking shelter in the plant, including women, children and a 4-month-old baby. He described how they huddled below ground in terror of the shelling and the prospect that the Russians could use white phosphorus munitions, which can melt flesh and burn to the bone. Since then, many civilians have been evacuated from the plant.

These departures, along with any fatalities among the Ukrainian soldiers, may prolong the siege; food, water and other supplies last longer among the few who remain.

The siege is agonizing for Mr. Krotevych’s parents and his sister, Sandra, 33. “I used to think that in Ukraine, people were valued,” she says. “It’s unprofessional to wait until the military dies because there is a lack of food, water, medicine. That’s what the Ukrainian government is doing now.” She says she feels “very angry with the inaction of our government, and also with the indifference of the world leaders who let it happen.”

Prospects of a negotiated rescue for the soldiers are slim. The Ukrainian fighters’ stand in Mariupol has pinned down Russian troops and prevented them from joining other battles in southern and eastern Ukraine, so there’s a strategic reason for them to remain. Meanwhile, Mr. Putin wants to give the Russian public a flashy military victory in Mariupol and therefore is likely loath to show any mercy to the soldiers there. Even if Kyiv and Moscow could agree on a humanitarian corridor for the soldiers in the steel plant, the troops may not trust it. In an infamous incident in 2014, Russians ambushed and massacred Ukrainian fighters in Ilovaisk after promising them safe passage.

Ukraine’s Surprise Strike on Russian Fleet Hobbles Putin’s Donbas Strategy

Source: WSJ.com. Brett Forrest in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and Nancy A. Youssef in Washington

Attack on navy ships at Berdyansk port could limit Russia’s ability to fire on eastern Ukraine, analysts say; ‘major logistical blow’

A surprise Ukrainian strike on a Russian ship at a southern port city last month could curb Moscow’s plan to expand its hold on the Donbas region, eliminating a key military advantage in the Russian attack plan, Ukrainian military analysts and U.S. officials said.

The March 24 offensive against Russian navy ships docked at a captured port in Berdyansk on the Azov Sea was the first major strike on the Russian fleet, Ukrainian and U.S. officials said. The attack destroyed a ship laden with supplies, drove others back into the sea, and damaged the port facilities.

The strike ended the presumption that Russian ships could attack without the threat of a Ukrainian reply. And it has limited Russia’s ability to fire missiles and artillery as it pivots its assault toward Donbas in Ukraine’s east, said retired Adm. James Foggo, who commanded U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa.

Hours after the strike, Russia moved its ships in port out to sea, making it harder for them to attack Ukraine’s cities and preventing them from supporting ground forces.

“It’s a major logistical blow,” Adm. Foggo said. “It’s an ‘aha!’ moment for the Russians. Despite the damage they have done inside Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are still capable of conducting offensive strikes with precision.”

In the nearly two weeks since the strike, Russia’s navy hasn’t launched any major attacks on Ukrainian cities, although it has struck targets around a few of them. On Sunday, missiles from Russian ships struck the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, hitting infrastructure.

Russia’s military made port cities a priority during its assault into Ukraine. It seized the city of Berdyansk, a key foothold for its future attacks in strategically important cities such as Mariupol, just days into its invasion of Ukraine, soon boasting of the advantage the port would afford its war effort.

Quickly putting the port to use, Russia landed huge ships carrying as much as 2,000 tons of supplies each for its ground forces in the Ukrainian south. The Russians ejected Ukrainian cargo ships, dredgers and a tug, then berthed their own ships carrying multiple-launch rocket systems to provide cover for troops moving into the region.

The ships at Berdyansk were only lightly defended, as the nearest Ukrainian forces were about 60 miles away.

“The Russians thought Ukraine didn’t have any capability to reach them,” said Andrii Ryzhenko, a former Ukrainian navy captain now with the Center for Defense Strategies, a Kyiv think tank with close ties to the military. “But Ukraine had the capability.”

By the early weeks of the war, Russia had as many as 22 ships in the Black Sea and another dozen in the Azov Sea, U.S. officials said. At least half of those in the Azov Sea were docked at Berdyansk—“sitting ducks,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

“It’s just an example of how cavalier Russia’s operations have been about keeping ships at shore,” Mr. Clark said.

Russia had major advantages over the Ukrainian navy for nearly a decade. It captured and destroyed much of the Ukrainian navy at the port of Sevastopol during Moscow’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, expanding its influence over the Black Sea. And in the run-up to the Feb. 24 invasion, Russia moved much of its navy from as far as the Baltic Sea toward Ukraine’s shores.

The Azov Sea, a small, shallow body of water bounded by Russia, Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, has been strategically important for centuries. Ships operating off the Azov Sea coast took part in the Russian assault on the southern city of Mariupol, military analysts said, firing artillery into Mariupol with little risk from Ukraine’s defenses. The ships also held supplies for nearby ground forces and provided another line of defense to troops and tanks entering Mariupol.

The Azov Sea is also the fastest supply route between Russia and Crimea, because Ukrainian forces destroyed the rail lines between the two in 2014. From the Russian port of Temryuk, it is faster for Moscow to deliver troops and supplies by sea to Berdyansk than to drive them over the bridge that spans the Kerch Strait, then north through Crimea and eastward over a strip of captured Ukrainian coastline.

On March 24, Ukraine fired a Tochka-U ballistic missile at the port, Mr. Ryzhenko said. The missile struck the Saratov, a Cold War-era landing vessel designed to ferry troops and equipment ashore through a ramp at the bow. As the Saratov foundered, other ships fled the Berdyansk port under a plume of smoke. The attack also damaged the port, according to satellite images.

U.S. defense officials warned that Russia could be making adjustments in the sea, much as it is doing around the Ukrainian capital. Russia said it was repositioning its forces around Kyiv, which U.S. officials described as a regrouping based on battlefield losses and logistical challenges.

Since the strike, Russia had withdrawn all but three ships from the Azov Sea as of last week, a U.S. senior defense official said, hindering Moscow’s ability to supply troops in the Ukrainian south.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin late last month said it was shifting its mission to Ukraine’s east, aiming to consolidate control over Donbas, its initial plan to quickly take Kyiv fading under relentless Ukrainian resistance.

The Berdyansk strike could also have a wide-reaching impact on the ability of Russia’s navy to support its army.

With the damaged Berdyansk port off limits to ships for weeks, Russia’s capacity to land troops there and in the vicinity of Odessa has diminished, especially as nearby Mykolaiv remains in Ukrainian control, analysts said.

“After the attack on landing ships in Berdyansk, the Russian Federation will be forced to take several, possibly two or three, landing ships from the Black Sea to the Azov Sea,” said Andrii Klymenko, a defense and maritime analyst with the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies, a Ukrainian think tank. “This will weaken landing capabilities.”

Putin’s Crisis of Authoritarianism From WSJ

Russia’s debacle in Ukraine shows democracy isn’t the model that’s failing.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. The Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2022 

It might seem surprising that Ukrainians have fought so well, but it wasn’t surprising they would fight, given their knowledge of what living under Vladimir Putin’s regime really is like. Nor that the Russian army would underperform: Mr. Putin’s mooning of late about the religiously transcendent purpose of the Russian state always sits oddly in a regime that exists to loot the state, as any conscript can see.

Even those Russians who support the war know the truth about their leaders: They are thieves.

A much simpler explanation exists of Mr. Putin’s evolution over 22 years than many accounts you’ve been reading, which emphasize ideology, frustration with the West, even a degree of mysticism. Go back and it’s clear his early liberal sentiments evaporated when he realized his presidency would have to become permanent so he could avoid accountability for the crimes that his rise occasioned.

