Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 87

Larry C. Johnson: WESTERN GENERALS AND PUNDITS STILL TRAFFIC IN FALSE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT RUSSIA

by Larry C. Johnson, Substack, 5/20/24

A key task in any analysis is to identify your underlying assumptions about the activity or person you are assessing. If you indulge false assumptions, then your entire analytical narrative will be wrong. It is like looking through a pair of prescription glasses — you’re myopic — and prescription is hyperopic. Personally, I prefer to deal primarily with facts and shy away from conjecture.

I want to focus on one recent article that illustrates this point. I thank Andrei Martyanov , who flagged this latest windbag puffery from the U.S. European Commander, Christopher Cavoli. Cavoli insists that, “Russia’s ongoing offensive in Ukraine doesn’t have the legs for a breakthrough.” [https://www.politico.eu/article/top-nato-commander-christopher-cavoli-russian-offensive-war-in-ukraine/]

“I know the Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough,” . . . .

“They don’t have the skill and the capability to do it, to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage,”

And his source of this insight? If you guessed, “The Ukrainians,” give yourself a gold star. Cavoli is dead wrong about the numbers, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Admiral Rob Bauer, a NATO dilettante, weighed in with this wowser — which I suspect is also courtesy of the Ukrainians.

He said Russia has managed to muster additional forces,“but the quality of the troops is lower than the troops they started the conflict with” due to the number of officers “that were killed in the beginning of the war” and so aren’t able to train newer soldiers.

Once again we are witnessing a display of projection — i.e., assigning to Russia what the Ukrainians are experiencing. Russia has been adding tens of thousands of troops per month since September 2022. Unlike Ukraine — which snatches guys off the street, shoves them into vans, hauls them to a military center, kits them out in uniforms, gives them a gun, and provides only cursory training — Russia is giving recruits at least six months of training and then placing those new soldiers in units with combat veterans. The ranks of the Ukrainian military are being depleted every single day, while Russia is building up its forces.

So let’s deal with some facts. Look at the numbers of soldiers in the Russian Army vs the supposedly invincible U.S. Army, and you will realize Cavoli’s buffoonery. (Yes, I am assuming these numbers are accurate, because they are provided by Western sources.)

“As of 2024, the Russian Armed Forces have 3.57 million troops, with 1.32 million active military, 2 million reserve, and 250,000 paramilitary. This is the second increase in the size of the Russian military since 2018, with the previous increase of 137,000 troops in August 2022.”

And the United States?

“As of July 31, 2023, the United States Army (USA) has 452,689 active duty personnel, 325,218 Army National Guard personnel, and 176,968 Army Reserve personnel, for a total of 1,073,200 uniformed personnel.”

Cavoli, a biology major, and Bauer, apparently are not very good at math. The Russian armed forces, now, are three times the size of that fielded by the United States, both in terms of active duty and reserve. But, the advantage for Russia is not just in terms of manpower. Consider this — Russia’s forces are located primarily in Russia (yes, there are a few in Syria) and Russia’s General Staff can bring the full might of 1.3 million soldiers to the frontlines far more quickly than the U.S. and NATO could mobilize and move. U.S. forces are scattered around the globe. If the United States decided to fight Russia, the Russians, as defenders, will have at least a three-to-one advantage over the United States.

Cavoli’s flawed assumption? He is looking at what the Russians have done over the past two years and assumes that Russia is operating at full tilt. It is not. He is assuming that because Russia has not committed a million plus soldiers to the battle, that the training is inadequate and the troops unskilled. And, worse of all, he believes the Ukrainians. I want to remind you that Colonel Alex Vershinin, writing at RUSI, provided a detailed account that totally rebuts Cavoli’s wishful thinking — The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine.

“Attritional wars require their own ‘Art of War’ and are fought with a ‘force-centric’ approach, unlike wars of manoeuvre which are ‘terrain-focused’. They are rooted in massive industrial capacity to enable the replacement of losses, geographical depth to absorb a series of defeats, and technological conditions that prevent rapid ground movement. In attritional wars, military operations are shaped by a state’s ability to replace losses and generate new formations, not tactical and operational manoeuvres. The side that accepts the attritional nature of war and focuses on destroying enemy forces rather than gaining terrain is most likely to win.

“The West is not prepared for this kind of war. To most Western experts, attritional strategy is counterintuitive. Historically, the West preferred the short ‘winner takes all’ clash of professional armies. Recent war games such as CSIS’s war over Taiwan covered one month of fighting. The possibility that the war would go on never entered the discussion. This is a reflection of a common Western attitude. Wars of attrition are treated as exceptions, something to be avoided at all costs and generally products of leaders’ ineptitude. Unfortunately, wars between near-peer powers are likely to be attritional, thanks to a large pool of resources available to replace initial losses. The attritional nature of combat, including the erosion of professionalism due to casualties, levels the battlefield no matter which army started with better trained forces. As conflict drags on, the war is won by economies, not armies. States that grasp this and fight such a war via an attritional strategy aimed at exhausting enemy resources while preserving their own are more likely to win. The fastest way to lose a war of attrition is to focus on manoeuvre, expending valuable resources on near-term territorial objectives. Recognising that wars of attrition have their own art is vital to winning them without sustaining crippling losses.”

