Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 42

Gordon Hahn: The Empty Tank: Is Demise of the Ukrainian Army Near?

By Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics, 2/2/25

U.S. President Donald Trump is apparently intent on achieving peace at a rapid pace, having set a 100 day window for accomplishing this exceedingly complex political task. Aside from such a time table’s lack of realism, there are other factors that will render it soon out of date. Primary is the deteriorating state of the Ukrainian army’s capacity to hold back the powerful Russian armed forces now arrayed against it. The front may suffer a catastrophic collapse before Trump’s presumed deadline, giving Russia an even greater upper hand in talks.

The collapse of Ukraine’s defense fronts along all or nearly the entire line of combat – which stretches from Kherson just north of Crimea to the east, then north through Donetsk to Kharkiv and Sumy – appears imminent. Some fronts may hold longer but are unlikely to survive 2025. All last year, Russian territorial gains and, for the most part of the year, Ukrainian casualties have increased with each passing month, as I predicted would be the case over a year ago (https://youtu.be/P_MJi5H6HKU?si=rxRiaE0EglSgbclw at the 1:00:45 mark). The territorial advance now is accelerating at an ever more rapid pace and could lead to major breakthroughs to the Dnepr (Dnieper) River at any time now.

At the same time, the state of the Ukrainian military is disastrous. The military mobilization passed and being carried out this year with such a debilitating effect on the economy and society is failing to replace current losses at the front with completely inexperienced recruits with low to no morale (www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yMTGKURYU). There are reportedly no more volunteers, and by spring some Ukrainian officials report the situation will be irretrievable. Moreover, almost all new recruits are old or unmotivated, The Economist reports (https://ctrana.one/news/475629-nekhvatka-soldat-v-vsu-stanet-kritichnoj-vesnoj-the-economist.html).

Commanders at the front, such as commander of the drone battalion of Ukraine’s 30th mechanized brigade, confirm that the 2024 mobilization has been an absolute failure, and there are now too few men to replace battle losses (https://ria.ru/20250113/mobilizatsiya-1993456847.html?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fdzen.ru%2Fnews%2Fstory%2F1af5d353-85ec-5374-a9d8-e07753fbda13). The mobilization that does occur is carried out by harsh, frequently violent measures. Verkhovna Rada deputy Aleksandr Bakumov from Zelenskiy’s own ‘Servants of the People’ party declared in session that mobilisation in Kharkiv Region is coerced, resembling filtration of Ukrainian population (referring to practice of detaining, beating, and torturing citizens of occupied areas in an ostensible search for fighters and collaborators), with exits from the city blockaded by ‘recruitment’ press gangs and lawyers of mobilized men get beaten. Small businesses are undergoing mass closures because of lack of workers willing to go outside for fear of being pressed into the army. Others have reported falsification of data to justify recruitment (https://ctrana.one/news/478468-v-verkhovnoj-rade-zajavili-o-bespredele-ttsk-v-kharkove-video-vystuplenija.html and https://x.com/leonidragozin/status/1881280945644605814). There are numerous reports and videos of violence being used by recruitment gangs. In addition, many men are fleeing the country in greater numbers in order to avoid Ukraine’s desperate and draconian  forced mobilization measures, sometimes at great risk to their lives and to sociopolitical stability. Most recently, Western governments have reportedly been pressuring Kiev to extend the mobilization to the age cohort of 18-25, which would bring a near catastrophic demographic collapse to a population already depleted by some 30 percent because of war deaths and emigration (https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-biden-draft-08e3bad195585b7c3d9662819cc5618f). Even the recrutiment centers themselves are attempting to avoid the draft. When Rada deputies proposed closing the personnel shortage by creating a brigade from among the mobilization gangs, the chairman of the mobilization centers claimed there were not enough of them to form a full brigade (https://ctrana.one/news/475129-v-ttsk-objasnili-pochemu-nelzja-vsekh-ikh-rabotnikov-poslat-na-front.html). Low numbers of volunteers and failed mobilization are creating distortions in force structure. ‘Zombi-brigades’ or ‘paper brigades’ are partially-manned units merely called brigades in order to impress Western donors and facilitate corruption for commanders who seize the salaries designated for non-existing personnel (https://ctrana.one/news/476359-bezuhlaja-raskritikovala-komandovanie-vsu-za-situatsiju-s-brihadoj-anna-kievskaja.html).

The large number of desertions from the Ukrainian military, a phenomenon wholly ignored in the Western media for three years, were revealed finally in November to have exceeded 100,000 since the war began (https://apnews.com/article/deserters-awol-ukraine-russia-war-def676562552d42bc5d593363c9e5ea0). This would amount to perhaps more than 10 precent of the Ukrainian army at its present size, given Zelenskiy’s recent claim it numbers 800,000 (https://t.me/stranaua/183652). Moreover, more than half those desertions occurred in the first ten months of 2024 alone (https://apnews.com/article/deserters-awol-ukraine-russia-war-def676562552d42bc5d593363c9e5ea0). This is already desertion on a massive scale and includes mass desertions (https://www.ft.com/content/9b25288d-8258-4541-81b0-83b00ad8a03f; https://ctrana.one/news/476730-zhurnalist-bojko-rasskazal-o-problemakh-v-vsu.html). Military blogger Yurii Butusov, Servants of the People deputy Maryana Bezuglaya, and others reported late last year on the desertion of an entire 1,000-man brigade trained in France immediately upon their arrival at the front. This may have been a case of a commander’s unsuccessful attempt to form what are called ‘zombi-brigades’ (https://ctrana.one/news/476748-jurij-butusov-zajavil-o-massovom-dezertirstve-v-brihade-vsu-anna-kievskaja.html and https://ctrana.one/news/476359-bezuhlaja-raskritikovala-komandovanie-vsu-za-situatsiju-s-brihadoj-anna-kievskaja.html). Indeed, military personnel have questioned the recent practice of creating new brigades when existing ones are woefully undermanned, apparently suspecting the corruption scheme lurking behind this practice (https://ctrana.one/news/474755-v-vsu-objasnili-zachem-sozdavat-novye-brihady-vmesto-popolnenija-sushchestvujushchikh.html). One Ukrainian commander told a Polish newspaper that sometimes in battle there are more deserters than killed and wounded (https://t.me/stranaua/180095).

Desertions are one symptom of lax discipline and especially low morale increasingly plaguing the Ukrainian army. Commanders are reporting that 90 percent of their troops on the frontlines are new, coercively mobilized men (https://ctrana.news/news/475190-v-vsu-sejchas-vojujut-v-osnovnom-zhiteli-sel-horodskim-lehche-sprjatatsja-ot-ttsk.html; https://t.me/rezident_ua/25314 (video); and https://ctrana.one/news/476730-zhurnalist-bojko-rasskazal-o-problemakh-v-vsu.html). Sources in the Ukrainian General Staff report similarly (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html). Thus, desertions are accompanied by unauthorized retreats, which are increasing in frequency. For example, hundreds ran from battle at one point last autumn in Vugledar (Ugledar) before it fell (www.ft.com/content/9b25288d-8258-4541...). Vugledar was once a solid stronghold, which in 2023 Russian forces stormed tens of times with no results. Ukrainians soldiers are refusing to carry out operational orders because they amount to suicide operations and are beginning to surrender as whole units, in one case nearly a full battalion (e.g., 92nd Combat). Indeed, refusals to follow orders or undertake counteroffensive measures are increasing. In one recent case, the Azov Brigade’s chief of staff, Bogdan Koretich, accused a Ukrainian general of such poor command that he was described as being responsible for more Ukrainian war dead than the Russians, forcing his removal (www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/06/24/7462293/). At lower levels, commanders are being fired in large numbers (https://strana.news/news/467266-itohi-852-dnja-vojny-v-ukraine.html). One reason for the disintegrating discipline and morale is that there is no relief for troops, as there is no long term‚ demobilization or time away from the front other than that coming from episodic brief rotations of troops—a consequence of insufficient troop numbers. Soldiers and their relatives have been lobbying for well over year for a law on demobilization that would routinize long rotations for troops to visit home, but no such law is visible on the horizon. Such would likely lead to a fatal troop shortage and the Ukrainian army’s full rout on the battlefield.