Mr. Putin is known to be a fan of the “Godfather” films but a Guy Ritchie movie strikes me as a better metaphor for his regime—you know, in which fast-talking London gang bosses comment colorfully on the inanities and stupidities of their fellow gangsters. On Tuesday, Russia continued its pell-mell retreat from Mr. Putin’s original, colossally misinformed war aims in Ukraine, which have produced only disaster. As Ray Winstone might say, what a prat.

If the Russian leader were as unchallengeable at home as many believe, why does he seem to organize his life around the principle that, to almost everyone around him, he’s expendable? His elaborate coup-proofing suggests he knows not everyone is in awe of his abilities or his public support. Mr. Putin is no Hitler or Mussolini, never having created a mass political movement or undying cadre of loyalists. If Mr. Putin were dethroned tomorrow, most Russians would view the matter with the same stoic passivity they do the weather.

It follows that his decision-making may also involve more uncertainty about what his colleagues will tolerate than we appreciate in the West.

Case in point: He may have rented the loyalty of Russia’s general staff by showering them with hundreds of billions in the past decade, much of which went to mansions and overseas accounts. But he still had to proceed with his Ukraine adventure on the basis that it would be a cakewalk, over in three days, a costless victory, producing only impotent tut-tutting from the West.

If he had offered his generals only sweat, tears, blood and sacrifice, they likely would have coughed into their sleeves and quickly left the room to adjust their portfolios in light of the discovery that Mr. Putin had lost the plot.

Or take his evident terror of personal contact and his legendary distrust of wireless communications. Both likely contribute to his propensity for misinformation and miscalculation. These facts may also mean—snip, snip—his authority is vulnerable to something as simple as cutting his landlines. The Kremlin’s frantic Ukraine backpedaling of recent days shows why Joe Biden’s ad lib in Poland may have been a gaffe, but it was an inspired gaffe. And the walkback was inspired too—leaving Mr. Putin’s associates in certainty about nothing except the fact that he can never again serve as a useful interlocutor to the world’s indispensable superpower.

My one disappointment was that China didn’t pipe up to say, “No, Mr. Putin must remain in power,” to emphasize just how thoroughly the Russian leader, through his own blunders, has reduced himself to a rag doll being fought over by nations that actually matter.

There’s a lesson about the relative blunders of free and unfree societies. The West’s managerial and democratic elite, of which Mr. Biden is a peerless example, may be feckless and short-sighted, and yet their societies go from strength to strength and don’t commit colossal errors (e.g., famines that kill tens of millions). We may one day conclude as much even about the relative merits of the U.S. and Chinese approaches to the Covid pandemic.

Recall that the U.S. also pursued wars that came to be seen as failures. But here’s the point: They were affordable failures. Indeed, our wars could drag on inconclusively because they were so far below the threshold of what the U.S. could sustain economically and politically.

The Chinese are assumed to be carefully husbanding the lessons of Mr. Putin’s Ukraine debacle as they get ready to anoint Xi Jinping with president-for-life status, but they are missing the most important lesson. Western societies insist on changing their leaders every few years, and it makes them strong and resilient in a way no authoritarian society is. This points to the true unpatriotism of a Putin or a Xi. Their central job, as they see it, is to deny their societies the blessing of regular, orderly and lawful succession of power from one set of hands to another.

On February 24 Ukraine is invaded by Russia

This Blog will attempt to chronicle the events of the Ukraine War.

Putin's Anti-Western Enmity Is Deeply Personal—and Stretches Back a Thousand Years

foreignpolicy.com

Michael Hirsh

19-23 minutes

Whether or not Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ends any time soon, what is certain to continue is the Russian president’s abiding hatred and mistrust of the United States and other Western powers, which he believes left him no choice but to launch an unprovoked war.

It’s not just Putin. These views are shared by the many Russian elites who have supported him for two decades. They have also been a chief reason for Putin’s domestic popularity—at least until recently, when his invasion ran into fierce resistance—even as he has turned himself into a dictator and Russia into a nearly totalitarian state reminiscent of the Soviet Union at its worst. It is an enmity worth probing in depth, if only to understand why Washington and the West almost certainly face another “long twilight struggle” with Moscow—in former U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s words—rivaling the 45-year Cold War.

The Russian president’s enduring antagonism toward the West is a complex tale, one compounded of Putin’s 69-year-old personal history as a child of World War II and career Soviet spy as well as the tangled, thousand-year history of Russia itself—or at least Putin’s reading of it. At the bottom, Putin and the many right-leaning Russian officials, elites, and scholars who support him not only don’t want to be part of the West and its postwar liberal value system but believe their country’s destiny is to be a great-power bulwark against it.

Even if Putin is somehow ousted from power, the generals and security mandarins who surround him are just as vested in his aggression as he is. And already, Russia is almost as isolated economically as it was during the Soviet era.

Indeed, Putin may have been preparing for this moment longer than people realize: After the Russian leader annexed Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin’s longtime ideologist, Vladislav Surkov, wrote that it would mark “the end of Russia’s epic journey to the West, the cessation of repeated and fruitless attempts to become a part of Western civilization.” Surkov predicted that Russia would exist in geopolitical solitude for at least the next hundred years.

“Putin has no path back,” said Anna Ohanyan, a political scientist at Stonehill College and the author of several books on Russia. Like other Russia experts, Ohanyan believed at one point during Putin’s 20 years in power that he was seeking a way to wield Russian influence within the institutions of the international system while trying to build new, countervailing ones, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Now most of those initiatives have turned to ashes. “By challenging territorial norms, he’s throwing out the prospect of the path he’s been building,” she said.

Biden administration officials are still grappling with the implications of the new long-term struggle. To do so, they have already delayed publishing their new national security strategy slated for the spring. While the administration expects to maintain its Indo-Pacific focus, officials say Putin’s aggression is leading to much more intensive effort to pursue what was already one of U.S. President Joe Biden’s key goals: the revitalization of NATO and the Western alliance, especially the new militarization of major European Union nations such as Germany, which hitherto had been reluctant to play a leading defense role.

Ukraine became the touchstone of Putin’s anti-Western attitudes in large part because the Russian leader and his supporters saw their historical brother nation as the last red line in a long series of Western humiliations. Putin, in his speeches, has repeatedly called this the West’s “anti-Russia project.” These perceived humiliations go back a long, long way—not just in the 30 years since the Cold War ended, nor even in the 100 years since the Soviet Union was formed in 1922. They reach all the way back to the European Enlightenment of more than three centuries ago, which gave rise to liberty, democracy, and human rights. To Russian nationalists like Putin, these developments have gradually come to eclipse Russia’s distinct character as a civilization.

By his own account, Putin sees himself not as the heir to the Soviets but as a champion of Russian civilization and Moscow’s Eurasian empire, whose roots extend back to a much earlier Vladimir—St. Vladimir, the Grand Prince of Kyiv from about 980 to 1015. St. Vladimir was ruler of what the Russians consider their first empire, the Slavic state known as Kievan Rus—based, of course, in Kyiv, the capital of what is now Ukraine. St. Vladimir’s conversion to Christianity in 988 later gave rise to the idea that Russia would be the “third Rome”—the heir to the fallen Roman and Byzantine Empires following the surrender of Constantinople to the Ottomans. It is why, like Putin, many Russians refer to Kievan Rus as “the cradle of Russian civilization” and Kyiv as “the mother of Russian cities.”

All this history is key to understanding Putin’s delusional view that Ukraine is not, and can never be, a separate country and “never had a tradition of genuine statehood.” Putin made this plain in a Feb. 21 speech, three days before the invasion, and in a 6,800-word essay from July 2021 titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In that essay, he reached back more than 10 centuries to explain why he was convinced that “Russians and Ukrainians were one people—a single whole.” He claimed it was important to understand that Russians and Ukrainians, along with Belarusians, “are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe.” Putin wrote: “The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir … still largely determines our affinity today.”

