Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 132

Informant Claims Biden’s Were Paid $5 Million In Burisma Scandal: Kim Iversen Interviews Garland Nixon

Link here.

Garland Nixon is a former police investigator and currently a political analyst and interviewer.

Gordon Hahn: Putin’s Balancing, Russian Culture, and Impunity after Prigozhin’s Mutiny

By Gordon Hahn, Russian and Eurasian Politics, 7/15/23

There is much confusion and scratching of the head surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seeming ‘weakness’, laxity, or permissiveness in hesitating to arrest two-day mutineer and Wagner PMC chief Yevgenii Prigozhin. Recent reports from Russia indicate that Prigozhin has been back in Russia, despite his supposed exile to Belarus along with some 10,000 Wagner fighters. Initially, in the wake of the mutiny’s dissolution Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman stated to Russian journalists that Prigozhin was to go to Belarus as part of the deal hashed out between Putin and his former associate by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka. Reports and photographs of a camp or base being erected for the exiled or redeployed Wagner troops in Belarus were published. But now it emerges that Prigozhin and 35 Wagner commanders and staff met with Putin in the Kremlin on June 29th and discussed what had happened and what the future would be for Wagner and perhaps for Prigozhin himself. In the meeting, Putin stressed both legal issues as well as the mutiny’s violation of an ‘agreement’ between himself and Prigozhin.[1]

Some propose that this boils down to some sort of softness in Putin’s personality, at least towards long-time friends and associates. Others conjecture that this is evidence of Putin’s political weakness, declining power, and failing control over his system, the so-called ‘Sistema’. There are at least three other important factors besides more situational ones such as political, military, and business considerations that help explain why Prigozhin and his co-conspirators have not been arrested. As a preface it must be said that we make a mistake if we expect Russian political actors to behave as, say, American, other Western, or even many non-Western politicians might. Russia is a different country than ours, not really significantly better or worse than ours. That said, the three non-situational factors facilitating impunity that I would like to suggest are: (1) the relatively soft form of the Putin system’s authoritarianism; (2) a tendency towards ‘arbitrary’ rule and limited emphasis on following the letter of the law, and (3) a cultural preference for unity or wholeness rather than disunity, pluralism, and conflict.

Putin’s System of Soft Authoritarianism

First, Western publics have been a caricature of Putin’s style of rule and the Russian political system by media, academics, and experts alike. Putin is either portrayed as an all-powerful dictator or a ruthless mafia don. Although there is occasional leaning in this direction and therefore a small element of truth regarding such aspects of Putin’s rule as is the case in all caricatures, they are gravely mistaken simplifications that distort more than they realistically depict matters as is also the case in caricatures.

As I have been arguing for two decades, Putin is a soft-to-medium range authoritarian leader, not a harsh authoritarian no less a totalitarian dictator. Analogies with Stalin or Hitler are completely misplaced and, indeed, downright absurd. Putin’s soft authoritarian Sistema is consistent with several aspects of Russian culture and political culture—sometimes called ‘national character.’ He has been artfully balancing not just between the republican and authoritarian personalist forms of rule for more than two decades. He has been juggling various factions in a country with a conflictive political culture and weak, non-Western legal culture and an aspiration to unity or ‘solidarist wholeness’ or tselostnost’.

In Putin’s once soft now more mid-range authoritarian system, he functions as the main arbiter, balancing between numerous competing political, ideological, clan-based, financial-industrial, class, and ethno-national groups. While he is surely the most powerful player in the system and has numerous institutional, legal, coercive, economic, and media resources at his disposal that others in the system lack, he also shares the control and application of those resources with select groups or sub-groups of the kind noted above as long as they do not threaten his hegemony over the system. Moreover, Putin is an arch-rational actor who carefully weighs issues, decisions regarding them, and those decisions’ potential consequences, intended and unintended. Personal relations with other actors matter to him. He rarely if ever has retaliated harshly against a former close associate. Putin is not a Joseph Stalin, who can send millions to labor camps, arrest high-ranking officials on a whim, or has his close associates and their family members imprisoned or executed.

In treading carefully in the matter of dealing with Prigozhin’s de jure betrayal, Putin is following his pattern, being sure not to provoke panic within the elite, disturb military function and morale, or leave his options open. By its very nature, soft-to-midrange authoritarianism requires taking into account situational factors. Thus, Putin’s restraint is also explained together and as a result of somewhat limited powers that Putin must gauge the political consequences of cracking down harshly on Prigozhin and the other ‘musicians’ of Wagner who participated in the ‘march for justice. They are regarded by Russians and, according to his own words, Putin himself as patriots who have served admirably in the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. A harsh reaction could cost Putin support among key constituencies of his such as traditionalists and ultra-nationalists.

Putin’s June 29th meeting with Prigozhin and 35 Wagner commanders and management staff was an attempt to look particularly Prigozhin in the eye in order to ascertain whether Putin’s belief that his old associate was not staging a military coup or hoping to incite a revolution from below but rather had let his anger and ambitions get the better of him in response to the Russian high military command’s attempt essentially to corporately raid ‘his’ company. This raises the second explanation: Russian culture’s preference for particularism over strict rule of law.

The Rule of Understandings and the Rule of Law

Russians place high value on personal relations over contractual relationships and legal technicalities. This is part of what is sometimes called the Russian historical pattern of ‘arbitrary rule’ contrasted with the Western pattern of the rule of law and constitutionality—what perhaps Russia’s greatest political philosopher and cultural thinker, Nikolai Berdyaev called the “Western cult of cold justice.” “Pity for the fallen, for the humiliated and offended, compassion are very Russian traits,” he observed.[2] In this way the strict, technical application of the law found in the West is often replaced in Russia by a more social or communal view of justice, where personal relationships with perpetrators and defendants and extenuating circumstances often trump carrying out the letter of the law precisely or even at all. In short, Putin’s Sistema relies less on the rule of law and more on what Russians, including officials, openly refer to ‘understandings’ or ‘ponyatii’. These are informal agreements among and between, leaders, various clans and interests sometimes backed by law, sometimes very much not.

This means that a mutiny such as Prigozhin’s is viewed more as a violation of informal understandings than it is seen through the prism of Russian law or the constitution. Putin stated that there is a Wagner “group” but it “does not exist juridically”, since there is no provision in Russian law for private military companies (which Wagner really was not and thus is beside the point), which he seemed to suggest the State Duma ought to begin work on. Nevertheless, he offered the Wagner commanders to gather the fighters “in one place and continue to serve under their direct commander” (not Prigozhin), without any mention of under what legal aegis it should be allowed to function.[3] In other words Wagner’s activities – ongoing for years – were sanctioned in an extralegal, informal form—an intra-elite ‘ponyatiya’ or understanding. Matters may be couched in strictly legal terms publicly, but behind the scenes the pivotal issue is whether Prigozhin violated an informal understanding and perhaps whether he did so first without justification or in response to his partners’ own violation of the perceived understanding.

Although revolts have not been treated with mercy and pardons by Russian rulers throughout all of Russian history, many, particularly quite recent and serious ones have. Prigozhin’s failed revolt would not be the first in recent decades in which insurrectionists might enjoy impunity. In a much stricter Soviet legal environment several political coup attempts against the great Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev went unpunished during his ‘perestroika’ era: an aborted possible autumn 1987 military coup, the March 1988 Nina Andreyeva affair, the June 1991 ‘constitutional coup’, and finally even the August 1991 Party-state apparat coup against Gorbachev and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin. After the resulting collapse of the communist Party-state regime and ultimately the Soviet state itself, all of the coup plotters were set free without trial. The same occurred after the October 1993 myatezh or revolt against Yeltsin led by his vice president and former military officer Aleksandr Rutskoi, Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, and many of the Soviets’ deputies.

In the pre-Soviet Russian Imperial era, failed palace coups and revolutions such as the constitutionalists’ plot against Empress-select Anna Ioannovna in 1730 and the 1825 Decembrist revolt – saw very different punishments meted out to the conspirators. In the former, the leaders were constantly harassed and eventually arrested, with the leader Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn imprisoned on apparently trumped up charges many years after the event. Six leaders of the Decembrist uprising were hanged, and thousands were exiled to Siberia. But in both cases, the punishments appalled the aristocracy and much of the narod or simple people alike. The somewhat failed 1905 revolution saw no one punished and led to an eventually aborted regime transformation, suggesting the more recent pattern of impunity. One might recall the case of Vera Zasulich, the pre-revolutionary Socialist Revolutionary, who in 1878 attempted to assassinate the governor of St. Petersburg and was acquitted by a jury won over by the moral sincerity of her political motives and social conscience. Russians, in Berdyaev’s words, are less legalistic than Western people: “(F)or them content is more important than form.”[4] Similarly, there is an element of the religious belief that triumphs over cold ‘eye for an eye’ justice in matters of life and death, which belong to God more properly than to man, and hence the Russians’ historical opposition to the death penalty and, to some extent, punishment in general.[5]

In the West, turns of events such as coups – of which we have few recent examples – are not met with pardons towards the preservation of solidarity but, more often than not, Berdyaev’s ‘cold justice.’ Putting aside the American Civil War in which the southern Confederacy’s leaders were given immunity from prosecution, the recent ‘insurrection’ in the US, 1/6, really a riot provoked by the FBI and the Democrat Party-state, is a case in point of cold justice or the rule of law gone awry. Cold legality can be turned against humanistic principles of republican rule of law. Thus, rather than mercy, pardons, and dropped cases, we have seen an aggressive, over-the-top pursuit of anyone even remotely connected or near the events of the ‘insurrection.’ This aggressive posture, of course, may be driven by the fact that the ‘insurrection’ was a fake organized by the Democrat Party-state itself which infiltrated its FBI and other agents into leadership positions of the small, generally non-violent groups that merely sought to enter the Capitol building, not destroy the U.S.’s constitutional republican regime.