However, perhaps the main problem in the Ukrainian army, as in the rest of Ukrainian state and society, is corruption. It is endemic and omnipresent in arms production and procurement, mobilization (draft evasion by bribe), purchasing of leave and absence from the front, and manning brigades. One Ukrainian Defense Minister told a journalist that the problem is catastrophic“ (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html). Independent Rada deputy Anna Skorokhod claims that only 15 percent (!) of servicemen on the personnel roles are serving at the front, with large numbers either non-existent (dead souls) in service or having bribed their way into hiding somewhere in the rear (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html). 

This is how Ukrainian officers describe the mass-scale of corruption in the army. Ukrainian army captain: “Due to false reports about the presence of personnel, the commanders of the directions receive false information. And they operate with ‚dead souls‘, developing combat plans. For example, somewhere the Russians have broken through a section of the front, the commander gives an order to a certain brigade to send a battalion with an attached group to reinforce. In fact, the battalion has been gone for a long time, its number is no more than a company — some have bought off their way to the rear or deserted. As a result, there is nothing to close the breakthrough, because of the threat, the flanks of neighboring brigades begin to crumble.”

Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff source: “If we take how many Russian troops we have at the front on paper, then if the Russians have an advantage in numbers, it is less than twofold. But that is on paper. In practice, the situation is different. Let’s imagine a separate section of the front. According to the papers, there are 100 people on our side, and 150 on the Russian side. That is, the enemy’s advantage is insignificant. With such numbers, it is quite possible to keep the defense. But during a real battle, the situation is radically different. At most 40 of our 100 people participate in it. And often even less. The rest are deserters, who simply refuse to fight, and the like. And Russians have 140-145 out of 150 people going into battle. In total, the advantage has already more than tripled. Why does this situation exist? Our army was initially based on a core of volunteers, ATO veterans, and highly motivated soldiers who went into battle without coercion and took the initiative. Russians had a big problem with motivation from the very beginning. But they worked on this issue and gradually created their own military-repressive system of coercion. And it works by sending soldiers into battle and stopping cases of insubordination and desertion. We did not create anything like this. And I doubt that we are even capable of creating such a system. Our state system is too weak and too corrupt for this. And now that the volunteers have died, died of injury, or simply burned out, and the army is being replenished with fake conscripts who have close to zero motivation, there are no ways to force them to fight. A separate problem is the quality of the command staff and the combat management system. There are also very big failures here, because many experienced commanders died and worthy replacements do not always come after them.” (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html).

This is a state of corruption, low morale, and incapacity reminiscent of the late, recently collpased Syrian army of Bashir al-Assad.

This sort of Ukrainian army along with its collapse comprises multiple threats to both the Maidan regime and the Ukrainian state beyond that posed by the advancing Russian army. I wrote some time back: “With the front collapsing and the army on the verge of dissolving, Zelenskiy’s post-Maidan regime is deeply divided and in danger of dissolution, which could bring state collapse, internecine warfare, and widespread chaos” (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/12/10/the-second-great-ukrainian-ruin-revisited/). The troops of a collapsed Ukrainian army will become a force that can sow chaos and/or be marshalled by a military or civilian leader towards the execution of a coup and perhaps a neofascist revolution or by peripheral and local figures to establish separate fiefdoms. Recall that during the Maidan demonstrations, leaders in Lvov and elsewhere first broached the idea of separating from then Yanukovych-controlled Ukraine. After the Maidan revolt and Yanukovych’s overthrow, it was Crimea and Donbas that moved towards separatism. Trump and his counterparts in Moscow, Kiev, and Brussels will need to make peace expeditiously in order to achieve a peace that avoids the long standoff and prospects for a new war in Ukraine that will be inherent in any unilateral, Russian imposed peace and Ukrainian capitulation and/or conquest as well as the danger of state collapse that could precede a Russian all-out victory. Indeed, it appears only Trump’s rapid peace can preempt the Ukrainian army’s full rout and collapse and save what remains of the Ukrainian state.

The Moscow Times: Trump’s Foreign Aid Freeze Throws Russian Civil Society Into Crisis

Two points to make. First, if you receive funding from a foreign government, you are not independent and those in alternative media need to stop referring to these outlets and organizations as independent. Second, as detailed by Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, a writer who has been living in Russia for decades, the majority of civil society in Russia is domestically funded and only a small percentage – the percentage that the west constantly focuses on – is foreign funded. So hysterical claims that “independent” Russian civil society will be gutted by the lack of US funding is nonsense. – Natylie

By Mark Tubridy, The Moscow Times, 1/30/25

The Trump administration’s abrupt freeze on foreign aid has plunged exiled Russian NGOs and media outlets into uncertainty, jeopardizing their funding and posing what some describe as the greatest challenge to Russian civil society since the Kremlin enacted its “undesirable” organization law a decade ago.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a sweeping directive last Friday, pausing all foreign aid for 90 days. The move aims to give the Trump administration time to review which programs align with the president’s “America First” agenda and determine which should continue receiving U.S. funding. Organizations have been issued stop-work notices on existing projects, along with a suspension of further disbursements.

The freeze has affected a broad range of initiatives, from landmine removal efforts in Iraq and HIV/AIDS treatment programs in Zimbabwe to typhoon emergency relief in the Philippines and wartime civilian programs in Ukraine. While Rubio later granted a waiver for “life-saving humanitarian assistance,” the vague wording has only deepened confusion, leaving organizations scrambling to determine whether their work qualifies.

For Russian NGOs and independent media operating in exile, many of which cannot generate revenue from donations or advertising inside Russia due to their designation as “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations,” the sudden cutoff of U.S. funding is potentially devastating.

“This is the biggest funding crisis for Russian civil society since 2015, when Russia’s law on ‘undesirable foreign organizations’ forced several Western private foundations to shut down their Russia programs,” a Washington, D.C.-based source familiar with U.S. government funding for Russian organizations told The Moscow Times.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, estimated that as many as 90 organizations could be affected. While some receive funding from private donors and European governments, many are losing a significant share of their budgets due to the Trump administration’s freeze.

“The consequences will vary by organization, depending on their financial situation and alternative funding sources,” the source said. “But most will at minimum have to scale back operations and lay off staff. Some of the largest and most prominent independent Russian media outlets and civil society groups could be forced to shut down entirely.”

Kovcheg (The Ark), an exiled nonprofit that provides support to anti-war Russians both abroad and inside Russia, said it was notified earlier this week by U.S. donors that some of its funding had been paused due to the State Department directive.

“We’re still in a better situation than most NGOs because we cover half of our budget through crowdfunding, but still, I need to cut a team and [some of] our activities,” Anastasia Burakova, who heads Kovcheg, told The Moscow Times.

Burakova added that donor organizations she had spoken with seemed uncertain about what would happen next. “They don’t have a clear idea of whether the programs will continue after the audit or which areas the new administration will support,” she said.

Almut Rochowanski, a nonprofit consultant with years of experience working with Russian human rights activists, recalled the “existential panic” that followed Russia’s 2012 “foreign agent” law in the context of both the current foreign aid freeze and suspension of U.S. federal domestic funding, which was temporarily blocked.

“It was revealing. It showed that access to foreign money was seen as the single most decisive factor for their continued work and existence,” Rochowanski told The Moscow Times.

A journalist who founded an independent Russian news outlet now operating in exile described the “emotional rollercoaster” he and his team experienced upon learning that a “significant portion” of their funding had been frozen.

“It’s not like we were entirely dependent on American grants… It just so happened that at this moment, we were more reliant on U.S. funding, and everything hit at once,” the journalist said on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “Almost overnight, the [money] was frozen.”

Despite the setback, he said his team would “keep fighting” and look for alternative funding sources. “If not, we’ll have to close, because, at this point, there’s simply nothing left to pay people with,” he added.

Some Russian organizations noted that while they do not rely directly on U.S. funding, they receive grants through intermediaries that do — causing the freeze’s effects to spill over to them.

