Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 151

Lucy Komisar: “Navalny,” documentary nominated for March 12th Oscar, is disinformation

Alexey Navalny

As many of you have probably heard by now, this documentary actually won the Oscar last night. – Natylie

By Lucy Komisar, The Komisar Scoop, 2/22/23

Lucy Komisar’s beat is the secret underbelly of the global financial system — offshore bank and corporate secrecy — and its links to corporate crime; tax evasion by the corporations and the very rich; empowerment of dictators and oligarchs; bribery and corruption; drug and arms trafficking; and terrorism. Her dozens of articles on the subject since 1997 have appeared in publications as diverse as The Nation magazine and the Wall Street Journal. She was winner of 2010 Gerald Loeb, National Press Club, Sigma Delta Chi, and National Headliner awards for her exposé of Ponzi-schemer Allen Stanford, which she brought to the Miami Herald. The Loeb award is the country’s most prestigious prize for financial journalism. 

How do you make a good propaganda film? How do you expose it before it wins a truth-telling award and embarrasses the prize-givers — before they discover it’s a pseudo-documentary that has been nominated for an “Oscar” – before the white envelopes are opened before millions of people on Oscar night, March 12th?

 “Navalny” is a slick production full of easily-documented fabrications, disinformation, with lots of clever visuals to distract and manipulate viewers. It is about Russian political activist Alexei Navalny, who according to the respected Levada Institute has shown 2% support in Russia. But he and the film have a great deal of backing in Washington and London.

The three people credited as the production’s authors are Canadian Daniel Roher; he admits he has never visited Russia nor speaks Russian. Bulgarian Christo Grozev of Bellingcat; this is an organization openly hostile to Russia which acknowledges financing by governments of the U.S, UK and Europe. And Russian Maria Pevchikh; she has worked for Navalny’s organization but has lived mostly outside Russia since 2006 and in 2019 obtained a British passport. CNN and Der Spiegel, which have put their names on the findings, acknowledge they joined an investigation by the group Bellingcat. This challenges the film’s credibility as an independent production.

The film’s hero, Alexei Navalny, has strong Washington ties. Navalny was a 2009-2010 fellow of the Open Society Foundations financed by George Soros, which supported a network of opposition NGOs in Russia before being banned in 2015. Then 2010, he graduated from the Yale Greenberg World Fellowship, which was originally called White House Fellows under Bill Clinton’s presidency. The first program director of the Yale World Fellows was Dan Esty, energy and environmental policy adviser for the 2008 Obama campaign.

When Navalny returned from the U.S. to Russia, he started an anti-corruption campaign. It was endorsed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Navalny is also allied with exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky; he was jailed for ten years for documented tax evasion using offshore shell company transfer pricing to launder profits of oil company Yukos, which he obtained through the infamous corrupt loans for shares deal in the Boris Yeltsin years.

However, Navalny has had his own criminal fraud problem, along with his brother Oleg.

In 2008, when the state-owned Russian Post decided to end collecting parcels from clients’ distribution centers, Oleg Navalny, persuaded several companies to shift to the privately owned Chief Subscription Agency (GPA), not revealing it was a company he, Alexei and their parents had just set up in tax haven Cyprus. Later, Yves Rocher Vostok, part of the French cosmetics firm, sued that they were deprived of free choice and weren’t told GPA was using subcontractors which charged around half as much as they paid GPA and that the Navalny cutout kept the difference as profit. A court gave Alexei a suspended sentence of 3 ½ years and his brother a prison sentence of the same term.

The European Court on Human Rights found, “By all accounts, GPA was set up for profit-making purposes and the applicants thus pursued the same goal as any other founder of a commercial entity.” So, in spite of questionable insider tricks, the European court deemed it no crime, because that is how business is done. But it was still an ethics problem for the “fighter against corruption,” because some people think that making money off such insider dealing is unethical.

Although the plaintiff Yves Rocher was part of a French company, which sued for damages in France, Western media depicted the trial as a sham instigated by President Vladimir Putin and didn’t report the full details of the case. Navalny’s violation of his conviction parole by failing to return to Russia as soon as he had recovered his health in Germany were the grounds for his arrest on January 17, 2021, and his subsequent court sentence to prison, where he remains. U.S. court rules for parole violations would not be different.

Navalny also became a player in America’s Russiagate operation. He published a video in 2018 claiming that Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska acted as a messenger between President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chief Paul Manafort and a top Kremlin foreign policy official. The Trump-Russia stories have all been proved false, including this one. However, Navalny has not corrected his anti-Trump video. This confirms not only his standard for truthfulness in documentary work, but also what allies he has made in the U.S.

During the Russian regional election campaign of 2020, Navalny was making regular trips out of Moscow to promote his anti-corruption organization. He claimed popular support, though according to the Levada Poll, he was drawing no more than 2% among Russians countrywide – less in the regions, more among the young in Moscow.

On August 20th, winding up a campaign in southeastern Siberia, Navalny got on the regularly scheduled flight from Tomsk to Moscow and fell ill. On the pilot’s decision, the aircraft made an unscheduled landing in Omsk, and Navalny was taken to a city hospital. The emergency ward staff treated his symptoms and stabilized his condition. A medical evacuation aircraft arrived from Germany the next day after Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, received Kremlin permission for his treatment in Germany, and he was flown from Omsk to Berlin August 22, with Navalnaya and Pevchikh accompanying him on the flight.

Navalny has had a history of medical conditions known to reflect the sudden reduction in blood sugar and cholinesterase levels – diabetes, Quincke’s Disease, and allergies leading to anaphylactic shock. This information, which had been reported in Russia and by Navalny sources well before the Tomsk incident, was not made public after his arrival in Germany.

The earliest claims that Russian intelligence agents had poisoned Navalny were made by CNN, which said they were based on a Bellingcat investigation. The CNN articles, December 14 and 21, 2020, scripted the essence of what the film produced the following year and released in 2022.

The film starts with Navalny returning to Russia after several months in Germany and then goes to flashbacks.

In one of the flashbacks Navalny makes an admission whose honesty is worth noting. He is complaining that he has gone to Novosibirsk in Siberia to make a movie about local corruption. He says, “I expected a lot of people who’d try to prevent our filming, confiscate our cameras or just break our cameras or try to beat us. I expected that sort of things and I was very surprised, like, “Why is nobody here?” “Why is there kind of…” I even have this strange feeling like, like a lack of respect. Like, seriously? I’m here and where is my police?” This is evidence from Navalny himself that he was far less important than he, the western press, and the filmmakers claim he was. It casts doubt from the beginning of the Navalny film that the president of Russia was out to get him and sent hitmen to Tomsk.

But let’s get to the fabrications at the heart of the film. There’s a long section about how Christo Grozev, identified as working for Bellingcat, buys travel and contact data on the Darknet to find the names and phone numbers of Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who had been traveling on planes to Siberia in August of 2020. There is no way to verify that the charts and faces substantiate what Grozev and Bellingcat say they prove, at least not at any standard required in any prosecution service or court in the U.S. In fact, CNN reported December 14, 2020, “CNN cannot confirm with certainty that it was the unit based at Akademika Vargi Street that poisoned Navalny with Novichok on the night of August 19.”

The Great Phone Call Hoax

The real test of the veracity of the film, the “smoking gun” to which everything is leading, is the great telephone call hoax. 

Those who made the film have understood the psychology of manipulating audiences. Slowly you bring them into a secret scam to be played on the bad guys. In this one, it starts with Navalny putting on a body mike. Why? He is not going somewhere to secretly record someone. Only his own team is in the room. The real recording microphone is off camera, where the film audience can’t see it.

But the body mike is a special effect, it’s a dramatist’s stage trick. Click the arrow. Navalny speaks to the camera: “Now I’m totally feel like I’m an undercover agent, with the wired up.” Does the audience know they are the butt of a theatrical joke?

Navalny calls three “FSB” agents. This is a setup for a veracity diversion, a factoid – that’s a seeming truth disguising a fake. We can be sure of this now, because he says to each of them, “I am Navalny; why do you want to kill me?” And the fake people hang up. What is the point of that? It’s to convince the audience of Navalny’s film production that the FSB was being telephoned. The voices are not real, they sound the same – either computer generated or acted by a professional mimic.

But then there’s his pièce de résistance, the interview with “the scientist” whom Grozev tells Navalny to call, because he will be more likely to talk than the regular FSB agents.

Navalny declares (as translated), “Konstantin Borisovich, hello my name is Ustinov Maxim Sergeyevich. I am Nikolay Platonovich’s assistant.” He says, “I need ten minutes of your time …will probably ask you later for a report …but I am now making a report for Nikolay Platonovich … what went wrong with us in Tomsk…why did the Navalny operation fail?”

