Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 134

Russian society split on Ukraine war – poll

Victory Day, Moscow; photo by Natylie Baldwin, May 2017

BBC Monitoring, Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1005 gmt 29 Jun 23   

The Russian public remains sure of a successful course of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to the results of a poll by Russian Field, influential business daily Kommersant reported on 28 June.

While over half of those questioned (58%) approved the actions of the Russian armed forces, a little more than a fifth of the respondents took the opposite view. At the same time, the share of those who support the termination of the operation and a transition to peace negotiations (44%) is practically equal to the number of those who support the continuation of hostilities (45%).

In the course of Russian Field’s 12th survey on the attitude of Russians to the war, sociologists spoke on the phone to 1,600 respondents from 16-19 June 2023. According to the study, 58% of Russians say the campaign is going well, while 21% think it is not. And 64% of respondents would approve the president’s decision to attack Kyiv – a record for the entire time of the study, the survey’s authors note.

A transition to peace talks, however, would be positively viewed by 72% of respondents, the poll found. Among those respondents who trust official sources of information (46% of those questioned), 84% positively assess the current results of hostilities, and 74% would support an attack on Kyiv.

Split on peace or war

When respondents were asked to choose between continuing hostilities or peace negotiations, their answers were roughly evenly divided: 45% and 44%, respectively. The position on this issue depends on age: among citizens aged 18 to 29, 62% support a transition to diplomacy, while only 36% of those aged 60 and older did so.

In the event that a second wave of mobilisation is required to continue the war, the majority in all age groups (54% of the total number of respondents) will approve the peace negotiations, with only 35% in favour of continuing hostilities in such a situation.

Respondents of all age groups, regardless of their attitude to the continuation of hostilities or negotiations, do not see an early end to the war: the proportion of those who believe that it will go on for more than a year is regularly growing and has reached 49% (in March 2022, this was expected by only 13% of respondents).

Divided over strategy

The question of what specific steps to take at the moment divided the respondents. A transition to offensive operations is favoured by 39%, while another 30% are in favour of consolidating the gains achieved, while 12% are in favour of a complete withdrawal of troops.

Russian Field notes that the number of supporters of maintaining the status quo is highest among the more well-off respondents, but falls again when it “gets close” to the wealthiest group of respondents. It is also noticeable that the proportion of supporters of an offensive strategy is higher among those who trust official data on the course of the war.

On the whole, however, the fighting in Ukraine remains a distant event in the perception of most Russians – 40% of respondents are tired of news related to the war. This figure has been stable since March 2022. Relations with some relatives or friends have been broken off because of a disagreement on the Ukrainian issue by 11% of respondents.

Public opinion regarding the war is now set, political scientist Alexei Makarkin told Kommersanta. “The absolute majority have decided on their views,” he said. “Now there are no events that would prompt people to reconsider these views.”

Hardened attitudes

Although Russians have access to various sources of information, they use them mainly to affirm their opinions, Makarkin said. “Information in most cases does not change their approach: if it contradicts their worldview, they almost immediately cut it off.”

According to him, in almost a year and a half since the start of the war, it has managed to “become routine”, and the events related to it do not occupy the Russians in the same way as they did in February 2022 and at the start of “partial mobilisation”. It is unlikely that the failed rebellion of the Wagner PMC will seriously affect their position, he said: “Everything was rapid, everything was very rapid, people did not have time to get scared.”

Kremlin says most Russians support war

On 29 June, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman was asked to comment on “data from an opinion poll according to which the number of Russians who support the special operation is equal to those who are in favour of the negotiation process”, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

Dmitry Peskov replied: “The data that we have is different, it still shows the absolute predominant support for the special operation, the absolute dominant support for the president”.

“Everything is clear there, the methodologies are clear – these are, in fact, provided by the pillars of our sociology,” he said.

He declined to comment on the opinion poll mentioned by the journalists, saying that he was not aware of its methodology, Interfax said.

Ted Snider: Is the US Taking Advantage of the Prigozhin Coup?

Photo by Gladson Xavier on Pexels.com

By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, 7/3/23

Following the attempted coup in Russia carried out by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, US President Joe Biden “made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”

It is not quite so clear that Russian officials believe him. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Russia’s security services are investigating whether Western or Ukrainian intelligence services were involved in the rebellion. Former President and current deputy chairman of the Russian security council Dmitry Medvedev released a statement that it is likely that Western intelligence services were working with Prigozhin.

It is very unclear what happened in Russia that day. But whether or not the US, Ukraine or other Western intelligence services were working with Prigozhin or actively involved in the rebellion, there are other ways to be complicit in a coup. Before the coup, you can enable it by not sharing intelligence that it is being planned; after the coup, you can take advantage of it with information or disinformation that exploits or creates cracks.

Because what happened in Russia is so unclear, what is happening in response in Washington is unclear. But it would be concerning if the US was taking advantage of the attempted coup.

One thing that has become clear is that US intelligence knew in advance that Prigozhin was planning some sort of rebellious military action. CNN reported that US intelligence was aware of Prigozhin’s planning “for quite some time” and that they saw signs of the preparations, including the massing of weapons and ammunition. The New York Times reported that US intelligence briefed military and Biden administration officials that Prigozhin was preparing military action against senior Russian defense officials. But both CNN and The Times say that they did not brief Moscow.

Two reasons for the decision not to inform Moscow are given. Both CNN and The Times report that the motivation was to prevent Putin from weaponizing US knowledge to imply US involvement. The Times adds the second motivation that the US “clearly had little interest in helping Mr. Putin avoid a major, embarrassing fracturing of his support.”

But both explanations are troubling. Not sharing the intelligence with Moscow may create the appearance that the US was not involved. But it also risks, if that lack of sharing becomes known, as it very quickly did, creating the appearance of complicity. And it is complicity. What better way could there have been to demonstrate a lack of complicity in a coup – if you really don’t want it to happen – than to inform Moscow of the intended coup?

The second explanation makes that complicity clear. The US didn’t share the intelligence because – whether or not they thought the mutiny could succeed – they didn’t want to help Putin avoid, at least, the embarrassment.

The denial of knowledge of the coup planning was intended to prevent the appearance that there was complicity; the revelation of the knowledge of the coup planning appears to confirm that there was.

The charge of enabling could be upgraded to involvement if information in the Discord intelligence leaks turn out to be true that Prigozhin had offered Ukrainian intelligence, with whom he was alleged to have maintained secret communications, information on Russian troop locations in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing forces from Bakhmut. If confirmed, such reports would suggest that Prigozhin was collaborating with Western intelligence.

Whether or not the US was involved before the coup, they seem to be taking advantage after the coup. As The Times says, the US has an interest in embarrassing Putin and fracturing his support. Hence the many statements insisting, rightly or wrongly, that Prigozhin’s march reveals the cracks in the Russian military and the weakened position of Putin in Russian politics.

There is also the oddity of one of Prigozhin’s statements just before his rebellion in which he repeated the West’s claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. He said that “There was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24. The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block. The special operation was started for a completely different reason.” What was the real reason? “The war was needed … so that Shoigu could become a marshal, … so that he could get a second ‘Hero’ [of Russia] medal. The war wasn’t needed to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine.”

It is odd that Prigozhin, in the days leading up to his rebellion, was reading off the Western script. It is especially odd since Prigozhin is no supporter of Shoigu – indeed, the removal of Shoigu was one of his key demands – but has been a leading supporter of the war. Prigozhin has called, not for Russia to end the war, but for Russia to fight it more aggressively.

The West has repeated this rejection of Putin’s narrative uncritically, reinforcing the already set public doubt of Putin’s claims of provocation. As if Putin was deceived by an ambitious politician and had not been issuing warnings – along with Yeltsin and Gorbachev before him – about NATO expansion into Ukraine and demilitarization for decades.

The Western media has also shifted a key piece of the narrative to reframe loyalty to Putin at the highest levels to disloyalty to Putin at the highest levels, suggesting instability and cracks and a weakening of Putin’s hold on government.

Prigozhin’s forces were small. Not only much smaller than Russian forces, but much smaller than the picture that he projected. His force of 25,000 was less than a third of that. He probably hoped, if the coup theory is correct – and we don’t even know that yet – that elements of the Russian military would defect to his side. One of the keys to that hoped for defection was General Sergei Surovikin. Surovikin is powerful, influential and respected: even by Prigozhin who, in demanding the removal of Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, nominated Surovikin to replace him.

But rather than defecting and taking part of the Russian army with him, Surovikin publicly condemned Prigozhin, stayed loyal to Putin and implored Prigozhin’s mutineers to lay down their arms. In a video appeal, Surovikin said, “I urge you to stop. The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country. Before it is too late, it is necessary and it is needed to obey the will and order of the popularly elected President of the Russian Federation.”

Many expert commentators see this public appeal as a decisive moment in the rebellion. Many of the Wagner forces, when they realized they were in rebellion against the Russian government and military, reportedly laid down their arms and left. As far as is known at this point, no one in the Russian military, government or security services defected to Prigozhin. No Wagner commanders or officers joined the rebellion.

But the Western media has retold this story to undermine the loyalty narrative and recast Surovikin as the traitor and not the savior.The New York Times accepted the role of lead writer.

On June 27, The Times reported that, according to US officials, Surovikin “had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership.” Despite the richness of the innuendo, of course he had advance knowledge of the rebellion. Everyone at his level of command had advance knowledge of the rebellion. That’s how they made the plans to quickly and effectively stop it. Knowledge does not imply involvement.

The Times, engaging in implication rather than reporting, then says that US officials “are trying to learn if Surovikin “helped plan Mr. Prigozhin’s actions.” That the US is trying to learn if he did does not mean that he did. Nor is it a “sign” that Russian generals “may” have supported Prigozhin, as The Times claims, that Prigozhin “would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power would come to his aid.” He likely did believe that. He was likely wrong.

Employing the word “if” as the foundation of their reporting, The Times then serves up the whole point of the innuendo: “If General Surovikin was involved in last weekend’s events, it would be the latest sign of . . . a wider fracture” in the Russian military and government.