Some scholars believe this obsession with long-ago history is why Putin, who during his two decades in power was often thought to be a wily and restrained tactician, made the biggest miscalculation of his career in invading Ukraine. In doing so, he united, in one reckless move, the Ukrainians and the Europeans as well as the rest of the world against him. “He didn’t realize that even most of the Russian-language speakers in eastern Ukraine see themselves now as Ukrainian—that over the past 30 years, the Ukrainians had formed their own country. He didn’t realize that their sense of identity had changed,” said Peter Eltsov, a professor at National Defense University and author of the new book The Long Telegram 2.0: A Neo-Kennanite Approach to Russia. “He also killed all the progress he was making in dividing Europe. Even Finland and Sweden, which had been neutral, are now talking about joining NATO. He achieved the 100 percent opposite result of what he wanted.”

Putin’s historical focus is also meant to convey his deeply entrenched belief that Russia is a distinct civilization that has little in common with the West. This is a key element of “Eurasianism,” a Russian imperial ideology that is more than 100 years old but today has been directed at what Putin and his supporters see as the “philistinism” of the West and the corruption of its democracies, said Kelly O’Neill, a historian of Russia at Harvard University. She suggested that Putin’s reluctance to fully integrate modern Russia into the global economy—beyond selling it a lot of oil and gas—is based on the Eurasianist belief that Russia and its dominions are “distinct economies that belong to this beautiful imperial whole. It’s a defensive mechanism. If you integrate, then you become more vulnerable. Their view is, ‘We’re fortress Russia. We don’t need anyone else.’”

This attitude also has profound roots in Russian history, especially the Russian belief that Orthodox Christianity is superior to the West’s liberalized Christianity, which Putin and other conservative Russians view as corrupted by Enlightenment ideas. In the early 19th century, the Russian answer to the French Revolution’s Enlightenment creed, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Freedom, Equality, Fraternity), was “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality”—which Sergey Uvarov, minister of public education to Tsar Nicholas I, formulated as the conceptual foundation of the Russian Empire. This tripartite credo isn’t mentioned in Putin’s speeches and writings—he still likes to pretend Russia is a democracy—but it has been invoked by the far-right thinkers said to influence Putin, including Aleksandr Dugin, Lev Gumilev, Ivan Ilyin, Konstantin Leontiev, Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy, and others dating back 200 years.

“Uvarov’s formula explains why Russia always seems to resuscitate an autocratic empire in periods of crisis—as it did after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and is now doing following the fall of the Soviet Union,” Eltsov said. Putin’s Eurasianist goals can also only live or die through autocracy and imperial power, Eltsov and other scholars said. “Eurasianism is an imperial idea because it offers a way to reconcile the unity of the people as a whole and their diversity,” O’Neill said. “It’s difficult to do that if you don’t have an empire.”

For Putin, the idea of rebuilding a Eurasian empire under his rule—of which Ukraine must be a part—seems central to his sense of destiny as a leader. Russia, a vast land straddling Europe and Asia, is a civilization that has never been able to decide whether it is more European or Asian—a dilemma made more confusing by the fact that Mongols ruled it for 240 years, leaving behind millions of Tatar descendants. Russia also can’t agree on what its borders ought to be, not even after a thousand years.

“In Europe, borders have been set by rivers and mountain ranges, but that is not the way Russia looks at how boundaries are set. They have fluctuated over time,” based in large part on Moscow’s fears of invasion, said Thomas Graham, a former senior U.S. diplomat and Russia expert now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “People have long said that there’s never been a Russian nation state in history—that it’s always been an empire of one sort or another. The borders of Russia today are pretty much the borders of Russia in 1721, the year the empire was founded. The way they see it now, [the Soviet collapse of] 1991 undid some 200 to 300 years of geopolitical advances.”

Putin’s main goal in office has been to reverse that trend as much as possible. Or as Surkov, the Kremlin ideologist, wrote in 2019: “Having collapsed from the level of the USSR to the level of the [Russian Federation], Russia stopped crumbling, began to recover and to return to its natural and only possible condition as a great land, combining and augmenting the commonality of its peoples.” As a result, Surkov concluded, Russia will soon return to its past glory and the top rank of geopolitical struggle.

Graham and other Russia experts said it is a mistake to view Putin merely as an angry former KGB apparatchik upset at the fall of the Soviet Union and NATO’s encroachment after the Cold War, as he is often portrayed by Western commentators. Putin, himself, made this clear in his Feb. 21 speech, when he disavowed the Soviet legacy, inveighing against the mistakes made by former leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin to grant Ukraine even partial autonomy. On the contrary, Putin and other Russian nationalists today see Marxism-Leninism as just another regrettable Western import.

Putin is rather a messianic Russian nationalist and Eurasianist whose constant invocation of history going back to Kievan Rus, however specious, is the best explanation for his view that Ukraine must be part of Russia’s sphere of influence, experts say. In his essay last July, Putin even suggested that the formation of a separate, democratic Ukrainian nation “is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.”

As Putin has shown by transforming post-Soviet Russia’s brief experiment with democracy under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin into his personal power structure, he also has never demonstrated any sympathy for the Western postwar order of liberal democratic capitalism. Instead, for him, the post-Cold War period has been mostly about redesigning borders and power. Putin has been driven mainly by an old strategic concept, embraced by dictators Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, and other traditional strategists from recent centuries, of the need for “strategic depth” or buffer zones to defend one’s borders. For Putin, whose father fought in World War II (Putin carries his picture every year in the national parade commemorating what Russians call the Great Patriotic War), and for many other Russians, the defining event of their lives was the trauma of Hitler’s invasion and the deaths of tens of millions of their countrymen. That was likened at the time, and still is, to Napoleon’s calamitous war on Russia the century before.

“Russia has been repeatedly invaded. That’s something that’s very difficult for us in the United States to understand because we never faced a catastrophe of those dimensions,” Graham said. “It is a sense that goes back centuries: In order to survive, you need strategic depth, so you need to push borders out as far away from the heartland as possible—not so much physical as geopolitical barriers. You just push until you meet something that can resist you.”

Putin’s strange promise to “de-Nazify” Ukraine to justify his invasion—especially odd because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish—is better understood if one considers that he may actually believe he’s still fighting World War II, when substantial numbers of Ukrainians joined the Nazis. Ukrainian national hero Stepan Bandera—whose name adorns many streets in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and other cities and whose statues can be found across the country—was himself a far-right nationalist who allied with the Nazis and oversaw Jewish pogroms. In his speeches, Putin has often recast the allied fight against the Nazis as a largely Russian triumph. “He probably genuinely believes he’s reproducing the war, fighting against Nazism again,” said Marlene Laruelle, a Russia scholar at George Washington University.

Putin’s consolidation of power and attempts to take back bits of the former Soviet bloc, starting with his incursion into Georgia in 2008, are also a result of what Eltsov calls “Weimar syndrome”—a burning sense of defeat and humiliation after Soviet Russia’s defeat in the Cold War. One reason Putin has been so popular until now is many ordinary Russians share his sense of national injustice, Eltsov said. It is analogous to what happened in Germany after World War I, when popular outrage over the Treaty of Versailles and weakness and chaos in the Weimar Republic precipitated a right-wing reaction and, ultimately, the rise of Hitler.

Not every Russian, of course, shares these anti-Western views—even going back hundreds of years. Great figures in Russian history, especially two of its most lionized tsars, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, often sought to embrace the West and Russia’s European identity. Peter, who ruled from 1682 to 1725, was so enamored with the West that he ordered his boyars, or lords, to educate their children in Europe and even imposed a “beard tax” to force them to look like clean-shaven Europeans. Catherine corresponded with Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot, called French writer Voltaire her hero, and initially sought to set up a parliament and free the serfs. Many royal and aristocratic Russian families eagerly interbred with their European counterparts; Catherine herself was Prussian-born.