According to Bellingcat, (the real) Kudryavtsev worked at the Ministry of Defense biological security research center and is a specialist in chemical and biological weapons. Supposedly not so stupid.

The talkative “Konstantin” says, “I would rate the job as well done. We did it just as planned, the way we rehearsed it many times. But when the flight made an emergency landing the situation changed, not in our favor….The medics on the ground acted right away. They injected him with an antidote of some sort. So it seems the dose was underestimated. Our calculations were good, we even applied extra.”

Navalny was questioned by the Berlin Staatsanwaltschaft (District Attorney) on December 17, 2020. Did he tell them about the phone call to Konstantin Kudryavtsev, which allegedly took place on December 14?

The office confirmed the interrogation, but when I sent a link to Navalny’s claims about the December 14th “call” three days earlier, a spokesman said they could not comment further.

There are key clues to the film’s fabrications. They deal with dates and timing which are not subject to dispute: the dangers of Novichok, the date of “Kudryavstev’s” “cleaning” in Omsk, and the date of the phone calls.

Novichok

First about the “poisoning.”

Yulia Navalnaya says in the film, “After a week I was unexpectedly called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” As the Navalny group arrived August 22, that would have been about August 29th. “They said we have discovered that your husband was poisoned with an agent from the Novichok group.” 

It was not the Charité lab that found this. The German Government announced not one week but two weeks after the group’s arrival that a laboratory of the German Armed Forces had identified a nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected after the patient’s admission to Charité.

Unlike the civilian doctors, who had not found Novichok, the military lab would not release details of its tests. There was no toxicology report, no name of the expert in charge of the testing and of the interpretation of the results, no name and formula of the chemical compound of the “Novichok group.” The Germans refused to send any medical or toxicological evidence they claimed to substantiate the attempted homicide to Moscow prosecutors investigating the crime. From then on, by hearsay and without evidence, the story became the West’s “Putin poisoned Navalny.”

Second, Navalny’s underpants. Navalny, his wife Yulia, his assistant Pevchikh, his press spokesman, others in his group, and the reporters publishing what they were told had been claiming until that moment that the instrument of the Novichok, the poison vector, had been a tea cup at the airport café, then a water bottle in the Tomsk hotel room.

Pevchikh, she repeatedly told the press, had filmed the removal of the hotel room water bottles, taken them secretly to Omsk, then loaded them on the medevac flight to Berlin in the luggage of one of the medevac crew, and delivered them from the German ambulance into the Berlin hospital by hand. But then, after four months had elapsed, the story became underpants.

A CNN clip not in the film claims the poison was put on the underpants “across the seams” at the button flap, but in what form – powder, aerosolized spray, or gel? Was the FSB counting on Navalny not to notice or feel moisture as he dressed?  Was the poison then in direct contact with his body?

On the plane, Navalny fell ill, and the pilot diverted to Omsk, where he was transferred to a hospital. The calculated lethality of the dose should have been fatal after symptom onset. However, the first symptoms appeared only after several hours, and they remained non-lethal for at least one more hour between Navalny going to the toilet cabin on his flight and his reaching Omsk hospital.

The Timing of Kudryavtsev’s trip and “cleaning”

CNN declares that “Kudryavtsev” flies from Moscow to Omsk on August 25, five days after the event, to take possession of Navalny’s clothes and “clean” them. It displays a visual of a flight from Moscow. But the FSB would have known of the diversion to Omsk August 20th. Would it have waited five days to send an agent there?

The film script puts Kudryavtsev in Tomsk for the job. At least he knows the details of where the Novichok was placed. He says, “We did it as planned.”

Were the underpants still considered dangerous? Did hospital workers who undressed Navalny get sick? Many people were exposed to Navalny and his deadly underpants, but not one has been reported to have fallen ill. The passengers who attended him in the plane and who flew on to Moscow have not reported medical problems.

The film “Kudryavtsev” voice says, “When we arrived [in Omsk], they gave [the underpants] to us, the local Omsk guys brought [them] with the police.” Did any police fall ill?

“Kudryavstev” says, “When we finished working on them everything was clean.” He explains that solutions were applied, “so that there were no traces left on the clothes.” CNN, in its video, has “Kudryavtsev” saying that he also cleaned Navalny’s pants, not mentioned in the film. Alexei is shown in Berlin holding the underpants. Did the Omsk police ship the “decontaminated” item to Germany?

There are more problems with this story.

There is conflicting information about whether Navalny’s underpants remained in Omsk.

Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh posted a tweet August 20, 2020 with the text: “Julia took Alexei’s things with her. She said that she did not allow them to be confiscated.” However, The Guardian reported September 21 that Navalny “demanded that Moscow return his clothes.” At any rate, the Charité Hospital said it did not test the water bottles or clothing.

Most important is the date of the phone call.

Ronald Thomas West, who identifies as a U.S. Special Forces veteran working in Europe, writes, with irony:

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West says, “ The poisoning happened on 20 August, the ‘hoax call’ is made on 14 December, and released by Bellingcat on 21 December. Now, wait a minute. The context of the call, a desperate demand for answers of what went wrong (Navalny didn’t die) for a report to higher up authority, is something you would expect within the first 48 hours, not nearly three months later. By the time this call was made, that dust should have settled and been vacuumed up by Russia’s intelligence services, everyone would have been debriefed by this time, including the target of the hoax call.”

The Trojan Horse

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Maya Daisy Hawke, the film’s co-editor, makes an unusual admission on her website. She said “It’s the best thing I ever worked on; the highlight of my career,” and adds, “Navalny was a Trojan horse.” I emailed her and asked what she meant, pointing out that Merriam-Webster defines trojan horse as “someone or something intended to defeat or subvert from within usually by deceptive means.” She walked it back and said, “They were hastily chosen words on a personal social media post.” She declined further comment and told me to contact the film’s publicist. I did. Charlie Olsky of Cineticmedia also declined to answer questions.

The film supports an analysis of the Russian public that is fallacious.

An unidentified woman says, “What to do with Navalny presents a conundrum for the Kremlin, let him go and risk looking weak, or lock him up, knowing it could turn him into a political martyr.” A U.S. broadcast reporter says, “Unexpectedly, Vladimir Putin has a genuine challenger. More than any other opposition figure in Russia, Alexei Navalny gets ordinary people out to protest.”

However, Eric Kraus, a French financial strategist working in Moscow since 1997, explains, “Mr. Navalny was always a minor factor in Russia. He had a hard-core supporter base — Western-aspiring young people in Moscow and St. Petersburg — the ‘Facebook Generation.’ He was never much loved out in the sticks and could never have polled beyond 7% nationwide, even before the war. Ordinary Russians now increasingly see the West as the enemy. Navalny is seen as the agent of forces seeking to break or constrain Russia. Now, he would get closer to 2%.” (Kraus has been cited as an expert by western media.)

Kraus said, “He is the supreme political opportunist. In Moscow, speaking in English to an audience of Western fund managers and journalists, it is the squeaky clean, liberal Navalny. Full of free markets, diversity, and social justice. Hearing him a few months later out in Siberia, speaking in Russian, one encounters an entirely different animal – fiercely nationalistic, angry and somewhat racist – there, his slogan is “kick out the thieves” but especially “Russia for the ethnic Russians,” anyone without Slavic blood, especially immigrants from the Caucuses, are second-class citizens.”

Another drama!

Finally, if readers can take any more drama, I ended up in the center of one!

As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, I was invited to a November 9, 2022 “Navalny” screening by CNN at 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan. The post-film moderator was Timothy Frye, professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University; the speakers were the filmmakers. I recorded them. Frye asked about “the one scene where Navalny is talking and getting the fellow to, you know, tricking him into speaking.”

Filmmaker Roher explained the political purpose: “And then the war started and what I understood was that this film became not just a film but we were now on a mission to remind the world that Vladimir Putin is not Russia and Russia is not Vladimir Putin and is Navalny.”

In the talk-back, I asked a question. “My name is Lucy Komisar, and I’m an investigative journalist. I want to delve more into the Kudryavtsev story. Mr. Navalny was questioned by the prosecutor in Berlin on December 17th. And three days earlier was the phone call with Kudryavtsev. Did he tell the prosecutor about the phone call which I assume they would have to check the authenticity of, and what did they determine about him? He claims on the phone call he examined these things on August 25 …. But on August 20 ….” [In fact,“Kudryavtsev” didn’t give the August 25th date, Bellingcat did.]

Interruption by Prof. Frye: “This is all on the issue and nobody else. Which is that after we stop in 10 minutes. There will be drinks. Okay, that’s….”