Later in the article, The Times says that the US officials “emphasized that much of what the United States and its allies know is preliminary.” The reporters go on to say, “Still, American officials have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Surovikin.”

Days later, reports broke that Surovikin had been arrested. Many outlets, including The Times, picked up the story. Surovikin, several media outlets reported, has not appeared in public; though his daughter reportedly claims this is untrue and that he is “at his work location.” Stating that the “circumstances surrounding the status of the general, Sergei Surovikin, are still very murky” and that “the reports were not conclusive,” The Times reports that Surovikin “appear[s] to have [been] detained.” What is not often reported is that Surovikin seems to have been detained before The New York Times reported that he knew of the rebellion in advance.

The report then says that “American officials would not say – or do not know – if he was formally arrested or just held for questioning.” That’s a big difference.

Maybe Surovikin has been arrested and maybe he hasn’t. But the story is being used to take advantage of the coup to exploit or create cracks with information or disinformation. Surovikin may have disappeared, and he may have been detained. But if he has been called in for questioning or debriefing that is normal and not news. If he has been called in for interrogation because he is suspected of participating in the rebellion, that is news. But since US officials “do not know,” the headlines and the story seem to be being framed in such a way as to imply cracks and a weakening of Putin’s position.

Weakening Putin’s position may seem to be obviously desirable. However, there are many reasons why removing Putin could lead to a worse alternative for the West. A little discussed one is that the removal of Putin could lead to a replacement with a more hardline foreign policy toward the West. In line behind Putin are hardliners who pushed Putin to go further in 2014 and annex not only Crimea but the Donbas. Putin has been more a restrainer than a hardliner. The leader who emerges victorious from a coup, like Prigozhin, could be a worse hardliner.

It is still very unclear what happened that day in Russia. Time may tell if Biden is telling the truth that the US “had nothing to do with” the coup or if Russian concerns are warranted that they did. But whether they did or whether they didn’t, there are other ways to be complicit in a coup. The US may have been guilty of such complicity before the coup attempt by not sharing intelligence with Russia that the coup was taking shape. And they may be being complicit after the coup attempt by disseminating information or disinformation that exploits or creates cracks that could weaken the Putin government.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

Branko Marcetic: We shouldn’t be cheering for state collapse in Russia

I think most of my readers are aware that most western think tank “experts” on Russia are not the sharpest tools in the shed. But based on this survey of opinion it appears that they’re both dumb and under the influence of psychedelic drugs. – Natylie

By Branko Marcetic, Responsible Statecraft, 6/28/23

In 1998, in the midst of a years-long U.S. campaign to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Gen. Anthony Zinni realized the United States had no actual plan for what would happen in the aftermath. Zinni filled this gap by commissioning a series of war games, which predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would be plunged into bloody chaos. The analysis, largely ignored at the time, would prove prophetic in the ensuing years.

This is worth recalling now, after long-standing hopes that the Ukraine invasion would spell the end of Vladimir Putin’s rule were nudged closer to reality over the weekend, with Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin carrying out a mutiny against the Russian president. The episode brings up several questions: What exactly is America’s plan should the Russian state collapse? What would follow a post-Putin power vacuum? And what measures should the United States take to manage its relationship with the country in such a scenario?

We can get some sense of the foreign policy establishment’s thinking on the subject by looking at what influential think tanks have had to say.

Take the Center for a New American Security, an arms-manufacturer-funded think tank closely aligned with the Democratic Party and from which the Biden administration has drawn many of its top foreign policy appointees. Shortly before Prigozhin’s coup attempt, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of its Transatlantic Security Program, co-wrote a piece outlining several scenarios for a post-Putin Russia, drawing heavily on her testimony in a Senate hearing in May.

In one scenario, Kendall-Taylor writes, Putin retains power and eventually dies in office, succeeded by a weak technocrat who changes little from current Russian policy. In another — the course of action she prefers — a Ukrainian military victory triggers a “seismic shift” in the Russian political landscape and galvanizes “a groundswell that could dislodge him,” leading to “the possibility of a more hopeful future for Russia and for its relations with its neighbors and the West.”

Kendall-Taylor admits the odds of a more liberal, democratic Russia emerging from this are “low,” pointing to the 2011 Egyptian revolution that ultimately resulted in Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s brutal dictatorship. And she acknowledges that if Putin was removed by an armed insurgency, “not only would the aftermath be violent, but the odds of a new dictatorship coming to power would also be high.”

Yet despite the risks “of violence, chaos, and even the chance of a more hard-line government emerging in the Kremlin,” Kendall-Taylor nevertheless concludes that “a better Russia can be produced only by a clear and stark Ukrainian victory,” which will “enable Russians to shed their imperialist ambitions and to teach the country’s future elites a valuable lesson about the limits of military power.” Whatever leader follows, she argues, the West should avoid rushing to stabilize relations and instead demand Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, the payment of reparations and the prosecution of war criminals, while aiming to “constrain Russia and its ability to wage aggression beyond its borders” in the long term.

Despite dismissing the risks, Kendall-Taylor is an outlier in acknowledging the potential for violence, instability, and a more hardline government. The Center for European Policy Analysis, another hawkish think tank, has published several pieces since the war began declaring that the possible collapse and disintegration of Russia “will be good for everyone” and that the U.S. goal “should be decolonization,” a popular new shorthand for encouraging its break-up.

Likewise, while insisting it is “essential to prepare” for a coup in Russia, Pavel K. Baev of the Brookings Institution explicitly refuses to consider what he calls the “distinct possibility” of “a catastrophic breakdown of Russia’s autocratic regime and the break-up of this deeply troubled state.” Instead, he asserts that the hardliners around Putin “have neither economic foundation nor public support” to escalate the war, and whoever takes power would simply dispose of them and look for “a way out of the accelerating catastrophe.”

This new leadership, Baev predicts, would make a “series of territorial concessions,” reassess Moscow’s dependence on its nuclear arsenal, and move to restart arms control and strategic stability talks with the United States. Belarussian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko would be replaced by “an unequivocally pro-European government” in the aftermath, in turn leading Moscow to rescind Putin’s September annexation and fully withdraw from Ukraine. Finally, sans Putin, Russia would be less inclined toward confrontation with the West, dealing China a major setback.

Similar predictions abound. Should Putin’s rule collapse, asserts Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “the jingoists will be fighting an uphill battle” while democratic demands will gain steam. A decisive Ukrainian victory could usher in new leadership that “open[s] the door to revived economic partnership with the West,” William Drozdiak, founding executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center, writes for the Wilson Center.

Some urge more ambitious plans. William Courtney, senior fellow at the influential and Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation, suggests sanctions should only be eased if Russia withdraws its troops from both Ukraine and Belarus. Rather than draw down U.S. forces in Europe, as was done after the Soviet collapse, the United States should consider “augment[ing] its forces in Central and Eastern Europe” and keeping the door open to further NATO expansion, while engaging Russia’s new leadership on democratic reforms.

Surprisingly more conciliatory is the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a prominent establishment think tank that nonetheless recognizes the grave risks of violence and instability in a Russian power vacuum, and calls for a “careful confidence-building dance” and maintaining a pledge to “welcome back” Russia into Europe if it reforms. (In a less surprising turn, CSIS still insists on maintaining sanctions, continuing military aid to Ukraine and pursuing Russian war criminals in case of a complete Russian collapse.)

In some cases, the predictions and policy suggestions seem at odds. At an event sponsored by the German Marshall Fund last year, analysts reportedly came to a consensus that “a post-Putin Russia would be worse than it is today,” with the possibility of “an even more Stalinist state,” a civil war, and “the disintegration and fragmentation of Russia, with pockets controlled by militias and warlords.”

Yet more recently, the Fund’s nonresident Senior Fellow Bart M. J. Szewczyk has argued that NATO governments primarily “need to step up their efforts to help Ukraine win” without mentioning these dire warnings raised during last year’s event. He dismisses as a “fallacy” that reciprocal security guarantees for Russia are essential for a viable peace and urges using a Russian military defeat to “end the so-called frozen conflict in Moldova, dissolve the Russian puppet statelet of Transnistria, and help Belarus democratize,” as well as to find this generation’s Mikhail Gorbachev, a Russian “successor they can do business with.”

Some common themes stand out. Few consider that what may follow Putin is not just violence and the country’s dissolution, as several experts have warned, but a more hardline government led by hawks more inclined to escalate the war and even less open to rapprochement with the West — and those who do barely dwell on the prospect, sometimes treating the possible negative consequences as an acceptable risk. This is despite the fact that, as Prigozhin’s munity has viscerally reminded us, almost all of Putin’s Russian critics today are more extreme, even ultranationalist. The Atlantic Council only mentions these hawks to urge Russian elites to “move beyond today’s misguided imperialism,” as if it would simply be a matter of will.

Several view Russia’s collapse as less a risk than an opportunity, either to extract concessions from Moscow beyond a withdrawal from Ukraine, or to further weaken and contain Russia. It’s assumed that any instability will play to the West’s advantage, whether by producing a liberal democracy in Belarus or undermining a Chinese government that, it’s presumed, would simply stand by and watch events unfold.

Maybe most striking, there is no mention of how the West can try to resolve the long-simmering grievances that have fed into today’s Russian aggression, or even that it should. Some advocate doubling down on ignoring Russian concerns about NATO expansion. It’s implied such grievances are exclusive to Putin, even though CIA Director William Burns has explicitly said NATO enlargement is widely opposed in Russia, and Gorbachev himself and other Russian liberals have echoed many of Putin’s criticisms of Western foreign policy.

It’s fair to ask whether the U.S. and European foreign policy establishments are repeating the mistakes of Iraq, when overly rosy predictions about the aftermath of regime change left them blindsided by the cascading repercussions of Hussein’s ouster. Those included a civil war and long-running ethnic conflict; the renewal of corrupt, authoritarian rule; a boost to the regional influence of a U.S. adversary; and violence and instability that spread inside and beyond the country’s borders, necessitating more open-ended military commitments, undermining U.S. global standing, and entailing steep human and economic costs.