In the US it is unclear whether the tendency to punish insurrectionaries and separatists is a function of its political culture’s lack of a value of wholeness or a function of its strict rational-legal form of government. In Russia, some may argue that it is unclear whether Russia’s tendency to forgive putschists evidences arbitrary justice and particularistic understandings – i.e., a weak rational-legal system or culture – or simple political expediency or arbitrariness. This is a question of the weight of background cultural factors and immediate situational ones. I am concerned here with the former, another of which is Russia’s aspiration to wholeness.

Russian Solidarism and Wholeness

In my most recent book Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Culture, Thought, History, and Politics I argued that there is a Russian aspiration to wholeness that results from religious and other cultural orientations valuing unity and is a reaction against the highly conflictive, schismatic nature of Russian history and politics. I delineated four types of wholeness or tselostnost’ in Russian culture and thought: monism (unity of the divine and material worlds), universalism (world unity), communalism (subnational, social unity), and solidarism (national political unity).[6] In relation to the impunity of mutineers like Prigozhin or other Russian putschists, rebels and the like, the type of wholeness at issue, I contend, is solidarist tselostnost’ or solidarism. I would argue that the strong preference or cultural norm or value of national political solidarity – having evolved out of the Russian struggle to overcome the dangers of internal disunity – could be at play in decisions to pardon or simply release those involved in political mutinies, revolts and such.

Again, situational factors, such as political expediency, may meld with this aspiration to preserve unity. For example, Yeltsin may have released the August 1991 and October 1993 putschists for fear of further splitting society and state and thereby prompting another round of political infighting and coups that might lead to the breakup of the Russian Federation as had happened with its state predecessor, the USSR. Similarly, Gorbachev may have foregone criminal or serious political consequences for the early political plots against his general secretaryship in order to preserve the sacred value of Party unity at a time when he was attempting to implement potentially destabilizing reforms. In the case of Prigozhin, we know that Putin has put a premium on preserving state and social political unity, exemplified by such measures as National Unity Day, the annual May 9th mass Victory Day celebrations, and even his repeated calls for political solidarity and even a kind of historical unity.[7] Thus, in his speech to the Russian people and military officers during and after Prigozhin’s revolt, Putin thanked them for preserving Russia’s solidarity and accused of Prigozhin of treason for undermining her solidarist wholeness. Similarly, in deciding to convene a meeting with Prigozhin and Wagner personnel on June 29th we see Putin laboring to stop up small wholes in the image of unity required by the Russian aspiration to and norm of solidarist tselostnost’ and so reinforce a Russian solidarity thrown into doubt by the myatezh.

It is not enough to analyze recent events or even the intricacies of political systems or a particular leader’s political practice. Cultural factors shaped by centuries of history are at least important in helping to understand foreign politics. Russian politics’s differences with our own are deeply rooted in Russia’s own history, culture and political culture and Western analysts are at a loss to understand her and drive us into conflict with her based on the false assumptions they are deluded by as a result of ignorance of almost all of them regarding Russian history and culture. Ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations matter perhaps even more than personalities and systems, and the former differ from state to state, people to people.

From Stalinism to the ‘Most Avoidable War in History’: My Interview with Prof. Geoffrey Roberts

By Natylie Baldwin, Consortium News, 7/21/23

Geoffrey Roberts is an historian, biographer and political commentator. A renowned specialist in Russian and Soviet foreign and military policy and an expert on Stalin and the Second World War, his books have been translated into numerous languages. He is emeritus professor of history at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Natylie Baldwin: How did you become interested in the Soviet Union and Russia?

Geoffrey Roberts: Mainly, it was a political interest in the Soviet socialist system. As a teenager I was enthused by the Prague Spring and [Alexander] Dubcek’s vision of socialism with a human face. Together with others, I studied the Soviet system for lessons — positive and negative — that could inform the achievement and building of socialism in my own country and elsewhere in the world.

I studied international relations as an undergraduate and that led to specialization in Soviet foreign policy but I have always been interested in all aspects of Soviet history. People assume I’m a Russophile, which I’m not (though I do have many Russian friends) — only in recent years have I become more interested in pre-revolutionary Russian history.

Baldwin:  A big part of your specialty is Joseph Stalin as well as World War II. What made you focus on Stalin and what is the most interesting thing you learned about him?

Roberts: When I started studying Soviet history I wasn’t much interested in Stalin as an individual. I thought his Marxism was mechanistic, crude and dogmatic. I agreed with Nikita Khrushchev’s critique of his dictatorial rule at the 20th Party Congress.

What interested me was not Stalin but “Stalinism” — the political, ideological and economic functioning of the Soviet system. In that regard, I was unconvinced by Khrushchev’s explanation of Stalinism as a function of the cult of Stalin’s personality. It seemed to me that the mass repressions of the 1930s and 1940s and the ongoing authoritarianism of the Soviet system — softer though it was after Stalin’s death — were the result of the collective failings and defects of the party and its ideology.

Nikita Khrushchev addressing the 20th CPSU Congress in the Kremlin, 1956. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

When I started to research Soviet foreign relations, I focused on policy, and on personalities other than Stalin, such as his foreign commissar, Maxim Litvinov. Only when I began working in the Russian archives in the mid-1990s did my attention switch to Stalin. What those archives revealed to me was how pervasive, detailed and dominant was Stalin’s leadership and decision-making. Given the dictatorial nature of Stalin’s regime, that was not so surprising, but now I could follow its day-to-day operation. Above all, the archives showed that Stalin was a formidable administrator who was able to absorb and process huge amounts of information. His decision-making was often inefficient but invariably effective in achieving his key goals.

The Soviet system was created by Stalin and it endured for many decades after his death. It had many defects but, after a fashion, it worked, not least during the crucible of total war with Nazi Germany.

Baldwin:  One of your books is Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War.  After making profound errors of judgment in the runup to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which led to horrible losses in the first weeks, you detail how Stalin worked hard to learn from his mistakes and ultimately became — you argue — the most important military strategist of the war in terms of defeating the Germans. Can you discuss this aspect of Stalin as well as how the war affected the Soviet Union in general and why it still has resonance for Russia?

Roberts: Stalin remains a hugely popular historical figure in post-Soviet Russia and in many other parts of the former U.S.S.R., such as his native Georgia. His popularity rests on his perceived role in winning the Second World War.  In my book I argued that Stalin was indispensable to the Soviet war effort — it was his system and could only function effectively if he performed well — that without his warlord-ship Hitler and the Nazis might well have won. Somewhat provocatively, I claimed it was Stalin who saved the world for democracy, albeit at the expense of half of Europe being subordinated to his authoritarian rule.

When the war ended in 1945, Stalin was almost universally hailed as the key architect of the allied victory over Nazi Germany. Not until Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin in 1956 was that positive verdict seriously questioned. Central to Khrushchev’s critique of the dictator was the poor quality of Stalin’s military leadership. While some of Khrushchev’s criticisms were valid, others obscured the extent to which the mistakes of the early war years were a collective failure, including on the part of Khrushchev himself.

With access to Russian archives, I was able to re-evaluate Khrushchev’s critique and demonstrate that Stalin was a highly effective war leader — a leader who learnt from and corrected his mistakes.

World War II was the central event in Soviet history. At stake in the conflict was not only the survival of Soviet socialism but the continued existence of the multinational state the Bolsheviks had inherited from the Tsars.  Had Hitler won, European Russia would have become a German colony and what was left of the Soviet Union a fragmented, disintegrating state. That historical spectre has particular resonance at the present time when many Russians see their country as once again involved in an existential struggle for survival.

Baldwin: In a recent interview with Glenn Diesen and Alexander Mercouris, you said that Stalin committed the crimes he did largely due to his being such a true believer in his communist ideology and was very convinced of the rightness of his actions to further this ideology.  This fits in with an observation I’ve made over the years (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) that the most dangerous people are those who are the most self-righteous, whether it’s on behalf of a religion or political philosophy, because they can justify the use of any means or methods in pursuit of their righteous ends.  What do you think?  Do you think policymakers in Washington suffer from a similarly dangerous sense of self-righteousness regarding their exceptionalism?

Roberts: The most important thing to understand about Stalin is that he was an intellectual, driven by his Marxist ideas, a true believer in his communist ideology. And he didn’t just believe it, he felt it. Socialism was an emotional thing for Stalin.  His often-monstrous actions stemmed from his politics and ideology, not his personality.

Josef Stalin, 1949. (Bundesarchiv, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

But the mass violence and repression of the Stalin era is not the whole of the Soviet story. Soviet society embodied many laudable ideas and aspirations — egalitarianism, multiculturalism, internationalism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, above all the valorization of peace and peaceful co-existence between different peoples, systems and values. The U.S.S.R. inspired a great deal of idealism and popular support throughout its existence, notwithstanding the millions of innocent people who fell victim to Stalin’s fanatical determination to defend the Soviet system against its enemies.

I agree with you about the dangerous self-righteousness of Western policymakers. But what really worries me is that they lack Stalin’s sense of realism and pragmatism and his ability to grasp the reality beyond his own ideological preferences. Thankfully, the same is not true of President Vladimir Putin, himself a product of the Soviet system, and an inheritor of its tradition of adapting political ideology to the contingencies and exigencies of the real situation.

Baldwin:   Given your work in analyzing and attempting to understand Stalin as a political leader, military strategist and as an intellectual, I wouldn’t be surprised if you get accused of being a Stalin apologist.  If so, what is your response?

Roberts: No one who reads my work with any degree of care would give any credence to such an accusation.

As a historian my primary task is to understand and explain Stalin, not to condemn or justify him. I do that by striving to see the world through his eyes, which, admittedly, requires a high degree of empathy, but which is not to be confused with sympathy. As a colleague of mine, Mark Harrison, once said, there is no moral hazard in trying to understand Stalin and having gained greater understanding, you can condemn him even more if you want to. But let’s get the history right before rushing to judgement.