LK: “The point is the press secretary said Alexei’s things were taken by Yulia before that, and she didn’t allow them to be seized. So how could they have been examined by this man after they were already taken away? And finally, the Berlin doctor said they didn’t detect any poisoning in Navalny’s blood, but two weeks later it was the German Armed Forces laboratory that said, yes.

So, all these things I think are contradictory and I would like to know the facts of why these contradictions exist.”

Christo Grozev: “Almost none of this was actually correct and including the sequence of events. I mean this was reactive and FSB officer on screen on recording that I made on my phone confessing to all of that.”

LK: “You said it’s him, but we don’t know it’s him.”

Grozev: “Well, I think the rest of the world knows and now okay. Be nice to know who you work for because….”

LK: “Oh, is this gonna be a [Joe] McCarthy question now?”

And at the end, Prof. Frye: “Well, thank you, Tim, Maria, Christo and Daniel. Thanks also to CNN HBO Max Warner Brothers Pictures … .”

He invited us all to drinks at Milos, a trendy restaurant in the complex. I went to the reception and asked Roher if I could interview him. He screamed at me, Noooo! And accused me of working for the Russians.

Then on the 17th I got an email from Nancy Bodurtha, Council on Foreign Relations Meetings and Membership Vice President. She had received complaints about my “conduct” at the screening. She threatened that I could be dropped from membership.

 She said: “I have received numerous complaints concerning your conduct at CFR’s November 9 documentary screening and discussion of Navalny. As stated in the member handbook, CFR is committed to maintaining a civil and respectful environment. All members are expected to exhibit the highest levels of courtesy and respect toward speakers, moderators, staff, guests, and one another. As a nonpartisan organization committed to hosting a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives to be debated and discussed freely, it is essential that the Council foster an inclusive and welcoming environment free from verbal, written, or physical harassment of any kind.

Per the Council’s By-Laws, a member may be dropped or suspended from membership for any conduct that is prejudicial to the best interests, reputation, and proper functioning of the Council. 

Please be advised that further misconduct may result in suspension with the possibility of the termination of your membership as determined by the board of directors.”

I replied:

“Dear Ms. Bodurtha

Regarding “numerous complaints concerning your conduct at CFR’s November 9 documentary screening and discussion of Navalny” which you cite, please send me copies of the complaints, including who sent them. I’m sure you agree that a Council member has the right to specifics on such an attack. If a person seeks anonymity, that raises questions about the truthfulness of their charges.

Did you investigate the complaints? If not, why not? If so, what were your findings?

Do you know what I said at the meeting? Like many journalists, when I ask a question of public figures in a public place, I record the interchange to make sure I can quote correctly.

[Here I repeated the recorded Q&A.]

What part of my question do you find objectionable? What as a journalist did I not have a right to ask? How was this harassment? Does courtesy and civility mean one cannot challenge what a film or speaker says?

Does allowing a wide range of viewpoints end when the challenge is to a view a Council staff member may not support? Were my statements deemed so dangerous that you voice a threat to throw me out of the Council? Who signed off on the decision to send me your notice?

After the film, I attended a reception where I encountered the filmmaker Daniel Roher and asked if I could interview him. In the presence of many people, he screamed at me, No! and said I was working for the Russians. Pretty much what Christo Grozev suggested. This persuades me that the “numerous complaints” came from Roher and his collaborators.

I look forward to you telling me who made the complaints, what they said, if you investigated their truthfulness and what in the above citation you find objectionable.

I don’t like attempts at intimidation. Neither should the Council. Nor would the Board. If I was not intimidated by killer racists in the early 60s, when I spent a year as editor of the Mississippi Free Press, I will hardly be intimidated now.

This persuades me I must write an article about the film and mention the “complaints” and your threat, which I dismiss as part of the cancel culture and deeply harmful to our society. Accordingly, let’s be clear that this exchange is on the record.

Lucy Komisar”

Her response was

“Lucy:  I acknowledge receipt of your response to my email and reiterate the Council’s expectation that members exhibit the highest levels of courtesy and respect toward speakers, moderators, staff, guests, and one another.  Best, Nancy”

Navalny, Bellingcat, and the filmmakers have made a documentary about the FSB creating not a professional hit, but a plan for immeasurable chaos, with high odds of failure and exposure to the public. The only professionalism is the filmmakers’ strike against their targets: the western media, the film’s audience, and maybe voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Linked to by Johnson’s Russia List, ACURA (American Committee on US Russia Accord) and Naked Capitalism.

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Andrei Tsygankov: One year at war: no winners, but all are losers

By Andrei P. Tsygankov, Canadian Dimension, 2/26/23

In Neville Chamberlain’s expression, in war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers. The brutal war in Ukraine is now in its second year with no serious prospect of ending. All the main parties—Russia, Ukraine, and the West—remain committed to victory rather than a mutually acceptable settlement based on negotiations without preconditions. What follows is a preliminary assessment of the main parties’ relative gains and losses per their stated objectives. These gains and losses incorporate political, military, and economic dimensions.

Ukraine and its people—those living in the territories controlled by Kyiv and those claimed by Russia in the eastern and southern parts—are the war’s most significant victims. Millions of refugees, thousands of killed civilians, and well over a hundred thousand soldiers killed or wounded on a battlefield is a gruesome but incomplete list of human suffering in the country. The Ukrainian economy survives only on foreign assistance. Nearly one-third of the potential labour force is unemployed.

While the Ukrainian state has survived, it has already lost about 20 percent of its territory with bleak prospects of regaining it. Ukrainians are united and committed to fighting, but the costs are extremely high and growing.

Ukrainian leaders, encouraged by the West, have refused to negotiate with Russia and continue to believe in achieving full victory before the end of 2023 or even earlier. However, judging by the past year’s record, Ukrainian officials have been unsuccessful in securing their country’s peace, prosperity, and territorial integrity.

Western nations set the high bar in what has become a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. According to their goals, Russian military power should be degraded, while the Russian economy should be severely undermined, making it exceedingly difficult to continue with the war. As a result, Ukraine should be able to insist on its peace terms.

Not only have these goals not been achieved, but there are growing signs they cannot be reached in principle. Indeed, the West’s own military and energy resources are dwindling. There are also increasing signs that Western populations are tiring of the war and its costs.

Americans and Europeans are not roused by the brave rhetoric of the existential fight for the “rules-based international order” or securing freedom from autocracies. The increasing costs and the low capacity for ideological mobilization will make it difficult to sustain the West’s course of defeating Russia on the battlefield.

Additional military supplies—air defence, tanks, long-range rockets, and fighter planes—will take time to produce, deliver, and train Ukrainians to use. In the meantime, Russia is also adapting to the realities of military escalation by increasing its military production and remaining prepared to engage in more intense warfare. Even without resorting to nuclear weapons, Russia has the capacity to attack critical transportation and logistical centres, mobilize additional troops, and target the Ukrainian leadership.

What’s more, the conflict is being gradually internationalized, with Iran, China, and other powers increasingly backing Russia. From the beginning, the war has been conducted in the nuclear shadow, and the potential for a nuclear escalation should not be taken lightly. Those who think that Vladimir Putin is bluffing have been unpleasantly surprised in the past and may be surprised again.

The West cannot win the Ukraine war by defeating Russia and it is losing the ability to end the conflict. The deterrence strategy without dialogue was flawed from the beginning and now has eliminated the prospect of negotiating a peaceful settlement. By not encouraging negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 and placing bets on coercing Moscow to accepting peace on Western terms, the United States and NATO countries have strengthened anti-Western attitudes among Russians.

Although most Russians are unwilling to fight the Ukrainian army, Russians are increasingly convinced that the West is their real enemy. Most of them now share the Kremlin’s narrative of fighting a long war for national survival in the manner of past conflicts against Napoleon and Nazi Germany.

Because the West has set such ambitious goals, it now painfully realizes the impossibility of meeting them. The Western nations are, therefore, losing the war per their stated objectives and their position in the first half of the year. Instead of developing a face-saving strategy, the US today, as earlier in Vietnam and Afghanistan, is becoming a hostage of its own uncompromising, values-driven stance.

Russia is no longer losing the war and has improved its strategic and tactical position following the withdrawal from Kherson in August 2022 and the partial mobilization in September-October 2022. The Russian military continues to make incremental gains in Donbas. Meanwhile, the Russian economy has survived the pressure of Western sanctions, losing 2.1 percent of its GDP in 2022, against expectations of about 12 percent.

The Russian leadership is preparing for a protracted war and estimates that it has resources sufficient for several years of fighting without major social and economic disruptions in the country

In addition, Russia’s reputation with non-Western countries remains significant. According to a recent poll, most Chinese, Indians, and Turks view Russia as an ally or necessary partner. They also think Russia remains strong or has become stronger since intervening in Ukraine. Russia’s great power status has been preserved at least in the eyes of non-Western nations.

