Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 159

Daniel Larison: What if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons?

By Daniel Larison, Responsible Statecraft, 1/2/23

The nuclear disarmament of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine was one of the great success stories of the end of the Cold War, and it was one of the most significant victories for the cause of nonproliferation.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, these newly independent states had to manage the problem of the Soviet nuclear legacy left behind in their lands. Their disarmament was bound up with their status as independent, sovereign countries as they sought and needed to be integrated with the rest of the world.

The commitment of the non-Russian republics to disarm saved the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and upheld the principles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and their eventual disarmament is one of the underappreciated achievements of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.

While all three states were always willing to get rid of the nuclear weapons they had inherited from the Soviet Union, the paths that they took to disarmament were somewhat different with respect to the terms and timing of removing these weapons and their delivery systems from their territories. The Ukrainian case is the most involved of the three, and because of the war in Ukraine it is also the most salient today in current debates about disarmament and nonproliferation. It is therefore fortunate that there is a new book that can expertly guide us through this complicated and important history.

Mariana Budjeryn’s Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine is an excellent study of how the process of disarmament unfolded. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including some Ukrainian sources not tapped before, Budjeryn details in great depth the internal deliberations of the Ukrainian government and the intensive rounds of negotiations among the U.S., Russia and the three non-Russian republics.

The book should become a standard reference for anyone working on this issue and on nonproliferation more broadly, and I expect that it will.

Budjeryn shows how the Ukrainian government realized that they had no practical alternative to disarmament if they were going to be a full-fledged member of the international community, but they also believed that their country should not give up the weapons without receiving something in return. The Ukrainian government took a nuanced position on the question of disarmament, as they were committed to denuclearization but wanted, for reasons of sovereignty and leverage, to emphasize that they “owned” the weapons on their territory even if they couldn’t and wouldn’t use them.

This insistence on ownership created some tensions in relations with both the U.S. and Russia, and opened Ukraine up to untrue charges of “backsliding” on its commitments. But in the end, Ukraine was never in a position to keep the weapons and did not want to keep them.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is how the three non-Russian republics leveraged the U.S. desire to ratify and implement START into securing themselves places at the negotiating table. Russia would have preferred to keep all arms control discussions bilateral, but since START could not be implemented without the cooperation of the other states it became necessary to include them.

This created some interesting contradictions in Washington’s dealings with these states. On the one hand, Washington accepted that the three non-Russian republics were successors to the Soviet Union for the purposes of arms control under START, but it would not accept that they were successors to the Soviet Union’s status as a nuclear weapons state.

The U.S. bottom line was that there should be no additional nuclear weapons states emerging from the collapsed Soviet Union. The NPT was clear that there could only be five nuclear weapons states, and the U.S. was not going to compromise on this point. This meant that Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had to commit to joining the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states while simultaneously assisting the U.S. in eliminating part of the Soviet nuclear arsenal that they had in their countries.

It took some time to get all three across the finish line with the ratification of both treaties, but it is a credit to their governments and to the Bush and Clinton administrations that they kept this process moving forward to a successful conclusion.

If Ukraine’s disarmament is discussed today, it is often mentioned as a supposed cautionary tale of what other states shouldn’t do. Shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion began, John Ullyot and Thomas Grant declared Ukraine’s disarmament to have been a mistake: “If you abandon your nuclear program and entrust your security to formal guarantees and conventional deterrence, you gamble with your future. If you give up your nukes, you give up your national security ace-in-the-hole.”

Bill McGurn of The Wall Street Journal asked rhetorically, “If Ukraine hadn’t given up its nukes after the collapse of the Soviet Union, would Vladimir Putin have dared invade?” This line of thinking is misguided for several reasons.

As Budjeryn shows, there really was no serious option of keeping the inherited nuclear weapons without exposing Ukraine to international opprobrium and isolation, and the cost of building up an indigenous nuclear weapons program to maintain their own arsenal was prohibitive. She sums up the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s view at the time: “The negative repercussions of the nuclear option would far outweigh the positive.”

It is a mistake for people today to indulge the fantasy that Ukraine could have kept these weapons without suffering severe negative political and economic consequences, and it gives encouragement to would-be proliferators that our collective commitment to nonproliferation is waning.

Another problem with the counterfactual is that there is no guarantee that Ukraine would have been made more secure if it had paid the high price to retain these weapons. If anything, possession of what would have been the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal probably would have made Ukraine more of a target for interference and intervention, and the resources it would have had to pour into its nuclear weapons program would have come at the expense of its other defenses.

Budjeryn quotes Boris Tarasyuk, Ukraine’s then-foreign minister, as saying, “For Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons would have been to go against the entire world order.” When critics of disarmament argue that Ukraine should have somehow kept this arsenal, they are ignoring the enormous, immediate costs that Ukraine would have faced for doing so. Ukraine would not only have been putting its good relations with the U.S. and its allies at risk by keeping these weapons, but counterintuitively it would have also risked its own survival.

Budjeryn concludes: “If Ukraine had refused to join the NPT and kept a part of its nuclear inheritance, it would not be the same country it is today but with nuclear weapons. Indeed, it is doubtful whether it would be a country at all.”“Inheriting the Bomb” is essential reading for anyone interested in issues of disarmament and nonproliferation. It is exceptionally well-researched and well-written, and it deepens the reader’s understanding of the complex problems that were created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also reminds us of the importance of careful, patient diplomacy in managing multiple potential crises peacefully.

French ex-president Hollande confirms Minsk agreements were a ploy

Link here.

MK Bhadrakumar: Russia, Iran open a trade route heralding a bloc

by MK Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, 12/28/22

Consequent upon the Ukraine war, as the Sea of Azov becomes an inland sea for Russia, bracketed by the Crimean Peninsula and the mouth of the River Don, the sea and rail networks of the region extend to Iranian hubs on the Caspian Sea and ultimately lead to the Indian Ocean. A feature article in Bloomberg last week titled Russia and Iran Are Building a Trade Route That Defies Sanctions brings to centre stage this “sanctions-busting” project in the region.

Last month, Mehr News Agency reported that a first 12 million–ton shipment of Russian grain bound for India already transited Iran. The time has come for the inland trade corridor known as the International North-South Transport Corridor or the INSTC, which was launched in 2000 to connect the Baltic Sea with the Indian Ocean.

Ironically, the West’s “sanctions from hell” against Moscow roused the INSTC to life. Moscow is currently finalising the rules that would give ships from Iran the right of passage along inland waterways on the Volga and Don rivers!

The INSTC was conceived as a 7,200 km-long multimodal transportation network encompassing sea, road, and rail routes to move freight between Russia, Central Asia and the Caspian regions, Iran and India. At its core, this is a Russian-Iranian project who are stakeholders in countering the West’s weaponisation of sanctions.

But there is much more to their congruent interests. The Western sanctions motivate them to look for optimally developing their economies, and both Russia and Iran are pivoting to the Asian market, and in the process, a new trading bloc is forming that is completely free of Western presence. “The goal is to shield commercial links from Western interference and build new ones with the giant and fast–growing economies of Asia, ” Bloomberg noted.

Speaking to a group of senior Russian editors on Monday in Moscow, Foreign Minister Lavrov said, “Rest assured that in the near future, we will see a serious drop in the West’s ability to ‘steer’ the global economy the way it pleases. Whether it wants it or not, it will have to sit down and talk.” This is the crux of the matter — force the western powers to negotiate.

In the near term, INSTC’s takeoff will depend on some big projects. On Monday, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak spoke about an energy grid involving Russia, Iran and Central Asia and the South Asian region.

Novak said, “A constant influx of national currencies gives confidence to the market. At the beginning of the year, we faced a situation where it was not very clear what to do with these currencies. At the moment, they are traded on the stock exchange and ensure mutual trade turnover… If at the beginning of the year this flywheel swayed very hard, then in just a few months it became commonplace, and we began to trade steadily in national currencies.” De-dollarisation provides an underpinning of the INSTC. This is one thing.

Second, Novak made the disclosure that Russia and Iran may reach an agreement on swap supplies of oil and gas by the end of this year. As he put it, “If we talk about perspective, this includes exports of gas to Afghanistan, Pakistan — either using the infrastructure projects of Central Asia, or through a swap from the territory of Iran. That is, we will receive their gas in the south of the country [Iran], and in exchange we will supply gas to the north for Iranian consumers.”

Novak added, “We expect around 5 mln tons [of oil] per year and up to 10 bln cubic meters [of gas] at the first stage.” Pakistan is interested in sourcing Russian gas. Novak referred to Russia’s agreement with Azerbaijan, which is set to increase gas supplies, and “when they increase gas production, we will be able to discuss swaps.”

Pakistan has an inherent advantage, as all the participating countries of the INSTC except India also happen to be members of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. At some point early enough, the two designated Iranian ports in the INSTC — Bandar Abbas and Chabahar — will likely get linked to Gwadar Port, which is the gateway to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] leading to Xinjiang, and an important component of the BRI.