But both Peter and Catherine were conquerors as well. And these reformist efforts at integration, while they helped modernize Russia and gave rise to all those French-speaking Russian aristocrats who populated the works of Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, were almost always eclipsed by deeper conservative Russian fears. Today, Russian nationalists deride the Western reform efforts of Peter the Great as a seditious “fifth column.” Even Boris Nemtsov—a liberal opponent to Putin’s regime who was murdered on a bridge near the Kremlin in 2015— suggested that Russia could benefit from a constitutional monarchy back in 1993.

To a degree little understood by many Westerners, Russian literary figures they revere, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, were also devotees of this idea of a “greater Russia” under an absolute autocrat. Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author best known for writings that exposed the horrors of the Soviet gulag, later became one of Putin’s favorite intellectuals. Before his 2008 death, Solzhenitsyn wrote in an essay: “All the talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is recently invented falsehood.” Shortly before his death in 1881, Dostoevsky wrote: “To the people the Czar is the incarnation of themselves, their whole ideology, their hopes and beliefs.”

Putin, many Russia experts say, is only Russia’s latest tsar, and that’s the way he should be viewed by the Western strategists now searching for ways to stop him. The answer, in the end, may be to understand that Putin is acting more out of weakness than strength. In other words, Putin is riding the tiger of democratic self-determination in Ukraine and other former states of the Russian sphere—all of which now want to join the West—and he may not know how to get off. Eltsov argues that as a result of its centuries-long effort to control so many ethnic nationalities within its ever-shifting borders, Russia cannot survive for long as a true liberal democracy.

If it embraced the West and its democratic values, he said, “Russia would probably disintegrate.”

Correction, March 14, 2022: A previous version of this article misstated the exact location of Boris Nemtsov’s death.

Putin Is Stuck in Ukrainian Mud, but He Still Has a Nuclear Option

After 25 days of fighting, it looks increasingly likely that Russia's armored columns won’t be driving victoriously down Kyiv’s broad boulevards. But that doesn’t mean Ukraine will avoid even greater suffering

Anshel Pfeffer, Harretz.com, March 20, 2022

KYIV – Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three weeks ago, the roads leading into the capital, the main highways, the entrances to military and government buildings, and even Maidan Square have been littered with massive anti-tank obstacles made from giant metal spikes and old railroad tracks welded together. There are enough on the streets of Kyiv now to block an entire armored corps and they are becoming new icons of this historic city. But as things look right now, they won’t be needed.

It’s much too early to predict how the Russia-Ukraine war will end, but one thing can be said with near-certainty: the Russian armored columns won’t be driving victoriously down Kyiv’s broad boulevards.

The Russians failed to prepare their invasion adequately and the Ukrainians had the right tactics in place to stop them with armed drones and anti-tank teams using both old Soviet-era, rocket-propelled grenades and more modern, portable Western missiles.

The tactical and strategic lessons will be learned for decades to come in military academies, and the experts who predicted the end of the era of the tank – which entered warfare just over a century ago in World War I – will certainly be bolstered in their arguments. But the failures in Russia’s war plans began much earlier than the botched advance on Kyiv and far above the pay grade of Russian armored division commanders.

Naturally, the situation around Kyiv draws much of the attention, but the Russian invasion is spread over a large number of fronts throughout Ukraine. Beyond the attempt to encircle and capture the capital, there is a similar and much bloodier campaign for the second-largest Ukrainian city, Kharkiv, to the east. Another important city encircled by the Russians is Mariupol, which holds the key to controlling the strategic Sea of Azov and opening the way from the annexed Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea coast. The Russians haven’t waited, however, and have opened up fronts there as well, in a push for the city of Mykolaiv and in so far botched attempts at naval landings around Odessa.

 A neighborhood in Kyiv that was destroyed by Russia's military Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

                               The Ukrainian flag flying atop sandbags at a defense post in Kyiv on Saturday. Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

                                                   An armed Ukrainian soldier at a press briefing in Kyiv over the weekend. Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

Other battles are raging in the east, where the Russian forces together with separatist militias are trying to encircle the Ukrainian army’s Joint Forces Operation (JFO) group facing the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

There were also a number of Russian attempts to “decapitate” Ukraine’s leadership using special forces who tried to assassinate or kidnap President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and airstrikes. Air and missile strikes, as well as cyberwarfare, have also been used to try to cripple Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

After 25 days of fighting, none of these objectives have been achieved.

If at the start of the invasion the Russians had concentrated their forces and logistical resources on just one or two, perhaps three, of these objectives, they would have had a realistic chance of achieving them within days, and could then continue on to further targets with the momentum of success.

Only one man could have given the orders to attack simultaneously on all these fronts. The same man who was convinced that Ukraine is a fake state that would crumble at his touch. President Vladimir Putin is already shifting the blame to his senior military and intelligence chiefs, but the colossal strategic error is his alone.

Of all the goals of Russia’s war, only two currently seem anywhere near their grasp: taking Mariupol – and even then it will be at the price of reducing a city of 400,000 to rubble and will take bloody house-to-house fighting at the cost of thousands of civilian casualties and thousands more military fatalities on either side. And even if the Russians do successfully capture Mariupol, their troops will be in no state to continue on to the next objective. Likewise with their encirclement of the JFO, which is also still a possibility.

With the exception of Mariupol, where progress is measured by streets, there have been no Russian advances on any of the fronts over the past week. In some places, they have even been forced to retreat in the face of Ukrainian counteroffensives or where their units were cut off from each other.

A "Kiev City" sign on an apartment block in the Ukrainian capital. Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

Residents on the street outside their apartment block, a day after it was hit by Russian shelling, in Kyiv on Saturday. Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

Theoretically at least, Russia can still change its strategy and concentrate more forces against a limited number of objectives. However, such a regrouping will take long weeks and the battalion groups that have been in the field for nearly a month – not including the months they spent in staging areas near the border – and have taken many casualties, will take longer than that to recuperate.

Since the Russian army is forbidden by law from using conscripts outside the country’s borders, there are few sources of reinforcements for the invading army. A few thousand mercenaries from Syria and some units moved from other areas will not change the picture. Ukraine’s population is less than a third of Russia’s, but it actually still has more personnel to throw into battle – the millions of men and women prepared to volunteer and fight for their country who are still walking around in the cities, wearing uniforms they purchased or made for themselves.

The great advantage Russia has over Ukraine in aerial and artillery firepower has failed to come into play, as it has not established air superiority over the country, preventing waves of bombers from pounding targets. It also seems to lack sufficient numbers of long-range missiles. The hundreds of batteries of mid-range rockets that Russia has are being used. But in a country the size of Ukraine, their effectiveness is limited if they can’t be brought close enough to the front.

What can still change the picture for the Russians? It is unlikely to be isolated tactical successes like the hypersonic missile strike on a military base in Mykolaiv that killed at least 50 Ukrainian troops on Friday.

A Ukrainian soldier on the streets of Kyiv on Saturday. Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

The collapse of Ukrainian infrastructure, forcing the Zelenskyy government to accept a humiliating cease-fire that will acknowledge Russia’s territorial grabs, is still conceivable. But it is looking less likely by the day as the Ukrainians have succeeded in repairing some of the damaged power networks and the supply chains are overcoming shortages. In recent days, many more food products are to be found in stores in Kyiv and other cities. The Ukrainian government has also changed the tax regulations in an attempt to get small businesses running again and to put the local economy back on track.