One or two reviewers of my latest book — Stalin’s Library — complained that by presenting him as an avid reader and as a serious intellectual, I whitewashed his dictatorship. All I can say is that they must not have noticed the book’s sub-title — A Dictator and His Books — or its first sentence — “this book explores the intellectual life and biography of one of history’s bloodiest dictators” — or the title of Chapter One — “Bloody Tyrant and Bookworm” — or, indeed, a whole section devoted to “Stalin’s Terror” — a topic on which I published yet another article about just recently.

Baldwin: I want to shift gears to current events.  You’ve done a remarkable job documenting exactly how events must have looked to Putin in the leadup to February of 2022, including Putin’s numerous public comments about the growing dangers of NATO expansion, de facto NATO membership for Ukraine, and the possible stationing of offensive missiles in Ukraine.

One of the things I really wanted to hash out with you regards an indirect sort of debate you had recently with Ray McGovern over whether Putin had other options he could have pursued instead of invading Ukraine in February 2022.  McGovern tends to agree with John Mearsheimer that Putin did not have any other realistic options to defend Russian security interests.  You wrote in response that you think this was a war of choice and not necessity by Putin. 

At the time Putin invaded, I believed Putin did have other options such as those outlined by Russia expert Patrick Armstrong in his article of December 2021. Those options included positioning nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and Belarus to show resolve in defending Russia against NATO-aligned mischief, and/or economic measures that would punish NATO-aligned nations, among other things. 

In retrospect, I don’t think any of these alternative measures would have worked. We’ve seen how the U.S. and virtually all of Europe has gone along with policies that have hurt their own interests both economically and in terms of security, particularly Europe.  We’ve also seen how the West is willing to escalate this conflict. I hate this war as much as anyone, but I also have to be honest at this point — it now seems implausible that Putin stopping gas deliveries to Europe or stationing nukes in Belarus or trying to appeal more to Europe would have deterred Washington/NATO in any meaningful way. 

Also, [former Ukraine President Petro] Poroshenko, [former German Chancellor Angela] Merkel and [former French President Francois] Hollande have all since admitted that they had essentially taken Russia for a ride with the Minsk Agreements which they used as a cover to build up Ukraine’s military. 

[Related: SCOTT RITTER: Merkel Reveals West’s Duplicity and PATRICK LAWRENCE: Germany & the Lies of Empire]

It seems like some in the West wanted this conflict or at the very least they didn’t have a problem once it started given their rejection of several attempts at negotiating an end to it.  Can you give some concrete options that Putin had that were realistic at all, given what he was dealing with from the West?  And please feel free to respond to any part of what I just laid out.

October 2015 in Paris; seated at table from left: Germany’s Angela Merkel, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko and France’s Francois Holland during Normandy format talks to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Roberts: My agreement with Ray McGovern and John Mearsheimer is far greater than any particular differences of interpretation.

The most important point about the Russia-Ukraine war is that it was the most avoidable war in history. It could have been avoided by Ukraine implementing the Minsk agreements. It could have been avoided by NATO halting its build-up of Ukraine’s armed forces. It could have been avoided by a positive U.S. response to Putin’s common security proposals of December 2021. Putin pulled the trigger but it was Ukraine and the West that loaded the gun.

[Related: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked and John Pilger: War in Europe & the Rise of Raw Propaganda and Ukraine Crisis Should Have Been Avoided]

When the West stonewalled his security proposals, Putin had a choice — continue with what I call his militarised diplomacy, or take military action to force acceptance of his demands. He chose war because diplomacy didn’t seem to be working and because he thought it was better to fight now rather than later — hence my characterisation of the invasion decision as a choice for preventative war.

I disagreed with his decision for three reasons: (1) notwithstanding Ukraine’s progressive military build-up, a dire existential threat to Russia was emergent rather than imminent; (2) the chance of diplomacy succeeding was slim but not non-existent; and (3) going to war was an enormously dangerous and destructive step to take, not just for Russia and Ukraine but for Europe and the rest of the world.

In retrospect, it seems clear that Putin’s decision for war was also based on a series of miscalculations. He over-estimated the power and efficacy of his armed forces, under-estimated Ukraine’s fighting ability, and, crucially, did not anticipate the determination and recklessness of the Western proxy war on Russia.

Had the Istanbul peace negotiations succeeded and war come to an end in spring 2022, those who argue Putin’s decision for war was right at the time he took it, would have a much stronger case to argue. But the prolonged nature of the war, the extent of its death and devastation, the real and continuing threat of nuclear catastrophe, and the prospect of an endless conflict, leave me unconvinced that it was the right thing to do.

It is highly likely Russia will in due course secure a decisive military advantage that will enable Putin to credibly claim victory. But it remains to be seen whether or not what Russia gains will have been worth the cost it will have paid.

Baldwin: Why do you think European leaders refuse to stand up to Washington’s reckless actions in terms of scuttling negotiations to end this war much earlier and continuing to escalate the conflict using a frog-in-boiling-water approach?  European leaders must know that if this conflict continues to escalate, they will be potential targets.

Roberts: It’s mind-boggling! Presumably, they feel the Russian threat is so great and their dependence on U.S. protection so deep, that these are risks worth taking. But I hope the scales will fall from their eyes and they will see that the Ukrainians are fighting a losing war of attrition that may end in complete catastrophe for their country.

To be fair, there are realist and pragmatic politicians in all European countries who desire a ceasefire and are prepared to negotiate a compromise peace with Russia. I’m sure their voices will become louder and more persistent in the coming months.

Baldwin:  In a similar vein, a recent survey of European opinion revealed that, though they currently view Russia as a rival, once the war ends most European citizens want to reconcile and partner with Russia.  It seems that regular Europeans realize that you can’t change geography and that Russia is a European neighbor and a modus vivendi must somehow be reached.  When do you think the leaders of Europe might catch up to this realization?

Roberts: The commonsense of the European public is right. There can be no peace and prosperity in Europe without a partnership with Russia. None of the world’s most pressing problems can be resolved without Russian participation.

The sooner this war ends the better it will be for Europe, for Russia and, above all, for Ukraine.

Natylie Baldwin is the author of The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations. Her writing has appeared in various publications including The Grayzone, Antiwar.com, Covert Action Magazine, RT, OpEd News, The Globe Post, The New York Journal of Books and Dissident Voice.

Views expressed in this interview may or may not reflect those of  Consortium News.

Jonathan Cook: Nato isn’t defending Ukraine. It’s stabbing it in the back

By Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, 7/14/23

Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

The Nato summit in Lithuania [last] week served only to underscore the utter hypocrisy of western leaders in pursuing their proxy war in Ukraine to “weaken” Russia and oust its president, Vladimir Putin.

Both the US and Germany had made clear before the summit that they would block Ukraine’s admission to Nato while it was in the midst of a war with Russia. That message was formally announced by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fumed that Nato had reached an “absurd” decision and was demonstrating “weakness”. British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace lost no time in rebuking him for a lack of “gratitude”.

The concern is that, if Kyiv joins the military alliance at this stage, Nato members will be required to leap to Ukraine’s defence and fight Russia directly. Most western states balk at the notion of a face-to-face confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia – rather than the current proxy one, paid for exclusively in Ukrainian blood. 

But there is a more duplicitous subtext being obscured: the fact that Nato is responsible for sustaining the war it now cites as grounds for disqualifying Ukraine from joining the military alliance. Nato got Kyiv into its current, bloody mess – but isn’t ready to help it find a way out.

It was Nato, after all, that chose to flirt openly with Ukraine from 2008 onwards, promising it eventual membership – with the undisguised hope that one day, the alliance would be able to flex its military muscles menacingly on Russia’s doorstep.

It was the UK that intervened weeks after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and presumably on Washington’s orders, to scupper negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow – talks that could have ended the war at an early stage, before Russia began seizing territories in eastern Ukraine.

The message Nato has sent Moscow is that Russia made exactly the right decision to invade

A deal then would have been much simpler than one now. Most likely, it would have required Kyiv to commit to neutrality, rather than pursuing covert integration into Nato. Moscow would have demanded, too, an end to the Ukrainian government’s political, legal and military attacks on its Russian-speaking populations in the east.

Now the chief sticking point to an agreement will be persuading the Kremlin to trust the West and reverse its annexation of eastern Ukraine, assuming Nato ever allows Kyiv to re-engage in talks with Russia.

And finally, it is Nato members, especially the US, that have been shipping out vast quantities of military hardware to prolong the fighting in Ukraine – keeping the death toll mounting on both sides.

Damp squib

In short, Nato is now using the very war it has done everything to fuel as a pretext to stop Ukraine from joining the alliance.

Seen another way, the message Nato has sent Moscow is that Russia made exactly the right decision to invade – if the goal, as Putin has always maintained, is to ensure Kyiv remains neutral.

It is the war that has prevented Ukraine from being completely enfolded in the western military alliance. It is the war that has stopped Ukraine’s transformation into a Nato forward base, one where the West could station nuclear-tipped missiles minutes from Moscow.

Had Russia not invaded, Kyiv would have been free to accelerate what it was already doing secretly: integrating into Nato. So what is Zelensky supposed to conclude from his exclusion from Nato, after he committed his country to an ongoing war rather than negotiations and neutrality?

So far, Ukraine’s much-vaunted “spring counter-offensive” has turned into a damp squib, despite western media spin about “slow progress”. Moscow is holding on to the Ukrainian territories it annexed.

So long as Kyiv can’t “win the war” – and it seems it can’t, unless Nato is willing to fight Russia directly and risk a nuclear confrontation – it will be precluded from the military alliance. Catch-22.