Clearly, the INSTC will spawn a web of international economic corridors. Iran is destined to become the hub of converging strategic interests with significant economic dimensions that will determine new alliances and impact the geopolitics of South and West Asia in the 21st century.

The US has been waging an information war to debunk the CPEC and fuel anti-China sentiments in the Pakistani public opinion. But it is a hopeless endeavour to malign the INSTC as a geopolitical project and impractical to threaten regional states from associating with what is an intercontinental trade route that is no single country’s franchise. After all, how to sanction a trading bloc?

The facts speak for themselves. The INSTC trials carried out to transport containers from Mumbai to St Petersburg using the trade corridor are able to reduce the delivery time of cargo from 45 days to 25 days at 30% cheaper rates than via Suez Canal, justifying the hopes for enhanced connectivity and utility of the corridor. Clearly, the trade potential of INSTC is immense.

However, Russia and Iran are determined to decouple the West. Lavrov said on Monday, “We can no longer rely on these people. Neither our people nor history will forgive us if we do… we too openly and naively put our faith in the assurances that we heard in the early 1990s about a common European home and the need for an international division of labour that would rely on the best performance and competitive advantages of each country, so that, by pulling our efforts together and saving resources, we would be able achieve the best and cost-effective results. All of that was empty talk.”

Iran and Eurasian Economic Union [comprising Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan] have reportedly finalised the terms for a free trade agreement involving more than 7,500 types of commodities. A market as big as $700 billion is opening up to Iranian products and services as of the next Iranian year [starting March 21, 2023].

The FTA encourages free movement of goods and services, and provides for common policies in the macroeconomic sphere, transport, industry and agriculture, energy, foreign trade and investment, customs, technical regulation, competition, and antitrust regulation. It will be a game changer for the INSTC, transforming the power dynamic in the vast Eurasian landmass and the Gulf region. The INSTC signifies a strategic axis between Russia and Iran built around a trade route heralding a non-western trading bloc of free-wheeling regional states with common interests in resisting western hegemony.

Gilbert Doctorow: The ‘New Free World’ (Excerpt)

Photo by Gladson Xavier on Pexels.com

By Gilbert Doctorow, Blog, 12/30/22

…Some Russian panelists [on talk shows] believe that for lack of a consistent policy on the war, the United States will cut its losses midway in 2023 and turn from Ukraine fully to the oncoming conflict with China over Taiwan.

All of which brings me to the remarkable analysis that a young specialist on China who is now invited regularly to the Solovyov show has been saying. His stand-out remark last night which I have used as the title for this essay is that 2022 has marked the emergence of a ‘New Free World,’ anchored by Russia and China, that has resources exceeding those of the U.S.-led Collective West. At these words, which clearly were delivered without any sense of irony or jest, John Foster Dulles must be turning over in his grave.

This China analyst insists that the most recent 20th Party Congress in China which gave President Xi his third term has installed around him known top ranking Party members who are ‘loyal’ to Russia and who despise America. There is every expectation that starting in 2023 there will be the approval and initial implementation of major Chinese investment projects in Russia, marking a significant departure from the economic relations of these two powers till now.

This same analyst says that with respect to China’s officially disavowing any intention to enter into alliances or to form military blocs, the reality is that the relationship with Russia very closely resembles an alliance with a military dimension. How else can one understand the recent joint Chinese-Russian naval drills in the South China Sea or the still earlier joint air force drills over the Sea of Japan. This, at the very moment when the United States and its allies denounce Russia as a military aggressor.

He insists that without Chinese backing from the very beginning, Russia would never have dared to venture upon the SMO [this is consistent with what Ray McGovern has been saying since February of 2022. – NB]. Chinese diplomatic support has been critically important in the UN Security Council. And China stepped up its import of Russian oil by 10% in the past year despite its overall reduced consumption due to the impact of Covid lockdowns on its manufacturing industry. The net result is that China was the single largest consumer of Russian oil, coal and other strategic commodities in 2022.

He notes that on the very day when Zelensky was in Washington, Xi received Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former President and present day close assistant to Putin. Their meeting, without masks and with warm handshakes for photo opportunities at the outset lasted well beyond the officially scheduled 45 minutes into several hours. That was clearly meant to be a signal to Washington and to the world. Moreover, today or tomorrow Presidents Putin and Xi are expected to have a lengthy video tête-à tête which will focus on coordinating actions in response to Washington’s future actions directed at either the Ukraine war or the Taiwan conflict. We do not have to wait long to see the emergence of a two front challenge to American global domination.

Meanwhile other panelists on the Solovyov show pointed to further proofs that the American century is over. As we know, China filed a suit in the WTO claiming that the United States has grossly violated WTO rules by imposing its embargo on export of state of the art semiconductors and related technologies to China. We were told last night that 126 members of the WTO have supported the Chinese position. What the Kremlin now expects is for the U.S. to effectively shut down the WTO, removing one of the important global institutions by which it has enforced its ‘rules-based order.’

I end this report by paying tribute to Charles Dickens for coining the expression which sums up the calendar year 2022 for the Russian Federation: ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’

Sarah Lindemann-Komarova: 2022 Wrap-Up Siberia

By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Echo of Siberia Blog, 12/30/22

2022, my mind goes immediately to Albert Brooks in his film “Lost in America. The scene where he finds out his wife gambled away their nest egg, “We are in hell, we have entered hell, when?” Not at all the image I expected to be reflecting on in Siberia as COVID barriers began to lift around the world. It has been dizzying year of adjustment. The “when” question almost doesn’t matter anymore, whether it was 2014, February 24 2022, December 25, 1991, NATO expanding, NATO bombing of Syria or Libya, Russiagate etc  We are where we are and it is as bad as it can get. 30 years after we were promised a peace dividend, how did we get here from there?

To start looking for answers, I decided to read my journals from 1992 when I first moved here. I was part of the first wave Americans who got caught up in the excitement of possibilities for Russia, for America, for ourselves. The journal is heartbreaking. Initially because there is so much misery and confusion, but in the context of today, that heartbreak comes mostly from being reminded of the opportunity America missed.

Whenever American friends ask me to explain Putin and his on-going support from the Russian people (going from 31% as Yeltsin’s Prime Minister in August 1999 to 81% this December), I tell them about the 90’s. There is a passage in my journal on a train to Krasnoyarsk, “11PM, still light as villages roll by. All across Russia tonight I know they speak of only one thing; how hard life is”. 

There are details defining hard on every page:

A University Professor apologizes for not inviting me to dinner because she hasn’t been paid for 6 weeks;

Being stuck in Tomsk because the price of a bus ticket was going up and the ticket machine can’t print anything higher than 99 r.;

A school English teacher kills herself because she is afraid if she asks for psychological support she will lose her job;

A student arrives for a visit saying he was going to buy me a candy bar but the woman at the kiosk would not sell him one because (he waves his rubles in the air) “this is old money, a candy bar costs new money”;

A group of retired gold miners in a village outside Chita ask a dozen different ways my impression of their quality of life compared to American pensioners. After each question they held their breath waiting for the answer. Like a second visit to the doctor after some tests have been done or stumbling across incontrovertible evidence that your 30 year marriage was a sham.;

When Ruslan Khasbulatov was President of the Russian Parliament he came to Novosibirsk. I was told that preparation by local government officials consisted mostly of deciding whether they should stuff goods in the stores and do repairs like they used to do when leaders came, or if this was no longer appropriate? Should things look good or bad?;

An elderly couple, retired engineers who built the BAM, in one of the largest apartments on the best street in Tomsk, apologize for having us eat dinner out of the frying pan because there is so rarely water they try to cut down on dishes;

Eva, one of my students wrote, “This summer the salary of a leading scientist from the Institute of Thermophysics was 900 rubles a month. What could he buy? 4 kilograms of butter for 800 rubles or maybe 3 kilograms of sour cream for 850 rubles. I must mention that this situation really killed a lot of talented scientists who couldn’t stand the humiliating conditions. One Department at the Inst. buried three gifted scientists in three months.

While all the misery described above was happening, the US was having a love affair with Russia. It was the worst of times for Russians but the best of times for Americans. Russia was THE place to be for ambitious and adventurous Americans. The world of opportunity, the place where frogs came to become princes/princesses. In Moscow it was a legendary non-stop party.  In Siberia it was quieter but still Americans could live above their paygrade and date out of their league and do pretty much anything they were or were not qualified to do.

One friend left a dead-end job at a video store in Minneapolis and opened the first chain of pizza parlors in Siberia, another came fresh from College and saved the Novosibirsk chocolate factory. When I arrived, I only had a BA and no idea how to teach English and yet I was teaching at one of the top universities in Russia. 