Similar outcomes would be magnitudes more disastrous in the case of Russia, which is several times larger than Iraq, is more central to the global economy, sits on the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, is located on Europe’s doorstep, and spans virtually all of Eurasia. We can only hope there’s more serious analysis inside the Pentagon than what’s coming out of Western think tanks.

Alexander Mercouris: Zelensky Pleads for Military Gains Prior to NATO Summit; Russian Confidence Grows, NATO Doubts Way Forward

Link here.

Here is the article discussing the survey of the number of Ukrainians who personally know someone who has been killed or wounded in the war. Mercouris makes reference to this survey more than once in the above video. – Natylie

Survey Reveals Impact of Russian War: Nearly 80 Percent of Ukrainians Affected by Loss and Suffering

Kyiv Post, 7/1/23

In a recent survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), the devastating toll of Russia’s war against Ukraine has come to light. {https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1254&page=1]

The study found that an overwhelming 76 percent of respondents have close relatives and friends who have either lost their lives or suffered injuries as a direct consequence of Russian aggression.

On average, each of the interviewees named seven such people.

Furthermore, the survey revealed that 64 percent of Ukrainians have at least one close relative or friend who sustained injuries during the conflict, with an average of five wounded loved ones per respondent.

Equally poignant is the revelation that 63 percent of participants have experienced the loss of at least one close relative or friend, amounting to an average of three deceased loved ones per respondent.

Prof. Paul Robinson: Russian liberalism’s false dawn

Gee, this whole neoliberal elitism and disdain for the general population thing sounds awfully familiar. – Natylie

By Prof. Paul Robinson, Canadian Dimension, 6/18/23

Theatre director Konstantin Bogomolov likes to shock. At the end of May, he was at it again, publishing an article denouncing his one-time ideological allies in Russia’s liberal intelligentsia for their attitude towards the Russian people and towards the war in Ukraine. Bogomolov was obviously out to provoke. Still, beneath its insulting rhetoric, his article contained a germ of truth about the prospects for Russia ever turning into a liberal democratic state.

Offending people on a regular basis has made Bogomolov famous, but whereas once he targeted conservatives, Putin, and the Russian state, more recently he’s been targeting the West and Russian liberals. Aggrieved by Western political correctness, in 2021 Bogomolov took up arms against it in an article entitled “The Rape of Europe 2.0.” In this, the director complained that Western Europe was constructing a “new ethical Reich” dominated by an “aggressive mix of queer activists, fem-fanatics, and eco-psychopaths.” Then in November 2022, the Financial Times described a play that Bogomolov directed as “clearly heralding the start of a new era in Russian culture, with new people and new authoritarian values centre stage.” “The uproarious laughter of the audience at jokes about blackface and homophobic slurs was nauseating,” said the FT.

In his latest article, Bogomolov writes that Russia contains a “society within a society” made up of people who perceive themselves as special. This is the intelligentsia, 90 percent of whom “call themselves Europeans and enlightened liberals. But in the depth of their souls, they despise their insufficiently successful, insufficiently advanced compatriots.” These “special people” would never agree to listen to the ordinary people, says Bogomolov, because if they did, ordinary people would tell them that “empire is good, and a whole lot of other things that are simply unacceptable in civilized European society.” Consequently, “the people must be silent.”

The war in Ukraine has horrified liberal intellectuals, writes Bogomolov, but not because they dislike the bloodshed. What really bothers them, he claims, is that it has deprived them of the opportunity to get subsidies from the state to produce works saying how terrible the state is. Russia’s intellectuals lament the loss of their former lives in which they could “sit on two stools, be progressive thieves, intelligent murderers, corrupt philanthropists, uneducated aristocrats, actors with conscience (an oxymoron), Europeanized racists … and so on and so forth.” The war has deprived them of the ability to “live in luxury” and sip “pumpkin lattes.”

The intelligentsia wants to go back to its good old life, says Bogomolov. But, he concludes: “In February 2022 [when Russian invaded Ukraine], the past died. … There is no turning back. … It’s necessary to stop viewing one’s country and one’s people with contempt and to listen to the hum of history and the voice of the people. Because their opinion matters.”

While exaggerated, Bogomolov’s complaints will ring true among many Russians. The sad fact is that the social gulf dividing the liberal intelligentsia and the mass of ordinary Russians is enormous, and the two parties do indeed often view each other with undisguised contempt.

Take, for instance, Moscow professor Sergei Medvedev, author of the Pushkin Prize-winning book The Return of the Russian Leviathan. Medvedev writes that the Russian “mass consciousness” is “embittered, alienated and provincial,” “undeveloped,” “archaic and superstitious.” In liberal discourse, the masses are often described as having the “morals of slaves,” and as such compared unfavourably with the enlightened intelligentsia, a contrast that is sometimes referred to as the “Two Russias Theory.” As one-time liberal icon Boris Nemtsov put it in his book, Testament of a Rebel, before his murder in 2015: “The Russian people, for the most part, is divided into two uneven groups. One part is the descendants of serfs, people with a slavish consciousness. There are very many of them and their leader is V.V. Putin. The other (smaller) part is born free, proud and independent. It does not have a leader but needs one.”

As for the idea that what liberals really hate about the war in Ukraine is the loss of their pumpkin lattes, that too contains a tiny bit of truth, although the point of complaint is more often cheese than coffee, good European cheeses having disappeared from Russian shops as a result of the sanctions and counter-sanctions that followed the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Medvedev again provides an example, writing that “Among the losses of recent years—the free press, fair elections, an independent court—what has hurt especially hard has been the disappearance of good cheese. … a piece of brie, a bottle of Italian chianti and a warm baguette … drew him [the Russian] close to Western values and were acts of social modernization. … Striking against cheese was equivalent to a strike against the quasi-Western idea of normality.”

Similarly, in a 2015 article Masha Gessen lamented the loss of Western cheeses in Russia due to sanctions, but found consolation in the fact that they could still be purchased at the Caviar House & Prunier Seafood Bar in a departure lounge at London’s Heathrow Airport. As she wrote:

“It’s my first time in Europe after all that’s happened,” the journalist and filmmaker Inna Denisova, a critic of the annexation of Crimea, wrote on her Facebook page …. “And of course it’s not seeing the historic churches and museums that has made me so emotional—it’s seeing cheese at the supermarket. My little Gorgonzola. My little mozzarella. My little Gruyère, chèvre and Brie. I held them all in my arms … and headed for the cash register.” There, Ms. Denisova wrote, she started crying.

Suffice it to say that the non-brie eating, non-Chianti sipping majority has a rather different perspective. While sentiments such as those above might not be the norm, their occasional expression has given Russian liberals a serious image problem.

Bogomolov’s article thus draws our attention to something quite important. Russian liberalism can never hope to gain power without finding some common ground with the Russian people, or at least of a sizeable section of it. But liberals and the rest of the population are so far removed from one another that this seems impossible. Doing what Bogomolov recommends—listening to the people—would mean accepting the unacceptable, including the war in Ukraine. Liberals don’t want to do this. Instead, they pin their hopes on the war going so badly for Russia that the Russian people changes its point of view. But that means wishing for their own country’s defeat in war, a stance that alienates them even further from the public. Frankly, it’s hard to see how they can escape from this conundrum. For now, all they can do is wait and pray for a miracle.

Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.

Rick Sterling: Who Is National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, the Man Running US Foreign Policy?

By Rick Sterling, Antiwar.com, 6/27/23

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is arguably the key person driving US foreign policy. He was mentored by Hillary Clinton with regime changes in Honduras, Libya and Syria. He was the link between Nuland and Biden during the 2014 coup in Ukraine. As reported by Seymour Hersh, Sullivan led the planning of the Nord Stream pipelines destruction in September 2022. Sullivan guides or makes many large and small foreign policy decisions. This article will describe Jake Sullivan’s background, what he says, what he has been doing, where the US is headed and why this should be debated.

Background

Jake Sullivan was born in November 1976. He describes his formative years like this:

“I was raised in Minnesota in the 1980s, a child of the later Cold War – of Rocky IV, the Miracle on Ice, and ‘Tear down this wall’. The 90s were my high school and college years. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Iron Curtain disappeared. Germany was reunified. An American-led alliance ended a genocide in Bosnia and prevented one in Kosovo. I went to graduate school in England and gave fiery speeches on the floor of the Oxford Union about how the United States was a force for good in the world.”

Sullivan’s education includes Yale (BA), Oxford (MA) and Yale again (JD). He went quickly from academic studies and legal work to political campaigning and government.

Sullivan made important contacts during his college years at elite institutions. For example, he worked with former Deputy Secretary of State and future Brookings Institution president, Strobe Talbott. After a few years clerking for judges, Sullivan transitioned to a law firm in his hometown of Minneapolis. He soon became chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar who connected him to the rising Senator Hillary Clinton.

Mentored by Hillary

Sullivan became a key adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign to be Democratic party nominee in 2008. At age 32, Jake Sullivan became deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning when she became secretary of state. He was her constant companion, traveling with her to 112 countries.

The Clinton/Sullivan foreign policy was soon evident. In Honduras, Clinton clashed with progressive Honduras President Manuel Zelaya over whether to re-admit Cuba to the OAS. Seven weeks later, on June 28, Honduran soldiers invaded the president’s home and kidnapped him out of the country, stopping en route at the US Air Base. The coup was so outrageous that even the US ambassador to Honduras denounced it. This was quickly overruled as the Clinton/Sullivan team played semantics games to say it was a coup but not a “military coup.” Thus the Honduran coup regime continued to receive US support. They quickly held a dubious election to make the restoration of President Zelaya “moot”. Clinton is proud of this success in her book “Hard Choices.”

Two years later the target was Libya. With Victoria Nuland as State Department spokesperson, the Clinton/Sullivan team promoted sensational claims of a pending massacre and urged intervention in Libya under the “responsibility to protect.” When the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians, the US, Qatar and other NATO members distorted that and started air attacks on Libyan government forces. Today, 12 years later, Libya is still in chaos and war. The sensational claims of 2011 were later found to be false.