Do not expect this conundrum to be highlighted by a western establishment media that seems incapable of doing anything other than regurgitating Nato press releases and cheering on bigger profits for the West’s war industries.

War crimes

Another such conundrum is the Biden administration’s decision last week to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions – small bomblets that, when they fail to explode, lie concealed like mini-landmines, killing and maiming civilians for decades. In some cases, as many as a third are “duds”, detonating weeks, months or years later.

Washington’s move follows Britain recently supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium shells, which contaminate surrounding areas with a radioactive dust during and after fighting. Evidence from areas such as Iraq, where the US and Britain fired large numbers of these shells, suggests the fallout can include a decades-long spike in cancer and birth defects.

The White House was all too ready to denounce the use of cluster bombs as a war crime last year – when it was Russia that stood accused of using them. Now it is Washington enabling Kyiv to commit those very same war crimes.

More than 110 states – not including the US, of course – have ratified a 2008 international convention outlawing cluster munitions. Many are in Nato.

Given the high “dud” rate of US cluster bombs, President Joe Biden appears to be breaking US law in shipping stocks to Ukraine. The White House can invoke an exemption only if exporting such weapons satisfies a “vital US national security interest”. Apparently, Biden believes “weakening” Russia – and turning parts of Ukraine into a death zone for civilians for decades to come – qualifies as just such a vital interest.

Desperate stop gap

While the official story is that this latest escalatory move by the US will help Kyiv “win the war”, the truth is rather different. Biden has not shied away from admitting that Ukraine – and Nato – are running out of conventional arms to fight Russia. This is a desperate stop-gap measure.

While most Nato members might be signatories to the convention on banning cluster munitions, they appear more than willing to turn a blind eye to Washington’s decision. Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who signed the convention in his earlier role as foreign minister, said this week that Berlin should not block the US shipment because to do so “would be the end of Ukraine”.

Every day such talks are delayed, Ukraine loses more of its fighting men, and potentially more of its territory

In other words, the resort to cluster munitions is an admission that it is Kyiv and its Nato partners – not Moscow – that have been weakened militarily by the war.

Once again, a supposedly “humanitarian war” by the West – remember Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – is becoming the opposite. Like every previous weapon delivered to Ukraine, the cluster bombs are being supplied to postpone the inevitable: the need for Kyiv to engage in talks with Moscow to end the fighting.

And every day such talks are delayed, Ukraine loses more of its fighting men, and potentially more of its territory.

Horrors of cluster bombs

It is not as though Washington or the rest of Nato are unaware of the effects of using cluster bombs. The US is estimated to have dropped 270 million of them on Laos during its “secret war” on that country more than half a century ago. Up to 80 million of them did not detonate.

Since the bombing ended in 1973, at least 25,000 people – 40 percent of them children – are reported to have been killed or injured by these small landmines littered across Laos’s territory.

More recently, the US used cluster munitions in its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hun Sen, the prime minister of Cambodia, which was bombed alongside Laos by the US during the Vietnam War, reminded the world this week of the horrors in store. He noted that, half a century on, Cambodia had still not found a way to destroy all the explosives: “The real victims will be Ukrainians,” he said.

But that warning is likely to fall on deaf ears in Ukraine. Zelensky, a leader who has been all but beatified by the western media, is no stranger to the use of cluster bombs. Though journalists prefer to mention their use by Russia only, human rights groups have documented Kyiv’s firing of cluster munitions on its own population in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

The need to protect Russian-speaking communities in eastern Ukraine from their own government – and from Ukrainian ultra-nationalists in the Ukrainian military – was one of the main reasons given by Moscow for launching its invasion. The New York Times reported Kyiv using cluster bombs last year on a small Ukrainian village in the country’s east.

According to an investigation by Human Rights Watch, Ukrainian forces also fired cluster munitions on the Ukrainian town of Izium last year, killing at least eight civilians and wounding 15 others.

Given this history, Washington would be foolish to take at face value reassurances from the Zelensky government that US supplies of cluster bombs will be fired only on Russian troops. All the evidence indicates that they will likely be used on civilian areas in eastern Ukraine too.

Double standard

Publicly, European leaders are trying to salve their consciences by implying that there are exceptional justifications for providing cluster munitions to Kyiv. The bomblets are supposedly essential if Ukraine is to defend its territory against Russian aggression and occupation.

But if that is really Nato’s yardstick, then there is another exceptional, oppressed state in no less need of such munitions: Palestine.

Like Ukraine, the Palestinians have had their territory seized by an implacable foe. And like Ukraine, the Palestinians face continuous military attacks by an occupying army.

Occupation forces always end up committing war crimes, as Russia’s have. The United Nations accuses the Russian army of rapes, killings and torture, and attacks on civilian infrastructure.

The commission of war crimes is inherent in the task of invading another people’s sovereign territory and subduing the local population, as the US and UK proved in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Undoubtedly, both Israel and Russia’s actions are causing untold suffering. But where there are differences, they reflect worse on Israel than Russia.

Is anyone in Nato considering supplying cluster munitions to the Palestinians to defend themselves?

Israel’s occupation has lasted many decades longer than Russia’s, and it has throughout those years continued to commit war crimes, including creating hundreds of illegal, armed settlements exclusively for Jews on Palestinian land.

Further, there was an existing civil war in Ukraine that had killed more than 14,000 Ukrainians before Russia invaded. At least a proportion of Ukrainians – largely its ethnic Russian population in the east – welcomed Moscow’s intervention, at least initially. It would be hard to find a Palestinian who wants Israel or its settlers occupying their land.

Is anyone in Nato considering supplying cluster munitions to the Palestinians to defend themselves? Would Nato endorse Palestinians firing cluster bombs at Israeli military bases or at militarised settlements in the occupied West Bank?

And would Nato accept Palestinian reassurances that such munitions would not be fired into Israel, just as it has accepted Ukrainian assurances that they won’t be fired into Russia?

These questions answer themselves. In the case of the Palestinians, western states don’t just apply a double standard. They even echo Israel in condemning Palestinian conventional attacks on Israeli forces.

Dangerous delusions

But the hypocrisies do not end there. Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s hawkish foreign minister, wrote in the Guardian last week that her country had made a mistake in pursuing a policy of what she called “chequebook diplomacy”.

Berlin, she added, had naively believed that political and economic interaction with the West would “sway the Russian regime toward democracy”. Instead, she concluded that “Putin’s Russia will remain a threat to peace and security on our continent and that we have to organise our security against Putin’s Russia, not with it.”

Europe’s path forward, Baerbock suggests, is limited to either a forever war against Russia or imposing regime change on the Kremlin. All of this is dangerous nonsense. The fact that self-serving, delusional analysis of this kind is echoed so uncritically by western media should be a stain on its reputation.

Baerbock implies that it was Moscow that rebuffed “our efforts to construct a European security architecture with Russia”. But Russia was never offered a meaningful place within Europe’s security umbrella after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That contrasts strongly with West Germany’s treatment after the Second World War. With the Nazi regime barely gone, Germany received massive US aid via the Marshall Plan to rebuild its economy and infrastructure, and it was soon embraced by Nato as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was handled very differently. It was not viewed as an opportunity to bring Russia into the fold.

Instead, the US and its western allies denied Russia both a proper aid plan and the cancellation of Soviet-era debts. The West preferred to prop up a weak president, Boris Yeltsin, insisting he commit to “shock therapy” privatisation that left the Russian economy open to asset-stripping by a new class of oligarchs.

Nefarious ambitions

While Russia was being hollowed out economically, Washington hurried to isolate its historic rival militarily and bring former Soviet states into the US “sphere of influence” via Nato. Successive US administrations developed and zealously pursued a hubristic foreign policy known as “full-spectrum global dominance” against its main great-power rivals, Russia and China.

Putin’s popularity among Russians grew the more he posed – often only rhetorically – as the strongman who would stop Nato’s expansion to Russia’s borders.

Contrary to Baerbock’s suggestions, Moscow wasn’t wooed by a Nato “chequebook”. It was gradually and systematically cornered. It was turned, bit by bit, into a pariah.

This isn’t the assessment simply of “Putin apologists”. Nato’s strategy was understood and warned against in real time by some of the biggest figures in US foreign policy-making – from George Kennan, the father of US Cold War policy, to William Burns, the current CIA director. 

In 2007, as US ambassador to Moscow, Burns wrote a diplomatic cable – later revealed by Wikileaks – arguing that “Nato enlargement and U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe play to the classic Russian fear of encirclement”. Months later, Burns warned that offering Ukraine Nato membership would place Moscow in an “unthinkable” predicament.

Washington simply ignored these endless warnings from its own officials, because maintaining peace and stability in Europe was not its goal. Permanently isolating and “weakening” Russia was.

The Biden administration understands it is playing with fire. Last year, in a remark most likely unscripted, the president himself invoked the danger of Russia, faced with a defeat in Ukraine it viewed in existential terms, unleashing a nuclear “Armageddon”.

Tragically, Nato’s malevolence, deceit and betrayal means that the only alternative to Armageddon may be Ukraine’s downfall – and with it, the crushing of Washington’s nefarious ambitions to advance full-spectrum global dominance.

Riley Waggaman: Is Moscow manipulating poverty statistics?

By Riley Waggaman, Substack, 7/13/23

Is the Russian government downplaying the socioeconomic hardships of its proles?

This is the incendiary claim put forward by State Duma Deputy Sergei Mironov, the leader of the sometimes surprisingly uppity (but mostly pro-Uniparty) political faction A Just Russia For Truth. According to Mr. Mironov, Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) has employed creative methods to “fix” the number of impoverished Russians at 9 million people—apparently forever.