Within a couple of months, I realized that as long as I called it a “Master Class in English”, I could talk about anything. My curriculum expanded to include a mock democracy, a gender lecture series with the only feminist in the region, and a seminar with a male American colleague, “Capitalism, Business, Women, and Sex in America”.  Every time I pitched a new idea a look of dread came over Anatoli, the Vice Dean, but he never said “no”. With what became known as the ”sex lecture”, he asked that I have dinner with Galina the Department Head to discuss. Two toasts in, I made my real case to Galina that included raising awareness about AIDS and she signed off saying, “This must be done”. I was surrounded by heroes who trusted me. All that opportunity squandered.   

In 92 Abram Illich, a mathematician who lost his position at the University for publishing a samizdat, told me promoting a red scare or the potential for fascism is beneficial to everyone in power because it provides the classic heist diversion while all the countries prized assets were stolen. He said I didn’t need to be afraid of a rise in fascism because “fascism requires you to believe in something deeply and no one here believes strongly in anything”. All that opportunity lost.

There is a quote from a Novosibirsk Mathematician’s wife, “Now it’s all treacherous, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” And that summarizes 2022 in Siberia. And while there are some similarities to 92, most people still don’t believe in anything deeply, the challenges people faced this year are a different kind of hard. They were forced to come to terms with their relationship to their country, what it means to be Russian or to live in Russia. That meant sometimes making hard choices, do I go or stay, do I serve or not? That process is finally bringing some clarity and that is no small accomplishment on the 30th anniversary of this “transition”.

For those who decided to stay, the vast majority of people in Siberia, it was a year of finding ways to adapt to a new reality every day. For many that included navigating, or not, relationships with friends and relatives in Ukraine and in the West. For some it means suffering the loss of a child, husband, brother or friend. These loses are well documented in local newspapers and by the fresh flag covered graves, Special Forces, Intelligence Services…

Everyone I met in 1992 was shell shocked by the changes and were totally unequipped to respond. That is not what is happening today. Once it was clear that this wasn’t going to end in a month or two, an impressive number of people focused on moving forward. Some wavered at first but decided to stay and make Russia a country worth fighting for. They have the skills and energy to take advantage of opportunities that have appeared because of sanctions. People are networking and building community in ways large and small. My neighbor, who moved to the Village from Moscow two years ago, is expanding her small hotel and her on-line platform while her husband commutes back and forth to an IT job. They spent yesterday with their 12 year old son dressed as Santa Claus, Snow Girl, and Helper visiting every store and municipal institution delivering gifts to all the workers. The ugly barrier that sometimes exists between “old” and “new” people in the Village is crumbling, we are all in this together.

And so, a new year begins. I have never greeted a new year with such trepidation and sadness for the opportunities lost. I know what was possible, I lived the dream that was born when the Cold War first ended. My journal includes a description of the 1992 US Embassy 4th of July party, seeing Gorbachev, meeting Strauss. I was invited by a young foreign service officer. We met when the Vice Rector called me out of class to meet someone from the US Embassy. He wanted to prove to him that an American could live here so that more American teachers would come. That Embassy guy is now one of Biden’s top NSC advisors on Russia. Maybe he knows how we got here from there?

Robert Freeman: We’ve Reached Peak Zelensky. Now What?

Volodymyr Zelensky in Servant of the People

By Robert Freeman, CommonDreams, 12/29/22

When the president of the poorest, most corrupt nation in Europe is feted with multiple standing ovations by the combined Houses of Congress, and his name invokedin the same breath as Winston Churchill, you know we’ve reached Peak Zelensky.

It’s a farcical, almost psychotic over-promotion, probably surpassed only by the media’s shameful, hyperbolic railroading of the country into war with Iraq, in 2003. Paraphrasing Gertrude from Hamlet, “Methinks the media doth hype too much.”

Finally, the neo-cons who have led the U.S. into the serial debacles of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine, costing the country tens of trillions of dollars and even greater amounts of destroyed reputational capital, will claim their customary immunity from any accountability for their savage failures and cheerily move on to their next calamity.

Let’s remember that before ascending to his country’s presidency, Volodymyr Zelensky’s greatest claim to fame was that he could play the piano with his penis. I’m not joking. And he ran on a platform to unite his country for peace, and for making amends with Russia. Again, I’m not joking.

Now, he’s Europe’s George Washington, FDR, and Douglas MacArthur all rolled into one and before whom the mighty and powerful genuflect.

Please. The only place to go from here is down. And, that is surely coming. Soon.

Consider some inconvenient facts that the fawning media, which is essentially the public relations arm of the weapons industry, doesn’t want you to know.

The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen,recently let slip that the Ukrainian army has lost more than 100,000 troops in the eight months since the beginning of the war. Over the nine-year span of the Vietnam War, the U.S. with a population six times that of Ukraine, lost a total of 58,220 men.

In other words, on a per day, per capita basis, Ukraine is losing soldiers at a rate 141 TIMES that of U.S. losses in Vietnam. The U.S. lost the public on Vietnam when middle class white boys began coming home in body bags. Does anybody with half a brain believe such losses in Ukraine are sustainable? Does anybody have another plan to avert such slaughter?

Von der Leyen is among the shrewdest public figures in the world. What she is doing is laying the predicate for Western withdrawal from Ukraine and ending the War. If you look at the facts on the ground, not the boosterish propaganda ladled out by the media, you can understand why.

In a matter of weeks, Russia, with its hypersonic missiles, destroyed half of Ukraine’s electrical power infrastructure. This, as winter is coming on. It can just as easily take out the other half, effectively bombing Ukraine back into the Stone Age. Is that what anybody wants?

The startling, indeed, terrifying part of this is that neither Ukraine nor the West have any defense against these hypersonic missiles. They travel so fast, and on variable trajectories, they cannot be shot down, even by the most advanced Western systems. They represent one of the greatest asymmetries in deliverable destructive power in the history of warfare, probably dwarfed only by the U.S.’s possession of atomic bombs at the end of World War II.

Again, there is no effective defense against them. The Russians have them. The Ukrainians don’t. Game over. Can you understand why leaders in the West are beginning to wake up?

On the conventional front, the Ukrainians are having trouble securing even conventional weapons to defend themselves. U.S. arms suppliers are working around the clock to replace their own stocks and the stocks that European countries have given to Ukraine. But the backlog is running into years. A recent headline from The Wall Street Journal stated, “Europe is Rushing Arms to Ukraine but Running Out of Ammo.”

Finally, the U.S. has committed $112 billion to Ukraine. That includes $45 billion just slipped into the omnibus funding bill against the likelihood that a Republican-controlled House will cut such funding, almost certainly substantially.

That’s more than $10 billion per month since the war started in February. And that doesn’t even count the subsidies, both material and financial, from the EU which amount to billions of dollars more per month.

Without such subsidies, Zelensky would not have lasted a month in the war. How many hours do you think he is going to last once that flow dries up? And it surely is.

The Europeans are coming to realize that their continent is being de-industrialized, literally moved backwards an entire epoch in economic terms, because of their willingness to serve as the doormat for the U.S.’ imperial war against Russia. Not even they, with their supine fealty to U.S. domination, are willing to commit collective economic suicide on behalf of the U.S.

France’s Macron and Germany’s Scholz are suggesting that accommodations to Russian interests must be devised in order to bring about a peaceful settlement of the war.

Macron suggested in a television address to his nation that an antagonized Russia is not in the security interests of Europe. “We need to prepare what we are ready to do…to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.”

Scholz was even more specific. In an article in Foreign Affairs he declared, “We have to go back to the agreements which we had in the last decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe.”

This is a direct repudiation of the U.S.’s maximalist position before the start of the War, that Russia’s security needs were of no interest to a marauding NATO.

Even U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is now mooting the idea that territorial concessions must be on the table. In a Wall Street Journal article, Blinken stated that, “Our focus is…to take back territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th.”

Notice, that this is a significant climb down from the U.S.’ earlier position that all Russian gains since 2014, including Crimea, must be reversed before negotiations could begin. And this is just Blinken’s opening hand. More concessions are sure to follow as Russian gains become greater and their likelihood of being reversed, lesser.

Put these four things together: staggering, unsustainable losses of soldiers; terrifying, indefensible asymmetries of destructive power; inability to supply oneself with even conventional defensive weapons; and categorically reduced support from your most important backers.

Does that sound like the formula for winning a war? It is not. It’s the formula for losing the war, which is why von der Leyen, Macron, Scholz, and Blinken are now laying pipe for getting out. The tide is going out under Zelensky. He will soon be remembered as a Trivial Pursuits question, or an answer on Jeopardy: “The only modern head of state known to be able to play the piano with his penis.” Ding. “Contestant #3?” “Who is Volodymyr Zelensky?”