“Some of the donors where you didn’t know who their source was… turned out to be one way or another linked to the same basket,” the head of a Russian nonprofit operating in exile said, requesting anonymity.

“Our donors told us to wait. They say they don’t know how long the pause will be,” the nonprofit head added. “So everything is on hold.”

Given the sweeping nature of the State Department directive, Russian independent media and NGOs are far from the only ones in the region to be impacted.

Ukrainian newspapers receiving funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have also said they were forced to suspend ongoing projects as a result.

And in an opinion column this week, The Kyiv Independent’s Chief Editor Olga Rudenko described how the U.S. funding freeze had left programs — including humanitarian relief, mental health support, media initiatives and community development projects — without critical financial backing.

Most Russian organizations contacted by The Moscow Times declined to comment on the freeze’s impact, with some stating they were still assessing how it would affect their operations.

“Russian media outfits probably understand that openly flaunting the fact that they are funded by Western governments might alienate their audiences,” Rochowanski said, pointing out that even anti-Kremlin Russians do not always view the West as a benign actor.

“They may also want to be careful because drawing unwanted attention from the Russian authorities could lead to threats against their reporters and sources,” she added. “For those same reasons, Ukrainian media can be quite open about how they are funded by Western governments.”

With U.S. funding on hold, some organizations are turning to European institutions for support, with discussions of potential emergency funding underway, according to the Washington, D.C.-based source.

The European Federation of Journalists urged potential European donors to step in and fill the gap left by the withdrawal of U.S. funding. While it did not specifically mention Russian organizations, the federation emphasized the reliance of Ukrainian news publications and exiled Belarusian media on U.S. financial assistance.

Still, even if civil society organizations manage to secure stopgap funding during the three-month freeze, there is growing concern that if the Trump administration’s review leads to long-term cuts, many will not survive.

“In the long term, if U.S. government funding isn’t restored, Russia’s independent civil society as a whole will be greatly diminished,” the Washington, D.C.-based source warned.

Andrew Korybko: The Russian-Iranian Partnership Might Be A Game-Changer, But Only For Gas, Not Geopolitics

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 1/19/25

The Russian and Iranian presidents met in Moscow last Friday to sign an updated strategic partnership pact that can be read in full here and was reviewed here. The run-up to this development was marked by predictable hype about it being a game-changer, which hasn’t subsided in the days since, but this is an inaccurate description of what they agreed to. The only way in which this might ring true is with regards to gas, not geopolitics, for the reasons that’ll now be explained.

To begin with, Russia and Iran already had close military-technical cooperation before they updated their strategic partnership last week as proven by the rumors of Russia relying on Iranian drones in Ukraine. They also agreed to revive the previously stillborn North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) shortly after the special operation began and the West imposed unprecedented sanctions against Moscow. Therefore, these parts of their updated strategic partnership aren’t anything new, they just aim to strengthen them.

About that, this agreement is fundamentally different from last summer’s Russian-North Korean one in that there aren’t any mutual defense obligations as clarified in Article 3. They only committed to not aid any aggression against the other, including assistance to the aggressor, and to help settle the subsequent conflict at the UN. That was already the case in their relations so explicitly clarifying it is redundant. Under no circumstances will Russia go to war against Israel and/or the US in support of Iran.

After all, “Russia Dodged A Bullet By Wisely Choosing Not To Ally With The Now-Defeated Resistance Axis” over the past 15 months as Israel single-handedly destroyed that Iranian-led regional network, so it naturally follows that it won’t risk World War III in defense of an even weaker Iran. Moreover, Russia didn’t risk war with either of them amidst last December’s American- and Turkish-backed regime change in Syria, not to mention the ongoing special operation where it has direct national security interests.

Putin is therefore very unlikely to break from this precedent, which observers can confidently conclude by dint of him declining to include any North Korean-like mutual defense obligations in Russia’s updated strategic partnership pact with Iran, which should hopefully put to rest some folks’ wishful thinking. It should also be said that the timing of this document’s signing is important too since it took place after Israel defeated the Resistance Axis and as the region correspondingly enters a new geopolitical era.

The parties had been negotiating their updated pact for several years already, and while work had finally ended last fall, Putin specifically requested during the Kazan Summit that Pezeshkian “pay a separate visit to our country to sign this document and other important documents in a ceremonial atmosphere.” Some at the time casually dismissed this as some form of protocol, but in retrospect, it’s arguably the case that Russia didn’t want to sign such a partnership pact until regional hostilities finally abated.

That’s understandable too since he foresaw that the West and some in Israel would interpret that development as supposedly being aimed against them, with the resultant spin complicating any potential peace talks over Ukraine and risking a crisis in relations with Israel. Putin remains committed to resolving the NATO-Russian security dilemma over Ukraine through diplomatic means and spent the past quarter-century expanding ties with Israel so he wasn’t going to jeopardize either in this way.

From the Iran side, Pezeshkian represents the “reformist”/“moderate” faction of the Iranian policymaking elite, and they too might have been concerned that this development would be interpreted by the West and some in Israel as being aimed against them. Such perceptions could spoil any chance of reviving nuclear talks with the US, and it was still uncertain who the next American President would be, so he and his ilk might have also calculated that it’s better to wait until regional hostilities finally abated.

Observers will note that Pezeshkian gave his first interview to foreign media since the US presidential election just days before traveling to Moscow, during which time he reaffirmed his intent to resume talks with the US. The timing strongly suggests that he wanted to preemptively counteract whatever spin hawkish elements in the new administration might try to put on his country’s updated strategic partnership pact with Russia. This might have even been coordinated with Russia to a degree too.

Moving along to the NSTC component of their updated strategic partnership pact, it’s much more substantive since the aim is to increase their measly $4 billion mutual trade, which will help Russia more easily reach other Global South markets while providing relief for Iran’s sanctions-beleaguered economy. If successful, and it’ll take some time to see either way, then the NSTC can serve as a new geo-economic axis connecting the Eurasian Heartland to West Asia, South Asia, and eventually ASEAN and East Africa.

Once again, these plans were already underway for almost three years before they finally signed their long-negotiated updated strategic partnership pact so none of this is exactly new, it just bears mentioning in the larger context considering that part of this newly signed document concerns the NSTC. Much more important than the military and connectivity parts by far is their ambitious gas plans since Russia and Iran have some of the world’s largest reserves, with the latter’s largely remaining untapped.

It was explained in late August why “Russia Might Soon Redirect Its Gas Pipeline Plans From China To Iran & India”, namely due to the continued pricing dispute with the People’s Republic over Power of Siberia 2 and the latest gas MoUs at the time with Iran and then Azerbaijan. These combined to create the credible possibility of Russia replacing its hitherto eastward export focus with a southward one instead. Their updated strategic partnership pact confirms that the southern direction is now Russia’s priority.

Putin said during his press conference with Pezeshkian that he envisages beginning exports at just 2 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year, presumably due to the lack of infrastructure in northern Iran, before eventually scaling it to 55 bcm. That’s the same capacity as the now-defunct Nord Stream 1 to the EU. His Energy Minister later told reporters that the route will run through Azerbaijan and that negotiations are in their final stages over pricing. Their successful conclusion would revolutionize the industry.

Russian investment and technology could unlock Iran’s enormous gas reserves, thus leading to those two creating a “gas OPEC” for managing global prices amidst the Islamic Republic’s entrance to the market. While they have a self-interested incentive to keep them high, plunging the price could deal a powerful blow to America’s fracking industry and its associated LNG exports, thus imperiling its newfound European market dominance brought about by sanctions, the Nord Stream terrorist attack, and Ukraine.

Additionally, Russian gas projects on Iran’s side of the Gulf could supply nearby India, and/or a swap arrangement could be agreed to whereby Iran provides gas to it on Russia’s behalf even sooner. For that to happen, however, India would have to defy existing US sanctions on Iran or secure a waiver. Trump 2.0 might be convinced to respectively turn a blind eye or extend such in order for India to purchase this gas instead of China, the latter of which is already defying such sanctions on the import of Iranian oil.