When the Libyan government was overthrown in Fall 2011, the Clinton/Sullivan State Department and CIA plotted to seize the Libyan weapons arsenal. Weapons were transferred to the Syrian opposition. US Ambassador Stevens and other Americans were killed in an internecine conflict over control of the weapons cache.

Undeterred, Clinton and Sullivan stepped up their attempts to overthrow the Syrian government. They formed a club of western nations and allies called the “Friends of Syria.” The “Friends” divided tasks who would do what in the campaign to topple the sovereign state. Former policy planner at the Clinton/Sullivan State Department, Ann Marie Slaughter, called for “foreign military intervention.” Sullivan knew they were arming violent sectarian fanatics to overthrow the Syrian government. In an email to Hillary released by WikiLeaks, Sullivan noted “AQ is on our side in Syria.”

Biden’s Adviser During the 2014 Ukraine Coup

After being Clinton’s policy planner, Sullivan became President Obama’s director of policy planning (Feb 2011 to Feb 2013) then national security adviser to Vice President Biden (Feb 2013 to August 2014).

In his position with Biden, Sullivan had a close-up view of the February 2014 Ukraine coup. He was a key contact between Victoria Nuland, overseeing the coup, and Biden. In the secretly recorded conversation where Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine discuss how to manage the coup, Nuland remarks that Jake Sullivan told her “you need Biden.” Biden gave the “attaboy” and the coup was “midwifed” following a massacre of police AND protesters on the Maidan plaza.

Sullivan must have observed Biden’s use of the vice president’s position for personal family gain. He would have been aware of Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the Burisima Ukrainian energy company, and the reason Joe Biden demanded that the Ukrainian special prosecutor who was investigating Burisima to be fired. Biden later bragged and joked about this.

In December 2013, at a conference hosted by Chevron Corporation, Victoria Nuland said the US has spent five BILLION dollars to bring “democracy” to Ukraine.

Sullivan Helped Create Russiagate

Jake Sullivan was a leading member of the 2016 Hillary Clinton team which promoted Russiagate. The false claim that Trump was secretly contacting Russia was promoted initially to distract from negative news about Hillary Clinton and to smear Trump as a puppet of Putin. Both the Mueller and Durham investigations officially discredited the main claims of Russiagate. There was no collusion. The accusations were untrue, and the FBI gave them unjustified credence for political reasons.

Sullivan played a major role in the deception as shown by his “Statement from Jake Sullivan on New Report Exposing Trump’s Secret Line of Communication to Russia.”

Sullivan’s Misinformation

Jake Sullivan is a good speaker, persuasive and with a dry sense of humor. At the same time, he can be disingenuous. Some of his statements are false. For example, in June 2017 Jake Sullivan was interviewed by Frontline television program about US foreign policy and especially US-Russia relations. Regarding NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan government, Sullivan says, “Putin came to believe that the United States had taken Russia for a ride in the UN Security Council that authorized the use of force in Libya…. He thought he was authorizing a purely defensive mission…. Now on the actual language of the resolution, it’s plain as day that Putin was wrong about that.” Contrary to what Sullivan claims, the UN Security Council resolution clearly authorizes a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians, no more. It’s plain as day there was NOT authorization for NATO’s offensive attacks and “regime change.”

Planning the Nord Stream Pipeline Destruction

The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, filled with 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas, was a monstrous environmental disaster. The destruction also caused huge economic damage to Germany and other European countries. It has been a boon for US liquefied natural gas exports which have surged to fill the gap, but at a high price. Many European factories dependent on cheap gas have closed down. Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.

Seymour Hersh reported details of How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. He says, “Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.” A sabotage plan was prepared and officials in Norway and Denmark included in the plot. The day after the sabotage, Jake Sullivan tweeted

“I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.”

Ellerman-Kingombe may have been one of the Danes informed in advance of the bombing. He is close to the US military and NATO command.

Since then, the Swedish investigation of Nord Stream bombing has made little progress. Contrary to Sullivan’s promise in the tweet, the US has not supported other efforts to investigate. When Russia proposed an independent international investigation of the Nord Stream sabotage at the UN Security Council, the resolution failed due to lack of support from the US and US allies. Hungary’s foreign minister recently asked,

“How on earth is it possible that someone blows up critical infrastructure on the territory of Europe and no one has a say, no one condemns, no one carries out an investigation?”

Economic Plans Devoid of Reality

Ten weeks ago Jake Sullivan delivered a major speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. He explains how the Biden administration is pursuing a “modern industrial and innovation strategy.” They are trying to implement a “foreign policy for the middle class” which better integrates domestic and foreign policies. The substance of their plan is to increase investments in semiconductors, clean energy minerals and manufacturing. However the new strategy is very unlikely to achieve the stated goal to “lift up all of America’s people, communities, and industries.” Sullivan’s speech completely ignores the elephant in the room: the costly US Empire including wars and 800 foreign military bases which consume about 60% of the total discretionary budget. Under Biden and Sullivan’s foreign policy, there is no intention to rein in the extremely costly military industrial complex. It is not even mentioned.

US Exceptionalism 2.0

In December 2018 Jake Sullivan wrote an essay titled “American Exceptionalism, Reclaimed.” It shows his foundational beliefs and philosophy. He separates himself from the “arrogant brand of exceptionalism” demonstrated by Dick Cheney. He also criticizes the “American first” policies of Donald Trump. Sullivan advocates for “a new American exceptionalism” and “American leadership in the 21st Century.”

Sullivan has a shallow Hollywood understanding of history: “The United States stopped Hitler’s Germany, saved Western Europe from economic ruin, stood firm against the Soviet Union, and supported the spread of democracy worldwide.” He believes “The fact that the major powers have not returned to war with one another since 1945 is a remarkable achievement of American statecraft.”

Jake Sullivan is young in age but his ideas are old. The United States is no longer dominant economically or politically. It is certainly not “indispensable.” More and more countries are objecting to US bullying and defying Washington’s demands. Even key allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are ignoring US requests. The trend toward a multipolar world is escalating. Jake Sullivan is trying to reverse the trend but reality and history are working against him. Over the past four or five decades, the US has gone from being an investment, engineering and manufacturing powerhouse to a deficit spending consumer economy waging perpetual war with a bloated military industrial complex.

Instead of reforming and rebuilding the US, the national security state expends much of its energy and resources trying to destabilize countries deemed to be “adversaries”.

Conclusion

Previous national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Zbignew Brzezinski were very influential.

Kissinger is famous for wooing China and dividing the communist bloc. Jake Sullivan is now wooing India in hopes of dividing that country from China and the BRICS alliance (Brazil,Russia, India, China, South Africa).

Brzezinski is famous for plotting the Afghanistan trap. By destabilizing Afghanistan with foreign terrorists beginning 1978, the US induced the Soviet Union to send troops to Afghanistan at the Afghan government’s request. The result was the collapse of the progressive Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and 40 years of war and chaos.

On 28 February 2022, just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine, Jake Sullivan’s mentor, Hillary Clinton, was explicit: “Afghanistan is the model.” It appears the US intentionally escalated the provocations in Ukraine to induce Russia to intervene. The goal is to “weaken Russia.” This explains why the US has spent over $100 billion sending weapons and other support to Ukraine. This explains why the US and UK undermined negotiations which could have ended the conflict early on.

The Americans who oversaw the 2014 coup in Kiev, are the same ones running US foreign policy today: Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan. Prospects for ending the Ukraine war are very poor as long as they are in power.

Rick Sterling is a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at RSterling1@gmail.com.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Why we won’t be able to “sober up the West” with a nuclear bomb

Apparently Sergey Karaganov is doubling down on his crazy idea of Russia potentially using nuclear weapons to get the US to act more rationally. His latest article can be found here.

Emphasis via bolding is mine. – Natylie

Fyodor Lukyanov is the editor-in-chief of the journal “Russia in Global Affairs”, Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (SVOP)

By Fyodor Lukyanov, Profil, 6/21/23 (translation to English via Google Translate)

Sergey Karaganov’s article “The Use of Nuclear Weapons Can Save Humanity from a Global Catastrophe” caused a violent reaction, which was probably part of the author’s plans. Public discussion about the permissibility of the use of nuclear weapons has been taboo, in fact, since the moment when their sole use by the United States against Japan led to certain consequences.

The relations of the nuclear superpowers in the last century were based on the presumption that any use would lead to total atomic war and the destruction of civilization. Confidence in the inevitability of such a scenario, fear of its implementation, made the nuclear bomb not a battlefield weapon, but a deterrent – both the enemy and the “hotheads” at home. And when someone dares to raise the question of the need to return the nuclear component to the status of conventional weapons, albeit incredibly powerful, it causes shock and indignation.

Your humble servant is not an expert on nuclear weapons and the principles of deterrence and does not pretend to be. But the topic raised by a senior colleague affects everyone, so I will venture to speculate from the position of an informed layman.

Deterrence as a child of its time

Everyone is free to evaluate Sergey Karaganov’s arguments in their own way, especially since they range from applied to religious. You can’t argue with one thing – today the risk of nuclear war is higher than at any time since the early 1960s. The reasons for this are the general increase in aggressiveness in international politics, and strategic frivolity as a result of thirty years of peace under American hegemony, and disbelief that a full-fledged nuclear war can really happen, that is, the departure of existential fear . The latter serves as a starting point. Only the return of the real fear of a nuclear apocalypse can sober up Western elites, who are ready to impose supremacy on the rest of the world by force, no matter what.The goal stated in the article is to “break the will” of the collective West, forcing it to abandon the desire for superiority. The last resort is a nuclear strike on a “group of targets in a number of countries.”

Let’s leave aside the moral aspect, with which everything is clear, the author himself recognizes the enormity of the proposed action. Let’s focus on the conceptual scheme, how effective it could be for “sobering up”.