At this stage, it looks as if the only way Russia can get back into the game and seriously threaten Kyiv is by raising a whole new army of conscripts, after changing the legislation or declaring martial law. But that would take at least half a year, probably much more, and will cause significant unrest within Russia.

Yet everything said above should not obscure the fact that Russia still has one very significant claim to being a military power: It continues to have the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world – around 6,000 (500 more than the United States), two-thirds of which are “tactical” nuclear weapons that could be used against Ukrainian targets, creating untold damage but without the threat of radioactive fallout on Russian territory.

It is of course possible that the level of maintenance of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the delivery systems is as low as that of its conventional weaponry. But even a single nuclear explosion could change the entire picture. The first use of a nuclear weapon in war since Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 77 years ago seems unthinkable, but so was Putin’s reckless decision to unleash a war on this scale.

The fear of Russia using a tactical nuclear weapon is one of the main reasons Western leaders have adamantly refused to get directly involved in the warfare, beyond supplying Ukraine with arms and intelligence. Even if Putin’s army remains stuck in the Ukrainian mud, he will still have the nuclear card to play. His tanks won’t capture Kyiv, but he can still inflict even greater suffering upon Ukraine than he already has.

Russia backs down on demands in Iran nuclear deal talks, making revival of 2015 pact imminent

A picture taken on November 10, 2019, shows an Iranian flag in Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, during an official ceremony to kick-start works on a second reactor at the facility.

ATTA KENARE | AFP via Getty Images

Russia backs down on demands in Iran nuclear deal talks, making revival of 2015 pact imminent

PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 18 20222:43 PM EDT

Natasha Turak@NATASHATURAK

KEY POINTS

• With the U.S. terminating its imports of Russian oil and the EU looking to reduce its energy dependency on Moscow, Iranian crude is looking more alluring.

• A return to the 2015 deal would see the return of Iranian oil to the market at a time when crude prices have hit their highest levels in more than a decade.

• The release of British-Iranian dual nationals from years of Iranian detention back to the U.K. has improved prospects for an agreement.

Russia has walked back its threat to torpedo the revival of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal over recent sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine, reopening the way to an agreement after nearly a year of talks. 

The parties involved in the pact, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, were reportedly close to reaching a deal in Vienna until the U.S. and EU imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Moscow then demanded that future trade with Iran not be impacted by Western sanctions, prompting the talks to be suspended last week. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that he had “received written guarantees” from the U.S. that its demands would be met, meaning the talks will likely proceed. The nearly simultaneous release of British-Iranian dual nationals from years of Iranian detention back to the U.K. and a reported U.K. repayment of a decades-old $530 million debt to Iran have improved prospects for an agreement.      

“Deal could come together quite quickly — potentially as soon as this week,” analysts at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group wrote in a note Wednesday. 

“Russia’s decision to moderate its demands clears the most significant hurdle in front of the JCPOA’s revival,” the analysts wrote, putting the odds of a deal passing at an optimistic 80%. “The release of the two British-Iranian prisoners is another positive signal that talks are nearing a conclusion,” they said.

Iranian oil back on the market?

With the U.S. terminating its imports of Russian oil and the EU looking to reduce its energy dependency on Moscow, Iranian crude is looking more alluring — as is the crude from other heavily sanctioned countries like Venezuela, which has reportedly been in energy discussions with U.S. officials.

A return to the 2015 deal, which originally lifted sanctions on Iran in return for limits on its nuclear program, would see the return of Iranian oil to the market at a time when energy supply shortages and geopolitical volatility have brought crude prices to their highest in more than a decade. 

This would “boost global oil supplies and could put downwards pressure on prices,” James Swanston, Middle East and North Africa economist at London-based firm Capital Economics, wrote in a note Thursday, adding that “it may also help to ease geopolitical tensions in the region.” Still, a return to previous production levels will take time. 

Adding Iranian oil to the market could drive down the price by $3 to $5 a barrel

Commodities analysts at S&P Global Platts predict that if sanctions were to be lifted on Iran immediately, it could export an additional 500,000 barrels of oil per day to markets from April to May of this year, with that figure reaching an additional 1.3 million barrels per day by the end of this year.

Iran was the fifth-largest producer in OPEC in 2020. Before the Donald Trump administration unilaterally ditched the deal in 2018 and re-imposed crippling sanctions on Iran’s economy, the country was producing 3.8 million barrels of oil per day. This later dropped to as low as 1.9 million barrels and is currently about 2.4 million barrels per day, according to the Atlantic Council — though most of this has had to remain in storage rather than be exported due to the sanctions.

Since the U.S. withdrawal from the deal, Tehran has made significant progress in terms of its nuclear activity, increasing uranium enrichment and stockpiles far beyond the parameters of the 2015 agreement. 

This means it has shrunk its “breakout time,” or the amount of time it would take to be able to build a nuclear bomb. Iran’s leaders said its advances would continue as long as U.S. sanctions aren’t lifted. 

Washington’s Gulf allies not happy

Eleven months after negotiations restarted, with the U.S and Iran not speaking directly but through European mediators, the remaining sticking points relate mostly to sanctions-related issues, including whether Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will continue to be designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization list. 

“But these are unlikely to prove insurmountable,” Eurasia’s analysts say, considering that both Washington and Tehran want a deal. 

U.S. should not rely on Venezuela, Iran to replace Russian oil, says Rep. Kevin McCarthy

The prospect of a return to the deal has not sat well with Washington’s Arab Gulf allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of OPEC’s leading crude producers and longtime adversaries of Iran. The two reportedly did not take President Joe Biden’s calls as he attempted to convince them to increase their oil production to alleviate soaring prices.

OPEC has not indicated any move to upping its production beyond pre-planned increases agreed between OPEC members and their non-OPEC allies, led by Russia, in 2021.

Ukraine Fights On

Mar 19th 2022 economist.com

9-11 minutes

“REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR,” Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, entreated America’s Congress. “Remember September 11th…Every night for three weeks, in various Ukrainian cities, Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death.” Mr Zelensky was not asking for pity. He was asking for a no-fly zone or, failing that, for arms. “I have a dream. I have a need. I need to protect our skies,” he pleaded—surely the first man to invoke Martin Luther King Jr in pursuit of surface-to-air missiles.

Shortly before Mr Zelensky began his speech on March 16th, Russian television broadcast an address given by Vladimir Putin, his counterpart. Where Mr Zelensky appealed to his listeners in the name of all Ukrainians, Mr Putin set Russian against Russian. “Fifth columnists and traitors,” he snarled, would be spat out “like midges that flew into [the Russian people’s] mouth”. The need for cleansing Russia of such “scum” was evoked with disconcertingly familiar fascist rhetoric. “I am convinced that such natural and necessary self-purification of our society will only strengthen our country [and] cohesion.”

The war, the dictator insisted, was “going to plan”. If that is his opinion then his minions are keeping him from the truth. According to American defence sources, 10% of Russia’s invasion force has been lost, presumably either killed or wounded. It is shy at least 233 tanks, 32 surface-to-air missile launchers and 41 planes, drones and helicopters, according to Oryx, a blog which tracks such weapons using pictures made public on the internet. On top of that which has been destroyed, a fair bit of workable Russian kit has been captured—much of it towed away gleefully, and on video, by farmers with tractors.

These are severe losses of men and materiel. What is more, they seem to have fallen disproportionately on elite units such as the VDV airborne forces, Spetsnaz special forces and the First Guards Tank Army, an armoured force purportedly both well trained and equipped. British defence intelligence says that these losses are so severe that they have left Russia “struggling to conduct offensive operations”. It has been forced to redeploy forces from its eastern military district (which stretches to Vladivostok), from its Pacific fleet and from Armenia; it is also recruiting Russian and Syrian mercenaries.