Part of Trump 2.0’s expected “Pivot (back) to Asia” is to obtain predominant influence over China’s energy imports, which includes cutting off its supply through a carrot-and-stick approach of incentivizing exporters to sell to other clients instead and creating obstacles for those that don’t. Some possibilities for how this could look with regards to Russia were explained here in early January, while the Iranian dimension could work as described above, albeit in exchange for US-Iranian talks making progress.

Even if India decides not to risk the US’ wrath by unilaterally importing Russian-produced Iranian gas in the event that Trump 2.0 isn’t convinced about the merits of having it replace China as Iran’s top energy client and thus threatens harsh sanctions, then China can just buy it all instead. Either way, Russia’s help in unlocking Iran’s largely untapped and enormous reserves will have a seismic effect on this industry, with the only questions being what prices they agree to and who’ll purchase most of it.

The answer to both is of immense importance for American interests since constantly low prices could kill its fracking industry and inevitably lead to the loss of its newly captured European market while China’s large-scale import of this resource (let alone on the cheap) could further fuel its superpower rise. It’s therefore in the US’ interests to boldly consider coordinating with the potentially forthcoming Russian-Iranian “gas OPEC” as well as allowing India to replace China as Iran’s top energy client.

Circling back to the headline, it’s indeed the case that the updated Russian-Iranian strategic partnership pact is poised to be much more of a game-changer in the global gas industry than for geopolitics, though its revolutionary impact on the aforesaid could have some geopolitical consequences in time. Even so, the point is that the pact isn’t geopolitically driven like some enthusiasts imagined before its signing and others still counterfactually insist afterwards since Russia won’t defend Iran from Israel or the US.

Russia and Iran “reject unipolarity and hegemony in world affairs” as agreed upon in their newly signed pact, but they’re not going to directly oppose it via joint military means, only indirectly via energy-related ones and by strengthening their economies’ resilience. The future of their strategic partnership is bright, but in order to fully appreciate its prospects, observers must acknowledge its non-military nature instead of continuing to fantasize about a joint war against Israel and/or the US like some are doing.

Suzanne Massie, former Reagan adviser known as ‘the woman who ended the Cold War,’ dies at 94

I discuss Suzanne Massie in my book and made major use of her excellent book “Land of the Firebird” as a source on the tsarist Russian period. Last summer, I finally got around to reading her memoir about her time as an advisor to Reagan on Russian/Soviet issues and how she’d developed her interest in Russia. I’d wanted to interview her about her books and reached out to the two different email addresses on her website, but never got a response. It had occurred to me that she must be in her 90’s and maybe wasn’t in any condition to give an interview. I’m sad that I wasn’t able to talk to her. She sounds like she was a wonderfully interesting woman who played an important role at a crucial time in getting a US president to see “the enemy” as human (as opposed to an ideological blob thousands of miles away) and having legitimate interests that had to be considered. – Natylie

Meduza, 1/27/25

Suzanne Massie, an American writer and scholar of Russian history who served as an adviser to U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the final years of the Cold War, died on January 26. She was 94 years old.

Massie was the author of books including Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, which Reagan used to prepare for his meeting with Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit of 1985, and The Living Mirror: Five Young Poets from Leningrad, in which she profiled future Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky. She also made significant contributions to the book Nicholas and Alexandra, by her then-husband, Robert K. Massie.

During Reagan’s presidency, Massie met with him over 20 times, telling him stories of her personal experiences with Soviet citizens and advocating for more communication between Washington and Moscow. She also shared Russian jokes and phrases with Reagan, including the phrase “Trust, but verify,” and made multiple back-channel trips to the Soviet Union to deliver messages for his administration. A 1993 article in The Atlantic referred to her as “The Woman Who Ended the Cold War.”

Massie continued to travel to Russia throughout the last decades of her life. In 2021, she asked Vladimir Putin for Russian citizenship in a TV interview on the state media network NTV. She was granted Russian citizenship later that year.

Pietro Shakarian: The Russo-Persian Partnership Pact: Significance and Implications

By Pietro Shakarian, ACURA, 1/20/25

At the end of 1829, the social scene in St. Petersburg was abuzz about a charming young Persian prince, who had traveled from Tabriz to the Russian Imperial capital with gifts for Tsar Nicholas I and the Romanov family.  The journey of Iran’s Khosrow Mirza, the seventh son of Crown Prince `Abbas Mirza, was intended to repair relations between Tehran and Petersburg, following the murder of the diplomat and writer, Aleksandr Griboedov. The mission was major diplomatic success and set the stage for a long-term rapprochement between Russia and Persia, following two major wars over control of the Caucasus in the early 19th century.

Almost 200 years later, Russia and Iran have never been closer.  On January 17, 2025, Iran’s affable reform-minded president, Masoud Pezeshkian, arrived in Moscow to a red-carpet reception.  After a warm meeting and over three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two leaders signed the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between their respective countries.  The signed pact envisions an intensification of ties between Moscow and Tehran to a degree unprecedented in the history of Russo-Iranian relations.  The document was the result of months of intensive diplomatic work by both the Russian and Iranian sides.  It also reflected a significant deepening of relations that had been occurring steadily over the past decade, augmented by Russo-Iranian cooperation within BRICS and coordination on several major flashpoints—Ukraine, Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), Gaza/Palestine, and Lebanon.

Prior to this groundbreaking event, Western—especially British—media outlets made persistent attempts to dismiss the obvious deepening of ties between Moscow and Tehran. Publications such as The Guardian sought to play-up the supposed points of disagreement between the sides on issues such as the rising tensions over the southern Armenian province of Syunik (Zangezur).  Still others have speculated, without any understanding of the internal dynamics of the Iranian Islamic Republic, that Pezeshkian was on course to lead a rapprochement with the West, especially the US.  Yet, to any serious observer of Russo-Iranian relations, it was abundantly clear that such speculation was completely divorced from reality.  The signing of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership treaty between Putin and Pezeshkian ran this point home, amplified by the obvious warmth between the two leaders.

The preamble of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership treaty defines relations between the Iranian and Russian peoples as being “deeply historical,” stressing the “closeness of cultures and spiritual-moral values.”  It emphasizes the need to elevate Russo-Iranian relations to a “new level” (“novy uroven’”) and to give them a “comprehensive, long-term, and strategic character.”  The treaty itself is valid for 20 years but is automatically extended every five years, ensuring that it remains more or less perpetually effective, unless one of the signatories withdraws from it.  In the run-up to the signing of this landmark accord, analysts in both the East and West widely speculated on its potential nature. Some believed that the treaty would only be of an economic or cooperative nature.  Others speculated that it would be purely focused on defense—to such a degree that the treaty itself could even be called a “defense pact.” In fact, the treaty, being comprehensive, includes elements of both.  Its 47 articles cover everything from cooperation in the defense and energy spheres, to mutual support against sanctions, to the promotion of Persian literature and language in Russia and Russian literature and language in Iran.

Defense Cooperation

As Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi stressed, the treaty itself does not represent a “military alliance.”  Nevertheless, mutual defensive cooperation stands front and center in the text, with the first several articles being devoted entirely to that issue. The centrality of defense is undoubtedly informed by the recent challenges faced by Moscow and Tehran in their common geographic neighborhood.  Iran’s area largely corresponds to the vast Iranian plateau of Eurasia, touching many areas of mutual concern with Russia.  Shaped like an elegant Persian ewer, the country stretches from the Caucasus in the north, to the Persian Gulf in the south, and to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent in the east.  The fact that Iran sits adjacent to the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia makes it an ideal partner for Russia, as the Kremlin aims to bolster security along its Eurasian perimeter amid increased pressure from the West. Moscow and Tehran likewise share significant common interests in the Middle East and the Levant, enhanced by the recent fall of the embattled government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

These common areas of interest are reflected in the relevant articles on defense cooperation in the treaty.  Section 1 of Article 3 obliges the parties to strengthen relations on the basis of “sovereign equality, territorial integrity, independence,” and “non-interference in the internal affairs of both sides.”  Section 3—a cornerstone of the treaty—prohibits the parties from supporting potential aggressors who might attack one of the two signatories. This section is especially significant in light of recent Israeli threats against Iran. Section 4 of Article 3 further obliges the parties against supporting separatist movements on each of the other’s territory. Given that Russia and Iran are large, multiethnic “civilizational” states, this section is certainly applicable to both sides.  However, it is especially relevant for Iran, given post-Soviet Azerbaijan’s irredentist designs on Iranian Azerbaijan (the historical Atropatene of antiquity).  As an Iranian Azerbaijani himself, Pezeshkian is particularly sensitive to Baku’s efforts to stir up separatism in his native province.  In recent years, Ilham Aliyev’s Azerbaijan has been actively encouraged in these aggressive irredentist endeavors by the Israeli and American governments.  Supported by copious amounts of “caviar diplomacy,” dubious “academics” like the Atlantic Council’s Brenda Shaffer have been particularly vocal about the cause of “Southern Azerbaijan” (Baku’s official irredentist name for Iran’s northern provinces).