Mironov wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday:

A huge number of people live in debt from paycheck to paycheck, take loans for the most necessary things. And then they save on the most necessary things, so that they can pay their debts on time—only so collectors do not come to torment them. But according to the reports, the bankers and financiers from the Government are performing well—the number of poor people is stable at 9 million, and the incomes of citizens are allegedly growing! This is a typical fraud and manipulation of statistics.

Harsh, bro.

Before I type another word I want to make it very clear that as an American I fully understand that the United States of Hamburgers is a cesspool of unconscionable poverty, and this blog post is in no way an attempt to portray Russia’s socioeconomic ailments as uniquely upsetting. That being said, Russia’s socioeconomic maladies are quite bad, and I would argue that just like in the United States, it’s very difficult to understand why poverty should exist at all in Russia—a country that, objectively, should be the wealthiest place on planet Earth. Well, there are many wealthy people with Russian passports, but for some weird reason their vast wealth never “trickles down” to the proles….

Your humble Moravia correspondent grew up in Santa Monica, California, which at least in his youth was the homeless capital of the United States, while also being a hub for very rich people with extremely fancy wives and condos and automobiles.

On my list of constructive criticisms of the United States of America, the country’s truly appalling wealth inequality, and its demonic mistreatment of those suffering from severe mental distress and/or substance abuse (anyone who falls through the cracks is treated like a 9th columnist rat), would have to be near the top.

I remember as a young Hobbit, full of piss and vinegar, waltzing down Montana Avenue as I tried to understand why Santa Monica’s fetishized beachside streets were peppered with homeless people in clear anguish. My mother once told me that many of these hurting souls were veterans with severe PTSD who were kicked to the curb after famous California governor-turned-Nicaraguan-cocaine-trafficker Ronald Reagan shuttered the state’s psychiatric wards. I don’t know if this is true, but it’s what I tell people when they ask me about Santa Monica, so let’s say it’s true.

A bit of a detour but I thought it was important to explain my feelings on this subject.

Back to Mironov. The Russian lawmaker warned the government in his Telegram rant that “the poverty of the population directly leads to its extinction,” and described the fight against poverty as “the second urgent task after the victory in the special military operation [in Ukraine].” Yikes.

Using Rosstat’s statistics, the number of poor Russians in the first quarter of 2023 decreased by 1.3 million, to 19.6 million people, compared to the first quarter of 2022. The poverty line is currently defined as households that bring in less than 14,000 rubles per month ($155 USD).

Mironov has been expressing his displeasure with these official statistics for a very long time. As Nakaunue reported on June 9 (“Mironov does not believe in poverty reduction according to Rosstat”):

Mironov is confident that another “victory” over poverty has been won exclusively on the “fronts of statistics.” Since 2021, Rosstat has been applying a new methodology for calculating poverty, as a result of which it is seasonal. In addition, it is estimated according to an obviously underestimated indicator—the “poverty line”.

“For the whole of last year, [the poverty line] was 13,545 rubles, in the first quarter of this year—14,026 rubles. If a person earns 14,027 rubles, he is no longer considered poor, which distorts the picture of poverty in the country. And the Government can use the data of the subordinate Rosstat for positive reports,” Mironov wrote.

According to the calculations of his faction, at the end of 2019 the real size of the consumer basket exceeded 31 thousand. This is the real poverty line, but the Government does not need such statistics.

Mironov’s displeasure with the “official” poverty statistics is nothing new, actually. He was making similar comments exactly one year ago:

“It turns out that people’s incomes are constantly falling, while the number of the poor is declining. What kind of miracles are these?! This socioeconomic phenomenon can only be explained by the ardent desire of Rosstat to show pleasant numbers, and the achievements of the agency’s bosses from the Ministry of Economy,” Mironov wrote.

According to the Rosstat report, in the third quarter of 2022, the poverty line was 13,688 rubles.

“Try to live on less than 14,000 rubles! It’s not even poverty anymore, swindlers, but real poverty, in which more than 15 million of our fellow citizens live!” Mironov said. […]

When determining the poverty level, Rosstat uses the “poverty line” parameter introduced by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 2049 dated November 26, 2021. It corresponds to the value of the consumer basket in the fourth quarter of 2020, taking into account inflation.

Mironov is sure that its composition is “long and hopelessly outdated,” but Rosstat is interested in such a beggarly consumer basket, because the smaller it is, the fewer the poor.

Look: I’m not going to act as if everything Mironov is saying is 100% true, but he’s clearly tapping into deep populist sentiment, which is almost certainly based on some kind of Truth. And as far as I can tell, many Russians are not convinced that “everything is going according to plan” with the economy (however, it’s important to acknowledge that after 10,000+ sanctions, things could be a lot worse).

I am basing this analysis on anecdotal evidence—including “off-the-record” conversations with some Russians I know in the Regions.

But, for example, here is a recent thread on popular internet forum Yaplakal, celebrating the Russian economy’s various positive indicators:

source

The top comment:

oof.

Again, I can’t confirm or deny that the Russian government is fudging its poverty statistics. All I can say is that Moscow has a long, proud tradition of manipulating numbers for its benefit.

My favorite recent example of this compulsive habit is when Putin issued his famous “May Decrees” in 2012. One of these orders stated that by 2018, Russia should record a significant reduction in mortality from diseases of the circulatory system, the country’s top killer.

Here’s what actually happened:

Regretfully, the initiative’s overwhelming success was soon besmirched by the federally-funded Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). The institute released a report in February 2018 which stated that it was “necessary to analyze the correctness of statistical information coming from the regions and conduct a detailed analysis of mortality rates.” The document also called for greater accountability for officials who provide “false reports on the causes of death.”

Eventually, the obviousness of the scam became undeniable. In December 2018, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova ordered regional governors to provide “a full justification” after it was determined that mortality from certain causes of death had been “underestimated.” 

The health ministry, which had readily rubber-stamped the problematic figures, absolved itself of wrongdoing and said any issues with the data should be taken up with Rosstat, Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service. Despite its denials, Skvortsova’s ministry allegedly played an active role in the odious scheme, and even retroactively changed its mortality targets to better fit the fraudulent statistics to predetermined benchmarks. 

The official acknowledgment of the scam created a sticky situation for the Russian government: who was to blame for all this nasty data manipulation? On October 14, 2019, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev publicly accused the country’s regional governors of cooking their books.

“This is a lie in the truest sense of the word,” Medvedev said in October 2019, referring to Russia’s phony mortality rates. 

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hrfjAsOe9ZE?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

So basically nothing has changed.

Just to be very clear: I think it’s very disingenuous of the Collective West to wet its diapers with crocodile tears about the sufferings of the Russian people, when Western sanctions do very little to inconvenience Russia’s Western-linked kleptocratic ruling elite, while making things needlessly annoying for proles who did absolutely nothing wrong.

But Moscow is almost certainly cooking its poverty books.

The End.

Kim Iversen: Russia Gives the West a Dose of Their Own Medicine Regarding Sanctions

This video was recorded on July 18, 2023. Link here.

Seymour Hersh: FEAR AND LOATHING ON AIR FORCE ONE (Excerpt and Summary)

By Seymour Hersh, Substack, 7/13/23

This article is behind a paywall, but it covers several issues as relayed to Hersh through his intelligence and government contacts. With respect to Turkey’s Erdogan lifting his opposition to NATO membership for Sweden, it was not mainly the promise of F-16’s from the US military, but according to Hersh:

I have been told a different, secret story about Erdogan’s turnabout: Biden promised that a much-needed $11-13 billion line of credit would be extended to Turkey by the International Monetary Fund. “Biden had to have a victory and Turkey is in acute financial stress,” an official with direct knowledge of the transaction told me. Turkey lost 100,000 people in the earthquake last February, and has four million buildings to rebuild. “What could be better than Erdogan”—under Biden’s tutelage, the official asked, “finally having seen the light and realizing he is better off with NATO and Western Europe?” Reporters were told, according to the New York Times, that Biden called Erdogan while flying to Europe on Sunday. Biden’s coup, the Times reported, would enable him to say that Putin got “exactly what he did not want: an expanded, more direct NATO alliance.” There was no mention of bribery.

A June analysis by Brad W. Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations, “Turkey’s Increasing Balance Sheet Risks,” said it all in the first two sentences—Erdogan won re-election and “now has to find a way to avoid what appears to be an imminent financial crisis.” The critical fact, Setser writes, is that Turkey “is on the edge of truly running out of usable foreign exchange reserves—and facing a choice between selling its gold, an avoidable default, or swallowing the bitter pill of a complete policy reversal and possibly an IMF program.” 

Another key element of the complicated economic issues facing Turkey is that Turkey’s banks have lent so much money to the nation’s central bank that “they cannot honor their domestic dollar deposits, should Turks ever ask for the funds back.” The irony for Russia, and a reason for much anger in the Kremlin, Setser notes, is the rumor that Putin has been providing Russian gas to Erdogan on credit, and not demanding that the state gas importer pay up. Putin’s largesse has been flowing as Ergodan has been selling drones to Ukraine for use in its war against Russia. Turkey has also permitted Ukraine to ship its crops through the Black Sea.

One of Hersh’s sources with access to relevant intelligence has told him that, despite what the Washington Post and NYT have been reporting, there is no evidence that the Prigozhin debacle of a few weeks ago has weakened Putin but just the opposite: “Putin emerged stronger than ever after the Prigozhin implosion, which led to the absorption of many of his mercenaries into the Russian army.”

With respect to the sending of the controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine, an administration official admitted that these are only now being sent because “that’s all we got left in the cupboard.” Interestingly, this official also told Hersh that claims being made that Russia has used them already during this war is a false attempt to cover up a morally questionable move by the US that will have no effect on the direction of the war: “the administration claims that the Russians have used them first in the war, which is just a lie.”

Finally, there are insider statements to Hersh that Victoria Nuland will not be Wendy Sherman’s replacement as Deputy Secretary of State and CIA director William Burns is seen among his colleagues in the government as an opportunist rather than a principled diplomat or intelligence agent.