Simplicius the Thinker, who writes at Substack, did a deep-dive on Vershinin’s analysis and explained what it means for Russia:

“Not only do we have confirmation from Western think tanks, and the highest offices of Ukraine itself, that Russia abides by strict brigade staffing and restoration policies, rotating troops constantly and never letting brigades get critically depleted in the way the AFU is forced to do. But recall how Russia utilized experienced Wagner vets in precisely the fashion described above. They ‘distributed’ Wagner and other experienced fighting units throughout the entire formation, adding them to both the Akhmat forces, Rosgvardia, and others, even bringing them to train Belarusian troops.

In short, Russia is strictly adhering to the playbook for ideal husbanding of both forces and battlefield knowledge, wisdom, and experience—doing the utmost to make sure the utterly vital knowledge gained by the most experienced warriors is never squandered but always multiplied throughout and utilized to its fullest.”

Cavoli is lost in some out-dated World War II fantasy. He expected the Russians to launch a blitzkrieg and, when they did not, assumed they were incapable of doing so because of poorly trained, ill-equipped soldiers. If history is any judge, Russian Generals are far superior to any the West has to offer. While the Americans were ousted from Vietnam and Afghanistan, the Russians have been chewing up Ukrainian forces and depleting NATO warehouses of critical weapon supplies. Russia has the means to do a breakthrough, but that is not its stated objective. Attrition! Russia is going to bleed Ukraine and its NATO allies white, rather than risk high-casualty maneuver assaults favored by the likes of Cavoli.

He’s EXPOSING how the West brought war to Ukraine, and they don’t like it – Redacted News Interviews Benjamin Abelow

Author Benjamin Abelow sits down with Clayton Morris to discuss his excellent book “How the West Brought War to Ukraine”.

YouTube link here.

Big Serge: Widening the Front – The Fifth Battle of Kharkov

Big Serge, Substack, 5/25/24

There are certain regions of the world that seemed destined by the cruel caprice of geography and chance to be perennial battlegrounds. Often these ravaged lands lay at the crossroads of imperial interests, as in the case of Afghanistan or Poland, which have been so frequently trampled by armies going this way or that, or else they are simply plagued by perennially unstable governance or roiling ethnic conflict. Sometimes, however, it is the peculiar logic of military operations that brings violence to the same place, again and again. One such notorious sufferer is the great industrial city of Kharkov, in northeastern Ukraine.

Originally founded as a modest fortress in the 17th Century, Kharkov was fated to play an unusual role in the Second World War. The city became a sort of symbol of frustration for the warring Soviet and German armies: it was the place that both armies wanted to get to, but could not quite seem to take and hold. In 1941 the city was captured in the waning phases of Germany’s colossal invasion of the USSR, and fell under occupation through the winter. In 1942, the city’s environs became the scene of an enormous battle when the Germans planned to launch an offensive out of Kharkov at exactly the same time that the Red Army planned an offensive towards it. The following year, the city was briefly recaptured by the Red Army as it pursued retreating German armies away from Stalingrad, before once again changing hands after a timely German counterattack. Finally, at the end of August 1943, the Soviets retook the city for good as they began their inexorable drive towards Berlin.

No major city changed hands as many times in World War Two as did Kharkov, which became the scene of no less than four substantial battles. The cruelty of fate had turned Kharkov into a sort of mutual culmination point – the spot on the map beyond which both armies repeatedly found it difficult to advance.

History does not repeat, as they say, but it does rhyme. Kharkov’s strategic position, as the great urban center blocking the inner bend of the northern Donets River, has not changed much in the eighty years since the Soviets and the Germans last fought in the forests here, and Kharkov Oblast is once more becoming the rope in a deadly game of tug of war. The area was briefly overrun by the Russian army in the opening weeks of the Special Military Operation, with the Russians establishing a screening line to cover their capture of the Lugansk shoulder. Later that year, Kharkov became the scene of Ukraine’s seminal military achievement of the war, when they overran the thin Russian defenses and launched a pursuit all the way to the Oskil River. And now, the Russians are back, launching a fresh attack into Kharkov Oblast on May 10. The sound of artillery is once again heard in the city.