However, on balance and by its standards, Russia is not set to win and is not winning the war. Although Moscow has improved its position since the early months of the invasion, it has not moved closer to its stated goals of “demilitarization” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. Just as the West cannot demilitarize Russia, Russia cannot accomplish this fully in Ukraine. In addition, because of the war’s brutality, Moscow lost the support of many Ukrainians who favoured strong ties with Russia.

Ukrainian political and military resolve remains strong, as is the West’s commitment to military aid, intelligence resources, and financial assistance. Russia’s military advancement is based on heavy Russian losses and remains slow. For example, as acknowledged by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, it would take the Russian army one and a half years to secure control of Donbas and three years to capture broader territories east of the Dnieper River.

Russia’s military escalation will have to come with high political costs at home and abroad and may not be undertaken except in response to a significant escalation by Kyiv or NATO.

Overall, none of the parties has met its political and military objectives. The paradox is that neither is rational enough to indicate an openness to robust negotiations and a political compromise. Russia’s signalled preferences include preserved control over newly gained territories. These preferences are opposed to Ukrainian and Western demands, as summarized in Zelensky’s peace plan.

A recent Chinese proposal to stop the fighting in Ukraine and begin negotiations without Russia’s withdrawal from Ukrainian territory is also not acceptable to Ukraine and the West

Therefore, moving toward a compromise will take more human suffering and military escalation. As difficult as it is to accept, things will have to get worse before they get better.

Andrei P. Tsygankov is Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Russian Realism (Routledge, 2022) and The “Russian Idea” in International Relations (Routledge, 2023).

Steven Myers: Time To End the War in Ukraine. Mediation Is the Best Answer

Photo by Nati on Pexels.com

By Steven Myers, Newsweek, 2/24/23

Since Russia began its invasion, the U.S. has contributed to an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, rallying popular opinion at home and throughout the West with the narrative that Russia’s motives and intentions are groundless, evil, and even genocidal.

This has made honest conversation about the history, motives, and inevitable geopolitical and economic consequences of the conflict impossible. Rather than directly intervene as the U.S. has historically done, the U.S. chose to pour fuel on the fire in the form of more funding, weapons, equipment, and technical support, without which Ukraine would have been forced to negotiate, perhaps even averting the war. Many brilliant, well-informed diplomats and scholars rang alarm bells about the U.S. diplomatic hubris, but to no avail.

Today, after a year of war, the consequences predicted by so many experts are now coming home to roost. The strategic, industrial, economic, political, and military situation in Ukraine—and in Europe—is deteriorating significantly. Even without Nord Stream, Russia remains the third-largest supplier of gas for the European continent. Germany, like the rest of Europe, had to pay 10 times the market price to bolster their reserves. But it’s not nearly enough.

Europeans have chosen to remove natural gas from their industries, leading to a huge number of industrial closures, including in Germany. Those manufacturing closures have occurred with all the attendant layoffs. Auto manufacturing alone is down by more than 25 percent. The German electorate is becoming increasingly skeptical about the West’s approach to the war. And that was before recent reporting of what many of us had been saying since September; that the Biden administration was responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage.

If he knew about it, Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, may be guilty of colluding with President Joe Biden in committing what even the U.S. defines as a major act of terrorism. A major German national strategic asset owned in joint venture with Russia was destroyed, seriously damaging both Germany’s economy and that of the EU, impacting tens of millions of jobs, putting many lives at risk, and on and on. A deep recession appears inevitable. The revelation should bring dire consequences for the German government at the very least. Only those who believe the ends justify the means and are willing put all moral considerations aside can defend this shocking action.

In Ukraine, the situation is desperate. Ukrainian tactical victories over the last year, however laudable, came at a terrible price. An estimated 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the war began. Ukraine is experiencing ongoing destruction of its infrastructure as winter progresses. A third of the Ukrainian population has been displaced already.

After the attack on the Kerch Bridge and their subsequent withdrawal from Kherson, Russia began launching missile and drone strikes against high-value Ukrainian infrastructure targets, including thermal power plants, electrical transmission lines, and large transformers. A third of the electric power grid is down. Much of the damage will be impossible to repair anytime soon. Unable to maintain their cities, the Ukrainians are running out of fuel, particularly diesel, as well as water and food.

Zelensky may have grand plans for a spring offensive, but it will likely come too late. Ukraine’s U.S.- and U.K.-supplied artillery shells, for example, are running low, while Russia is in full-throttle shell production mode, with an artillery advantage of three to one. Endless swarms of rockets and Iranian drones are continuing to systematically take down everything the country needs for people to live there. Satellite imagery tells the true story of the cost of this war. At night, Ukraine is as dark as the Black Sea.

In December, Biden finally seemed to encourage Zelensky to think about negotiations. Zelensky instead demanded preconditions for negotiations which he knew Putin would never accept. What we’ve seen over the last couple of months is faux escalation with deals for Challenger tanks from the British, along with negotiations to send Patriot batteries, M1 Abrams tanks, and F16s from the U.S. These are unlikely to ever arrive. The U.S. is not going to put weapon systems into Ukraine that can only be operated by U.S. personnel, would be immediately attacked upon delivery, or might fall into the hands of the Russians.

The coming year of conflict promises to be vastly more devastating to Ukraine than what we’ve seen so far. Russia is not going to listen to dubious offers to negotiate based on demands that ignore the issues that caused the war in the first place. The only way out is a mediated settlement. Mediation offers a very different approach to achieving a long-term durable resolution than is possible with negotiations. It provides a more structured, comprehensive path to resolving the conflict because the process is led by an objective, neutral third party.

The only country capable of mediating this conflict that would be potentially acceptable to all the belligerents is Israel. Israel understands protracted conflict better than any other nation in the world and they are tough negotiators. They won’t give up and walk away. They’ll keep at it. With the newly elected Netanyahu coalition in power, the timing couldn’t be better for Israel to take this on. Most importantly, they’ll want to do it.

Some outcomes of the mediation may be obvious. But there are many complicated issues on the table that must be articulated, legitimized, and resolved. Mediation can do that. The process will take many months. But, perhaps its most important outcome will be the start of a healing process so essential for the many, many people on both sides of the conflict victimized by this cruel and needless war. Morality is at the core of what makes peace possible. Ukraine and Russia are neighbors and will always be, and they share a great deal. It is time to put an end to this tragedy.

Did the West Sabotage Ukraine & Provoke Russia? My Presentation to Texas State University Philosophy Dept. – March 8, 2023

Link here.

Anatol Lieven: For years, Putin didn’t invade Ukraine. What made him finally snap in 2022?

It’s good to see someone explain to an English speaking audience (in this case the readers of The Guardian) how Putin’s views about the west evolved from wanting to be a part of it – and when that wasn’t possible, wanting to simply do business and have its most basic interests respected – and when that wasn’t possible, having to acknowledge that the hardliners were right that the west wasn’t interested in reasonable relations with Russia. Emphasis in the article is mine. – Natylie

By Anatol Lieven, The Guardian, 2/24/23

Why did Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and try to capture Kyiv in February 2022, and not years earlier? Moscow has always wanted to dominate Ukraine, and Putin has given the reasons for this in his speeches and writings. Why then did he not try to take all or most of the country after the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, rather than only annexing Crimea, and giving limited, semi-covert help to separatists in the Donbas?

On Friday’s one-year anniversary of Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine, it is worth thinking about precisely how we got to this point – and where things might be going.

Indeed, Russian hardliners spent years criticising their leader for not invading sooner. In 2014, the Ukrainian army was hopelessly weak; in Viktor Yanukovych, the Russians had a pro-Russian, democratically elected Ukrainian president; and incidents like the killing of pro-Russian demonstrators in Odesa provided a good pretext for action.

The reason for Putin’s past restraint lies in what was a core part of Russian strategy dating back to the 1990s: trying to wedge more distance between Europe and the United States, and ultimately to create a new security order in Europe with Russia as a full partner and respected power. It was always clear that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would destroy any hope of rapprochement with the western Europeans, driving them for the foreseeable future into the arms of the US. Simultaneously, such a move would leave Russia diplomatically isolated and dangerously dependent on China.

This Russian strategy was correctly seen as an attempt to split the west, and cement a Russian sphere of influence in the states of the former Soviet Union. However, having a European security order with Russia at the table would also have removed the risk of a Russian attack on Nato, the EU, and most likely, Ukraine; and allowed Moscow to exert a looser influence over its neighbours – closer perhaps to the present approach of the US to Central America – rather than gripping them tightly. It was an approach that had roots in Mikhail Gorbachev’s idea – welcomed in the west at the time – of a “common European home”.