A peace will soon be declared. Russia will keep the Donbas and Crimea in recognition of the facts on the ground. Both sides will be better off for this. The Donbas is ethnically, linguistically, religiously, and culturally Russian, which is why it voted overwhelmingly for assimilation into Russia. Besides, if Kiev loved them so much, it wouldn’t have murdered 14,000 of them over the past eight years and resumed massive shelling in early February of this year, before the Russian invasion.

Ukraine will foreswear any future affiliation with NATO. This is Putin’s highest priority and what he asked for–and was denied–in his request to the U.S. and NATO last December, before the invasion was launched. If Russia begins its much-feared winter offensive, as many expect, Ukrainian generals will dispatch Zelensky in a coup rather than send their few remaining soldiers to certain annihilation.

U.S. grain and pharma conglomerates will buy up Ukrainian farmland—some of the best in the world—for pennies on the dollar. This is the standard MO of U.S. multinational vultures coming in after the kill to pick apart the carcasses. U.S. weapons makers will look for and help provoke the next feeding frenzy, much as they materialized Ukraine barely a year after the humiliating U.S. defeat in Afghanistan derailed their last gravy train.

Russia and China, driven together by U.S. bullying, will continue to constellate the nations of the Global South into an anti-Western bloc committed to collaborative, mutually profitable, peaceful development. The U.S. and its closest allies will cower behind the walls they’ve constructed of the ever-shrinking share of the global economy that they can manage to hold as their own.

Ukraine will prove a turning point in the dismantling of U.S. hegemony over global affairs that it has enjoyed—and, let’s be honest, often abused–since 1945. The U.S. public is not psychically prepared for such a come down. But that is the cost of living in the fantasy world that the media lavishes up to keep that self-same public ignorant, fearful, confused, entertained, and distracted.

Finally, the neo-cons who have led the U.S. into the serial debacles of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine, costing the country tens of trillions of dollars and even greater amounts of destroyed reputational capital, will claim their customary immunity from any accountability for their savage failures and cheerily move on to their next calamity. We need to be on the lookout for their next gambit to pillage the treasury and advance their own private interests above those of the nation. It will surely come.

Geoffrey Roberts: ‘Now or Never’: The Immediate Origins of Putin’s Preventative War on Ukraine

By Prof. Geoffrey Roberts, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Volume 22, Issue 2

Geoffrey Roberts is an historian, biographer, and political commentator. A renowned specialist in Russian and Soviet foreign and military policy and an expert on Stalin and the Second World War, his books have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Estonian, Greek, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Historians like to tell two sorts of stories about the origins of wars. Firstly, the story of how the situation that made a war possible, probable or even inevitable, came about, a narrative that will typically include an account of relevant background conditions, analysis of important preceding events, and an exploration of long-term political, economic, military and ideational trends.

Secondly, the story of the decision-making process that actually led to war. Wars happen for a reason or, rather, a series of reasons. Historians aim to reconstruct the reasoning that leads to war, usually in the form of a chronologically-driven narrative. The circumstance and influences impacting on the thinking and motivations of critical actors will be integral to the explanatory content of the narrative – the explanation of why someone or some people took decisions that resulted in war.2

Tudor history specialist, Geoffrey Elton, described this narrative duality as the search for both the situational and the direct causes of historical events. Situational causes are the circumstances and conditions that make an event possible, while direct causes are the human actions that make things happen. Crucially, humans are the cause of all their own actions, not least in precipitating war. Such actions may be irrational, incoherent or overly emotional, but they remain intelligible and re-presentable in an explanatory narrative of what happened and why.3

This narrative approach to war origins is empirically driven. It relies on the existence and availability of evidence that enables us to figure out and demonstrate agent motivations and calculations. That is why historians prefer to study the origins of a war a relatively long time after the event – when there is more evidence, particularly that of a confidential character. The passage of time also facilitates identification of the most significant antecedent events in the run-up to war.

This essay is devoted to the when and why of President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022. As far as possible, it refrains from speculation and relies almost entirely on the record of Putin’s public pronouncements during the immediate prewar crisis. That public record is currently the best available evidence of his motivations and calculations. What this evidence shows is that Putin went to war to prevent Ukraine from becoming an ever-stronger and threatening NATO bridgehead on Russia’s borders.

At the heart of Putin’s preventative war thinking was an imagined future in which Russia would confront an existential threat. The longer war was delayed, he argued in February 2022, the greater would be the danger and the more costly a future conflict between Russia, Ukraine, and the West. Better to go to war now, before NATO’s Ukrainian bridgehead on Russia’s borders became an imminent rather than a potential existential threat – a statement that he repeated during the course of the war.

Such rhetoric and reasoning has characterized preventative war decision-making throughout the ages. “It’s now or never,” exclaimed Kaiser Wilhelm II in July 1914 when he urged Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia before it became too powerful, thus setting in motion an escalatory sequence that resulted in a cataclysmic war involving all Europe’s great powers.4

“The world will hold its breath,” Hitler predicted when he launched his crusade to liquidate the strategic-ideological threat of the judeo-bolshevik Soviet regime. Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser was a new Hitler claimed the British and French when they seized control of the Suez Canal in 1956, while President Eisenhower’s domino theory had the communists’ advance in Vietnam threatening all of South East Asia.

And according to President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had to be stopped before he acquired deliverable weapons of mass destruction and became too dangerous to be attacked and removed from power.

Pre-emptive action to preclude an even bloodier conflict in the future is a standard justification for aggressive war, one that is often accompanied by illusions of quick and easy victory. To say that Putin believed he had been backed into a corner by Ukraine and the West is not to endorse his perceptions and assessments of the situation. But greater understanding of Putin’s calculations may help clarify how this calamity came about, how it could have been prevented, and how an even greater future catastrophe might be averted.

There are many theories and interpretations of the reasoning behind Putin’s decision for war with Ukraine. Some see Putin’s actions as driven by an underlying geo-ideological ambition, such as the restoration of the Soviet/Tsarist empire or Orthodox Russia’s pursuit of a civilizational struggle with a decadent West. Others view it is part of a persistent pattern of centuries-long Russian aggression, authoritarianism and expansionism. More parochial explanations include the idea that war served to shore up Putin’s domestic regime and popularity. Or perhaps, as some argue, it was the decision of an isolated, egoistical dictator, surrounded by fawning courtiers, who believed Russia’s invasion would be welcomed by his Ukrainian blood-brothers.

The limitation of all these explanations is their lack of definite documentary evidence. They attribute reasons for Putin’s actions for which there is no proof except a perceived pattern of events that is deemed to fit the assumed motivation. Maybe in decades to come more probative evidence will emerge from the Russian archives or other confidential sources. But for the moment the best guide we have to what was going on in Putin’s mind when he made his decisions for war is twofold: what he said and what he did.

Putin’s own explanations of his actions cannot be accepted at face value: what he said at various meetings and press conferences in the run-up to the invasion were part and parcel of his propaganda battle with Ukraine and NATO. And his rhetoric may well have masked a pre-existing intention and determination to go to war for motives other than those he stated.

But historical experience shows that while politicians do lie and dissemble – and Putin is no exception – what they say publicly invariably reflects a core of authentic belief. Their rhetoric reflects and constructs their version of reality, warped though it may be. What appears to outside observers as false, tendentious, exaggerated or irrational claims may make complete sense to the actors themselves.

While this essay does not present a long-term, situational narrative of the war’s origins, it is worth noting that Putin has his own version of that history. According to him, the war’s origins lie in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 and Lenin’s subsequent decision to include Russian territory within the administrative boundaries of the newly created Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic that became part of the USSR in 1922 – a sub-state structure that, claims Putin, incubated a virulent anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism. As a man of the multi-ethnic borderlands himself, Stalin saw that nationalist danger but did nothing to de-nationalise the structure of the Soviet constitution, while Khrushchev compounded the problem by transferring Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. When the USSR collapsed in 1991 no thought was given to the millions of Russians stranded in Ukraine as a result of a series of arbitrary decisions by the Bolsheviks and their post-communist successors. Post-Soviet Russia was prepared to live with this unsatisfactory situation but Moscow’s efforts at peaceful co-existence were thwarted by the machinations of Ukrainian nationalists and their western backers, notably the anti-Russia coup in Kyiv in 2014 and NATO’s subsequent military build-up of Ukraine.5

Putin’s long-term story of the origins of the Russia-Ukraine crisis was very much to the fore as he pondered and plotted to liquidate what he saw as the lethal threat of a NAT0-backed nationalist Ukraine that would attempt to retake by force its lost territories in Crimea and the Donbass.

The Russians’ military planning and preparation for the war remains opaque but they must have been gaming war with Ukraine over the Donbass since 2014 when separatist rebels in that region broke away from the Kyiv regime. Putin’s final decision to go to war seems to have been last-minute but the groundwork for military action would have been initiated many months previously.

On the eve of the invasion, many astute and well-informed commentators convinced themselves that the supposedly realistic and pragmatic Putin would not risk such an attack.