Nuclear deterrence and the principle of mutually assured destruction (HLG) is a product of the political and technological development of the second half of the twentieth century, the era after World War II. It was a unique period of relative orderliness of international relations, based on a system of institutions – organizations and norms of varying degrees of formalization. Thanks to this orderliness, it was possible to regulate the interaction of the main players, primarily the two superpowers.

The presence of an approximate military-political, economic and ideological balance was cemented by the nuclear factor – first the appearance of atomic weapons in the USSR, then the achievement of Soviet-American parity. The degree of orderliness should not be exaggerated, but it was greater than ever before, and probably ever in the future.

A crisis of the old order

The end of the Cold War meant the disappearance of balance in most respects, but the institutional framework remained unchanged. It was assumed that there was no need to rebuild it, because in the absence of confrontation, the institutions would finally work as they should. The nuclear factor also remained unchanged – the principle of the HLG was preserved even during the period of Russia’s maximum weakness in the first years after the collapse of the USSR.

In practice, the viability of the institutions created in the last century and working effectively then began to decline rapidly – their mechanism was intended for a different alignment of forces and interests. Theoretically, it would be necessary to discuss the other infrastructure of international organizations and agree on their structure. But the victorious West did not consider it necessary. After all, the very system of institutions, starting with the UN, initially embodied American ideas. The Soviet Union agreed to them after World War II, because it had no doubt that it would play a leading role in any design.In other words, the stability of the world order of the second half of the last century was determined by Western design and the presence of a balance of power within it, which was provided by the USSR.

Without balance, the structure staggered and began to crumble. Hence the dysfunction of structures, from the United Nations to many sectoral and regional institutions, including those that were purely Western, such as the WTO, which arose on the basis of the GATT. They cannot cope with the heterogeneity of the world. Against this background, other types of associations are beginning to take shape, less formalized, including a smaller number of participants, designed for a more flexible approach. A fixed world order is not expected in the foreseeable future – it will not be possible to regulate multi-level international strife without a qualitative simplification of the picture. And it is just not expected, if you do not consider catastrophic scenarios.

Deterrence as an institution

Nuclear deterrence is one of the fundamental institutions of the second half of the last century. It did not take shape immediately, for the first decade and a half of the existence of atomic weapons, America and the USSR probed possible boundaries by provoking exacerbations. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the leaders of the two nuclear superpowers faced that very fear. And they finally fixed the inadmissibility of direct conflict.

Nuclear weapons are indeed capable of destroying humanity, and the institution of deterrence was considered almost unshakable. You can play different games, but you can’t put the existence of the planet on the line. Yes, no one will. The same Sergei Karaganov wrote a few years ago: the depth and scale of international contradictions are such that in former times they would have led to a world war long ago, only the presence of nuclear stops weapons. Now he comes to a different conclusion. The United States is not afraid to unleash a full-fledged war against a nuclear superpower, albeit by proxy.There is only one step before a world war, it will be universal thermonuclear, it may turn out that the only way to avoid it is to arrange a preventive nuclear war, but a local one.

Here it is reasonable to ask the question: why a nuclear attack against another state / bloc possessing nuclear weapons will not lead to a rapid escalation to the very thermonuclear universal, that is, an exchange of strikes between Russia and the United States? The entire system of relations in the nuclear sphere, as noted by theorists of deterrence, is built primarily not on strategy and technology, but on psychology. And this psychological game should discourage the enemy from even the thought of a possible nuclear attack.

The use of nuclear weapons means the end of the game and, in fact, nullifies its special role, turning it into a very powerful means of destruction. And competition in the means of destruction is a “normal” war, only in this case of a cyclopean scale. Mutually assured destruction may not happen, but the all-encompassing damage will be such that the participating countries and the world as a whole will change dramatically in horrific ways.

Is it possible to go back to basics?

Sergey Karaganov emphasizes that nuclear strikes are a last resort, and expects that the movement along the “ladder of escalation” itself will force the opposite side to realize the level of threat and move on to a conversation on the merits – how to start getting out of the clinch and remove contradictions. That is, he believes it is possible to return to the original institutional meaning of nuclear weapons – the production of absolute fear that limits the behavior of participants.

But, as mentioned above, at that time it was part of the overall system of balanced management of international processes. Yes, we can say that the existence of that system was largely determined by the presence of nuclear weapons, but it was not limited to this factor. And when other elements of the structure began to fall off after the Cold War, it turned out that nuclear deterrence as such was not enough to provide the previous behavioral limitations.

It is assumed that with the help of fear, on the escalation of the terminal threat, it is possible to recreate a system of mutually acceptable rules. This logic was applied at a lower level in December 2021, when Russia put forward ultimatums on long-term security guarantees, threatening “military-technical measures” in case of refusal. The nature of the measures manifested itself with the start of a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine and shocked the Western elites, who treated the ultimatum with disdain. This, however, did not lead to a willingness to enter into a discussion with Russia about its concerns, the effect was the opposite.

It can be argued: the comparison is incorrect, since the NWO does not pose a direct threat to the United States and its NATO allies, and nuclear escalation does. But this is where the very elites whose irresponsibility Sergei Karaganov complains about come into play. No matter how you treat them, but so far they demonstrate skill in managing public opinion and mobilizing in support of their policies. Even though objectively this policy is to the detriment of the welfare and security of their citizens.

It turns out that the plan is to return nuclear deterrence to the status it had in the second half of the twentieth century by inflating the level of threat. And to return the elites of the type that were in power at that time. Something romantic-nostalgic. It is not clear where such personnel could be obtained today – just look at alternative forces in the leading Western countries. Moreover, apart from everything else, legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons in someone’s eyes outside the obvious situation described in doctrinal documents (a threat to the existence of the state) looks like an impossible task.

Are we going to bang?

Immediately after the Americans detonated the atomic bomb in 1945, George Orwell wrote a short essay, “You and the Atomic Bomb.” He had no doubt that some others (at least the Russians and the Chinese) would acquire these weapons, and if they remained at the level of not only super-destructive, but also difficult to obtain and very expensive, then they could be useful: “For an indefinite period, it will put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of establishing” a world that will not be peace. That is, Orwell understood from the very beginning that the meaning of this invention is not in application, but in availability. According to Orwell, turning it into another “mere weapon”

Now nuclear weapons are becoming more and more accessible both technologically and materially. Are reflections on the likelihood of using the prerogative of only Russian minds looking for a way out of a difficult military-strategic situation? Of course not. Arguments on this subject are gradually filling the world public space. This confirms what has been said above – the institution of deterrence, like other institutions of the last century, is in crisis. A sharp increase in the degree of discussion does not lead to the strengthening of the institution, but to its final collapse. And the application will not be a way to make you come to your senses, but a formal removal of the general taboo with unpredictable consequences.Further actions will no longer be dictated by calculations of one kind or another, but by reactions to each next step of the other side. Playing nuclear peers is a gambling activity. But in the event of a breakdown, the net damage will multiply any hypothetical benefits for everyone.

The taboo on the use of nuclear weapons is undoubtedly weakening. You need to prepare for everything. And rational behavior here is not to break the taboo completely, preventively, but to try to preserve it as at least some kind of limiter. This does not mean that the topic itself cannot be touched, quite the opposite. It is sanctimonious to shy away from the very thought of application – an ostrich approach. In this sense, Sergey Karaganov should be thanked for such a direct statement of position. Its discussion should become part of the development of a new understanding of strategic stability to replace the one that can no longer be restored.

MoA: Ukraine’s Zaluzhny Is Back And Asking For More Weapons

Moon of Alabama, 6/30/23

Last December the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, talked with The Economist. He asked for more weapons which, he said, would allow him to throw the Russian forces out of Ukraine:

“I know that I can beat this enemy. But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs, 500 Howitzers. Then, I think it is completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23rd.”

Some seemed to believe his talk. Following the request Ukraine received more or less all of what it had requested. Ukraine then loudly announced a counter-offensive but took several months before launching it. In the meantime it threw all available resources into a useless battle to hold onto the city of Bakhmut against the steady advance of the Wagner mercenary forces. That fight alone cost the Ukraine some 70,000 casualties. Meanwhile the Russian army engineers were building multiple reinforced defense lines which any counter-offensive will now have to overcome.

At the beginning of June, under pressure for the U.S., the Ukrainian army finally launched its counteroffensive. It was a dud. The Ukrainian troops entered the Russian security zone miles away from the real defense lines and immediately ran into mine fields and came under intense artillery fire. After 4 weeks of fighting they ‘liberated’ some 50 square miles of open land and a few small settlements. This came at significant costs:

“There were fewer than 50 men in the unit, he said, and 30 did not return — they were killed, wounded or captured by the enemy. Five of the unit’s armored vehicles were destroyed within the first hour.

…

“For the first hour and a half of the 37th’s assault near Velyka Novosilka, the Russians bombarded the unit with nonstop shelling that penetrated their AMX-10 RC armored vehicles, according to Grey, another soldier in the battalion who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his call sign. The armored vehicles, sometimes called “light tanks,” were not heavy enough to protect the soldiers, Grey said, and had to be positioned behind them instead of in front.

…

“Everyone expected that we would have some kind of support, but unfortunately, for some reason, there was none,” Lumberjack said. His commander had little experience, he said, and had counted on assistance from artillery units. “But he got confused when he saw that there was none.”

At this speed it will take the Ukraine many years of fighting and an unlimited supply of weapons and men to kick the Russians out:

“To put the matter in perspective: Today, Russia controls about 17 percent of the territory that was previously Ukraine’s. If Ukrainian forces are no more successful in the weeks ahead than they have been so far, Ukraine will not recapture all of its territory for 16 years.”

Over the last months I used a spreadsheet to list and sum up the Ukrainian casualties as they are listed in the daily reports of the Defense Ministry of Russia. These numbers are likely a bit too high but by what percentage, 10 or 20%, is hard to say.

From June 1 to June 30 the numbers sum up to: 313 tanks, 815 Infantry Fighting Vehicles and other armored vehicles, 313 howitzer and other long range artillery systems. The Ukraine also lost some 21,900 men which gives an average of 730 per day.