Section 4 of Article 3 thus represents a strong refutation of these efforts to “balkanize” Iran.  In Persian eyes, it is also perceived as a significant symbolic gesture on the part of Moscow, due to the historical legacy of Russian and Soviet interventions in Iran’s internal affairs. Especially noteworthy in this respect is the Iranian memory of Stalin’s support for the breakaway Azerbaijani and Kurdish republics in northern Iran after World War II.  The latter history still resonates among many Iranians and was even represented by Marjane Satrapi in her graphic novel (later film) Persepolis. Significantly, Pezeshkian’s hometown, Mahabad, once served as the center for the short-lived Kurdish Republic, backed by Stalin. Nevertheless, it must be stressed again that Section 4 is arguably just as relevant to Russia as it is to Iran, given recent calls by certain Western politicians and pundits for the dissolution or “breakup” of the Russian Federation.

Article 4 of the treaty focuses on deepening cooperation in the intelligence sphere, while Article 5 is entirely devoted to military cooperation.  The latter envisions a deep and all-encompassing collaboration between Tehran and Moscow in all military spheres, stopping just short of an outright military alliance.  It obliges both parties to conduct joint military exercises on their respective territories as well as “beyond their borders” in accordance with international law.  Section 4 calls for cooperation against common military and security threats, as well as larger threats to regional security.  In a similar vein, Section 2 of Article 6 envisions annual meetings on bilateral military-technical cooperation.  Article 7 focuses on joint cooperation in the fight against terrorism, human trafficking, illegal migration, and more, while Articles 10 and 11 focus on cooperation in the spheres of arms control and information security respectively.

Areas of Mutual Interest

Articles 12 and 13 of the treaty refer to the need for defense and security cooperation in specific areas of the Russian and Iranian geographic neighborhood.  In particular, one of Russia’s leading scholars of the Caucasus, Sergey Markedonov, has referred to Article 12 as being “of fundamental importance.”  This particular article obliges the two signatories to “promote the strengthening of peace and security in the Caspian region, Central Asia, Transcaucasia, and the Middle East” and unequivocally calls on the sides to “cooperate with the objective of preventing the interference” and “destabilizing presence” of “third states.”  With regard to Transcaucasia, the unnamed “third states” undoubtedly include the US, the UK, Israel, the members of the EU, and almost certainly Turkey.  This article will likely be welcomed by Georgia’s Irakli Kobakhidze but will give pause to Armenia’s Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev.  Pashinyan’s flirtations with the US and the EU and Aliyev’s extensive cooperation with Israel and Turkey put Yerevan and Baku at odds with Tehran and Moscow by the terms of this specific article.

Article 13 focuses exclusively on the Caspian region, an area of particular relevance to both Russia and Iran not only in terms of security, but also energy and north-south economic and transport cooperation.  This article alone contains four sections, reflecting the great importance that Moscow and Tehran attach to the Caspian as a common zone of cooperation.  It also reflects Iran’s plans to transform itself into a regional and international gas hub, a vision that Russian elites once invoked in reference to Turkey, during a period when relations between Moscow and Ankara were warmer.  Foreign interference is no less relevant in the Caspian, given the significant interest of the American and British war parties and energy industries in the region.  BP, for example, holds a 30% interest in the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.  These forces also share the long-term interest in developing a Trans-Caspian pipeline, by expanding the BTC across the Caspian to access the energy riches of Central Asia, especially Turkmenistan, to “contain” Russia, Iran, and China.  Yet, despite the significance that the Caspian region is accorded in the treaty, it was not mentioned at all by Putin or Pezeshkian in their press conference.  By contrast, the Middle East was mentioned six times, while the Caucasus was mentioned three times.

Article 14 of the treaty is likewise relevant to recent developments in the Caucasus, obliging the parties to facilitate the expansion of trade between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).  Of particular significance in this regard is the common border between Iran and EAEU member Armenia, in the mountainous province of Syunik, a region of major historical, spiritual, and cultural importance for the Armenian people. Azerbaijan seeks to claim this vital link between Iran and the EAEU as the “Zangezur corridor,” a vision known by Iranians as “NATO’s Turan Corridor.”  The aim of the “Kuwait on the Caspian” would be to secure a direct link with its Nakhichevan exclave and, by extension, NATO member Turkey, granting NATO open access to the Caspian Sea. Empowered by his belief that he can get anything he wants through military aggression, Aliyev has constantly threatened to forcibly seize this territory from Armenia, thus making Syunik another major potential flashpoint in Eurasia. The issue has profound security implications for Iran and Russia and, as the seriousness of the treaty’s language attests, this point is certainly not lost on Moscow or Tehran.

From Sanctions Support to the Shahnameh

Subsequent articles call for deepening bilateral economic, trade, energy, and transportation ties.  Section 2 of Article 16 calls for establishing “direct ties” between Russian federal subjects and the provinces (ostân-hâ) of Iran.  Article 19, with four sections, details mutual cooperation against sanctions, including an obligation not to join any international sanctions against either signatory, as well as a guarantee against “unilateral coercive measures.”  Article 20 builds on these points by detailing options to bypass SWIFT.   In particular, Section 2 calls for creating a “modern payment system independent of third countries.”  Article 23 pledges mutual assistance in the development of the peaceful use of atomic energy, while Article 25 calls for simplifying customs procedures between the two countries. Several additional articles articulate extensive cooperation in the science, healthcare, and education spheres.  In terms of culture, Articles 32 and 34 call for the promotion of Russian and Persian literature and language in both countries. In the sphere of mass media, Article 33 calls for countering “disinformation and negative propaganda” aimed against the signatories.  The concluding articles call for additional cooperation in several spheres, from tourism to sports to water resource management.

On the whole, all of these articles reflect the fact that the Russo-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership treaty is indeed just that – an all-encompassing document providing the basis for even deeper ties between two giants of Eurasia.  Tellingly, as Markedonov also noted, the treaty itself reflects already much of what Russo-Iranian relations had become in recent years.  Now, however, everything is codified on paper.  The text is rich in significant points, but the most significant aspect of the document is what it represents and implies as a whole.  Much like the Chinese-brokered Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the Russo-Iranian treaty represents yet another major indication that today’s world is fundamentally multipolar.  Any serious student of history or international relations would do well to pay attention and study this document very closely.  It is of immense importance, not only for Russia and Iran, but also for the changing landscape of global affairs more generally.

Pietro A. Shakarian, PhD is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Historical Research at the National Research University–Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Ian Proud: Russia races for Ukranian mineral wealth before a potential ceasefire

By Ian Proud, Responsible Statecraft, 1/24/25

Russia has spent the past five months swallowing up ever bigger tracts of Ukrainian coal, lithium, and uranium in the Donbass. Yet Western politicians still cling to the belief that they will be able to tap these resources to repay Ukraine’s ever mounting pile of debt. This is economic madness.

In the summer of 2024, most Western politico-military commentators were predicting that Russia was focussed on storming the strategically important military hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk. Russian troops had advanced slowly, inexorably westward in a straight line following the bloody attritional battle for Avdiivka which was captured in February 2024.