This is a high price for what are, as yet, relatively scant gains. In the east, Russia is stuck at the outskirts of Kharkiv, a city it tried and failed to take on the war’s first day. In Sumy, north-west of Kharkiv, Russian tanks have been spotted lodged in the mud—a problem that will only grow as Ukraine’s spring thaw gets going.

Russian forces are firmly positioned 15-20km to the north-west of the centre of Kyiv and 20-30km to the east of it, and other suburbs around the capital are being laid waste. More and more rockets and missiles have been hitting the city.

But that fire has been returned. Ukrainian artillery is being dug in around the city and mobile missile-launchers deployed. Supermarket shelves are far from full but food has not run out. The water, electricity and gas utilities are still working. Morale remains high. “I have never so much as killed a chicken,” says Vladislav, a 52-year-old electrician who was watching television when missiles hit the district in which he lives on March 14th. “But now I’d kill that Putin bastard.” Ukrainian control over corridors to the south of the city keep it connected to the rest of the country, and thus the world—witness the visit there by the Czech, Polish and Slovenian prime ministers on March 15th.

Such connections are not just symbolic. They can bring supplies. Perhaps Ukraine’s second-biggest advantage is that Western arms are still pouring into the country. On March 15th the Joint Expeditionary Force, a British-led ten-nation bloc of northern European states, agreed to “co-ordinate, fund and supply” more weaponry. On March 16th America announced $800m in new security assistance to Ukraine. The package includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems and 2,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles. It also contains 100 unspecified drones which are thought to be Switchblades, loitering munitions that can strike tanks from up to 40km away. On a forthcoming trip to Slovakia and Bulgaria, Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, is expected to ask both allies to provide Ukraine with longer-range Russian-made air-defence systems from their arsenals, such as the S-300.

The only thing which may be more important to Ukraine’s defence than these supplies is the morale they help keep up. Ukrainian troops are defiant, confident and buoyed—not to say surprised—by their success not just in holding out for three weeks when many Western experts thought the war would be over in days, but in imposing serious losses on enemy forces which have, in some places, come close to a standstill.

There ain’t no easy way out

Russian forces advancing north out of Crimea have, by and large, made more progress than those coming south from Belarus and Russia. But there, too, some assaults have become bogged down. In the south-west, Russian forces appear to be stuck at Mykolaiv, a port which guards the road to Odessa. They have been unable to assault it, capture it from the sea or bypass it. Their response, as is often the case with Russia’s army, has been to shell it. Rockets have landed in the city’s zoo on at least three occasions. The tail of one Smerch rocket is stuck inside the bird enclosure; the peacocks have not been the same since, say staff. “After three weeks of this idiot’s genocidal war,” says a deputy zookeeper, “It really would be the icing on the cake; to see lions, tigers and leopards free to roam.”

But Russia’s military dysfunction and Ukraine’s thumping victory in the information war may have obscured some of the country’s vulnerabilities, especially those which are some way away from the besieged, battered but defiant cities. Stymied though Russia may be at Mykolaiv, it has been advancing quite quickly towards Kryvyi Rih, a city around 150km (90 miles) to the north-east. If that manoeuvre pans out, it would weaken Ukraine’s hold on Dnipro, a larger city which controls vital crossing points over the Dnieper river.

Should Russian forces also manage to break out past Kharkiv and move south, a pincer movement formed by the two advances could isolate the Ukrainian forces facing the Russian separatists in the east of the country. The Ukrainian forces in this area, known as the Joint Forces Operation, are thought to comprise a sizeable fraction of the regular army. In a letter sent to his officers on March 9th, General Thierry Burkhard, France’s chief of defence staff, warned that Ukraine, “faced with the difficulty of holding a stretched position, without any operational reserve, could experience a sudden collapse”. In the long run, losing its army in the field would bode ill for Ukraine’s chances.

Perhaps mindful of their respective weaknesses and losses—the civilian toll in Ukraine has been hard, especially in Mariupol—Russia and Ukraine seem to have become more seriously engaged in negotiations that could bring about a ceasefire or end the war. Mr Zelensky, who in recent days has acknowledged that Ukraine “will not enter” NATO, insisted that the Russians were sounding “more realistic” about a settlement. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on March 16th that the two sides were “close to agreeing” a deal that would involve a neutral Ukraine receiving guarantees about its security. That said, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s foreign minister, has been quoted as saying the Russians are only pretending to negotiate.

Likely sticking-points are not limited to the territory at stake (Russia will want to keep its gains in Donbas, including Mariupol, should it succeed in taking the city). What sort of security guarantees are offered, and by whom, will matter as much or more. Mykhailo Podolyak, one of Ukraine’s negotiators, told The Economist that the only acceptable deal would be one with “specific and legally binding guarantees” under which Ukrainian allies such as America, Britain and Turkey “would be able to actively intervene in case of any aggression”. Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, says that the guarantors would have to include not just countries friendly to Ukraine but also all five permanent members of the UN security council.

Mr Yermak also says that, although the two teams of negotiators can prepare the ground, any agreement will ultimately have to be hammered out by the two presidents. How strong their hands are will depend on the fortunes of war between now and then; the negotiations may not reach their level until there is desperation on the part of one or both of them.

Come what may, though, the broadcasts of March 16th showed that Mr Zelensky will bring the goodwill of the world and the fervent expectations of his people to the table: “I would tell him ‘Fight until victory!’” says Vladislav, the electrician in Kyiv. Mr Putin’s position, meanwhile, will be shaped by a domestic situation, and an attitude to it, which are both far darker. �

Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis

This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "No end in sight"

Ukraine Update: Ukrainian President Asked Biden Not to Sanction Abramovich, to Facilitate Peace Talks Source WSJ

wsj.com

WSJ News Exclusive | Ukrainian President Asked Biden Not to Sanction Abramovich, to Facilitate Peace Talks

Vivian Salama, Justin Scheck and Max Colchester

9-11 minutes

Early this month, officials inside the U.S. Treasury Department drafted a set of sanctions to punish Roman Abramovich, a prominent Russian oligarch, following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, say people familiar with the plans.

When it came time to announce those sanctions, which had been designed to go out in tandem with sanctions from the U.K. and European Union, the White House’s National Security Council told the Treasury to hold off. The reason: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky advised President Biden in a recent phone call to wait on sanctioning the oligarch, who might prove important as a go-between with Russia in helping to negotiate peace, according to people with knowledge of the call.

President Biden consulted Ukraine’s president on a range of sanctions, including the planned penalties targeting Mr. Abramovich.

“We are not going to read out private conversations between President Biden and President Zelensky,” said Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council. The Treasury Department declined to comment.

State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to comment specifically on sanctions discussions regarding Mr. Abramovich, but said that Mr. Biden, who traveled Wednesday to Brussels to meet with his European and G-7 counterparts, is working “to ensure collectively we can do all we can to hold to account all those responsible for this war for this needless conflict.”

On whether Mr. Abramovich has been a go-between in talks between the Ukrainians and Russians, Mr. Price added: “There are a number of channels through which our Ukrainian partners and their Russian counterparts can engage in dialogue and diplomacy.”

The Ukrainian president’s office declined to comment.

“For the negotiations, and in the interest of them succeeding, it is not helpful commenting on the process nor on Mr. Abramovich’s involvement,” a spokesperson for Mr. Abramovich said in a statement. “As previously stated, based on requests, including from Jewish organizations in Ukraine, he has been doing all he can to support efforts aimed at restoring peace as soon as possible.”

The U.K. and the EU both sanctioned Mr. Abramovich earlier this month over his links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, freezing his assets in their jurisdictions.