Full article available to subscribers here.

Scott Ritter Investigation: Agent Zelensky – Parts 1 & 2

An eye-opening documentary investigation of Volodymyr Zelensky by Scott Ritter. Link here.

More info: https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/ag…

Matt Taibbi: Where Have All The Liberals Gone?

By Matt Taibbi, Racket News, 7/12/23

Yesterday [July 11, 2023] a House Committee — Republican-led, but still — released a series of documents showing without a doubt that the FBI has been forwarding thousands of content moderation “requests” to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube on behalf of the SBU, Ukraine’s Security Agency.

The documents not only contain incontrovertible evidence that our own FBI pressures tech companies to censor material, but that the Bureau is outsourcing such work to a foreign government, in this case Ukraine. This passage below for instance reads “The SBU requested for your review and if appropriate deletion/suspension of these accounts.”

There can’t possibly be controversy at this point as to whether or not this censorship program is going on. Whether it’s the FBI forwarding the SBU asking for the removal of Aaron Maté, or the Global Engagement Center recommending action on the Canadian site GlobalResearch.Ca, or the White House demanding the takedown of figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the same types of behavior have now been captured over and over.

In light of this, I have to ask: where are the rest of the “card-carrying” liberals from the seventies, eighties, and nineties — people like me, who always reflexively opposed restrictions on speech?

Is your argument that private companies can do what they want? Then why did you think otherwise in 1985, when Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center suggested record companies “voluntarily” label as dirty songs like “Darling Nikki,” and call them McCarthyites when they compiled a list of the “Filthy Fifteen” albums? Does that not sound suspiciously like the “Disinformation Dozen”? Why were you on Frank Zappa’s side then, but with blacklisters now?

Do you now think it’s not really censorship if the FBI merely makes its opinion known about content, and doesn’t order takedowns? Did you think the same when the FBI sent a letter to Priority Records complaining about NWA’s “Fuck the Police”? Did you agree then with the ACLU, whose Southern California chairman responded to the FBI’s letter by saying, “It is completely inappropriate for any government agency to try to influence what artists do. It is completely against the American traditions of free speech”?

Is your belief that new forms of speech constitute “harm” and “offense” to such a degree that censorship is warranted? If so, why did you once support Andres Serrano and his work Piss Christ, which Catholics insisted was an intolerable offense, and call it censorship when opponents like Al D’Amato and Jesse Helms tried to pull funding for Serrano from the National Endowment of the Arts? Wasn’t the Hustler magazine spread suggesting Jerry Falwell had sex with his mother in an outhouse offensive? Didn’t you go to The People Versus Larry Flynt anyway?

If you’re okay with the FBI collaborating on censorship with the SBU now, why oppose the original PATRIOT Act, suggesting you didn’t even want the government looking at library records in search of Islamic terrorists? Why did you support the Dixie Chicks when they were blackballed for antiwar views after the Iraq invasion? Did you cheer them when you watched Shut Up and Sing?

Weren’t those national security issues, too? That wasn’t even that long ago. Is Vladimir Putin that much more of a menace than Al-Qaeda to justify the change in heart?

The change in thinking of traditional American liberals is the only part of this censorship picture that still doesn’t quite compute for me. I’d like to hear from anyone who has an explanation, a personal testimonial, anything. Comments are open to everyone here.

My Interview with Sarah Lindemann-Komarova on the Evolution of Democracy in Russia from 1990’s to Present

By Natylie Baldwin, Covert Action Magazine, 7/12/23

Below is an interview that I conducted with Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, an American who has lived in Siberia since 1992. She was a community development activist there for 20 years. She currently focuses on research and writing, mostly about Russia and community activism. Her work has been published in The Nation and she is the co-author of several academic articles and blogs at Echo of Siberia.

Natylie Baldwin: When and how did you end up going to Russia and what made you decide to stay?

SLK: In 1988 I was working as the production coordinator on a movie and wanted a career change. With no college degree or any idea what I would like to do, I decided to say “yes” to anything, hoping my fate would reveal itself. My first “yes” was to a trip traveling around the Soviet Union with a peace group to train for and run the Moscow Marathon.

I grew up duck-and-covering with the standard fear and stereotypes about the Soviet Union. As we traveled around, I didn’t need language to understand that a lot had been left out of the narrative, especially in relation to the USSR’s role and sacrifice defeating Nazi Germany.

Traveling over the Caucasus Mountains from Pyatigorsk [Russia] to Tbilisi [Georgia] and then flying to Baku [Azerbaijan], Kyiv, and Byelorussia [now Belarus] to train with local running groups before going to Moscow for the race, I had an epiphany. There was so much energy and excitement and hope for change and peace that I wanted to know more and be a part of it. I returned home to New York and entered Columbia University to major in Political Science with a Soviet Union focus.

Summer of junior year I went back to the Soviet Union, this time to Siberia. It was with a citizen diplomacy group to live with a family, study language, and hang out for a month in Akademgorodok, the university and science center 30 kilometers from Novosibirsk, the third largest city in Russia. It was May of 1990 and Yeltsin had just been elected President of what was still the Russian Republic and, similar to two years earlier, there was energy, excitement and hope. I made many friends, several of them visited me in New York, and a university English teacher agreed to arrange a visa for me when I graduated.

On February 1, 1992, I arrived expecting to spend four months experiencing the transition to democracy and teaching a course at the university before returning home to apply to grad schools. I came with an optimism shared by many Americans: Western companies were moving in, the country was loaded with resources, had a highly educated population, and the guy who stood on the tank won. That was not the mood that greeted me.

Once again the narrative was off as the news in America did not capture the catastrophic dimensions of economic Shock Therapy. No one I met in Siberia expected the change to be so sudden, unpredictable and cruel. Three weeks in, I was skiing through the forest when I knew—it was not a decision, I just knew—I wasn’t going back. Everything was happening here. This transition was going to take a lot longer and, if I wanted to understand it, I had to be here, not in a U.S. classroom. Plus, there were endless opportunities to get involved, promote peaceful change, and generate increased understanding between Russia and America.

NB: What was Russia like in the 1990s and how has it changed in the years since?

There is a myth about the golden age of democracy during the 1990s that was perpetuated by Moscow-based liberal elites. This is how my student described the national scene: “Congress made a strange impression on me. It looks like a group of people who are fighting for power and don’t care about the country. They don’t want to work together…we have just political games and not a real process of building democracy.”

And the exciting world of elections locally? In Novosibirsk, Yeltsin found a way to kick out the elected communist governor and replace him with a more “liberal” guy. The Communist went on to become a banker until he made a comeback when the “liberal” guy was voted out of office.

The “liberal” guy then went on to become a banker, the Communist achieved nothing and was challenged in the next election by the “liberal,” the “democratic” mayor of Novosibirsk, and a Vice Minister of Economics. The “liberal,” the Communist and the Minister lost; two returned to banking and the third to Moscow. Except for the Communist, I have no idea what political party any of them represented, there were over 60 of them competing for offices in Novosibirsk at this time. My personal favorite was the “Beer Lovers Party.”

With regard to economics, in 2013 journalist Masha Gessen’s version was, “Contrary to popular belief the 1990s did see living standards rise…between 1991 and 1996 EVERY Russian household acquired a new washing machine” (see video link above at the 22-minute mark).

The reality is it was 20th century Dickens with the best of times for Americans and a tiny group of Russians and the worst of times for everybody else. There were three Russias. The first was tiny, rich and getting richer by the minute, leaving nothing for everybody else. I did not have much, if any, exposure to this group.

The second group of 1990s people in Russia consisted of the 99.99% who were busy surviving or not. My first year, the dollar exchange rate went from 95 rubles to 720 rubles and leading researchers at institutes had 90-ruble salaries. Life was a high jump, every time you were lucky or savvy enough to make it over, the bar got raised with salary arrears that could last five months for teachers, or physicists getting land to plant potatoes instead of [receiving] money, or hearing they were lopping the zeroes off the money only later to be told that [the] money wasn’t legal tender any more, it was “old money.” One of my students wrote that her father’s institute “buried three gifted scientists between 50-60 years old in three months.” Purchasing a fully automatic washing machine was the last thing on anyone’s mind or ability to purchase.

The amazing thing was how calm and silent it was considering the desperate situation. People continued going to work. Students attended my classes even when it was -30 degrees [Celsius or -22 degrees Fahrenheit] and there was no heat at the university. One of my students explained, “It is not pleasant or good when you can say nothing about what will happen to you in the near future. The majority of people are simply tired of everything….They just want to live like ‘normal’ people, they want to have comfortable flats and tasty food.” An old woman I shared a coupe with on the train from Moscow to Novosibirsk told me there are only two words you need to know to understand Russians, “terpelivoye” (patient) and “perezhit” (live through it). These traits continue to be both curse and blessing.

The third Russia was the one for the Americans and for us, every door was open based on the assumption we had all the answers. The opportunities in all spheres were endless, [Russia was] the place where frogs came to become princes. We felt powerful and hopeful and for the most part the Americans who came here were good people swept up not only in the excitement of opportunities and being able to immediately operate above [their] pay grade, but because they believed they were part of a great and positive mission for peace and prosperity.

As for how it has changed, everything is different. Statistically, the Levada Center has been covering “right track, wrong track” since 1996 and in November of that year 21% said right track and 58% wrong track. In April of this year, it was 68% right track and 21% wrong track. There are still fabulously rich people as well as people with outside toilets but there is also everything in between with an ever-growing middle class. It has been nothing short of astonishing to see the changes that have taken place in my village in one of the poorest regions in the country since we built our house in 2001.

NB: How did you get involved in community activism in Russia? How has community activism evolved there over the years? What types of issues are likely to precipitate activism in Russia and what form does it take?