But from August, Russian tactics shifted. First from the south of Donetsk they stormed Vuhledar, literally translated as “Gift of Coal,” a site of significant reserves, capturing it on October 1. That opened the way to swallow up large swaths of land in the south. Following the apparent encirclement of Velyka Novosilka in the past two days, one of Ukraine’s three licensed blocks of extractable lithium is now within short reach in Shevchenko.

Russian armed forces skirted Pokrovsk, instead battling through Selydove and in a straight line for about 20 miles, capturing a Uranium mine in a village called Shevchenko (not the same Shevchenko where the lithium is located). In recent weeks, Russian forces have taken Ukraine’s most important mine for coking coal in Pishchane and two related coking coal shafts in Udachne and Kotlyne. Together, these mines alone had produced the coking coal for 65% of Ukraine’s steel production. There are now fears that Ukrainian steel production could plummet to 10% of its prewar level in 2025.

Since President Trump was elected in November, and the prospect of an enforced ceasefire grew brighter, Russia’s advance has progressively accelerated. Today it is on the verge of completing its capture of the coal-rich bastion of Toretsk, the only town on the line of contact that hadn’t moved since 2014.

That’s bad news for Ukraine, not just because of a potential loss of further territory.

Prior to the crisis in Ukraine starting in late 2013, the extractives sector accounted for over a third of total exports, with agricultural products a third of that value. Today, the situation has been flipped, with agriculture by far the largest export sector.

By capturing every coal, uranium, and lithium mine that they can, Russia is cutting off an important source of Ukrainian wealth. Ukraine faces deeper current account deficits as its agriculture sector is unable to make up the difference for lost exports of minerals, especially with President Zelensky wanting to give away Ukrainian grain to Syria.

Fitch ratings has predicted Ukraine will record current account deficits of 6.5% of and 5.7% of GDP respectively in 2024 and 2025.

As I have pointed out before, with Ukraine still cut off from international lending markets because of its junk sovereign credit rating, that means the only way it can make up the difference is foreign aid or loans from foreign governments. With debt now about 100% of GDP, Ukraine has had to dip into the domestic bond market.

However, as Ukrainian banks are largely state owned, that amounts to borrowing from itself. Ukraine’s central bank governor has denied that the country will need to print money in 2025 to keep the lights on. If it does, hyperinflation and a collapse of the hrynia will beckon, rendering Ukraine’s debt impossible to pay, at which point Western governments will need to bail the country out.

Fear not, though, as Western politicians have a cunning plan to repay Ukrainian debt. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been outspoken this year in saying that Ukraine could pay back U.S. loans with its mineral wealth. He first raised this in a CBS interview in February 2024 as Congress worked hard to unlock former President Biden’s $61 billion aid package to Ukraine. He repeated this position one month later in Kyiv. Standing beside President Zelensky, he said, “they’re sitting on trillion dollars of minerals that could be good for our economy.”

A month later, Congress passed the long-delayed $61 billion U.S. aid package to Ukraine. That included just $9 billion in forgivable loans, short of the two-thirds Sen. Graham had hinted at in February.

Nonetheless, it marked another step on the road towards shouldering more debt onto Ukraine in the belief that this might one day be repaid in Ukrainian uranium, lithium, and other bountiful minerals. This was solidified by the G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration loan of $50 billion agreed in June 2024, to which the United States contributed $20 billion at the end of 2024.

During this same period, the shift in focus towards Ukraine giving up its natural resources to secure Western aid gathered steam. In October 2024 when President Zelensky unveiled his so-called victory plan, giving up Ukraine’s natural resources became codified. He claimed that Ukraine would sign an agreement with the U.S., EU and others that would allow for use of Ukraine’s natural resources, which were worth “trillions of dollars.”

Just last week, shortly before President Trump’s inauguration, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer penned a “100-year partnership deal” between the United Kingdom and Ukraine. While the document has yet to be made public, 10 Downing Street said that it would cement the UK as “a preferred partner for Ukraine’s energy sector, critical minerals strategy and green steel production.”

US and UK politicians see great potential profit in accessing Ukraine’s wealth when war finally comes to an end, with Forbes Ukraine valuing minerals at $14.8 trillion.

However, just over half of that is located in the four eastern Ukrainian regions that Russia has occupied and where it gains new ground each day.

Back in August, in a typically foul-mouthed tirade, former Russia President Dmitry Medvedev took to his Telegram channel, among other things, to pillory Sen. Graham, who he called a “fat toilet maggot.” He continued, “To get access to the coveted minerals, the Western parasites shamelessly demand that their wards wage war to the last Ukrainian… ‘You’ll have to pay off your debts very soon. Hurry up, dear friends!’”

Leading European politicians still urge Ukraine to continue its war using credit in the hopes it might be repaid with a stock of natural resources that Russia captures with ever greater speed and covetousness. That is the economic equivalent of Russian roulette with a fully-loaded revolver that President Putin is gladly pointing at us.

President Trump’s efforts to end this madness can’t come soon enough.

Gordon Hahn: The Imminent NATO-Ukrainian Defeat’s Implications for the Fate of the Ukrainian State

By Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics, 1/16/25

Westerners are fond of citing a statement falsely attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that “Ukraine is not even a state.” This quote is marshaled in order to support the equally false and truly absurd claim that Putin’s decision to undertake his ‘special military operation’ and invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was intended to conquer all of Ukraine in an effort to conquer all of the former Soviet states and Russian Imperial territories before moving into Europe. In actuality, the West has treated Ukraine as a less than sovereign, independent state and as a tool – a sacrificial lamb — for the attainment of maximum U.S./Western hegemony in Eurasia by way of NATO expansion. Now, as the fateful and potentially fatal war for Ukraine – the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War – approaches its end game, the statement attributed to Putin may become a simple, if sad, statement of fact. And the wiping of the Ukrainian state off the map of eastern Europe, western Eurasia, and the world is more likely to come as a result of Western actions as it is of Russian forces’ drive westward.  

It is the U.S. and West that drove NATO expansion despite the Ukrainian constitution’s now former clause stipulating the country’s non-bloc, neutral status but repealed by Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s predecessor in Ukraine’s Office of the President, Petro Poroshenko, and despite the Ukrainian population’s divided, if not majority opposition opinion to Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

It is the U.S. and the West that refused to negotiate NATO expansion and a general European security architecture and instead push Ukraine forward to the frontline in NATO’s confrontation with ‘Putin’s Russia’, despite the West’s own claims that Putin and his Russia were dangerous and expansionist.

It is the U.S. and the West that conned Zelenskiy into continuing the war with Russia that Moscow escalated after losing all hope in January 2022 for any negotiations with the West over these issues. Putin opted to engage in coercive diplomacy by initiating the ‘special military operation’ and invading Ukraine and almost simultaneously offering peace talks to Ukraine in February 2022 in order to achieve with Kiev the kind of security agreement that eluded Moscow in relations with the West. The Minsk, then Istanbul talks that resulted reached a preliminary agreement only to see the West scuttle the agreement by refusing to provide the security guarantees envisaged in it any by dispatching then British Premier Boris Johnson to issue the NATO message that Kiev should fight and Washington and Brussels would provide everything Ukraine needed ‘for as long as it takes.’ The Western-Ukrainian relationship that has developed in the course of the war is reminiscent of that of a vassalage—Ukraine being the vassal with little to no sovereignty.

It is the U.S. and the West that have refused to begin peace talks with Moscow or pressure Kiev to do so and instead continuously escalated a war that is attritting Ukraine both in terms of its population and its territory even as Russian forces’ drive westward accelerates with each passing month (as I predicted in January 2024; see https://youtu.be/P_MJi5H6HKU?si=rxRiaE0EglSgbclw at the 1:00:45 mark), despite Putin’s and other top Russian officials’ repeated statements that they are open to any negotiations.  