At one time, Putin subscribed to this idea. He wrote in 2012 that: “Russia is an inseparable, organic part of Greater Europe, of the wider European civilisation. Our citizens feel themselves to be Europeans.” This vision has now been abandoned in favour of the concept of Russia as a separate “Eurasian civilisation”.

Between 1999, when Putin came to power, and 2020, when Biden was elected president of the US, this Russian strategy experienced severe disappointments, but also enough encouraging signs from Paris and Berlin to keep it alive.

The most systematic Russian attempt to negotiate a new European security order came with the interim presidency of Dmitry Medvedev from 2008 to 2012. With Putin’s approval, he proposed a European security treaty that would have frozen Nato enlargement, effectively ensured the neutrality of Ukraine and other states, and institutionalised consultation on equal terms between Russia and leading western countries. But western states barely even pretended to take these proposals seriously.

In 2014, it appears to have been Chancellor Angela Merkel’s warnings of “massive damage” to Russia and German-Russian relations that persuaded Putin to call a halt to the advance of the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. In return, Germany refused to arm Ukraine, and with France, brokered the Minsk 2 agreement, whereby the Donbas would return to Ukraine as an autonomous territory.

In 2016, Russian hopes of a split between western Europe and the United States were revived by the election of Donald Trump – not because of any specific policy, rather because of the strong hostility that he provoked in Europe. But Biden’s election brought the US administration and west European establishments back together again. These years also saw Ukraine refuse to guarantee autonomy for the Donbas, and western failure to put any pressure on Kyiv to do so.

This was accompanied by other developments that made Putin decide to bring matters concerning Ukraine to a head. These included the US-Ukrainian Strategic Partnership of November 2021, which held out the prospect of Ukraine becoming a heavily armed US ally in all but name, while continuing to threaten to retake the Donbas by force.

In recent months, the German and French leaders in 2015, Merkel and François Hollande, have declared that the Minsk 2 agreement on Donbas autonomy was only a manoeuvre on their part to allow the Ukrainians the time to build up their armed forces. This is what Russian hardliners always believed, and by 2022, Putin himself seems to have come to the same conclusion.

Nonetheless, almost until the eve of invasion, Putin continued unsuccessfully to press the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in particular to support a treaty of neutrality for Ukraine and negotiate directly with the separatist leaders in the Donbas. We cannot, of course, say for sure if this would have led Putin to call off the invasion; but since it would have opened up a deep split between Paris and Washington, such a move by Macron might well have revived in Putin’s mind the old and deeply held Russian strategy of trying to divide the west and forge agreement with France and Germany.

Putin now seems to agree fully with Russian hardline nationalists that no western government can be trusted, and that the west as a whole is implacably hostile to Russia. He remains, however, vulnerable to attack from those same hardliners, both because of the deep incompetence with which the invasion was conducted, and because their charge that he was previously naive about the hopes of rapprochement with Europe appears to have been completely vindicated.

It is from this side, not the Russian liberals, that the greatest threat to his rule now comes; and of course this makes it even more difficult for Putin to seek any peace that does not have some appearance, at least, of Russian victory.

Meanwhile, the Russian invasion and its accompanying atrocities have destroyed whatever genuine sympathy for Russia existed in the French and German establishments. A peaceful and consensual security order in Europe looks very far away. But while Putin and his criminal invasion of Ukraine are chiefly responsible for this, we should also recognise that western and central Europeans also did far too little to try to keep Gorbachev’s dream of a common European home alive.

Ukraine puts NBC reporter on kill list for reporting from Crimea

Link here.

Fred Weir: Putin frames war as protecting Russia’s existence. Are Russians buying it?

Moscow Street Life; Photo by Natylie Baldwin, Oct. 2015

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 2/21/23

It’s been almost a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and many of the original rationales for the attack put forward by the Kremlin, such as “de-Nazification,” are no longer even mentioned.

Instead, the key appeal Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Tuesday in his first state of the nation address in almost two years was that, since Russians are fighting against the united West and not just Ukraine, they must consolidate behind the war effort for the sake of national survival. “The goal of the West is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, to end us once and for all,” he said. “We will respond accordingly, because we are talking about the existence of our country.”

And, in a demonstrative final break with the post-Cold War arms control regime – which has been tenuous for years – Mr. Putin announced that Russia will suspend its participation in New START, the last of the nuclear arms treaties that limited arsenals and provided channels for verification and crisis management.

It’s hard to gauge the effectiveness of Mr. Putin’s case for uncompromising struggle with the Russian public. As Russia faces receding horizons for victory, the so-called existential threat has become the core of the Kremlin’s case for staying the course, even if it requires a painful new mobilization of manpower and more economic burdens for an indefinite period.

But while Mr. Putin’s framing may be persuading the Russian public that the war is one of defense against NATO rather than of offense against Ukraine, it seems less likely that he is stirring their enthusiasm for the conflict. While support for the war remains high, there appears to be increasing desire among Russians, whether they favor the war or not, that it be resolved with peace talks soon. And while the possibility of defeat is not being entertained, the civic mood seems to be resignation rather than resolution.

“I don’t see consolidation of mass support for the war,” says Boris Kagarlitsky, a Moscow-based veteran left-winger and anti-war activist, who contributes to Russian Dissent, an English-language portal for critical Russian voices, “but there is no groundswell of support for the opposition either.”

“People have returned to a state of detachment”

Russian state-funded pollsters stopped asking explicit questions about war support after some surveys late last year found a softening in public backing, and a sharp rise in a desire for peace talks. The data is thin and, in any case, sociologists warn that wartime polls are inherently unreliable, especially in the current Russian atmosphere where anti-war sentiments or expressions deemed defeatist could result in jail time.

But the sketchy data available indicates that personal support for Mr. Putin remains high, and at least a reduced majority of Russians think the war effort must continue until some kind of victory. Interviews with a few Kremlin-skeptical political experts who remain inside Russia suggest that early hopes of a public anti-war groundswell have been thoroughly dashed and, although most average Russians seem deeply unwilling to talk with a foreign journalist, those who do express ambivalence about the war at best.

“Russian society is multi-layered, and the views we find can be quite contradictory,” says Andrei Kolesnikov, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who, despite his outspoken anti-war opinions, remains in Moscow. “Some want peace, but support Putin. Some don’t want Putin, but back the war. The middle part of society is composed of conformists, most of whom are passive but some are active.

“I have noticed that those active supporters of the war are becoming more aggressive. It’s actually new and unexpected to see so many people who not only feel the war must be continued, but that it must be prosecuted to total victory,” says Mr. Kolesnikov. “I would not have believed that there could be so much dormant instinct for totalitarianism in our society, which Putin is now awakening.”

Mr. Putin’s contention that Russia is defending itself against the concerted forces of the West does appear to get considerable traction among Russians.

“Judging by what I see around me, and sociological data, I see that the idea that ‘it’s us against NATO’ does seem to work,” says Mr. Kolesnikov. “It helps people see this not as a war against little Ukraine, but as a defensive struggle against a really big enemy.”

The only organization still asking Russians flatly whether they support the “special military operation” is the independent Levada Center, and its latest report in January found that 75% of respondents supported the war to some degree, while 21% said they were opposed to some extent. The numbers who believe the war will end in Russian victory declined slightly between April and January from 73% to 71%, while those who think the war will last more than another year more than doubled, from 21% to 43%.

But secret polls allegedly commissioned by the Kremlin last fall, and cited by The Moscow Times and Meduza, found that the number of people who believed that starting the war was the right thing to do was declining precipitously, from over 70% to under 60% by last November, while those who thought the war was not going according to plan had reached a high point of 42%, and just 22% thought it was basically on track.

“By now people who support the operation say that too much has already been invested in it to think of stopping,” says Denis Volkov, head of Levada. “But both supporters and opponents say they wish it would end as soon as possible with peace talks.” After the chaos and shock brought on by the partial mobilization last fall, things have settled down. “Some people left the country, others realized they weren’t subject to mobilization. By early 2023, people have returned to a state of detachment, thinking that none of this depends on them.”

“They will carry on”

Marina Volkova, a working Muscovite, expresses the fairly typical view that “Russia has no way out but to continue this to the bitter end. I think it will win. But I am so surprised that there aren’t more efforts to bring peace, make the sides sit down and find a solution. I have many friends with sons and grandsons on the front line, and I feel for them. I really wish it were over.”

Pensioner Yevgenia Vasilyeva says the war is a horror that has kept her awake every night for a year. “I don’t know whether it will end in victory or defeat, but it should end. I dream of peace and normal relations with Ukraine.”