During the month the Russian air defense claimed to have shot down 15 Ukraine planes, 5 helicopters, 200 HIMARS and 20 Storm Shadow ‘wonder weapon’ missiles. Those numbers do not include the significant damage Russia has done to defense repair shops, weapon and ammunition depots all over Ukraine with its constant long range missile attacks.

In total the Ukraine lost in one months more than Zaluzhny requested back in December and more than it has received during the time since.

In the Washington Post Zaluzhny is back and begging for more weapons:

“For Ukraine’s counteroffensive to progress faster, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the top officer in Ukraine’s armed forces, says he needs more — of every weapon. And he is telling anyone who will listen, including his American counterpart Gen. Mark A. Milley as recently as Wednesday, that he needs those resources now.

“In a rare, wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Zaluzhny expressed frustration that while his biggest Western backers would never launch an offensive without air superiority, Ukraine still has not received modern fighter jets but is expected to rapidly take back territory from the occupying Russians. American-made F-16s, promised only recently, are not likely to arrive until the fall — in a best-case scenario.

“His troops also should be firing at least as many artillery shells as their enemy, Zaluzhny said, but have been outshot tenfold at times because of limited resources.”

Zaluzhny wants F-16s and more ammunition but also more of ‘every weapon’. Here are the problems.

When Zaluzhny will get his F-16s he will immediately learn that the Russian Su-35 is by far superior to them. Its radar can see farther than the F-16’s and its long range over-the-horizon missiles can kill the F-16s before they even have a chance to fire their own ones.

The ‘west’ is currently unable to produce as much ammunition as Ukraine wants to fire. And while the U.S. still has some Bradleys and Abrams battle tanks in its reserves the depots for ‘every weapon’ in other NATO countries are already empty. There are no more tanks, armored vehicles or howitzers they could give away.

In total there simply is not enough to replace the losses the Ukraine has on a daily basis. Meanwhile Russia is already producing more of every weapon than its military needs for its daily operations.

There is no way the Ukraine can win this fight or even hold on to its current positions. That was easy to foresee and predict. Those who urged Ukraine on should be condemned for the murderous slaughter they caused.

Ukraine needs to make peace with Russia. Yes, it will come with conditions that are not easy to swallow. Still, there is no other way out.

To continue the fight, with ever increasing losses of men and land, is not a sustainable alternative.

Dmitry Trenin: The US and its allies are playing ‘Russian Roulette’. You’d almost think they want a nuclear war

By Dmitry Trenin, RT, 6/22/23

Dmitry Trenin is a research professor at the Higher School of Economics and a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is also a member of the Russian International Affairs Council.   

Professor Sergey Karaganov’s “Tough-but-necessary decision” article – which claims that by using its nuclear weapons, Russia could save humanity from a global catastrophe – has provoked plenty of reaction both at home and abroad. Partly because of the author’s status – he has been an advisor to both President Boris Yeltsin and President Vladimir Putin – and also due to the belief that his opinion may possibly be shared by some people in positions of power.

Dmitry Trenin, an extremely respected Russian expert who served in the Soviet military gives his response.

***

Professor Sergey Karaganov’s recent article brought into public focus the thorny issue of the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict. Many reactions to the piece boil down to the well-known reasoning that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and thus it cannot be fought.

Against this background, President Vladimir Putin, responding to a question at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, said that nuclear weapons are a deterrent and the conditions for their use is defined in a published doctrine. He explained that the theoretical possibility of using these weapons exists, but there is no need to use them now.

In principle, nuclear weapons have been “on the table” for Russia from the very beginning of the Ukrainian conflict precisely as a means of deterring the US and its allies from becoming directly involved. Nevertheless, repeated public reminders from Putin and other officials about Russia’s nuclear status have so far not prevented a growing escalation of NATO’s participation. As a result, it has become clear that nuclear deterrence, on which many in Moscow have relied as a credible means of securing the country’s vital interests, has proven to be a much more limited tool than they expected.

In fact, the US has now set itself the task – unthinkable during the Cold War – of trying to defeat another nuclear superpower in a strategically important region, without resorting to atomic weapons, but instead by arming and controlling a third country. The Americans are proceeding cautiously, testing Moscow’s responses and consistently pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of arms supplied to Kiev, as well as the choice of targets for them. From starting with anti-tank ‘Javelins,’ to eventually cajoling allies to send actual tanks, the US is now apparently pondering transferring F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles.

It is likely that this US strategy is based on the belief that the Russian leadership would not dare use nuclear weapons in the current conflict, and that its references to the nuclear arsenal at its disposal are nothing more than a bluff. The Americans have even been calm – at least outwardly about the deployment of Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus. Such “fearlessness” is a direct result of the geopolitical changes of the last three decades and the change of generations in power in the US and the West in general.

The fear of the atomic bomb, present in the second half of the twentieth century, has disappeared. Nuclear weapons have been taken out of the equation. The practical conclusion is clear: there is no need to be afraid of such a Russian response.

This is an extremely dangerous misconception. The trajectory of the Ukrainian war points to an escalation of the conflict both horizontally (by expanding the theater of military action) and vertically (by increasing the power of the weapons used and the intensity of their use). It must be soberly acknowledged that this momentum is heading towards a direct armed confrontation between Russia and NATO. If the accumulated inertia is not stopped, such a clash will take place, and in this case the war, having spread to Western Europe, will almost inevitably become nuclear. And after some time, a nuclear war in Europe will most likely lead to an exchange of blows between Russia and the US.

The Americans and their allies are truly playing Russian roulette. Yes, so far the Russian response to the bombing of Nord Stream, the drone attack on the strategic Engels airbase, the entry of Western-armed saboteurs into the Belgorod region and many other actions by the Washington-backed and controlled side has been relatively restrained.

As Putin recently made clear, there are good reasons for this restraint. Russia, the president said, is capable of destroying any building in Kiev, but will not stoop to the methods of terror used by the enemy. But Putin added that Russia was considering various options for destroying Western warplanes if they are based in NATO countries and directly take part in the war in Ukraine.

So far, Moscow’s strategy has been to allow the enemy to take the escalatory initiative. The West has taken advantage of this, trying to wear down Russia on the battlefield and undermine it from within. It makes no sense for the Kremlin to go along with this plan. On the contrary, it’s a better idea to clarify and modernize our nuclear deterrence strategy, taking into account the practical experience of the Ukrainian conflict. The existing doctrinal provisions were formulated not only before the start of the current military operation, but also apparently without a precise idea of what might happen in the course of such a situation.

Russia’s external strategy includes a basket of foreign diplomacy, information campaigns and other aspects – in addition to the military elements. The main adversary should be given an unambiguous signal that Moscow will not play by the rules set by the other side. Of course, this should be accompanied by a credible dialogue with both our strategic partners and neutral states, explaining the motives and objectives of our actions. The possibility of using nuclear weapons in the current conflict must not be concealed. This real, not just theoretical, prospect should be an incentive to limit and stop the escalation of the war and ultimately pave the way for a satisfactory strategic balance in Europe.

Regarding Russian nuclear strikes against NATO countries, as raised by Professor Karaganov: Hypothetically speaking, Washington would most likely not respond to such an attack with a nuclear response of its own against Russia – for fear of a Russian retaliatory launch against the US itself. This would dispel the mythology that has surrounded Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty for decades and lead to a profound crisis for NATO – possibly even the dissolution of the organization. It is possible that, in such circumstances, the Atlantic elites of NATO and the EU would panic and be swept aside by patriotic forces that would see for themselves that their security does not in fact depend on a non-existent US nuclear umbrella, but on building a balanced relationship with Russia. It is also possible that the Americans could decide to leave Russia alone.

It could well be that the calculation just described would ultimately be correct. But it is unlikely.

Yes, a US nuclear strike on Russia would probably not follow immediately. It is unlikely that the Americans would sacrifice Boston for Poznan, just as they were not going to sacrifice Chicago for Hamburg during the Cold War. But there will probably be some sort of response from Washington. Perhaps of the non-atomic type, which, without speculating too wildly, could be sensitive and painful for us. It is likely that with it, Washington would try to pursue a goal similar to ours: paralyzing the Russian leadership’s will to continue the war and creating panic in our society.

Moscow’s leadership is unlikely to capitulate after such a blow, since, at this stage, Russia’s very existence would be at stake. It is more likely that a retaliatory strike would follow, and this time, one can assume, against the main adversary rather than its satellites.

Let us pause before this point of no return and summarize our analysis tentatively.

Should the nuclear bullet be demonstrably inserted into the cylinder of the revolver that the US leadership is recklessly playing with today? To paraphrase a late American statesman: Why do we need nuclear weapons if we refuse to use them in the face of an existential threat?

On the other hand, there is no need to scare others with words. Instead, we have to prepare practically for any possible turn of events by carefully considering the options and their consequences.

The war in Ukraine has become protracted. As far as we can tell from the actions of the Russian leadership, it expects to achieve strategic success by relying on Russian resources, which are many times greater than those in Ukraine. It also relies on the fact that Moscow has much more at stake in this war than the West. This calculation is probably correct, but it should be taken into account that the opponent assesses Russia’s chances differently than we do and may take steps which could lead to a direct armed clash between Russia and the US/NATO.

We must be prepared for such a development. To avoid a general catastrophe, it is necessary to put fear of armageddon back into politics and the public consciousness.

In the nuclear age, it is the only guarantee of preserving humanity.

This post was originally published by Russia in Global Affairs

Scott Ritter: Wagner, I hardly Knew Ye

By Scott Ritter, Substack, 6/28/23

The dust has settled following last weekend’s abortive insurrection by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the private military company known as the Wagner Group, and some 8,000 fighters he employed, against Russian President Vladimir Putin. A clearer picture has since emerged about what exactly transpired during this coup, and why these events unfolded as they did. It also has allowed time to shine a light on Wagner Group, revealing it as something more than the invincible band of heroic Russian patriots celebrated by Russian society at large. Instead, a less complimentary image of Wagner emerges, one which portrays it as a business venture run by a corrupt narcissist who used Russian state funds to build a cult of personality that hypnotized an unwitting Russian populace into believing that Wagner was the sole source of salvation for Russia from the threat posed by the war with Ukraine.