SLK: It was organic. It began by using my English classes as a means of civics education. This was inspired by my students’ response to the question, “What is democracy?” There was only one answer: “freedom.” When I prompted for more answers, it was more freedoms: religion, speech, etc. Never did anyone say “responsibility” and that was shocking and troubling to me having been raised in the Kennedy “ask not what your country can do for you” era. I developed a mock government curriculum for my classes and discovered that, as long as you called it a master class in English, you could talk about anything. I went on to conduct open seminars starting with the first gender seminar in Siberia with the only Russian feminist in the region and then, with AIDS raging in New York. I decided it was important to conduct the first sex seminar with an American male psychologist.

After a year, money was a problem. I was saved by a woman in an American delegation who was impressed with my work and organized for me to apply to an American foundation for support. My first grant of $18,000 was to travel around to universities with my “Democracy Seminar.”

In the meantime, people started knocking on my door asking questions about organizing. The U.S. foundation encouraged me to create a U.S. NGO and apply to open an information center. I got the grant, left the university, and opened the ECHO information center and the first free access Internet node in Siberia. I only found out later that this was possible because a former student who became my technical director illegally tapped into a cable at a technology company several floors above our office.

A year later USAID gave me almost $2 million through a U.S.-based organization to expand what I was doing and create the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center and Siberian Network of community development/NGO resource centers in 11 regions covering a territory larger than the United States. An American colleague moved to Krasnoyarsk to take over the “democracy seminars.” After several months, he told me that university [level] is too late, we needed to work with schools. He started conducting school seminars in small towns that were all decimated by the transition.

Throughout the country the enterprises and institutions that supported these communities were shuttered, all that was left were the schools. He came up with the idea of developing a community school model that, instead of the U.S.’s life-long learning focus, would be about creating schools as centers for community development. This led us to John Dewey, the great American democratic education philosopher. One particular quote provided the foundation for our overall development approach, “Wherever democracy has fallen, it was too exclusively political in nature. It had not become part of the bone and blood of people in daily conduct. Unless democratic habits of thought are part of the fiber of a people, political democracy is insecure.”

Both of these organizations continue to do important work and the models they promote are being practiced not only throughout Russia but in other former Soviet republics. Management was turned over to Russians years ago and I continued to work with them as an expert until the pandemic.

Still, most Americans have no idea that their taxpayer dollars were invested so successfully in Russia. That is because they only hear about and from a very small group of mostly Moscow-based human rights groups that applied a completely different strategy to their development work. The blowback from their strategy became so pronounced that it started to impact anyone receiving U.S. funding.

Prior to Obama coming to the White House my colleagues and I were often invited to debrief new USAID staff and other visiting delegations. I developed a democracy paradigm comparison Power Point to outline the two strategies as I perceived them [traditional transition vs. new Siberian]. It included an emphasis on freedom vs. responsibility, being against something vs. being for something, PR vs. one-on-one organizing, civil society equated with human rights and NGOs vs. civil society equated with anyone who chooses to use the space, NGO development vs. community and economic development, and human rights vs. quality of life.

We all agreed that human rights was a key goal, our problem was using it as a means for democratic development because it tended to generate criticism and conflict instead of partnership and trust. The step one I was raised on [was to] find that small patch of common ground and build from there.

My Russian colleagues told me early on, if we start demanding and lecturing local government, they will squish us like a bug. Instead, we invited them to observe a grant committee and introduced them to supporting NGOs in open competition. Next, we invited them to contribute some money and conduct a competition together. This led to the first Russian government money in history distributed to NGOs through a transparent competition. So, from zero rubles to non-government-related organizations to multiple millions yearly through national, regional and local competitions that often include NGO leaders as judges.

Another example is coalitions. In 1995 we organized sectoral meetings for Novosibirsk NGOs (environment, disabled, women’s, etc.) and were surprised that most of them didn’t know each other. We offered to finance an all-Siberian conference for their issue if they would organize it. No one was interested; there was real resistance to working with people they didn’t know. I thought of it as the “nashi” (ours) Soviet hangover. We were desperate until USAID gave me permission to find a real U.S. grassroots activist (most of the experts used in these programs are trained trainers with no real experience). He came over from Maine and asked NGO leaders several questions. When they left, he told us, “weak organizations don’t create coalitions, concentrate on institutional development and create opportunities for people to meet and work together and coalitions will appear.” He was right.

These are just two key examples of how things have changed. Also, essential for us was the inclusion of regional NGO leaders in all national decision-making processes. In general, more people are active addressing a wider range of issues than ever before. For the most part, today things are similar to the U.S.

Community development almost always begins with beautification actions [like] collecting litter, landscaping, building playgrounds and benches, etc. Issue-specific groups most often appear in response to a personal experience such as a child born with disabilities, breast cancer, a passion for nature or animals, etc. The big difference is the numbers. They are increasing but still relatively small compared to the U.S. Still, when we first tried to introduce volunteerism, we were universally met with pushback, “we were all volunteers during the Soviet Union and what good did it do us?” By the end of the ’90s our [program] mobilized over half a million volunteers throughout Siberia.

The challenges 30 years ago continue to be relevant: to encourage more people to be active, to help those who were active to be more effective and to get government and business to be supportive of these initiatives. There is no question that over the last 5-6 years the situation has become more challenging for NGOs and that is sad and frustrating, but it has not stopped the community development-focused organizations I have worked with.

Most significantly, in terms of how all this can ultimately lead to the kind of responsibility-focused democracy I believe in, are the results of a recent Levada Center survey. They asked “to what degree do you feel responsible for what happens in your town and in the country?” The number who feel fully or significantly responsible for their town went from 3% in 2006 to 21% in December 2022 and in the country from 15% to 39%.

The number who felt no responsibility registered a 19% drop for town and 30% for country. Equally important they asked “to what degree do you think you can influence what happens in your town fully or significantly?” Influence went from 8% to 23% and in the country from 4% to 19%. Here there was a 22% drop for town and 29% drop in the number of people who feel they have no influence on what happens in the country. This is more characteristic of democracy than the totalitarian state some people in America have been led to believe exists in Russia.

My final examples come from my village. For 20 years I was one of two activists in the community and there were no grassroots NGOs. Things really started to change when there was a COVID influx of middle-class people and the appearance of a broader middle class among “locals” thanks to increased economic opportunity from tourism. Since then, there have been dozens of initiatives from pickets to planting trees, and saving a riverbank park from privatization.

Not all have been successful; perhaps more have failed than succeeded but the dynamic has changed. Everything came full circle for me last year. A colleague from the Siberian Center days contacted me. He is now working for a major private foundation in Moscow and was coming for a site visit to an NGO they were supporting in my village! A month later I sat next to a woman at a dinner party who told me about her NGO that had just won a [Russian] presidential grant. None of this existed 30 years ago, [so] how can I not be hopeful?

NB: In terms of activism in Russia, Westerners tend to hear about Western-supported opposition activists like Alexei Navalny and expats like Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. How well do these people represent Russian opinion in general? How well do they represent actual grassroots Russian activists and their concerns?

SLK: I have never heard a Russian talk about Kasparov or Khodorkovsky in relation to politics. Navalny is not as popular as people in America think. Navalny appeared on the list of Levada Center responses to the question, “Name politicians or public figures you trust the most.” He peaked at 5% in January 2021. A January 2023 survey asked if people approved of Navalny’s activities and 9% approved, 57% did not, 23% said they hadn’t heard about him, and 11% said it was hard to answer.

At a more grassroots level, I followed the 2020 Novosibirsk City Council elections closely because there were several non-systemic opposition candidates running, some as part of the Navalny Coalition and others as Independents. The Navalny candidate said that “Elections in Novosibirsk are elections for all of Russia. Today in Novosibirsk, we will decide how the electoral landscape in general will look next year. We have the capital cities Moscow and St. Petersburg, they have their electoral behavior, and we have villages with their electoral behavior. Novosibirsk is the golden middle, how people vote in Novosibirsk, plus or minus, is how the rest of the country votes.”

With a miserable 18.4% turnout, only 3% of eligible voters showed up to support Coalition candidates. So, despite a video about corruption in Novosibirsk that went viral with 4.9 million views, Navalny’s massive PR campaign was not generating votes, there was an enthusiasm gap, the turnout for all Coalition candidates was even slightly lower than the overall. This could have been a style rather than a policy issue because a less confrontational Independent candidate garnered the most votes in the election and 27.6% of her district’s eligible voters turned out.

NB: Can you talk about the effect of government crackdowns on foreign funding of media and NGOs in Russia? How much of an effect has this had on Russian activism both qualitatively and quantitatively?

SLK: I can only speak authoritatively about the initial “Foreign Agent Law” [of 2012] requiring certain NGOs to register as foreign agents or to be identified by the government to be put on the list. The hysteria [about] the initial appearance of the “Foreign Agent Law” and the crushing of civil society was not borne out in practice.

The organization I founded was in the first wave and shortly thereafter a number of my colleagues’ organizations were listed. The reality was that listed groups had three options. They could forgo foreign funding and apply to be removed from the list (as did the organization I started) and continue to do their work. They could make their objections public while following the increased reporting and labeling requirements, keep their foreign funding, and continue to operate. Lastly groups who refused to comply with the requirements could be assessed large fines and eventually liquidation. Some in this latter group found work-arounds registering new entities. There was a chilling effect but I did not see the work of activists notably diminished qualitatively or quantitatively.

As relations between the West and Russia worsened over the years, the effects became more pronounced for some groups, especially those with Western funding which did not have any domestic sources of funding. Still, the organizations that I know continue to work. There was a great quote from a community foundation leader responding to a couple of people complaining about how hard it was to work with their local government. He said, “Don’t spend your energy trying to break through, find a way to go around.” It has never been easy for activists.