The prospect of Russian defeat is seldom discussed, even though some like Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser and Putin supporter, insist that most Russians believe the war has become an existential struggle for survival.

“Of course rational people have to consider the possibility of defeat,” he says. “But we know that it would mean that Russia would disappear as a united country. The disaster would be much worse than after the collapse of the USSR. That’s why, if Russia loses during the upcoming spring fighting, there will be mass mobilization and the entire society will be put onto a war footing. …

“Every Russian schoolchild knows that the West has tried to destroy Russia in each century for a long time. Now it’s happening under the leadership of the U.S. But it’s the same thing, they are trying to break up Russia, and people are realizing that it’s an existential battle. Russia is just beginning to gear up for the fight.”

But critics note that the discussion of the possibility of defeat is a deeply unpopular idea, and could court legal consequences.

“Admitting defeat would be a political disaster for the authorities, so they will carry on no matter how much worse things get,” says Mr. Kagarlitsky, the anti-war activist. “Apathy and despair seem to be the order of the day [among the public]. This is a very atomized society. People are mostly concerned about themselves and their families.”

Joe Lauria: As Bakhmut Falls, US May Turn From Ukraine, Starting With Pipeline Story

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 3/8/23

On its face, The New York Times article yesterday, “Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say,” appears intended to exonerate both the U.S. and Ukrainian governments from any involvement in the destruction last September of the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany.  

The thrust of the Times article is that Ukrainians unaffiliated with the Kiev government were the ones who did it, according to the newspapers often cited, unnamed “U.S. officials.” 

But a closer examination of the piece reveals layers of nuance that do not dismiss that the Ukrainian government may have had something to do with the sabotage after all. 

The story quotes anonymous European officials who say a state had to be involved in the sophisticated underwater operation.  The Times goes out of it way to say more than once that that state was not the United States.  And while the second paragraph of the story says categorically that the state is not Ukraine either, the article then leaves the door open to possible Ukrainian government involvement:

“U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services. [Emphasis mine.]

The Times then makes clear what the consequences would be for the pro-Ukraine “coalition” that Washington has built in the combined West if there was Ukrainian government involvement.

“Officials said there were still enormous gaps in what U.S. spy agencies and their European partners knew about what transpired. But officials said it might constitute the first significant lead to emerge from several closely guarded investigations, the conclusions of which could have profound implications for the coalition supporting Ukraine.

Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.”

The Times further develops the theme that involvement by the Ukrainian government could destroy the international support for Kiev the United States has built, as well as the immense public backing for Ukraine that the U.S.-led information war has developed.

The Washington Post, which yesterday ran a similar story, reported that the Ukrainian government denied any involvement in the attack. “Ukraine absolutely did not participate in the attack on Nord Stream 2,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, the top adviser to Zelensky, questioning why his country would conduct an operation that “destabilizes the region and will divert attention from the war, which is categorically not beneficial to us.”

Distancing Begins

The newspaper here is allowing U.S. officials to begin distancing the U.S. from Ukraine, claiming Washington has limited influence on Kiev, despite years of evidence to the contrary. The piece appears to be preparing the Western public for an abrupt about face in Ukraine because of a litany of Ukrainian operations the U.S. says it opposed.  It is worth quoting the Times at length here:

“Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.

U.S. officials and intelligence agencies acknowledge that they have limited visibility into Ukrainian decision-making.

Despite Ukraine’s deep dependence on the United States for military, intelligence and diplomatic support, Ukrainian officials are not always transparent with their American counterparts about their military operations, especially those against Russian targets behind enemy lines. Those operations have frustrated U.S. officials, who believe that they have not measurably improved Ukraine’s position on the battlefield, but have risked alienating European allies and widening the war.

The operations that have unnerved the United States included a strike in early August on Russia’s Saki Air Base on the western coast of Crimea, a truck bombing in October that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, and drone strikes in December aimed at Russian military bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrainian border.

But there have been other acts of sabotage and violence of more ambiguous provenance that U.S. intelligence agencies have had a harder time attributing to Ukrainian security services.

One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist.

Kyiv denied any involvement but U.S. intelligence agencies eventually came to believe that the killing was authorized by what officials called “elements” of the Ukrainian government. In response to the finding, the Biden administration privately rebuked the Ukrainians and warned them against taking similar actions.

The explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines took place five weeks after Ms. Dugina’s killing. After the Nord Stream operation, there was hushed speculation — and worry — in Washington that parts of the Ukrainian government might have been involved in that operation as well.“

Of course all this is not to say that the United States did not conduct the Nord Stream sabotage just as Seymour Hersh has reported and yet still cynically blames Ukraine. (Hersh ridiculed the Times story in an email to Consortium News, which sought his comment.)

In directing attention towards the Ukrainian government’s possible culpability, U.S. intelligence gets a twofer: it deflects blame from the U.S. and prepares the public for the United States to justify abandoning Ukraine after all the U.S. has invested in its adventure to weaken Russia and topple its government through an economic, information, and proxy war, all of which have failed. 

A consensus is forming among Western leaders that the war against Russia in Ukraine is lost. Thus Washington would have to save face to pull off such a reversal of policy. Insinuating that Ukraine blew up the pipelines of its ally Germany could help the U.S. climb down from its strident position in support of Ukraine.

German Media Also Blames Ukraine on Same Day

On the same day of The New York Times story yesterday, a joint investigation by a major German newspaper, Die Zeit, and the ARD broadcast network, also reported that the pipeline attack was linked to Ukraine.  Die Zeit reports, according to a machine translation:

“The German investigative authorities have apparently made a breakthrough in solving the attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. After joint research by the ARD capital studio, the ARD political magazine Kontraste, SWR and ZEIT, it was possible to largely reconstruct how and when the explosive attack was prepared in the course of the investigation. Accordingly, traces lead in the direction of Ukraine.” 

Just like the Times report, Die Zeit also hedges its reporting, saying that “investigators have not yet found any evidence as to who ordered the destruction.” It might not be credible to immediately blame Ukraine. The sources for these articles may be employing a tactic to gradually prepare the public for more definitive blame later.  Die Zeit does provide a level of detail missing from the Times report, however.  The investigation

“managed to identify the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation. It is said to be a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman. Accordingly, the group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor, who are said to have transported the explosives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nationality of the perpetrators is apparently unclear. The culprits used professionally forged passports, which are said to have been used, among other things, to rent the boat.”

That both articles appeared on the same day in major U.S. and German publications (including The Washington Post) might indicate a degree of coordination between U.S. and German intelligence. On Friday, just four days before the articles appeared, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made an unusual trip from Berlin to Washington, where he immediately went to the White House for a meeting with President Joe Biden. 

No aides were present in the Oval Office with the two men. The meeting lasted just over an hour.  There was no press conference afterward and Scholz did not allow press on his plane. He returned to the airport after the meeting to fly back to Berlin. Clearly the two men did not want to discuss a sensitive matter over the phone or in a video-link. 

Western Leaders Already Say Ukraine Can’t Win 

The Times was fed this piece from U.S. intelligence as stories continue to be leaked showing Western leaders do not believe Ukraine can win the war, despite their public pronouncements, and that Kiev must cut its losses and seek a settlement with Russia. The Wall Street Journal reported 11 days ago: 

“The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say.

‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zelensky at an Élysée Palace dinner last month that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported.

According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.”

Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported.

Bakhmut: a Turning Point

A major turning point in the war that would force a huge decision for Washington may come if Russia can complete its military takeover of Bakhmut. 

The battle for the city in Donbass has been raging since last summer and has intensified in the past weeks.  Russia has nearly encircled the entire city trapping an estimated 10,000 Ukrainian troops inside. Ukraine had repeatedly played down the importance of Bakhmut, but nevertheless has continually sent in droves of soldiers to their death. Bakhmut is an important hub in Ukraine’s defense of Donbass. 

In an interview with CNN yesterday, Zelensky at last admitted Bakhmut’s vital importance to Ukraine. “We understand that after Bakhmut they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “That’s why our guys are standing there.” 

The fall of Bakhmut to Russia would be a major humiliation for Zelensky and Ukraine, as well as for the United States and Europe.  The U.S. would have a major choice to make:  continue to escalate the war with the danger that it could lead to a NATO-Russia confrontation that could go nuclear, or press Ukraine to absorb its losses and seek a settlement. 

Russia however would then be in a position to dictate terms:  possibly recognition of four eastern Ukrainian oblasts as part of Russia after referendums there voted to join the Russian Federation; Ukraine agreeing to be a neutral nation that will not join NATO; demilitarization of Ukraine and disbanding of neo-nazi units. 