What they missed was the crystallisation of Putin’s apocalyptic vision of a future, nuclear-armed Ukraine, embedded in NATO and intent on provoking a Russian-Western war. Arguably, it was that long-term nuclear danger that finally prompted Putin to go to war.

Finish reading this essay here.

Naked Capitalism: Michael Hudson Discusses the Future of Europe and Global Restructuring

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Naked Capitalism, 12/16/22

Yves here. Michael Hudson was interviewed Thursday on MEGA, a German news radio program, focusing on the economic impact of the war with Russia on major players, particularly Europe. We have a translated transcript below and will embed the YouTube version (in German) which is expected to be posted early next week.* * *

(1.) You made some predictions in our last interview for “Four” magazine which became true.

You talked about crisis for German companies in the production of fertilizer. This just hit the headlines weeks after our interview.

You also said: “What you characterize as “blocking Nord Stream 2” is really a Buy-American policy.” This now also became more than clear after the destroyed Nord Stream pipelines.

Could you comment that?

MH: U.S. foreign policy has long concentrated on control of the international oil trade. This trade is a leading contributor to the U.S. balance of payments, and its control gives U.S. diplomats the ability to impose a chokehold on other countries.

Oil is the key supplier of energy, and the rise in labor productivity and GDP for the leading economies tends to reflect the rise in energy use per worker. Oil and gas are not only for burning for energy, but are also a basic chemical input for fertilizers, and hence for agricultural productivity, as well as for much plastic and other chemical production. 

So U.S. strategists recognize that cutting countries off from oil and its derivatives will stifle their industry and agriculture. The ability to impose such sanctions enables the U.S. to make countries dependent on compliance with U.S. policy so as not to be “excommunicated” from the oil trade. 

U.S. diplomats have been telling Europe for many years not to rely on Russian oil and gas. The aim is twofold: to deprive Russia of its major trade surplus, and to capture the vast European market for U.S. oil producers. U.S. diplomats convinced German leaders not to approve the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and finally used the excuse of the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine to act unilaterally to arrange the destruction of both Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

(2.) For our audience, our listeners: In your new book “The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism”

You state that the world economy is now fracturing between two parts, the United States and Europe is the dollarized part.

And this Western neoliberal unit is driving Eurasia and most of the Global South into a separate group. You just stated this in an interview from November.

The Rentier Economy is a Free Lunch

Could you explain this for our outlet?

MH: The split is not only geographic but above all reflects the conflict between Western neoliberalism and the traditional logic of industrial capitalism. The West has deindustrialized its economies by replacing industrial capitalism with finance capitalism, initially in an attempt to keep its wages down by moving abroad to employ foreign labor, and then to try and establish monopoly privileges and captive markets or arms (and now oil) and high-technology essentials, becoming rentier economies.

 A century ago, industrial capitalism was expected to evolve into industrial socialism, with governments providing subsidized basic infrastructure services (such as health care, education, communication, research and development) to minimize their cost of living and doing business. That is how the United States, Germany and other countries built up their industrial power, and it also is how China and other Eurasian countries have done so more recently. …

Read full interview here.

Transcript of Vladimir Putin’s Press Conference on 12/22/22

Kremlin website, 12/22/22

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Please.

Yulia Bubnova: Good afternoon.

TASS Agency, Yulia Bubnova.

To be honest, I would like to start with some summing up. Clearly, it was not the easiest year, and not the most ordinary, but what are its main results for you?

What have we achieved, perhaps, what did we fail to achieve, and how do you see our future, where are we going and where should we arrive?

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: There are no ideal situations. Ideal situations only happen in plans, on paper, and you always want something more. But in general, I think that Russia made it through the year quite confidently. We have no concerns that the current situation will prevent us from implementing our plans for the future, including for 2023.

Let me repeat once again, we believe – I want to stress this – that everything that is happening, and everything connected with the special military operation, is an absolutely forced and necessary measure. We should be grateful to our military, our troops, officers, our soldiers for what they are doing for Russia, defending its interests, sovereignty and, above all, protecting our people. They act with dignity and achieve what the country needs.

As for the economy, as you know, despite the collapses, devastation and catastrophe predicted for us in the economic sphere, nothing like that is happening. Moreover, Russia is performing much better than many G20 countries, and doing so confidently. This applies to the main macroeconomic indicators and the GDP. Yes, there has been a small drop. I said it quite recently: 2.9 percent, according to our and international experts. Now they are giving another figure, even smaller: 2.5.

The unemployment rate is a key indicator worldwide. In Russia, it is below the pre-pandemic period: let me remind you, then it was 4.7 percent, and now it is at 3.8–3.9 percent. That is, the labour market is stable.

Public finances are stable, there are no alarming details here either. This result did not just fall into our laps. It is the result of the work of the Government, regional teams, businesses, and sentiment in society, which is showing unity and a desire to work together to achieve common goals.

Therefore, in general, we feel confident, and I have no doubt that every goal we set will be achieved.

Konstantin Panyushkin: Good afternoon.

Konstantin Panyushkin, Channel One.

In the wake of the State Council, if you will. How would you personally assess the results of the implementation of youth policy this year, considering the dignified way Russian youth have conducted themselves since February 24?

Vladimir Putin: You know, we always talk about this – well, not us, but look at our classical literature: it is always about fathers and children, it is always a question of young people in any period of the country’s development – and, indeed, I think the same is happening all over the world – young people are constantly accused of being superficial, unworthy of something, that everything was better before.

On the contrary, I believe that young people are always better. Remember the hardest trials at all times in our history. Everyone said, “No, that was then, now they could not do it.” But what can they not do? Young people can do everything. There are different types in all age groups. But in general, our young people show, primarily, a striving for progress, they demonstrate a high level of education, training, understanding of the ongoing processes in the world, in society, and an understanding of where to go, what has true value, what you need to rely on.

I am talking about our history, love for the homeland, for our Fatherland. This is especially pronounced during times of trial.

Recall our difficult events in the North Caucasus. People did not think much of our youth. But recall the paratroopers from Pskov – this is an example of what young people can do, how heroically they can behave. And now look at how young people are fighting and how our youth are responding to what is happening in the zone of the special military operation, how they are supporting our fighters.

I went to the Manezh today, and I was close to tears when I saw how young people in their teens and a little older were collecting things, writing letters. There were also many volunteers that were young as well.

Yes, people are different. There are people who got into their cars and silently drove away, yes. But on the whole, I want to repeat that Russia’s young people – and I can say this with confidence – are demonstrating love for their land, a desire to fight for it and move forward individually and as a country.

Andrei Kolesnikov: Good afternoon.

Kommersant newspaper.

Mr President, you did not give your Address to the Federal Assembly this year and, apparently, there will not be one. Like many others, I have written about this, noting that the issue of the address flared up in several formats recently, for instance, at the meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects. It seems, yesterday it was also mentioned at the expanded meeting of the Defence Ministry Board.

Could you explain why this is the case this year? And what does the future hold for your address?

Vladimir Putin: I think there was no address in 2017, either. I am referring to the calendar year. But there should be.

What is the problem? The problem is these are fast-moving events, the situation is developing very rapidly. Therefore, it was very difficult – probably not very, but rather difficult to pin down results at a specific moment and specific plans for the near future. We will do that early next year, without a doubt.

But the point of the address lies in what I have just said. It has been reflected in my statements one way or another. It was impossible not to talk about it. So, frankly, it was rather difficult for me and the Executive Office to squeeze this into a formal address without a lot of repetition, and that is it. In other words, I have already spoken about key things in one way or another, so there was not much desire to collect it all again and repeat what I had already said.

For something substantial, we need time and additional analysis of what is happening, what we are talking about and planning for the near future.

We will do this. I will not mention exact dates but we will certainly do this in the coming year.

Kseniya Golovanova: Kseniya Golovanova, Interfax.

Mr President, I would like to ask you about the agreement on supplying Patriot missile battery to Ukraine reached during Mr Zelensky’s visit to the United States. Is it possible to speak about full US involvement in the conflict in Ukraine? What about the consequences of this decision? For instance, can Russia bring its systems closer to the borders of NATO countries or deploy them in direct proximity to the US?

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: You have asked whether it is possible to speak about greater US involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. I think we need to look at the problem more broadly. What do I mean specifically and why?

Because the United States has been doing this for a long time – it has long been involved in the processes taking place in the Soviet and post-Soviet space. Back in Soviet times whole institutes worked in Ukraine, and they fully realised the background of the issue. They have experienced, deep specialists who know this professionally. I will repeat, the ground was laid during Soviet times; people were selected, meanings were defined and so on. I don’t want to go into details at this point – this is not the right format where one can go deep into the history of the issue. That said, it is still clear where all this came from.

The unity of the Russian world is a very subtle issue. Divide and rule – this slogan was used in ancient times and is still being actively used in real politics. This is why our potential adversary, our opponents have always been dreaming about this and have always been engaged in this. They have been trying to divide us and then run the separate parts.