As a military analyst with no small amount of experience in covering armed conflict, I don’t believe that I am susceptible to being star-struck in the presence of men who have earned, through experience, reputations as warriors of formidable stature. I was myself a US Marine, a member of a fraternity of sea-going warriors proud of both their martial history and military abilities, which are held to be second to none. I have served in harm’s way with special operators from America’s most elite military units and have worked closely with similarly skilled professionals from other nations. I think I have a good judge of what constitutes military competence and am not hesitant to give credit to where it is due.

As someone who follows events in the Middle East closely, I had been tracking the activities of the Wagner Group in Syria since their initial deployment in 2015. Their reputation as skilled fighters was earned in the blood of dozens of their comrades who lost their lives fighting terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. As such, when in 2022 rumors started to circulate about the presence of Wagner Group fighters operating alongside the Russian Army in the region of the Donbas, I took notice. It was difficult to find credible sources of information, and the Wagner Group was reticent about anyone giving out information about its activities. But eventually I was able to piece together an understanding of the role played by Wagner in the Donbas, along with the impact Wagner had on the war. My analysis, both spoken and written, reflected the high regard I had for the Wagner Group as a combat formation, and the heroism and skill of the soldiers it employed.

Prior to my recent visit to Russia, my host informed me that the Wagner forces engaged in the fierce fighting around Bakhmut spoke highly of my analysis and could be counted among my biggest fans. Indeed, during my visit, I was introduced to several Wagner veterans, and a few serving Wagner employees, all of whom wanted to shake my hand, and many of whom presented me with gifts signifying the depth of their appreciation for my work. Whether it was a combat knife, a chrome-plated sledgehammer (an unofficial symbol of the Wagner Group), or various Wagner combat patches (including one embroidered with my name), I was taken aback by the level of genuine and heartfelt affection these Wagner men—noted for their toughness under fire—showed for me.

When the events of June 23-24 unfolded before me, I was taken aback. An organization that I held in the highest esteem was engaged in an act of self-destruction before my very eyes, engaged in conduct—an armed insurrection against a constitutionally-mandated government—that any military professional imbued with a respect for the chain of command and the nation he or she served would find reprehensible. Like many others, I was compelled to reexamine my understanding of the Wagner Group, the people it employed, and its history in the service of Russia.

Relatively little is known about the formation of the Wagner Group. What little information is available comes from Yevgeny Prigozhin himself and, as such, must be seen in the context of his tendency for self-promotion. Prigozhin long denied any involvement with Wagner Group, and indeed initiated legal action against journalists (including Bellingcat) who reported on his involvement. This changed in September 2022, when Prigozhin openly discussed his role with Wagner Group in a post published on his Telegram page.

Wagner’s origins date back to February 2014, following the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s constitutionally-elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, by Ukrainian nationalists backed by the United States and European Union. At that time, Crimea was part of Ukraine. Shortly after the Maidan revolution ousted Yanukovych, right-wing Ukrainian nationalists attempted to take control of Crimea, which had a majority ethnic-Russian population whose loyalties leaned decisively toward Moscow. The nationalists were confronted by so-called “self defense units” drawn from the local pro-Russian citizenry.

But there were other actors on the ground as well. Concerned that the Ukrainian government would call out the Ukrainian army to intervene, the Russian government mobilized a force of several hundred “little green men,” consisting of elite Russian special forces who, because of constitutional limitations regarding the deployment of regular Russian army forces on the soil of a foreign nation, were “sheep dipped” (a US term made popular during the CIA’s covert war in Laos in the 1960’s and 70’s, where active duty US Air Force officers would be transferred to the CIA’s “Air America” proprietary company for operations inside Laos.)

The man put in charge of these “sheep dipped” special operators was Dmitry Utkin, a recently-retired Lieutenant Colonel who had previously commanded a Russian special forces (Spetznaz) unit affiliated with Russian Military Intelligence (GRU). Utkin and his “little green men” played a leading role in the Russian takeover of Crimea on February 26, 2014, four days after Yanukovych fled Ukraine. Following the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, Utkin’s “little green men” were dispatched to Lugansk, where they were tasked with providing training and assistance to the pro-Russian fighters that had taken up arms against the Ukrainian nationalists who had seized power in Kiev.

As the fighting expanded, so, too, did the role of the “little green men,” and by April it became clear that the Russian government would need to create a more formal organization which would serve as the conduit for military assistance to the pro-Russian militias fighting in the Donbas. On May 1, 2014, a new entity, known as the “Wagner Group” (named after the call sign—“Wagner”—used by Utkin) was created and given a contract with the Ministry of Defense to serve in this role. While Utkin served as the military commander of this new organization, “Wagner Group” itself was managed by a group of civilian businessmen headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who by that time had established himself as a successful restaurateur whose clients included Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Wagner was heavily involved in the fighting that raged in the Donbas from May 2014 through February 2015, when a ceasefire came into effect after the signing of the Minsk 2 accords. With the fighting in Ukraine winding down, Prigozhin and Utkin sought to exploit Utkin’s own past experience as a mercenary in Syria. The ability to deploy a professional military unit capable of operating on foreign soil where regular Russian forces were prohibited was attractive to the Russian Ministry of Defense, who contracted with Wagner to provide military assistance to the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Wagner’s success in Syria led to additional “support contracts” being executed for operations in several African countries. In addition to being paid by the Russia government, Wagner Group was able to arrange its own economic relationships with its African clients, which led to several profitable ventures designed to enrich its owners, including Prigozhin.

On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to commence what was being called a “Special Military Operation” (SMO) against Ukraine. The Russian military began deploying onto the soil of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (which were both recognized by Russia as independent states days prior to the SMO being kicked off), where they fought alongside local militias. Wagner Group continued to operate on the territory of the Donbas in a reduced capacity from 2015 until the SMO’s initiation.

After the collapse of the April 1, 2022, peace negotiation between Russia and Ukraine scheduled to take place in Istanbul, Turkey, the Russian military was instructed to begin large-scale offensive operations intended to liberate the territory of the Donbas still occupied by Ukraine. On May 1, 2023, a new contract was signed between the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Wagner Group for some 86 billion rubles, or $940 million, to expand the scope and scale of its Ukrainian operation from advisory and assistance to that of a combat unit of roughly division-size capable of largescale fighting against regular Ukrainian forces. To sweeten the deal, the Russian Ministry of Defense signed a separate 80-billion-ruble deal (some $900 million) for the provision of food to the Russian Army using Prigozhin’s catering company.

War, it seems, had become very profitable business for Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Wagner played a major role in many of the battles waged in the spring and summer of 2022 which, collectively, became known as the Battle of the Donbas. Wagner was initially organized as a battalion-sized unit of several hundred highly-trained military veterans. As the fighting dragged on, the Wagner forces began to expand in size and capabilities, soon acquiring their own armor and artillery forces, as well as dedicated fighter aircraft. By the time the Lugansk city of Sievierodonetsk fell to Russian forces, on June 25, 2022, the Wagner Group was a division-sized unit which had developed a reputation for expertise in urban warfare, taking the lead in clearing Ukrainian troops who were dug in among the ruins of that city. By the fall of the neighboring city of Lysychansk, on July 3, 2022, the Wagner Group had become synonymous with operational excellence.

The fighting in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, however successful it was for the Russians and Wagner, had proven to be extremely costly from the standpoint of casualties. It became apparent to both the military command structure of Wagner, built around a cadre of experienced military veterans known as the “commanders council,” and Wagner’s corporate owners, headed by Prigozhin, that Wagner would suffer both in terms of military efficiency and profitability if it had to recruit and train seasoned veterans to replace those who had fallen in battle. During the house-to-house fighting that defined the Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk battles, Wagner’s small unit commanders had developed tactics which combined firepower (indirect artillery and direct fire support from tanks) with aggressive infantry assaults which could overwhelm Ukrainian defenders.

Rather than waste experienced fighters in this style of fighting, Prigozhin began recruiting new fighters from Russian prisons, promising them expungement of their criminal record in exchange for a six-month contract to fight on the frontlines. The Wagner commanders would train these inmate recruits over the course of a 21-day program that focused on the rudimentary combat skills needed to execute the Wagner urban warfare tactics, before organizing them into “shock” units which would be fed into the fighting. These units, while ultimately effective, suffered up to 60% casualties. Between 30-50,000 convicts were eventually recruited by Wagner, of whom 10-15,000 are believed to have been killed in the subsequent fighting for the cities of Soledar and Bakhmut.

The battles for the twin cities of Soledar and Bakhmut began on August 1, 2022. Wagner Group and its inmate “shock” units played a central role in the intense combat that followed. By this time, the world was starting to take notice of the fighters of this private military company. Labeled as mercenaries by the Western media and governments, and patriotic heroes by the pro-Russian citizens of the Donbas whose homes, villages, towns, and cities were being liberated, Wagner began emerging from the shadows. Whereas previously the Russian government and media were reticent to even acknowledge its existence, by the end of September 2022 Prigozhin, who had famously sued journalists who (accurately) reported that he was the owner of Wagner Group, wrote a posting on his Telegram channel admitting that he was, indeed, the owner.

While many observers took Prigozhin’s unexpected step into the spotlight as a sign of Wagner’s increasing public profile, the reality behind Prigozhin’s decision was simple business. From September 25-27, 2022, the citizens of the Donbas undertook a referendum on whether they wanted to be incorporated as part of the Russian Federation. By the end of the first day, it was clear that the result would be an overwhelming “yes.”

Prigozhin went public with his role as the owner of Wagner Group on September 26, 2022. This was the first salvo of what would become a massive public relations campaign designed to create the impression that Wagner was an essential part of the Russian war effort, whose fighters were singularly capable of defeating the Ukrainians. Prigozhin’s public relations campaign was further enhanced by the fact that the Russian public had been shocked by the retreat of the Russian army during the Ukrainian Kharkov Offensive, which began on September 6, 2022. While the regular army was in retreat, the forces of Wagner continued to advance along the Soledar-Bakhmut front, providing the Russian people with the only example of battlefield success during these dark times.