Portraying Ukraine as an unworthy partner that blew up German pipelines might help minimize the humiliation to the West if this were to happen.  Then again neoconservatives in Washington and in European capitals might win out in the battle with realists and continue pressing the war, though the realists at this stage seem to have the upper hand.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of  Consortium News  and a former U.N. correspondent for  T he Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe , and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the  Sunday Times  of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for  The New York Times.   He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies: Winning & Losing the Economic War Over Ukraine

By Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies, CommonDreams, 2/21/23

With the Ukraine war now reaching its one-year mark on Feb. 24, the Russians have not achieved a military victory but neither has the West achieved its goals on the economic front. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and its European allies vowed to impose crippling sanctions that would bring Russia to its knees and force it to withdraw.

Western sanctions would erect a new Iron Curtain, hundreds of miles to the east of the old one, separating an isolated, defeated, bankrupt Russia from a reunited, triumphant and prosperous West. Not only has Russia withstood the economic assault, but the sanctions have boomeranged — hitting the very countries that imposed them.

Western sanctions on Russia reduced the global supply of oil and natural gas, but also pushed up prices. So, Russia profited from the higher prices, even as its export volume decreased. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that Russia’s economy only contracted by 2.2 percent in 2022, compared with the 8.5 percent contraction it had forecast, and it predicts that the Russian economy will actually grow by 0.3 percent in 2023.

On the other hand, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by 35 percent or more, despite $46 billion in economic aid from generous U.S. taxpayers, on top of $67 billion in military aid.

European economies are also taking a hit. After growing by 3.5 percent in 2022, the Euro area economy is expected to stagnate and grow only 0.7 percent in 2023, while the British economy is projected to actually contract by 0.6 percent. Germany was more dependent on imported Russian energy than other large European countries so, after growing a meager 1.9 percent in 2022, it is predicted to have negligible 0.1 percent growth in 2023. German industry is set to pay about 40 percent more for energy in 2023 than it did in 2021.

The United States is less directly impacted than Europe, but its growth shrank from 5.9 percent in 2021 to 2 percent in 2022, and is projected to keep shrinking, to 1.4 percent in 2023 and 1 percent in 2024. Meanwhile India, which has remained neutral while buying oil from Russia at a discounted price, is projected to maintain its 2022 growth rate of over 6 percent per year all through 2023 and 2024. China has also benefited from buying discounted Russian oil and from an overall trade increase with Russia of 30 percent in 2022. China’s economy is expected to grow at 5 percent this year.

Other oil and gas producers reaped windfall profits from the effects of the sanctions. Saudi Arabia’s GDP grew by 8.7 percent, the fastest of all large economies, while Western oil companies laughed all the way to the bank to deposit $200 billion in profits: ExxonMobil made $56 billion, an all-time record for an oil company, while Shell made $40 billion and Chevron and Total gained $36 billion each. BP made “only” $28 billion, as it closed down its operations in Russia, but it still doubled its 2021 profits.

As for natural gas, U.S. LNG (liquefied natural gas) suppliers like Cheniere and companies like Total that distribute the gas in Europe are replacing Europe’s supply of Russian natural gas with fracked gas from the United States, at about four times the prices U.S. customers pay, and with the dreadful climate impacts of fracking. A mild winter in Europe and a whopping $850 billion in European government subsidies to households and companies brought retail energy prices back down to 2021 levels, but only after they spiked five times higher over the summer of 2022.

While the war restored Europe’s subservience to U.S. hegemony in the short term, these real-world impacts of the war could have quite different results in the long term. French President Emmanuel Macron remarked,

“In today’s geopolitical context, among countries that support Ukraine, there are two categories being created in the gas market: those who are paying dearly and those who are selling at very high prices… The United States is a producer of cheap gas that they are selling at a high price… I don’t think that’s friendly.”

An even more unfriendly act was the sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines that brought Russian gas to Germany. Seymour Hersh reported that the pipelines were blown up by the United States, with the help of Norway — the two countries that have displaced Russia as Europe’s two largest natural gas suppliers. Coupled with the high price of U.S. fracked gas, this has fueled anger among the European public. In the long term, European leaders may well conclude that the region’s future lies in political and economic independence from countries that launch military attacks on it, and that would include the United States as well as Russia.

[Related: German Lawmaker Calls for Nord Stream Probe]

The other big winners of the war in Ukraine will of course be the weapons makers, dominated globally by the U.S. “big five”: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. Most of the weapons so far sent to Ukraine have come from existing stockpiles in the United States and NATO countries. Authorization to build even bigger new stockpiles flew through Congress in December, but the resulting contracts have not yet shown up in the arms firms’ sales figures or profit statements.

The Reed-Inhofe substitute amendment to the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act authorized “wartime” multi-year, no-bid contracts to “replenish” stocks of weapons sent to Ukraine, but the quantities of weapons to be procured outstrip the amounts shipped to Ukraine by up to 500-to-1. Former senior OMB official Marc Cancian commented, “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future.”

Since weapons have only just started rolling off production lines to build these stockpiles, the scale of war profits anticipated by the arms industry is best reflected, for now, in the 2022 increases in their stock prices: Lockheed Martin, up 37 percent; Northrop Grumman, up 41 percent; Raytheon, up 17 percent; and General Dynamics, up 19 percent.

While a few countries and companies have profited from the war, countries far from the scene of the conflict have been reeling from the economic fallout. Russia and Ukraine have been critical suppliers of wheat, corn, cooking oil and fertilizers to much of the world. The war and sanctions have caused shortages in all these commodities, as well as fuel to transport them, pushing global food prices to all-time highs.

So the other big losers in this war are people in the Global South who depend on imports of food and fertilizers from Russia and Ukraine simply to feed their families. Egypt and Turkey are the largest importers of Russian and Ukrainian wheat, while a dozen other highly vulnerable countries depend almost entirely on Russia and Ukraine for their wheat supply, from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Laos to Benin, Rwanda and Somalia. Fifteen African countries imported more than half their supply of wheat from Russia and Ukraine in 2020.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the U.N. and Turkey has eased the food crisis for some countries, but the agreement remains precarious. It must be renewed by the U.N. Security Council before it expires on March 18, but Western sanctions are still blocking Russian fertilizer exports, which are supposed to be exempt from sanctions under the grain initiative. U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told Agence France-Presse on Feb. 15 that freeing up Russian fertilizer exports is “of the highest priority.”

After a year of slaughter and destruction in Ukraine, we can declare that the economic winners of this war are: Saudi Arabia, ExxonMobil and its fellow oil giants, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

The losers are, first and foremost, the sacrificed people of Ukraine, on both sides of the front lines, all the soldiers who have lost their lives and families who have lost their loved ones. But also in the losing column are working and poor people everywhere, especially in the countries in the Global South that are most dependent on imported food and energy. Last but not least is the Earth, its atmosphere and its climate — all sacrificed to the God of War.

That is why, as the war enters its second year, there is a mounting global outcry for the parties to the conflict to find solutions. The words of Brazil’s President Lula da Silva reflect that growing sentiment. When pressured by President Joe Biden to send weapons to Ukraine, he said, “I don’t want to join this war, I want to end it.”

Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. Other books include, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2018); Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection (2016); Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (2013); Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart (1989), and with Jodie Evans, Stop the Next War Now (2005).

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist and a researcher with CODEPINK. He is the co-author, with Medea Benjamin, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Kyiv Independent: Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’

Photo by Nati on Pexels.com

By Igor Kossov, The Kyiv Independent, 3/5/23

KOSTIANTYNIVKA, Donetsk Oblast – Russia’s relentless assault on Bakhmut is sacrificing waves and waves of unprepared men being sent to their deaths.

But multiple defenders of this embattled city in Donetsk Oblast feel that they are in a similar boat, according to interviews with more than a dozen soldiers currently fighting in or around Bakhmut.

During their brief visits to the nearby town of Kostiantynivka, Ukrainian infantrymen told the Kyiv Independent of unprepared, poorly-trained battalions being thrown into the front line meat grinder to survive as best they could with little support from armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, drones and tactical information.

“We don’t get any support,” says a soldier named Serhiy, who has been fighting on the front lines in Bakhmut, sitting down with his friend, also named Serhiy, for a conversation in a small cafe in the Kostiantynivka market. Both men are in their 40s but one of them is a bit older than the other.

All soldiers in this article have been identified only by first name or callsign because they spoke to a publication without authorization by a press officer. 

They say that Russian artillery, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers are often allowed to strike Ukrainian positions for hours or days without being shut down by Ukrainian heavy weapons. Some complained of poor coordination and situational awareness, allowing this to happen or making it even worse.

Mortarmen spoke of extreme ammunition scarcity and having to use weapons dating back to World War II. Drones that are supposed to provide critical reconnaissance information are also scarce and are being lost at very high rates in some parts of the battlefield.