Now the Ukrainian state’s control over its territories is being whittled away by Russia’s mounting, if cautious offensive. It has been stated by Zelenskiy and Western leaders that Ukrainian forces’ ill-advised, costly, and failed incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in July 2024 provides Kiev with collateral to trade for its Russian-occupied regions. But Russia has stated that no talks with Kiev are possible so long as Ukrainian troops remain on Russian territory, and Russia’s advancing troops in Ukraine are moving deeper into regions beyond the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhia regions Russia has laid claim to and annexed. Thus, rather than Ukraine being able to trade Kursk for one or more of those regions in any future talks, it will be Russia that will be able to demand concessions for the return of regions or parts thereof such as Kharkiv (Kharkov), Sumy, Dnipro (Dnepropetrovsk), Mikolaev, and even eastern Kiev.

Moreover, the danger of Russian forces crossing the Dnieper River into western Ukraine is just over the horizon. So it now is becoming more in NATO’s perceived self-interest in its pursuit of encroachment on Russia’s borders and encircling her to destroy what is Russia’s Ukrainian buffer than it is to preserve any Ukraine that is a non-bloc, neutral state. Russia has repeatedly declared that it is in its self-interestthat Ukraine be a non-bloc, neutral state and never become a member of NATO. This is because Russia prefers a buffer be situated between it and the Western alliance for all the obvious and not so obvious (to many) reasons. Therefore, the party in the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War that is most interested in destroying Ukraine as a state is not Russia but NATO.

The elimination of Ukraine will achieve the key goal that NATO’s expansion to Ukraine has been intended to achieve: NATO’s acquisition of members along all of Russia’s western and southwestern borders (the Transcaucasus). In comparison with having Ukraine as a member-state, Ukraine’s absorption by Russia has only two downsides for Washington and Brussels. First, they will have to forego the control over the Black Sea they coveted as the second goal of NATO expansion, though perhaps Georgia remains an option, however less liable in the wake of the recent elections and failed attempt to repeat the color of ‘rose’ revolution there. Second, there will be a blow to Western prestige in light of its failure to save Ukraine and deal a strategic defeat to Russia.

There are numerous ways in which the West or elements therein can facilitate or bring about Ukraine’s demise. The most likely is another scuttling of peace talks – this time those being worked on by the Trump Administration – forcing Ukraine to continue fighting a losing war of attrition with Russian advancing forces right up to the Polish, Hungarian, and Rumanian borders. This is precisely what hardline former Russian Security Council Secretary and FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev was warning in his much discussed Moskovskii Komsomolets interview. For Trump this will be a soon forgotten political defeat. But many in DC and Brussels will rejoice at the prospect of a long war for Russia that lasts until Putin’s physical or political health fails, sparking a power struggle that might offer the prospect of a Russian collapse on the Soviet model.

A less likely scenario would be the previous one with annexations of Transcarpathian and western provinces of Ukraine by Hungary, Rumania, and Poland added in. Elements in all three of these countries are pushing for returns of traditional national territories given to the USSR’s Ukraine SSR by Joseph Stalin after World War Two. Midwives of Ukraine’s dissolution could also emerge as a result of NATO’s insertion of troops into Ukraine west of the Dnieper, as was proposed by some earlier in the war. Recent talk of British and French ‘peacekeepers’ in Ukraine could perform the same function. Although this variation is unlikely, such a ‘protectorate Ukraine’ could eventually be dissolved and its parts incorporated by its neighbors as noted above.

With Ukraine’s disappearance, the Beltway and Brussels can and will assuage themselves with the knowledge that NATO has reached Russia’s borders in yet another sector and has the option of fomenting Ukrainian separatists inside Russia.

The one thing that would likely trump or delay the abovementioned scenarios, besides Trump and any innovative schemes his team might conjure up, is some form of direct Western intervention in the war on the ground. In this case, there is still no guarantee of Ukraine’s survival as Western and Russian troops rampage through the country in the long war over NATO expansion.

Sergey Poletaev: Russian forces advance on seven key positions: These battles will determine the fate of the conflict

By Sergey Poletaev, RT, 1/22/25

Over the past month, the Russian military has advanced along seven directions in Donbass and Kursk Region, with significant progress reported in key areas. The Kurakhovo operation in the western part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is nearing completion, while Russian forces are beginning to encircle the Pokrovsk urban agglomeration, further north. What follows is a detailed account of recent developments.

Kursk Region: Kiev’s failed attack

In late 2024, Moscow’s forces significantly reduced the Ukrainian military’s foothold in Kursk Region — part of ‘old Russia’ — mitigating threats and preventing the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) from advancing toward strategic locations like Lgov and Rylsk. The strategy of attrition warfare has kept this section of the front relatively static.

On January 5–6, approximately three Ukrainian battalions launched an attack on the settlement of Berdin. However, Russian troops detected their preparations early and executed counterattacks in the directions of Russkoye and Cherkasskoye, liberating Russkoye Porechnoye. Another counterattack targeted Malaya Loknya.

Photographic evidence indicates that a Ukrainian battalion was destroyed near Berdin, marking one of the AFU’s largest operations since the disastrous 2023 counteroffensive. Despite their efforts, the Ukrainian column failed to penetrate Russian minefields.

The front line remains stable following these engagements, with no signs of an imminent large-scale Russian push. Instead, attrition tactics are likely to persist until Ukrainian resources are depleted or a retreat is ordered.

Toretsk and Chasov Yar: First steps toward Konstantinovka

Months of intense fighting for Toretsk and Chasov Yar in Donetsk have started to yield results. By mid-January, Russian forces had captured a fire-retardant factory in Chasov Yar, followed by the city center, including the city council building, by January 20. The western part of the city remains under Ukrainian control, but these gains position Russian forces closer to Konstantinovka, a major target with a pre-war population of 75,000. But in order to advance in this direction, the Russian army needs to expand the area of control along the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal.

In Toretsk, Russian forces captured the Tsentralnaya mine, the city center, and multiple residential areas. The AFU retains control over the Toretskaya mine and parts of Krymskoye in the northeast. Securing Toretsk allows Russian troops to move towards Konstantinovka, which is 10–11 km further along the railway line.

However, operations in these areas face challenges. In Chasov Yar, supply routes via the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal are problematic due to the canal’s depth, which reaches up to ten meters in places. Meanwhile, Toretsk’s dense urban development and challenging terrain complicate Russian advances. Despite these hurdles, progress in these sectors marks steady, albeit incremental, gains.

Pokrovsk-Mirnograd: Encirclement in Progress

Pokrovsk is emerging as a focal point for Russia’s next major offensive following the Kurakhovo operation. The strategy appears to follow a familiar pattern: encircling the city, establishing fire control over supply routes, and depleting the Ukrainian garrison’s resources.

The southern flank of Pokrovsk was formed after the capture of Selidovo in late October 2024. This area also serves as the northern flank of Kurakhovo. Indicators suggest that Pokrovsk and Mirnograd — together forming an urban area of over 100,000 people — will be targeted as a single entity.

In January, Russian units advanced toward the Pokrovsk–Mezhevaya highway in the south and the village of Vozdvizhenka in the north, cutting off the Pokrovsk–Konstantinovka highway. These maneuvers are initial steps toward encircling Pokrovsk and Mirnograd while demonstrating the potential for a broader offensive that could extend into the Dnepropetrovsk region for the first time since 2022.

Kurakhovo: The final phase of the operation

The Kurakhovo operation began on October 1, 2024, with the capture of Ugledar. On January 6, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the liberation of Kurakhovo and its extensive industrial zone. Russian troops entered the western part of the industrial zone around New Year’s Eve, facing minimal resistance as the weakened Ukrainian garrison abandoned its positions.

Over the course of three months, Russian forces systematically surrounded the city from three sides, establishing fire control over supply lines and forcing the AFU into retreat. The flanks extended 10–15 km west, encircling Ukrainian forces outside fortified urban and industrial zones.

The operation is not yet complete, however. The capture of Andreevka and Konstantinovka is essential to stabilize the front line and fully secure this strategic area.

Broader Strategic Observations

Russian advances over the past month highlight a methodical approach characterized by encirclement, resource depletion, and steady territorial gains. While operations in Toretsk and Chasov Yar underscore the challenges of urban combat and logistical constraints, progress in Pokrovsk and Kurakhovo demonstrates the effectiveness of Russia’s offensive strategies.