What is new here? The idea of Ukrainian separatism was born by itself long ago, when we were still one country. You know, I have always said that if someone decides that a separate ethnic group has formed and wants to live independently, for God’s sake, it is impossible to ever go against the will of the people.

But if this is so, this principle must be universal and it is impossible to ever go against the will of people that feel like they are in a different reality, that consider themselves a part of the Russian people and the Russian world, that believe they are part of this culture, part of this language and part of this history and these traditions. Nobody can fight them, either.

But a war was unleashed on them in 2014. I mean a war. This is what it was about. What was it when the centres of million-strong cities were struck from the air? What was it when troops with armour were deployed against them? It was a war, combat operations. We endured all this, endured and endured, in the hope of some peace agreement. Now it turns out that we were simply fooled. So, a country like the United States has been involved in this for a long time. A long time.

In this sense, it is possible to say that by leading us to the current events, they achieved the desired goal. For our part, we had also no other choice than the actions we took late last February. Yes, that was the logic shaping the developments, but our primary goal is to protect people that – let me repeat – feel like they are part of our nation, part of our culture.

What did we believe at one time? We believed that okay, the USSR ceased to exist. But, as I said at yesterday’s Defence Ministry Board meeting, we thought our common historical roots, our cultural and spiritual background would be stronger than what pulls us apart, and such forces have always existed. We assumed that what unites us was stronger. But no, it was not so, due to the assistance of outside forces and the fact that people with extreme nationalist views came to power basically after the collapse of the Union.

And this division was growing worse all the time with the help of these forces and despite all our efforts. As I once said – at first we were pulled apart, separated and then set against each other. In this sense, they have achieved results, of course, and in this sense it has been something of a fiasco for us. We were left with nothing else. Maybe we were deliberately brought to this, to this brink. But we had nowhere to retreat, this is the problem.

They were always fully involved; they did their best. I do not remember now, but you can read up on it in history books. One of the deputies of the tsarist State Duma said, if you want to lose Ukraine, add Galicia to it. And this is what happened in the end; he turned out to be a visionary. Why? Because people from that part behave very aggressively and actually suppress the silent majority in the rest of that territory.

But again, we believed that the underlying foundations of our unity would be stronger than the trends that are tearing us apart. But it turned out this was not the case. They began to suppress Russian culture and the Russian language, tried to break our spiritual unity in totally barbaric ways. And they pretended that no one noticed. Why? Because, as I said, their strategy was to divide and rule.

A unification of the Russian people is undesirable. No one wants it. On the other hand, our disunity would make them happy; they would gladly continue to rip us apart. But our unification and consolidation are things no one wants – except us, and we will do it and we will succeed.

As to the military-technical aspects, the point is that, as I said yesterday, the Admiral Gorshkov frigate will enter combat service in early January, equipped with new weapons systems.

It is not that we are planning any provocations, but it is nevertheless a factor in strengthening our strategic forces. These are medium-range systems, but they have such speed characteristics that they can give us certain advantages in this sense.

As for the Patriot, it is a pretty old system. I would say it doesn’t work like our S-300. Nevertheless, those who oppose us assume that these systems are defensive weapons. All right. We will just keep that in mind, and there is always an antidote. So those who are doing this, are doing it in vain: it just prolongs the conflict, and that’s that.

Konstantin Kokoveshnikov: Good afternoon.

Konstantin Kokoveshnikov, Zvezda TV channel.

If I may, I have one more question about the special military operation. As usual, you have said very little about the course of the operation, preferring not to speak about the details. However, do you see any signs of the conflict becoming drawn out?

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: You know, I have already spoken about this. The situation actually started developing – this was less perceptible here, while the West preferred not to speak or notice anything – way back in 2014, after the coup d’état that was instigated by the United States, when cookies were handed out on Maidan. I have spoken about this many times.

But our goal is not to whip up the military conflict but to end this war. This is what we want, and this is what we will try to do.

As for me speaking little or sparingly about it, this is logical. On the one hand, I may be sparing words, but the Defence Ministry holds daily briefings to report to the public and the country about what is going on, where this is taking place, in what manner and so on.

In short, we will do our best to end this, and the sooner, the better, of course. As for what and how this is taking place, I have noted on numerous occasions that the intensification of the conflict will lead to unjustified losses. Many a little makes a mickle.

Alexei Petrov: Alexei Petrov, Rossiya TV channel.

Mr President, my question essentially follows up on this theme.

Western political quarters have recently been saying, including in NATO, that the Western resources which are being provided to Ukraine as assistance are not unlimited; in fact, they are running out. At the same time, some Western experts believe that Russia’s resources are down to the last missiles, munitions and so on.

We have heard this before, but, nevertheless, what is the situation in our defence industry? Can it replenish the resources we need, on the one hand, and produce enough for continuing the special military operation, on the other hand?

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: First of all, I do not think that the resources of Western countries and NATO members have been stretched thin. It is another matter that Ukraine is being supplied with weapons of the former Warsaw Pact countries, the majority of which are Soviet-made. This resource is running out indeed; we have destroyed and burned almost all of these weapons. There is only something like a few dozen armoured vehicles and a hundred of other weapon systems left. We have destroyed a lot of them. The stock of these systems is almost exhausted.

But this does not mean that Western countries and NATO do not have other weapons. They do have them. However, it is not easy to convert to new weapon systems, including NATO-standard ones. This requires preparation time, personnel training, stocks of spare parts, maintenance and repair. It is a big and complicated issue. This is my first point.

Second, there is also the question of the Western defence industry capabilities. The US defence sector is large and can be drummed up, but this will not be easy there either, because this involves additional allocations, and the allocation of funds is part of the budget process. It is not a simple matter.

It is said that the Patriot systems may be sent to Ukraine. Let them do it; we will weed out the Patriots too. And they will have to send something to replace them with or create new systems. It is a long and complicated process. It is not all that simple. We take this into account and count everything that is being sent there, how many systems there are in the depots, how many more they can manufacture and how fast, and if they can train the necessary personnel.

Now to our capabilities and resources. We are spending them, of course. I will not provide figures here, for example, how many shells we are using a day. The figures are high. But the difference between us and those who are fighting us is that the Ukrainian defence industry is rapidly moving towards zero if not a negative figure. All of its manufacturing capabilities will be destroyed soon, whereas our framework is being expanded. As I pointed out at the Defence Ministry Board meeting yesterday, we will not do this to the detriment of the other economic sectors. We must provide for the army anyway, one way or another, as the Minister said yesterday.

Unlike Ukraine, we have been developing our industry, including the defence sector over the past decades. We have been developing out military science and technology. There are some elements lacking, like loitering munitions, drones and the like, but we have been working on that. We know which enterprises can produce them, how many and how soon. We have the funds for financing research and technology centres and manufacturing capacities. We have all of that.

Yes, there is a problem with building up production speed and volumes. But we can do it, and we will certainly do it.

Aisel Gereykhanova: Aisel Gereykhanova, Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Mr President, in this situation, is there a real chance for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine situation? Is it possible?

Vladimir Putin: Every conflict, every armed conflict ends with some kind of negotiations on the diplomatic track, one way or another, and we have never refused to negotiate. It is the Ukrainian leadership that has forbidden itself to negotiate. This attitude is somewhat unusual, even bizarre, I would say. Nevertheless, sooner or later, any parties that are in a state of conflict sit down and negotiate. The sooner this realisation comes to those who oppose us, the better. We have never given up on that.

Valery Sanfirov: Valery Sanfirov, Vesti FM.

Mr President, you have been meeting frequently with the military of late.

Vladimir Putin: Does this surprise you?

Valery Sanfirov: No.

Vladimir Putin: Every day, so that you understand, every day.

Valery Sanfirov: A question about heroes.

You have passed Kutuzovsky Prospekt as you were traveling to this State Council meeting; the streets in that area are named after General Dorokhov, Rayevsky, Barclay de Tolly, and Vasilisa Kozhina. Even the State Council meeting took place in a hall with some 11,000 plaques with the names of St George decorated heroes, if I am not mistaken.

Is the special military operation producing national heroes and commanders? Are any new names appearing?

Vladimir Putin: Yes, of course. Unfortunately, any armed conflict is associated with losses, with tragedies, injuries and so on. And as a rule, you know, those who die while defending the interests of their Fatherland, their Motherland, their people, those who receive injuries – they are the strongest. They are at the forefront. And of course, they are heroes. I have said this many times. This is my personal deep conviction.

Just think about it: you and I are standing here in this hall at the Kremlin Palace; we are warm, with the artificial sun shining above us; the lights are on, the interior is beautiful – and the soldiers are out there in the snow. Do you see?