All this leads to terrifying casualties of both dead and wounded. “The battalion came in in the middle of December… between all the different platoons, there were 500 of us,” says Borys, a combat medic from Odesa Oblast fighting around Bakhmut. “A month ago, there were literally 150 of us.”

“When you go out to the position, it’s not even a 50/50 chance that you’ll come out of there (alive),” says the older Serhiy. “It’s more like 30/70.”

The Office of the President of Ukraine has claimed that Russia may have lost tens of thousands of men during the Battle of Bakhmut as of mid-January. Fighting has since only intensified, with Ukraine repeatedly claiming close to a thousand Russians dead in its daily updates. As Bakhmut is seeing the heaviest fighting, most of these casualties are likely in that area. Authorities haven’t revealed any information on Ukrainian losses in the Battle of Bakhmut.

Based on the soldiers’ testimonies, Ukrainian losses appear to be high as well.

Worse by the day

Bakhmut has been the site of very heavy fighting for months, but in the past few weeks, Russian attacks have intensified to an insane degree according to most interviewees. 

Multiple soldiers say that they are under massive assault from both Wagner Group mercenaries and regular Russian forces.

“There’s Wagner and there’s two brigades of airborne assault,” says Oleksandr, an infantryman from Sumy, who is part of a Ukrainian assault battalion in Bakhmut. “It’s rough. Constant waves, nonstop.”

Some have characterized the Russian attacks as huge waves of cannon fodder, while others say that the invaders’ tactics have evolved to keep up with the battlefield.

The older Serhiy says that the enemy likes to send a team of three or four expendable foot soldiers to attack and make the Ukrainians expose themselves by shooting at them. At that point, the more elite forces zero in on the defenders’ position.

Once they begin exchanging fire, the Ukrainians are struck with heavier weapons like Russian mortars and rockets from Grad multiple launch rocket systems or BMP infantry fighting vehicles and BTR armored personnel carriers with machine guns.

“They get the positions where we are, establish the coordinates, then they hit us from seven to nine kilometers out with mortars,” as well as from closer by with grenade launchers, says the older Serhiy. “They wait for the house to fall so we have to jump out. The building catches fire and then they try to finish us off.”

“Their birds come out and they chase us with fire,” adds the younger Serhiy, referring to Russian UAVs, like quadcopters and Orlan-10 fixed wing drones that spot distant heavy weapons. “They hit accurately.”

As Russians destroy more and more buildings, Ukrainians keep losing more places where they can reliably take cover. Borys the medic says people have been lost when their entrenched positions collapsed from heavy Russian fire, suffocating them.

“I’ll put it like this, we should get our people out because if we don’t take off, then in the next few weeks, it’s going to be bad,” says Oleksandr. A mortarman named Illia agrees that Bakhmut is “practically encircled.”

On March 3, a key bridge connecting Bakhmut with the village of Khromove on its edge was destroyed. This was a vital artery for evacuating civilians and transporting supplies from the town of Chasiv Yar. CNN reported and soldiers confirmed that the bridge was destroyed by a Russian attack.

The Institute for the Study of War on March 3 said that it appeared that Ukrainian forces were preparing the battlefield for an orderly withdrawal from Bakhmut, but followed up with a March 4 evaluation that Russian forces are unlikely to surround the city soon.

Military leadership denied that Ukrainian forces are pulling out and said that Ukrainian forces will only withdraw from the city if they have to.

No support

Some infantrymen told the Kyiv Independent that they often can’t rely on friendly artillery and mortar attacks against heavier Russian weapons.

“A mortar could be attacking us for three hours, we wait for support, there’s no support,” says the older Serhiy.

“They tell us hang on, you will get support in half an hour to an hour. We wait for seven hours, there’s no support,” the younger Serhiy chimes in.

Russian forces don’t seem to have this problem, the two comrades say. Russian shelling and attacks with vehicle-mounted weapons are abundant. When Ukrainian forces do get mortar support, the mortars often miss by a wide margin, some soldiers claim.

Ukrainian troops also say they acutely feel the lack of infantry vehicles on the front lines. With the exception of light Territorial Defense forces, the Ukrainian infantry is supposed to be mechanized, per military policy.

“I heard that infantry (units) need to be mechanized,” says the older Serhiy. “We, it seems, are following the old system, no one knows this. Where are our BMPs? Where is our artillery?”

Illia confirms that what is supposed to be mechanized infantry on paper, is often just infantry on foot in practice. He says Ukraine critically needs infantry vehicles, as the insufficiently few that it has are being expended in combat.

The two Serhiys questioned why they were seeing Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicles in the rear lines, while on the front they barely see them at all.

“Why are they here? They should be over there,” says the older Serhiy. “Here, it’s waiting for them (the Russians) to come. It could have been used to destroy them over there.”

No ammo

Illia, a mortarman with the 3017th unit of Ukraine’s National Guard offers a simple explanation for the lack of indirect support fire.

“When we get ammo, we get 10 shells per day, 120 millimeter shells,” Illia says. “That’s enough for one minute of work.”    

The mortars themselves date back to the years 1938-1943 and hitting something with them “takes a miracle.” But Ukrainian mortars still manage to hit their targets despite all these challenges, he says.”We need ammo, ammo, ammo,” Illia adds. “If we keep getting 10 shells, Bakhmut will quickly be surrounded.”

The younger Serhiy says the mortar shells are often old and useless, either failing to fly on target or failing to explode.

This is not the case everywhere. Mykola, a mortarman from Odesa Oblast, says that with Soviet ammo dwindling to critical levels, his unit now gets NATO mortar shells, even though their tubes are still from World War II.

But Mykola confirms that they don’t get enough ammo. Mortar shells were more abundant when Ukraine defended the town of Soledar but since the battle moved to Bakhmut itself, there were shortages, he says.

Poor communication

Some say the disorganization goes beyond ammunition shortages. 

The younger Serhiy says that logistics and signals are of very poor quality, adding that his battalion fails to make good use of its drone, which provides no help in the urban battlefield.

While units have access to radios to communicate, a lack of better communication equipment and specialists to operate it leads to some very difficult moments, the younger Serhiy adds.

A Russian BTR terrorized Ukrainian infantry around a part of Bakhmut for a month, without being shot by heavy weapons even once, even though it had been reported up the chain of command multiple times and multiple soldiers confirmed the casualties it was causing.

“That’s why positions get given up,” says the younger Serhiy. “They wouldn’t be given up if you could transmit that a BTR’s been riding around for a month (shooting people). If they took care of that BTR, the positions would have been secure.”

Multiple soldiers say there aren’t enough drones or people to use them properly, which is why they are often being lost, on top of being forced down by the Russians’ electronic countermeasures.

Callsign Lawyer, an aerial reconnaissance specialist based in Kostyantinivka who goes on missions closer to the front with a drone team, says drones are in fewer numbers in Bakhmut than they are outside it and attrition rates are higher there. Russians have many directional electronic weapons that can force close-flying drones to land.

Poor preparation

Multiple soldiers say Bakhmut troops are barely given enough time to learn to shoot a rifle – sometimes their training is just 2 weeks, before they’re dropped into the hottest parts of the most intense current battle of the war. They would have preferred for troops to get a minimum of two or three months of training before being deployed to such a hot spot.

“Two weeks’ live training and they’re sent here. You can’t do that,” says the older Serhiy. “Or it’s a person who once served in the army, how long ago was that? Obviously they forgot everything.”

“We were promised that we wouldn’t be sent to the zero line right away, that at first we’d be sent to the second or third line,” he continues. “And then we came here in the middle of the night and they immediately sent us to Bakhmut.”

“Obviously a person starts freaking out. To tell you the truth, if they didn’t fire at me first, I wouldn’t have fired a shot. But I have bullets coming within 50 centimeters of me, that’s when I started shooting.”

According to both soldiers named Serhiy, most brigades are insufficiently trained and lack the experience for an environment as brutal as Bakhmut. People are taken at night to a place they’d never seen before and the battle starts in the morning.

“This is why positions are abandoned, people are there for the first time,” says the younger Serhiy. “I went to a position three times and was given six people who hadn’t fought at all before. We had a few dead and wounded that had to be evacuated… Our people are not being protected.”

Oleksandr confirms that while some battalions fighting in Bakhmut are well-trained and ready, most of them aren’t and many were thrown in at night without much preparation. “Yes, that’s true, my battalion was not prepared,” he says. After five months without a single break from the fighting, only half of Oleksandr’s battalion is left, he says.

“They shouldn’t have rushed to throw everyone in there,” says the younger Serhiy. “Better to abandon those positions, who cares? It’s better to properly train people.”