The “foreign agent” label became noticeable to a broader group of the public with its expansion to include media in 2021 and 2022. None of this is good and the space for civil society has constricted but it has not been crushed. I do not offer this as justification but to add some context to the initial appearance of the foreign agent label. It was a blowback response to activities by some foreign-funded groups that the Russian government did not feel were appropriate. There had been numerous warnings that went ignored. Based on my personal experience, it would and should be unacceptable for a wholly Russian-funded NGO to conduct some of the activities I saw here in the U.S. There were issues to be addressed; however, considering their lack of connection to the grass roots, the government response was an over-reaction.

NB: How would you characterize democracy in Russia? From what I’ve studied and heard Russians say is that what happened there in the ’90s gave many Russians a negative association with democracy. Would you say that Russians want democracy and, if they do, what will that democracy look like compared to American democracy? For example, Russians do not have the kind of libertarian hostility toward the role of the state that underlies American democratic philosophy.

SLK: As I said when I first asked my students their word association to “democracy,” there was one response: “freedom.” When I returned to the classroom in 2016, in addition to freedom, student associations included “compromise,” “lie,” “choice,” “majority,” “not Russia,” “liberality,” “inefficient,” “quality,” “respect,” “sham,” “Ancient Greece,” “impossible.” Still no “responsibility.”

The assumption that freedom is both necessary and sufficient for a sustainable democracy may be why some elites still see the 1990s as the heyday of democracy when it was chaos and desperation for most. The ’90s democracy was also problematic because of things like the constitutional crisis and Yeltsin bombing the Moscow White House Parliament building. A student wrote, “The most amazing thing is that Yeltsin swore to obey the Constitution…but a few days ago he said he would not pay attention to Congress’s decisions.” So, this was not a great environment for an ends-justifies-the-means situation.

Another issue surfaced later. When I asked my follow-up question, is Russia a democracy, only a smattering of hands went up if any. Then, “Is America a democracy?” and instantaneously all hands up until 2001 when I attended a conference for school directors in Voronezh, 500 kilometers south of Moscow, [which] was used by the Germans as a staging ground for [the five-month battle of] Stalingrad and school kids still pull bullets and helmets out of the ground for school museums. “Is America a democracy?” and no hands went up. There was an awkward silence as the directors traded looks of embarrassment and confusion until a large, commanding woman sitting in the middle of the front row asked, “why didn’t they count the votes?” [NB: referring to the 2000 Bush-Gore election]

Despite all those mixed messages and quality-of-life negative results, what I consider the real indicators for a democracy continue to improve—i.e., more people actively addressing a wider range of issues. Yes, the civil society space has contracted but there is still plenty of room to be active and it is being used. I don’t think any response to the question “do you want democracy?” would be meaningful here because of the wide variety of ways people define it, they are still trying to figure out what it means.

Thirty years in, what did we expect? I know I thought, like most, four months, maybe a year and bing-bang-boom democracy. Well, the U.S. has been defining and redefining its democracy for over 200 years. It’s an on-going process. However, if it cannot be connected in any way with improved quality of life or hope for it, people will not be attracted to it. That said, I do think that people here are more predisposed to a more social democratic format (Europe vs. U.S. free market) since, as you noted, they are comfortable with a bigger government role and safety net.

NB: What is your personal observation about the effect of the “special military operation” in Ukraine in general on Russians? What about the mobilization?

SLK: What strikes me most is how different it is from the American experience of war in the 21st century. In the U.S., wars have been a constant, tragic but largely ignorable fact for most people I know. Here, there are two fronts, the kinetic special military operation [SMO] and economic sanctions, and everyone I know is impacted by both of them.

The degree of impact varies with some leaving Russia while others volunteered to serve. Another big difference is that this is personal for so many people who have relatives or friends in Ukraine and/or who grew up there. Some of those relationships have survived while others have not. Even for those who do not have relatives or friends living or fighting in Ukraine the realities of war are more visceral to people here. Perhaps it is fading among some in the younger generation, but the horrors of what is called the Great Patriotic War are part of every family’s history. Most of the people I know are supportive of the SMO—they do not think it was “unprovoked”—but none of them are “rah-rah” about it.

As for the sanctions, everyone was terrified at first, scrambling to do what they could to mitigate the effects. The big hit never came even though everything is different. People here are good at being creative, making ends meet as the most significant impact has been inflation that all countries are suffering. Most of what left is not really missed or has a work-around. On the plus side, there are big opportunities for those ready to take advantage of them. For example, the closing of the West to Russia has generated an economic boom for people in my village, which has become a major tourist destination with two flights a day from Moscow.

NB: How have friends and family that you may still have in the U.S. reacted to your living in Russia all these years? Did you notice any change at various times when tensions between the U.S. and Russia were heightened, such as during Russiagate and after the start of the “special military operation”?

SLK: My family and friends have always been very supportive of my work here. The fact is I could never have done what I did without their support. You have to remember, when I arrived there was no Internet. If I wanted to call home, I had to order a call in advance through an overseas operator. My sister, who is a lawyer, set up and ran an American NGO when I started to get American funding. She was an essential resource strategically and helping identify American activists who could enlighten our work.

My other sister owns a successful coffee business and introduced me to the double bottom line business model with profit equal to social mission. I presented this and her company as a case study in my seminars on social entrepreneurship at the university and on a tour around Yamalo- Nenets (Autonomous Okrug) sponsored by the regional government in the far north. On the personal front, I got together with my future husband when one of my best friends came to visit and encouraged me to take another look at him [as a romantic prospect].

As for changes in response to increasing tensions between the U.S. and Russia, until Trump they were only noticeable in relation to my work. A shift in the press was noticeable with Putin’s decision to run and opposition protests were launched in 2011. The coverage was based on a Moscow-centric liberal point of view that had every right to exist but promoted a very limited view of the country. This skewed narrative over time has led to inaccurate assumptions with disastrous policy implications. It is also the reason I turned my attention to writing and academic research.

The appearance of Russiagate brought it home. During a 2017 visit to America, MSNBC blared from enormous flat-screened TVs in homes of friends where I never noticed a TV before. In 2018 things grew even more ominous when my Russian husband and I went to dinner at a friend’s fiancé’s family home in Maine. An American, he was our neighbor for years in Altai before returning to the U.S. The next morning, he told us the liberal matriarch said we were not welcomed back. He apologized saying, “she gets her news from Rachel Maddow.” Around that time, my teenage daughter asked me, “why are the Russians in American TV shows and movies always bad people?”

When the SMO began, it became necessary to navigate relationships with some friends in regular COVID-inspired ZOOM groups. Others reached out and asked, “tell me what I don’t know.” When friends shared my pieces on Facebook, there were some shocking comments from their friends and any attempt to have a mutually beneficial dialogue was useless. One high school friend compared me to a diarist in 1930s’ Nazi Germany and said that any Russian who supports the war should burn in hell.

I was allowed to enter the country but my elite private high school told me I would not be welcomed at the reunion because I had the Sputnik vaccine. When the SMO happened three months before the reunion, a couple of friends said America would not be a good environment for me so I canceled the 2022 trip. A classmate said he was worried I would get in trouble if he mailed me our reunion book of memories. I follow the American press daily so I am not surprised by the assumptions. It is the deeply hate-filled attitudes of a very few people that scare me. I never experienced hatred before and nothing good can come of it. Despite the sounds of distant thunder growing louder over the past 20 years, I never imagined it would come to this, it is heartbreaking and so, so dangerous and unnecessary.

NB: What do you most want Americans and Westerners to know about Russia?

SLK: No Russian has ever thrown me out of their home. I was concerned when the SMO and sanctions began but it is almost as if people go out of their way to be kind. When I meet new people, they always ask where I am from because of my awful accent. When I tell them, their response is the same as it was 30 years ago, “What is it like there? Why are you still here?” My answers are more complicated now as my daughter loves studying math at the university and my husband has his dream machine-learning job. Still, for me it is the same now as it was 30 years ago. The best way for me to contribute to America is to generate increased understanding and peace between our two countries. I do spend a lot of time now drowning in a sense of failure and yet I am starting to see some green shoots, things I spent years looking for here in relation to civil society and now evidence of real reason for hope. There is an anti-war candidate running for [U.S.] President [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] and people ask me for sources so they can learn more.

There are four things I am sure of:

This war/SMO was wholly avoidable, it has nothing to do with democracy, and the American people need to be better educated about developments in the post-Soviet world.There were countless lost opportunities for America to continue supporting civil society. We stopped trying to make things work. Krasnoyarsk, the largest and one of the richest regions in the country, was the first region to establish a major NGO grant competition. In 2006 the governor asked us to develop and implement a training and information center model that could be established throughout the region so everyone had access to the information and skills necessary to develop and conduct effective projects. At the time, USAID was looking for Russian institutional development partnerships so we pitched the idea of expanding the project. The governor agreed, the head of USAID agreed, and a meeting between them was set up. Then, what became known as the “spy rock scandal” [a scandal involving UK spying in Russia via a fake rock that camouflaged recording equipment to pass information] happened and the meeting was canceled. I met with the USAID head and he said, “Don’t worry Sarah, let’s give it a few days and we’ll work something out.” And they did. The meeting got bumped down to vice governor and assistant head, they agreed, and numerous U.S.-supported NGOs provided development services to the region for two years. When it came time to renew, toward the end of the Bush administration, Krasnoyarsk was interested, [but] the U.S. was not.Americans’ assumptions about Russia are based on the opinions of a very small group of people who have every right to their opinions, but they should not be mistaken as reliable narrators for the largest country on Earth.In relation to democratic development in Russia and elsewhere, America cannot impose its priorities and models on people. They will figure it out themselves if they have an opportunity to identify their own interests and prosper economically. The best thing America can do now to promote democracy worldwide is to concentrate on making their own democracy real.