We talk about the insoles in their boots and so on, about their weapons – but they can come under fire at any moment. Of course, they are all heroes. They are putting in a tremendous effort, risking their health and lives. Of course, they are heroes. Some of them commit special acts, acts that are referred to as heroism, personal heroism. Not just hard work, but personal heroism.

We think about this, of course, and we will definitely find a way to present them as role models for our entire society, as an example for the younger generation to follow. These people are strengthening the inner spirit of the nation. This is very important. We certainly have them. There are a lot of them. You probably know some of them; others we do not know yet, we do not have their names yet, but we will list them for sure.

Maria Glebova: Maria Glebova, RIA Novosti.

If I may, I would like to get back to the economy.

You said earlier that the economy has not collapsed. But now we hear that the main blow will come next year. Could you please tell us whether it will be possible to keep the Russian economy afloat?

Also, at the end of each year, you meet with Russian business leaders. But not this year. Why is that? Do you see their role in the growth of private investment now?

I would also like to bring up social matters. Will all social commitments that were made continue to be met?

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: As for the economy, I have already touched upon this topic, but have something to add.

First, the predicted economic collapse did not happen. True, we have posted a decline, and I will repeat the figures. There have been promises – or predictions or hopes maybe – that Russia’s economy will contract. Some said its GDP would drop by 20 percent or more, by 20–25 percent. True, there is a decline in GDP, but not 20–25 percent; it is in fact 2.5 percent. That is the first thing.

Second. Inflation, as I said, will be a little more than 12 percent this year – it is one of the most important indicators, too. This, I think, is much better than in many other countries, including the G20 countries. Inflation is not good of course, but it being smaller than in other countries is good.

Next year – we have mentioned this, too – we will strive for the 4–5 percent target, based on the economy’s performance in the first quarter – at least, we hope so. And this is a very good trend, unlike in some other G20 countries, where inflation is on the rise.

Unemployment is at a historic low of 3.8 percent. We are running a budget deficit, this is true, but it is only 2 percent this year, next year too, then it is projected at one percent, and less than one percent in 2025: we are expecting about 0.8 percent. I would like to point out that other countries – both large developing economies and the so-called developed market economies – are running a much greater deficit. In the United States, I think, it is 5.7 percent, and in China, it is over 7 percent. All major economies are running deficits above 5 percent. We are not.

This is a good foundation for moving confidently into 2023.

Our priority for 2023 will be the development of infrastructure. I do not think I need to list all the projects, we have a lot: the Eastern Operating Domain project, the North-South corridor, and other infrastructure projects across the country (just recently Marat Khusnullin reported on road construction) and so on. Airports, ports, a lot of other projects.

Next, we also need to deal with financial issues. What do I mean? The country’s financial system is stable, banks are reliable and operate without disruptions, which is thanks to the Government and bank employees who work very hard and know their jobs very well. They are highly qualified people who manage many things, if not everything. We must maintain macroeconomic stability. We will not allow any uncontrollable spending but, as I said, will move towards achieving the main macroeconomic indicators that can support the economic stability in general.

I spoke about infrastructure. The next important aspect is maintaining the stability of the financial system, the banking system and the budget. It is important to do a very important thing, which is to substitute the investment that participants in the economic activity relied on before, including some Western institutions, foundations and so on, with sources inside the country. They must be substituted with domestic funding. Of course, we can do it by engaging various instruments. I do not want to go into detail. If you are asking a question about the economy, your readers most likely know what they are. They exist and must be developed. It is not a simple matter but it is possible.

Of course, we must resolve the main issue, which is increasing real wages. It is absolutely obvious. Considering the inflation and the budget revenues, we are able to make a step in this direction. We have an entire set of economic measures we must take. I have no doubt that all of them are achievable. Results of the next year will show how we can fulfil these plans and get closer to solving these tasks.

Maria Glebova: What about large businesses?

Vladimir Putin: Large businesses.

You see, I always enjoy meeting with my colleagues although now COVID is on the rise again, along with swine flu. It is the only problem. I mean I could meet with them like I am meeting with you, but they have to gather in one place. They may pose certain risks to each other in terms of the epidemiological situation. It is the only problem. At any rate, we maintain constant contact and will continue to develop this dialogue.

They are going through difficult times. You see, there are different people. We know that well, the country knows it. First of all, they were all subjected to sanctions. Western, pro-Western or not, they were subjected to the sanctions indiscriminately. What for? To force businesses to confront the government. But people living in this country must serve the country’s interests. And the country is interested in them working effectively and paying taxes. They do not have to have a boat seized abroad or a castle on the Mediterranean Sea or in London.

You see, the point is, if a person lives here and associates their life, the life of their children and family with this country, it is one thing. But if a person does not associate their life with this country and simply takes money from here to build a life abroad, it means they do not value the country where they live and earn money but instead value their good relationships in the place where their property and bank accounts are. This kind of people pose a danger to us.

But we are non-judgmental, as long as they work effectively. We maintain and we will continue to maintain our contacts.

I want to note that maybe not 100 percent, not everyone, but most representatives of business, including large businesses, are patriots of our country, patriots of Russia. Every person has their own individual circumstances, but all of them are striving not to just live and work in Russia, but to work in the interests of our country, maintain their staff, enterprises, develop the economy, etc.

Nakhid Babayev: Good afternoon, Mr President.

My name in Nakhid Babayev, NTV.

I would like to talk more about the economy. Is Russia suffering losses after the price cap on Russian oil was adopted? Has the oil sector asked the state for help, concessions?

Hence the next question. Much is being said about the response measures, and an executive order is being developed. Will the measures outlined by it be able to protect our interests?

Vladimir Putin: You know, I think I will sign the executive order next Monday or Tuesday. These are preventive measures, because there is no obvious damage to Russia, the Russian economy or the Russian fuel and energy sector. We are selling oil at approximately the same prices as this cap.

Yes, the goal of our geopolitical opponents and adversaries is to reduce the income to the Russian budget, but we are not losing anything because of this cap. The Russian fuel and energy sector, the budget and the economy are not incurring losses, because we already sell oil at this price.

But what is important is that they are trying to bring new tools, not characteristic of the market economy, to the global economy. The customer, the buyer is trying to introduce new, non-market regulation to be used in theory and practice in the entire world.

Imagine this: you want to go to a dealer to buy a car, say, a Mercedes or a Chevrolet. You go there and say, “I will buy it for five rubles, no more.” Okay. You buy one, two, three cars, and then the Mercedes factory will close, because the production of Mercedes or Chevrolet cars will not be profitable anymore. It is the same in the energy sector, completely the same thing.

This sector already lacks investment. There are problems related to the fact that money is not invested in new projects such as pipelines, production and development due to environmental concerns and the transition to renewable energy sources. Banks do not loan money, and insurance companies refuse to issue policies. Large global companies have stopped investing in the volume the global energy sector needs.

And now they are trying to administratively set a price cap. This is the road toward destroying the global energy sector. The moment might come when the underinvested sector stops providing the necessary volume of products and the prices will soar and hurt those who are trying to introduce these instruments.

Therefore, energy producers, oil producers in this case, take it personally, referring to themselves, not Russia, but themselves because everyone believes that this is the first attempt to dictate administrative rules of price regulation to producers, and more will follow.

Alexei Lazurenko: Alexei Lazurenko, Izvestia.

I would like to follow up on the same subject.

Similar decisions to cap gas prices were adopted several days ago. What will we do in this context? How big of a threat is this for us, and what will be the future of the Nord Stream pipelines?

Vladimir Putin: This initiative follows the same pattern, as far as I can tell. Once again, we are witnessing an attempt to use administrative leverage to regulate prices. Nothing good can come out of this for gas or oil markets.

Overall, sometimes our colleagues and partners really surprise me by how unprofessional they are. There was a time when it was the European Commission which forced us to switch to market pricing and to setting the price of natural gas on the commodity exchange. We, in turn, and I personally, tried to persuade Brussels not to do it, saying that this is not how the gas market works and would have grave consequences, resulting in surging prices. This is exactly what is happening right now. Now they do not know how to get out of this situation and are trying to regulate the price of gas too.

However, there is a slight difference compared to the way they try regulating oil prices. This time, the European Commission is focusing on regulating commodity exchanges. They are pegging gas prices to LNG, saying that gas prices must correlate with LNG pricing, etc. Still, this is an attempt to use administrative methods for regulating prices.

You know, they do not listen to us, they do not want to deal with us, they do not like us and want to counter us. Fine, but what about listening to themselves? I am referring to those trying to regulate gas prices in Europe. They always take their cues from the Americans, bowing and humiliating themselves every time they are ordered to do something. This time, there were no orders, but they could have listened to what the US experts are saying. Take Friedman, a prominent economist and Nobel Prize winner. He said that if you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, just cap the price of tomatoes. Instantly you’ll have a tomato shortage. They are doing the same with oil and gas – exactly the same. For some reason, no one is listening.