For Prigozhin, it became essential that he separate Wagner from the Russian Army in the eyes of the Russian people. The reason why was simple—with the Donbas now part of the Russian Federation, Wagner Group was in technical violation of Russian laws which prohibited the operation of private military contractors on Russian soil. Already there was talk about the need to change the contractual status of Wagner’s relationship with the Russian Ministry of Defense as soon as Wagner’s contract expired on May 1, 2023.

But Prigozhin had a money-making system in place, especially when it came to the use of convicts. Prigozhin could pay them less than a regular Wagner recruit, and the cost of their training was miniscule compared to that given more specialized fighters. The money saved by this process was estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars, all of which flowed back into the pockets of Prigozhin and his fellow owners and investors. Desperate to keep this enterprise intact, Prigozhin went on the offensive, publicly condemning senior Russian generals and officials, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

In November Wagner unveiled a shiny new center in Saint Petersburg designed to propel the company into the psyche of the Russian public as a major player in Russian national security affairs. All the while, the fighters of Wagner pressed forward their attacks on Soledar and Bakhmut, driven by Prigozhin’s desire to be seen as the only effective fighting force fighting the Ukrainians. And, increasingly, the fighters leading the charge were units composed on former Russian inmates.

But Prigozhin was running into a problem. He was forced to stop recruiting from prisons for the simple fact that he lacked a contract vehicle to pay the inmates after May 1,2023, meaning the last inmate recruit was processed by Wagner by December 1, 2022. Prisoners were still allowed to volunteer as frontline fighters, but they would have to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense going forward. Since the prisoner contracts were linked to specific periods of service that had to be fulfilled before their records could be expunged, Wagner could not commit inmates to anything less than a full-six-month term of enlistment. Wagner could still recruit non-inmate persons, since there would be no legal headaches created if Wagner did not renew its contract with the Ministry of Defense.

While Prigozhin’s PR campaign was a tremendous success (Wagner even released a feature-length film, Best in Hell, in February 2023 that brought the horrors of urban warfare—and the individual heroism of the Wagner fighters—to the screen), he was failing to win over the Minster of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defense, Valery Gerasimov. Prigozhin turned what should have been a professional disagreement about legalities into a personal matter filled with allegations of corruption and incompetence. Prigozhin also began accusing the Russian Ministry of Defense of deliberately holding back on the provision of ammunition to Wagner forces, a phenomenon he described as “shell hunger,” which resulted in Wagner forces suffering disproportionally high casualties.

Prigozhin began to behave erratically. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Wagner contract was not going to be renewed, meaning that Wagner forces would have to be incorporated into the very Russian Ministry of Defense Prigozhin was publicly denigrating, a move widely rejected by the rank and file of Wagner as well as its leadership. It also was becoming clear that Prigozhin’s lucrative food contract with the Ministry of Defense was likewise not going to be renewed, an action most probably related to Prigozhin’s attacks on the Defense Ministry’s two most senior officials, Shoigu and Gerasimov.

It was around this time that Prigozhin first discussed the issue of what would become of Wagner’s 50,000-strong force if the Russian Ministry of Defense continued to insist on their formal incorporation. In an interview in February 2023 with Semyon Pegov (“War Gonzo”), a pro-Russian combat correspondent and blogger, the topic of a potential Wagner attack on Moscow was raised in the context of why the Ministry of Defense was restricting ammunition. While Prigozhin noted that the idea did not originate with him, he indicated that it was interesting—not something one wants to hear from who owns a large, combat-hardened, well-equipped private army.

It was also in February 2023 that, according to US intelligence, Prigozhin and the Ukrainian intelligence service began communicating directly. Perhaps picking up on Prigozhin’s frustration and paranoia, the Ukrainian intelligence service notified the Wagner owner of a plot involving former Wagner personnel to orchestrate a coup in Moldova. Prigozhin and Wagner had, by this time, been conducting secret talks with Ukrainian intelligence. Concerned that Russian intelligence had gotten wind of these discussions, Ukraine raised the possibility of Prigozhin’s arrest and subsequent labeling as a traitor. 

The impact of Prigozhin losing nearly $2 billion in contacts, combined with an increasing level of paranoia on his part that he was caught up in a life-or-death struggle with Shoigu and Gerasimov, led the Wagner owner to double down on his vitriolic attacks on Russia’s military leadership, and thereby create the impression that he and Wagner alone could guarantee military victory for Russia over Ukraine. These attacks reached their culmination in the final fights for Bakhmut, which concluded on May 20, 2023, when Prigozhin announced that his fighters had captured the city. Prigozhin spoke of the “meatgrinder” aspect of this battle, and how Wagner—at great sacrifice—“broke the back” of the Ukrainian army, killing between 55-70,000 Ukrainian soldiers for a loss of between 20-30,000 of its fighters.

As Russia celebrated the accomplishments of Wagner in Bakhmut—elevating even further the near-mythological status Wagner and its fighters enjoyed in the eyes of an adoring Russian public—Prigozhin had more pressing matters to deal with. His contract with the Ministry of Defense had expired. He had been given a two-month extension—through July 1, 2023—given the fact that Wagner was heavily engaged in the fighting in Bakhmut. After that time, however, the Wagner forces operating in the Donbas would have to enter a contractual relationship with the Ministry of Defense or else be disbanded. Prigozhin withdrew his fighters from Bakhmut to camps in eastern Lugansk, where he lobbied his combat-hardened commanders to reject the terms of the Ministry of Defense, and instead join him to create a common front of opposition to the leadership of the Russian military.

Prigozhin’s opposition to Shoigu and Gerasimov, and his plotting to supplant them, did not escape the attention of either the Russian government or Russia’s enemies in Ukraine, the US, and Great Britain. Vladimir Putin, in a speech delivered to Russian security officials on June 27, indicated that Russian officials were in constant contact with the commanders of Wagner to warn them not to help Prigozhin use Wagner for his own personal ambition. Days before Prigozhin sent Wagner forces to Rostov and Moscow, the CIA briefed US Congress and President Biden on the existence of Prigozhin’s plot. The British MI-6 did the same, briefing the British Prime Minister as well as Ukrainian President Zelensky.

According to Ukrainian sources, the British also lobbied the Ukrainians to pause offensive operations during the window of time Prigozhin was expected to move on Moscow in the hopes that a civil war would break out that would cause Russia to withdraw combat troops from the frontline, providing the Ukrainian army with increased opportunities for success. MI-6 also used its connectivity with the Ukrainian intelligence services, in coordination with MI-6-controlled Russian oligarchs operating out of London, to reinforce Prigozhin’s belief that he had the support of the Russian military, politicians, and business elite, all of whom Prigozhin was led to believe would rally to his side once Wagner began marching on Moscow.

The failure of Prigozhin’s gambit has already become cemented in history. However, there remains an element of Russian society which, having been swayed by Prigozhin’s intensive PR campaign, continue to believe that Prigozhin’s complaints against Shoigu and Gerasimov were legitimate and, as such, so too was his march of Moscow. The facts speak otherwise. At the time of Prigozhin’s precipitous move on Moscow, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov were overseeing a Russian military campaign that was eviscerating Ukraine’s NATO-trained army, inflicting casualties at a 10-to-1 ration. During the first three weeks of the current Ukrainian counteroffensive, more than 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, along with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles—many of which were just recently supplied to Ukraine—destroyed. The Russian military was well-equipped, well-trained, and well-led. Morale was high. Any notion that Shoigu and Gerasimov were professionally incompetent was belied by the facts.

Prigozhin has bragged about the superiority of the Wagner forces when compared to those of the Russian Army. But the real reason the Wagner forces halted their march on Moscow and returned to their barracks was the fact that they had encountered the Russian military outside Serpukhov, south of Moscow. There, some 2,500 Russian special forces backed by Russian air power were waiting. At the same time, some 10,000 Chechen “Akhmat” special forces had closed in on Rostov-on-Don, where Prigozhin had taken up headquarters, and were preparing to assault the city with the intent to destroy the Wagner forces deployed there, along with their leader. Wagner’s combat experience could not make up for the fact that they were not prepared to carry out sustained ground combat against Russian ground and air forces.

Prigozhin was not only confronted with the reality of his imminent demise and of the men who had accompanied him, but, contrary to the expectations created by the British and Ukrainian intelligence services before the Wagner mutiny, the fact that not a single military unit or officer, not a single politician, and not a single businessman—no one—rallied to Prigozhin’s cause; Russia had sided with its President, Vladimir Putin. While Prigozhin’s extensive PR campaign had succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of Russian people, it had failed to convince people that they should betray their president.

In the interest of avoiding Russian-on-Russian bloodshed, Prigozhin accepted a compromise, brokered by Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, that had he, Dmitry Utkin (the only senior Wagner commander to join him) and the 8,000 Wagner fighters who participated in the failed coup return to their camps in eastern Lugansk. There they would disarm, turning over their heavy weapons to the Russian military, before being sent off into exile in Belarus. For those Wagner fighters—some 17,000—who refused to participate in Prigozhin’s act of treachery, they, along with their commanders, were given the option to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense or go home. Prigozhin’s contracts were cancelled, and Wagner disbanded. Moreover, there would be no changes in the Russian Ministry of Defense—Shoigu and Gerasimov would remain in their respective positions.

Even had Prigozhin not betrayed Russia, the Wagner Group would have ceased to exist as Prigozhin’s private army. However, the Wagner Group’s honor would have remained intact. Prigozhin’s treachery guaranteed that Wagner will be forever tainted by the greed and naked ambition of its owner, a man who sought to exploit the goodwill of the Russian public that the fighters of Wagner had earned with their blood and sacrifice on battlefields in the Donbas, Syria, and Africa, all in a misguided effort to usurp a constitutionally-mandated government the people had themselves put in power.

Farewell, Wagner—I hardly knew ye.