Several U.K. and European officials say they have no knowledge of Mr. Zelensky making a specific plea to their leaders not to levy sanctions on Mr. Abramovich. Several Ukrainian officials and officials from other Western governments are also skeptical about how deeply Mr. Abramovich is involved in the peace talks.

The U.S. decision to delay sanctioning Mr. Abramovich is an unexpected twist in the West’s strategy to punish rich oligarchs with Kremlin links in an effort to pressure Mr. Putin. While several high profile Russian businessmen have spoken out against the war, Mr. Abramovich is the only oligarch to publicly say he is trying to push Moscow to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Mr. Abramovich is a billionaire former oil magnate and Kremlin insider for more than two decades, according to U.K. and EU governments. He owns numerous trophy assets including London’s Chelsea Football Club, several mega yachts and palatial homes in the U.S. and UK.

The Treasury Department took aim at him as Russia invaded Ukraine, researching his holdings and ways he could be penalized to pressure Mr. Putin, says a person familiar with the matter. It proceeded cautiously out of concern that penalties could affect global steel prices, this person said. Mr. Abramovich owns a minority stake in Evraz PLC which runs steel plants in Oregon and Colorado. U.S. officials discussed potential sanctions that could exempt such businesses.

Mr. Biden’s unusual consultation with Mr. Zelensky about these and other specific sanctions targeting individual Russian elitesunderscores efforts by the U.S. to coordinate closely with Kyiv and other allies as it continues to look for new ways to stifle the Russian government.

U.S. officials who spoke with The Wall Street Journal emphasized that they have no reason to believe Mr. Abramovich has been particularly helpful in the talks between the Ukrainian and Russian governments, and intelligence assessments have, in fact, suggested otherwise.

Mr. Abramovich got involved after Ukrainian government officials reached out to people with Russian contacts who might be able to provide a bridge to Mr. Putin. One of them was film producer Alexander Rodnyansky, the father of an adviser to Ukraine’s president, according to the producer’s publicist Lera Paksyalina. Mr. Rodyansky founded a Ukrainian television channel that screened shows produced by Mr. Zelensky while he was an actor.

Responding to the request for assistance, he reached out to Mr. Abramovich, a person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Abramovich knew Mr. Rodnyansky through his funding of arts projects in Russia, the person said.

Mr. Abramovich has told associates that he was trying to act as a go-between in the conflict, according to people familiar with the matter.

Days after Russia’s invasion, Mr. Abramovich’s spokeswoman confirmed his involvement, saying he had offered to help the Ukrainian government in “achieving a peaceful resolution.”

The consequences of harsh economic sanctions against Russia are already being felt across the globe. WSJ’s Greg Ip joins other experts to explain the significance of what has happened so far and how the conflict might transform the global economy. Photo Illustration: Alexander Hotz

The offer to capitalize on his relationship with Mr. Putin was a significant turnaround from Mr. Abramovich’s earlier messaging. For years he has, through various spokespeople, attempted to put distance between himself and the Kremlin.

After buying Chelsea in 2003, he told the Financial Times in a rare interview that he had “no special relationship” with the Russian president. In 2010, his then-spokesman denied a story from leaked U.S. Embassy cables that alleged he had a close financial relationship with Mr. Putin as “entirely absurd.”

Mr. Abramovich feels he can try to use his standing in the Russian business community to try to facilitate talks between the two nations, according to a person close to him. It is unclear whether Mr. Abramovich has succeeded in speaking to Mr. Putin or what he has done to mediate. An official at Ukraine’s Embassy in Israel said “we have no information that he is or was involved” in peace talks.

People who have spoken to Mr. Abramovich say he is spending a significant amount of time on the process. His private jets have zigzagged between Russia, Turkey and Israel in recent weeks, according to flight tracking data. He was seen in the capital of Belarus in late February during a round of talks, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, several representatives of Israeli charities and other organizations signed a letter to the U.S. ambassador in Israel warning of the financial consequences of sanctioning Mr. Abramovich, a major donor to Israel’s Yad Vashem holocaust memorial.

Write to Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com, Justin Scheck at justin.scheck@wsj.com and Max Colchester atmax.colchester@wsj.com

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The Beauty of Ukraine

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The Beauty of Ukraine

National Symbol of Ukraine

The World That Putin Has Made

The World That Putin Has Made
The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2022
Richard Fontaine

On Feb. 4, just weeks before he would invade Ukraine, Vladimir Putin went to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Sitting alone, the Russian president appeared to close his eyes as the Ukrainian team entered. By the end of the month, he would threaten the country's independent existence.

The Olympics wasn't the only item on Mr. Putin's agenda in Beijing. He held a high-profile summit meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in which the two pledged friendship and solidarity. To sum up their vision for what such a partnership could achieve, they issued an expansive joint manifesto.

The world they sought, the statement said, would be ordered very differently than in the past, and China and Russia would cooperate with "no limits" to assume their rightful places in it. They would forge an "international relations of a new type," multipolar and no longer dominated by the United States. There would be no further NATO enlargement, no color revolutions, no globe-spanning U.S. missile defense system, no American nuclear weapons deployed abroad. Actors "representing but the minority on the international scale," that is, the U.S. and its allies" might continue to interfere in other states and "incite contradictions, differences and confrontation," but Beijing and Moscow together would resist them.

"In the world order to come, no one would pressure China or Russia on human rights or interfere in their internal affairs."

The manifesto put in stark, global terms much of what Mr. Putin has pursued for more than a decade. The Russian president wants to prevent Ukraine from aligning with the West and to dominate and absorb the Ukrainian people. He hopes to fracture Western unity, especially within NATO, to stop the alliance's expansion and to reverse its eastern military deployments. In Mr. Putin's plans, Russia would regain an expansive sphere of influence that would at once guarantee its security needs and recognize its longstanding imperial claims. After a long period of post-Cold War decline and humiliation, his country would be strong and respected again; a great power treated as such.

In the world order to come, no one would pressure China or Russia on human rights or interfere in their internal affairs. Democracy itself would be redefined and subject to no universal standard. "It is only up to the people of the country," the manifesto said, "to decide whether their State is a democratic one." Russia would join with China to oppose both "any forms of independence for Taiwan" and the formation of alliances opposed to Beijing in Asia.

This is the world that Mr. Putin wants, but it is not the one that he is violently ushering into existence. His unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has resulted in geopolitical shifts astonishing in their scale and rapidity. The outlines of a new global order are already perceptible; and in many ways, they are precisely the opposite of those the Russian president seeks.

Before the invasion, Western countries widely viewed Russia as a resentful, revisionist power, led by a president who was unhappy with his country's global position but pragmatic and opportunistic. Moscow
s unprovoked war of aggression changed this perception overnight. American and European leaders now see Russia as a clear and present danger, not just to Ukraine but potentially to other neighbors and even to NATO territory. Gone are the visits of European leaders to Moscow and the lengthy discussions about accommodating Russian security concerns. In their place are utter distrust and a common desire to isolate and weaken Russia.

If Mr. Putin hoped to carve out an international leadership role for Russia, he has failed badly. For the first time in a quarter century, the U.N. General Assembly met in emergency session to debate a resolution condemning the invasion. It did so by a vote of 141-5, with Moscow joined only by Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria in opposing the measure. Even its quasi-ally China abstained on the vote. Nearly 40 countries then made the largest-ever referral to the International Criminal Court, asking it to investigate potential Russian war crimes in Ukraine. President Biden summed up the attitude of many leaders, saying, "Putin has unleashed violence and chaos. But while he may make gains on the battlefield, he will pay a continuing high price over the long run."