We have been keeping a close eye on these developments, watching them. If the system they propose tilts towards administrative regulation and runs counter to Gazprom’s contracts with its counterparts, or if there is any interference in these contracts, we reserve the right to consider whether we have an obligation to perform these contracts while the other party infringes on them.

As for the Nord Streams…. What can I say? This was a terrorist attack, which is obvious, and everyone has recognised this. Even more surprising is that it is an act of international, or should I say state terrorism. Why? Because individuals cannot carry out terror attacks of this kind on their own. States were clearly involved in perpetrating them.

As they say in such cases: look for who will benefit. Who will benefit from Russian gas being supplied to Europe only through Ukraine, who will benefit from Ukraine receiving the money? The aggressor is Russia, but they receive money from us for transit, and we are paying them, though they call us aggressors, and though they are aggressors in relation to Donbass, too. We are countering aggression, not the other way around. They take money and that is alright. Money is money.

Who benefits from Russian gas being supplied to Europe only through Ukraine? That is who blew it up. Nobody is investigating. We had an opportunity just once to inspect the sites of explosions. All this was in the media, there is nothing to repeat, as I am sure you already know this. But there is no real investigation, no one is investigating. It is astonishing but true.

As for oil and gas, do you know what occurred to me right now during our conversation? I have already talked about this once, but I think it will be difficult to disagree with what I am about to say.

Look, they are trying to put a price cap on energy resources, on oil and gas. Who produces them? Russia, Arab countries, Latin America, Asia, Indonesia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE produce oil, too. The United States produces both oil and gas, but they consume everything: they have little left for the external market. That is, it is produced in those countries, but consumed in Europe and in the United States.

I believe that what they are trying to do now is a remnant of colonialism. They are used to robbing other countries. Indeed, to a large extent, the rise of European countries’ economies is based on slave trade and robbery of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. To a large extent, the prosperity of the United States grew out of the slave trade and the use of slave labour, and then, of course, as a result of the First and Second World Wars, which is obvious. But they are used to robbing others. And an attempt at non-market regulation in the sphere of the economy is the same colonial robbery, or, in any case, an attempt at colonial robbery.

But the world has changed and they are unlikely to be able to do it today.

Alexander Yunashev: Mr President, good afternoon.

Alexander Yunashev, Life.

I would like to ask you how the events of recent months have changed your life and daily routine? Do you find the time to exercise?

Next week is New Year, so I would like to wish you happy holidays and ask how you will spend them?

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

There is nothing out of the ordinary here. I will celebrate this New Year with my family, with people who are dear to me, and I will watch the President’s speech, the address.

As for sports, I do continue to exercise. I believe that this is just a way to stay in shape, and I must stay fit for work. It is like a pill that makes you feel good and work well. I wish everyone had this attitude to sports: it is a good thing. They say that it also helps stay fit mentally: a sound mind in a sound body.

Thank you, too.

Have wonderful holidays! My best wishes.

MK Bhadrakumar: A Germany-China-Russia triangle on Ukraine

By MK Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, 12/25/22

Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken probably thought that in his self-appointed role as the world’s policeman, it was his prerogative to check out what is going on among Germany, China and Russia that he wasn’t privy to. However, Blinken’s call to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday (December 23) turned out to be a fiasco.

Most certainly, his intention was to gather details on two high-level exchanges that Chinese President Xi Jinping had on successive days last week – with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the chairman of the United Russia Party and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev respectively.

Blinken likely made an intelligent guess that Steinmeier’s phone call to Xi on Tuesday and Medvedev’s surprise visit to Beijing and his meeting with Xi on Wednesday might not have been coincidental.

Medvedev’s mission would have been to transmit some highly sensitive message from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Xi. Recent reports had indicated that Moscow and Beijing were working on a meeting between Putin and Xi later this month.

Steinmeier is an experienced diplomat who held the post of foreign minister from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2013 to 2017, as well as of vice-chancellor of Germany from 2007 to 2009 – all during the period Angela Merkel was the chancellor (2005- 2021). Merkel left a legacy of a surge in Germany’s relations with both Russia and China.

Steinmeier is a senior politician belonging to the Social Democratic Party, same as the present chancellor Olaf Scholz. It is certain that Steinmeier’s call with Xi was in consultation with Scholz. This is one thing.

Most important, Steinmeier had played a seminal role in negotiating the two Minsk Agreements (2014 and 2015), which provided for a package of measures to stop the fighting in the Donbas in the downstream of the US-sponsored coup in Kiev.

When the Minsk agreements began unraveling by 2016, Steinmeier stepped in with an ingenious idea that later came to be known as the Steinmeier Formula spelling out the sequencing of events spelled out in the agreements.

Specifically, the Steinmeier formula called for elections to be held in the separatist-held territories of the Donbas under Ukrainian legislation and the supervision of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It proposed that if the OSCE judged the balloting to be free and fair, then a special self-governing status for the territories would be initiated.

Of course, all that is history now. Merkel “confessed” recently in an interview with Zeit newspaper that in reality, the Minsk agreement was a Western attempt to buy “invaluable time” for Kiev to rearm itself.

Given this complex backdrop, Blinken would have sensed something was amiss when Steinmeier had a call with Xi Jinping out of the blue, and Medvedev made a sudden appearance in Beijing the next day and was received by the Chinese president. Notably, Beijing’s readouts were rather upbeat on China’s relationship with Germany and Russia.

Xi put forward a three-point proposal to Steinmeier on the development of China-Germany relations and stated that “China and Germany have always been partners of dialogue, development, and cooperation as well as partners for addressing global challenges.”

Similarly, in the meeting with Medvedev, he underscored that “China is ready to work with Russia to constantly push forward China-Russia relations in the new era and make global governance more just and equitable.”

Both readouts mentioned Ukraine as a topic of discussion, with Xi stressing that “China stays committed to promoting peace talks” (to Steinmeier) and “actively promoted peace talks” (to Medvedev).

But Blinken went about his mission clumsily by bringing to the fore the contentious US-China issues, especially “the current Covid-19 situation” in China and “the importance of transparency for the international community.”

It comes as no surprise that Wang sternly lectured Blinken not to “engage in dialogue and containment at the same time,” or to “talk cooperation, but stab China simultaneously.”

Wang said, “This is not reasonable competition, but irrational suppression. It is not meant to properly manage disputes, but to intensify conflicts. In fact, it is still the old practice of unilateral bullying. This did not work for China in the past, nor will it work in the future.”

Specifically, on Ukraine, Wang said, “China has always stood on the side of peace, of the purposes of the UN Charter, and of the international society to promote peace and talks. China will continue to play a constructive role in resolving the crisis in China’s own way.” Judging from the US State Department readout, Blinken failed to engage Wang in a meaningful conversation on Ukraine.

Indeed, Germany’s recent overtures to Beijing in quick succession – Chancellor Scholz’s high-profile visit to China last month with a delegation of top German CEOs and Steinmeier’s phone call last week – have not gone down well in Washington.

US President Joe Biden’s administration expects Germany to coordinate with Washington first instead of taking its own initiatives toward China. (Interestingly, Xi Jinping underscored the importance of Germany preserving its strategic autonomy.)

The current pro-American foreign minister of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, distanced herself from Chancellor Scholz’s China visit. Evidently, Steinmeier’s phone call to Xi confirms that Scholz is moving according to a plan to pursue a path of constructive engagement with China, as Merkel did, no matter the state of play in the United States’ tense relationship with China.

That said, discussing peacemaking in Ukraine with China is a daring move on the part of the German leadership at the present juncture when the Biden administration is deeply engaged in a proxy war with Russia and has every intention to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

But there is another side to it. Germany has been internalizing its anger and humiliation during the past several months. Germany cannot but feel that it had been played in the countdown to the Ukraine conflict – something particularly galling for a country that is genuinely Atlanticist in its foreign-policy orientation.

German ministers have expressed displeasure publicly that American oil companies are brazenly exploiting the ensuing energy crisis to make windfall profits by selling gas at three to four times the domestic price in the US.

Germany also fears that the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, building on foundational climate and clean-energy investments, may lead to the migration of German industry to the US.

The unkindest cut of all has been the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Germany must have a fairly good idea as to the forces that were behind that terrorist act, but it cannot even call them out and must suppress its sense of humiliation and indignation.

The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines makes a revival of the German-Russian relationship an extremely tortuous affair. For any nation with a proud history, it is a bit too much to accept being pushed around like a pawn.

Scholz and Steinmeier are seasoned politicians and would know when to dig in and hunker down. In any case, China is a crucially important partner for Germany’s economic recovery. Germany can ill afford to let the US destroy its partnership with China and reduce it to a vassal state.

When it comes to the Ukraine war, Germany has become a frontline state, but it is Washington that determines Western tactics and strategy. Germany estimates that China is uniquely placed to be a peacemaker in Ukraine. The signs are that Beijing is warming up to that idea, too.