The capture of Kurakhovo and advances toward Pokrovsk and Mirnograd could pave the way for operations extending into Dnepropetrovsk for the first time since 2022, potentially altering the strategic landscape.

As the conflict continues, the effectiveness of Russia’s strategy — coupled with its ability to manage logistical and operational challenges — will play a decisive role. For now, the focus remains on consolidating gains, securing supply lines, and preparing for the next phase of operations.

Leonid Ragozin: Biden’s Ukraine disaster was decades in the making

By Leonid Ragozin, Al Jazeera, 1/18/25

President Joe Biden is about to wrap up what many perceive as a disastrous presidency. His departure from the White House could potentially mark a turning point in both the Russia-Ukraine conflict and in the three decades of poorly thought-out Western policies which resulted in the alienation of Russia and the collapse of its democratic project. But that hinges on the incoming President Donald Trump’s ability not to repeat the mistakes of his predecessors.

It is Russian President Vladimir Putin who decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the ground for this conflict was prepared by US securocrats in the 1990s. Back then, Russia had just emerged from the dissolution of the USSR much weaker and disoriented, while the Russian leadership, idealistic and inept as it was at the time, worked on the assumption that full-blown integration with the West was inevitable.

Decisions made at that time triggered confrontation between Russia and the West which arrived at its logical climax during Biden’s presidency.

The problem was never the eastward expansion of NATO – a security pact created to confront the Soviet Union – and the European Union per se, but Russia’s exclusion from this process.

Crucially, this approach set Ukraine on the course of Euro-Atlantic integration while Russia was kept out of it – creating a rift between two nations closely linked to each other by history, economic and interpersonal relations. It also precipitated Russia’s securitisation and backsliding on democracy under Putin.

This outcome was never pre-destined and it took relentless efforts by American securocrats to bring it about.

One of the lost chances for a different path was the Partnership for Peace programme, officially launched by the Clinton administration in 1994. It was designed to balance the desire of former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO and the crucial goal of keeping Russia on board – as a major nuclear power and a new democracy with a clearly pro-Western government.

Russia joined it but, as the American historian Mary Sarotte writes in her book Not One Inch, this useful framework was derailed at its inception by a small number of securocrats in Washington.

She specifically talks about “the pro-expansion troika”, consisting of Daniel Fried, Alexander Vershbow, and Richard Holbrooke, who pushed for an aggressive expansion of NATO, disregarding protests from Moscow.

Sarotte also mentions John Herbst as the author of a later report on unofficial promises of NATO’s non-expansion made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev which, as she suggests, shaped the US policy of ignoring Russia’s complaints about NATO expanding all the way to its borders for decades to come.

The unreflective arrogance and triumphalism that these securocrats embody can also be seen in Biden himself who back then was a prominent member of Congress. In a 1997 video, he mocked Moscow’s protests against NATO expansion by saying that Russia would have to embrace China and Iran if it kept being intransigent. He clearly assumed it to be an absurd and unrealistic scenario back then – believing, perhaps, that Russia had no choice but to stay in the Western orbit. But it turned out exactly along the lines of what he thought was a smart joke.

In his hawkish politics on Russia, Biden found a willing partner in the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It is hardly a coincidence that Zelenskyy’s massive U-turn on relations with Russia started as Biden took office.

The Ukrainian president had been elected on the promise that he would end the simmering conflict that began with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. He met with Putin in Paris in December 2019 and the two agreed to a ceasefire in the Donbas region, which both sides had largely respected, reducing the number of deaths to near zero.

But once Biden set foot in the White House, Zelenskyy ordered a clampdown on Putin’s Ukrainian ally Viktor Medvedchuk, while simultaneously launching loud campaigns for Ukraine’s NATO membership, the return of Crimea, as well as for the derailing of the Russo-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

Two factors may have played into Zelenskyy’s decisions. Azerbaijan’s victory over Russian-backed Armenian forces in the fall of 2020, achieved largely thanks to Turkish Bayraktar drones, gave hopes that high-tech warfare against Russia could be successful. The other factor was that in December 2020, polls showed Medvedchuk’s party ahead of Zelenskyy’s.

Just a few days after Biden’s inauguration, Zelenskyy gave an interview to American outlet Axios in which he famously asked his US counterpart: “Why Ukraine is still not in NATO?” This was followed by an op-ed with the same question in the title by Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, published by Atlantic Council – a think tank that gets much of its funding from the US government and Pentagon contractors.

Unsurprisingly, some of the same personalities that shaped US policies towards Russia in the 1990s also egged on the Biden administration to adopt aggressive policies that contributed to making the invasion happen.

On March 5, Fried, Vershbow and Herbst, along with three others, published a report in the Atlantic Council with a list of recommendations for the Biden administration with regard to Ukraine and Russia. These boiled down to pressuring Putin by escalating on every front – from offering NATO membership plan to Ukraine to derailing Nord Stream 2 and “enhancing security” in the Black Sea.

Three weeks after that publication, Putin began deploying troops on the Ukrainian border, embarking on 11 months of hair-raising brinkmanship. This period saw the British warship HMS Defender entering what Russia had declared its territorial waters off the coast of occupied Crimea in June, the US starting secret supplies of weapons to Ukraine in September and finally the US and Ukraine announcing a strategic partnership in November – a move that amounted to casus belli in the eyes of Kremlin hawks.

It was around that time that Putin began preparing for the invasion in earnest before eventually triggering it in February 2022. The resulting war is now approaching its third anniversary.

Despite massive Western backing, Ukraine suffered terrible losses and gained nothing from challenging Putin to a fight. The war has brought Ukraine to the brink, causing a massive refugee crisis, economic collapse, social disintegration and ever-growing death toll.

If peace in Ukraine is achieved this year, it will likely be along the lines of the failed Istanbul agreements of 2022, which envisioned an Austria-styled neutral Ukraine with limits on the size of its army. Russia will likely insist on keeping much of the territory that it gained as punishment for Ukrainian intransigence. This will technically constitute a defeat for Ukraine, but it will be a clear win for the Ukrainian people, who have borne the brunt of this war, as well as for the rest of the world.

It will also be a major defeat for the securocratic class which has been pushing for a new standoff with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The aggressive pursuit of expansion at the expense of Russia has clearly failed as a strategy. It is time for Western policymakers to do some soul-searching on how to reverse the situation and start a slow drift back towards rapprochement with Moscow.

This is not about absolving Putin’s government from accountability for the crime of aggression as well as war crimes committed by Russian troops. It is about removing conditions which caused Russia’s transformation into a militarised dictatorship and ending a conflict which will keep propping up Putin’s regime for as long as it lasts.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Ukraine’s chief army psychiatrist arrested on $1m corruption charge

By Laura Gozzi, BBC, 1/21/25

Ukraine has detained its army’s chief psychiatrist for alleged “illegal enrichment” charges related to earnings of more than $1m (£813,000) accrued since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

In a statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the man sat on a commission deciding whether individuals were fit for military service.

The SBU statement did not name him – however, a man called Oleh Druz was previously identified as the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ chief psychiatrist.

The SBU said he owned three apartments in or near Kyiv, one in Odesa, two plots of land and several BMW luxury cars, and investigators searching his home also found $152,000 (£124,000) and €34,000 in cash.

The statement said the man did not declare the property, which was registered in the name of his wife, daughter, sons, and other third parties.

He now faces ten years in jail for the alleged charges of illegal enrichment and making a false declaration.

Druz was implicated in a similar case in 2017 which saw him fail to declare two SUVs and several properties, leading him to be suspended.

Ukraine has long battled endemic corruption.

In May, a Ukrainian MP was charged with embezzling £220,000, while in 2023 more than 30 conscription officials accused of taking bribes and smuggling people out of the country were sacked in an anti-corruption purge.

Last year, the Ukrainian parliament voted to abolish military medical commissions after several officials were accused of accepting bribes in exchange for issuing exemptions from military service.