As the war began, Mr. Putin warned that "Russia remains part of the global economy" and that its partners should "not set a goal to push us out of the system." And yet, the world's largest economies, except China, moved quickly to disconnect Russia from the benefits of globalization, including trade, travel, technology and finance. They sanctioned Russia's biggest banks, enacted restrictions on their use of the SWIFT financial messaging system and froze central bank assets. In so doing, they deliberately fomented a financial crisis, drove the ruble to an all-time low and provoked a near-default on Russia's sovereign debt.

Multiple countries stopped issuing visas to Russians, barred Russian air travel, sanctioned key individuals and their families and put export controls in place. Energy giants like BP, Shell and Exxon are divesting their Russian holdings, Visa and Mastercard have stopped processing payments, and Apple no longer sells iPhones in Russia. Even sports bodies have joined the movement: FIFA suspended Russian soccer teams, the International Olympic Committee banned Russian athletes, and Russian teams are now prohibited from participating in international hockey events. Never before has an economy so large become so isolated so quickly.

The combination of unprovoked war and economic mayhem has brought many Russians into the street to protest. But Russia has long had the habit of accompanying external aggression with domestic repression, and the Kremlin has played to type, cracking down on internal dissent. The resulting image is one of a Russia not strong and unified but discontented and even brittle.

In Europe, Mr. Putin's aggression achieved virtually overnight what decades of haranguing by American presidents could not. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz killed Nordstream 2, the $11 billion pipeline that would have carried gas to Germany, and pledged to diversify away from Russian supplies. He announced that Germany would immediately boost defense spending by 100 billion euros and pledged annual defense outlays amounting to 2% of German GDP, up from 1.4%. He also pledged to ship weapons to Ukraine, including antitank rockets and Stinger missiles that can take down Russian aircraft.

Neutrality is waning. Non-NATO member Finland and neutral Sweden both aligned firmly with the West against Russia, and for the first time, majorities in both countries now favor NATO membership. Both are sending weapons to Ukraine. Even Switzerland, which has famously guarded its neutrality for more than 500 years, has frozen Russian assets, adopted the EU sanctions package, voted at the U.N. to condemn Moscow's invasion and delivered emergency relief supplies to Ukraine.

The EU, which for two decades has aspired to a military role without much success, crossed its own Rubicon. The economic bloc announced that it will provide fighter jets and other lethal arms to Ukraine. "For the first time ever," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, "the EU will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack. This is a watershed moment." After Kyiv appealed for EU membership, Ms. von der Leyen observed that Ukraine is "one of us, and we want them in the European Union." She subsequently softened her remarks, but such sentiment toward Ukraine was notable because it had been unthinkable just days before.

Much more in Europe was previously unthinkable. In the 1980s, the U.S. and Britain supplied weapons to the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan, but they did so in a secret operation that took years to scale up. Within days of Mr. Putin's invasion, by contrast, at least 15 countries, most of them European, were openly arming Ukraine. NATO activated its Response Force, an advanced military force capable of rapid deployment, for the first time in its history.

Mr. Putin sought to stop NATO expansion, roll back the alliance's deployments and dominate what he considers Russia's sphere of influence. But the opposite outcome is more likely. His war could ultimately leave NATO larger, more unified, better armed and with military deployments placed closer to Russia. For decades, EU members divided largely on east-west lines over how to deal with Russia. Now that problem is a source of common action. A land war on the continent may well have helped to birth a new Europe.

The geopolitical reverberations extend to other regions as well. Japan joined the sweeping sanctions on Russia and is sending bulletproof vests to Ukraine. This may be just the beginning for a country that sees in Russia's invasion the possible antecedents--and responses--to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. "We want to demonstrate what happens when a country invades another country," a Japanese official told the Washington Post. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that "Japan needs to implement a fundamental upgrade of its defense capabilities."
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Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who still leads the ruling party's largest faction, went further. Despite the country's strong opposition to nuclear weapons, he said, "Holding discussions on the reality about how the world's safety is protected should not be considered a taboo." Mr. Kishida quickly rebuffed the notion of Japan's acquiring nuclear weapons, but Russian aggression has plainly changed the debate. As a senior defense ministry official told the Japan Times, "If [Ukraine] had nukes, Russia would not have invaded it."

China could be forgiven a bit of buyer's remorse regarding its new quasi-ally. Mr. Putin's war of conquest leaves Beijing badly exposed. Many of its businesses may soon be forced to choose between access to the U.S. market or Russia's. Powerful countries representing half of the world's economic output oppose Moscow's aggression, while China has aligned itself with a reckless Russia that faces long-term isolation and impoverishment even as its military flounders in the field. The prospect has led many in Asia to rethink the region's security requirements. Reports that Beijing knew war was coming, did nothing to avert it, and merely asked Moscow to delay until after the Olympics compound its problems.

Mr. Putin's war has even had a galvanizing effect inside the U.S. The intelligence community predicted the Russian invasion, over Moscow's insistence that such claims were ludicrous, and in doing so demonstrated its credibility. Republicans and Democrats found a policy that all can support--for Ukraine and against Russia--and dozens of American cities are now lit up in blue and yellow. Such domestic political unity may not last--it usually doesn't, even in response to an external threat--but once again, Mr. Putin seems to have accomplished the impossible.

The extraordinary global response to Mr. Putin's war stems from its obvious geopolitical significance. Leaders in many countries immediately understood that not only do Ukrainian lives and independence hang in the balance, but so, too, do broader principles of international behavior. World order--those institutions and rules that govern, if not always effectively, the conduct of nations--is very often taken for granted. Indeed, much recent political debate in the U.S. has focused not on the benefits of world order but on its costs. Defense spending, alliances and military pacts, diplomatic deals, international economic arrangements--all are easy to dismiss as the obsolete manifestations of a Cold War mind-set, or the hubris of U.S. leadership, or the conceit of those who overlook the interests of average Americans.

Easy, that is, until the foundations of international order shake violently, as they have with the invasion of Ukraine. The alternative to an ordered world, and to countries shouldering the cost of its defense, is the law of the jungle, where big countries can take territory, impose their rule and spread chaos at will. That is Mr. Putin's world. Dozens of countries are combining to resist it--and to preserve and extend the principles that have done so much to create peace, prosperity and freedom for well over half a century. Those are the stakes in Ukraine.

The outcome remains uncertain. Through sheer might and brutality, Mr. Putin may yet conquer Ukraine and erase its statehood. The solidarity of governments opposing Russia might wane as costs set in. Sanctions could fade or the pledges of stronger defense go unfulfilled. The international leadership to which the U.S. has been stirred might fade.

A more hopeful possibility exists, however, and an immense opportunity. The countries joined in common concern for the preservation of a liberal world order could stay as united in the future as they are today. They could use Mr. Putin's war as a turning point, committing themselves to upholding rules and norms that will otherwise fade. There is nothing inevitable about the world envisioned by Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi--where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, where autocracy reigns and individuals cower, where democracy itself is redefined to mean oppression of the people.

Today's two revisionist great powers are formidable, but they pale in comparison to the West's combined might. Defending a liberal international order requires unity and commitment, however, and entails costs. Even a few weeks ago, such a project seemed unlikely for fractious democracies facing the determined rise of autocratic challengers. Not today.

The world that Mr. Putin launched this war to create is very different from the world that is emerging. By invading Ukraine, he has weakened Russia rather than strengthened it. He has achieved not the absorption of Ukraine into Russia but the enduring enmity of their peoples. He has initiated not a successful challenge to the West but rather a war that has spurred its members to take action.

Mr. Fontaine is the chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security.

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Absolute Power Corrupts…

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairing a meeting on economic issues Monday in Moscow.                                      PHOTO: KREMLIN VIA REUTERS

              Historian Lord Acton warned that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

This statement applies to individuals, institutions, and governments, and is as applicable today as it was in 1887