The Northern Front

I understand the impulse to draw “big arrows”, as the parlance goes. Many people are becoming frustrated with the pace of the war and the positional nature of the combat, and so Russia opening a new front looks like a chance to unlock the frontline and restore mobile operations. I think this is misguided for several reasons, and more generally the idea that the Russians are making some sort of serious play for Kharkov is very wrongheaded. In fact, the opposite is true – it’s likely that we will see the Russians attempt to avoid fighting in Kharkov’s shadow. On the other end of the spectrum are those labeling the new offensive a “feint”, which is wrong both as a misunderstanding of the military nomenclature and of the Russian intentions.

First off, let’s clarify something about the word “feint”, and see how it does not at all apply to Russia’s Kharkov operation. A feint refers to a deceptive or distracting maneuver designed to disrupt the enemy’s decision making or pull his forces out of position. That is not what is happening here, for two reasons. First, the Kharkov operation is a real attack involving meaningful Russian forces. Russia currently has two Army Corps in this area of operations – the 11th and 44th, along with elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army. This is a grouping with serious punch – the Ukrainians are of course forced to divert forces in response, but they are doing this not because they have been deceived but because the Russians are presenting a serious threat that warrants response. Secondly (as we will see shortly), this is an operation that has the potential to be supportive of Russia’s operations on the Oskil front (around Kupyansk).

In other words, it’s not a deception or a feint, but a real front that forces Ukraine to reallocate assets. By extending the front, they are drawing in Ukrainian reserves and fixing them in place – more on that later. But the new front is far more than just a distraction.

It may be useful to look a stripped down map of the area to get a handle on things. There are of course a variety of great mappers out there, like Kalibrated and Suryiak who do excellent work geolocating the war and marking front lines, but one drawback that they all share is that they use Google Maps for their base, which can make things look rather cluttered. In this case, a more minimalist view can help us see what is going on.

Right now, Russian operations are directed on two towns close to the border – Volchansk and Lypsti. Let’s consider what this means.

The first thing that we have to note is that Volchansk is on the east bank of the Donets River, meaning it is on the Kupyansk side and not the Kharkov side. The initial Russian thrust managed to cut Volchansk off from the west bank of the river, which means the main route for AFU forces to access the town would be the arterial road running north and crossing the river at Staryi Saltiv. However, on May 11 the Russians managed to destroy the bridge in Staryi Saltiv. There were only two bridges over the Donets within 30 miles of Volchansk; one is now physically blocked by the Russians after they captured the village of Staritsa, and the other is destroyed. Russia has also struck several ancillary bridges on the Volchya river, preventing the Ukrainians from efficiently moving reserves to the flanks of Volchansk.

This has put the AFU in a real bind. To feed reinforcements into Volchansk, they are forced to take a circuitous route (crossing the Donets near Chuguiv) and drive up a well surveilled road where they are extremely vulnerable to Russian fires. In essence, Volchansk has become an isolated battlespace where approaching Ukrainian reserves can be pummeled on the march. Geolocated Ukrainian losses from LostArmor confirm this, with hits clustering on that main avenue of approach.

This has turned Volchansk into a very well shaped battlespace, with Russia managing to partially bifurcate the front along the Donets River. Meanwhile, the Russian advance on Lyptsi has an important supportive role, in that it will allow Russian tube artillery to bring the city of Kharkov in range.

Ukraine has to defend this front, of course. Most of Russia’s forces in this grouping are still in reserve, and it is very clear that the AFU cannot simply allow the Russians to open a backdoor to Kupyansk for free. However, in the short term this defense is costly for the AFU, because the shaping of the battlespace and the lanes of approach for their reserves allow Russia to fight an effective interdiction battle. The Ukrainian army simply does not have adequate road access to Volchansk to hold the town for long.

In sum, the reopening of the Northern Front does not signal a qualitative change in the conduct of the war, but it does create a major stress on the AFU. Russia is not going to suddenly unlock the front and begin slicing mobile operations. This is still the same war that it has been for the last two years, with methodical positional fighting and paralyzing strike capabilities. But the Kharkov front does serve a variety of Russian interests, and supports the following goals:

1. Stretch the front laterally to denude Ukrainian strength and draw in AFU reserves.

2. Fight an interdiction battle, striking AFU forces as they deploy on the east bank of the Donets and degrading Ukraine’s ability to sustain their defenses.

3. Place the AFU around Kharkov under tube artillery fire.

4. In the longer term, exploit the front by isolating the Ukrainian grouping around Kupyansk.

The most important aspect of all this, however, is the ability to both force the Ukrainians to commit precious assets *and* attrit them in an efficient manner by forcing them to feed units into an isolated combat area on the east bank of the Donets. Ukraine’s ability to generate new forces and provide replacements is reaching its limits, with mobilization covering perhaps only 25% of losses. Budanov has complained that there are essentially no reserves left, and Ukraine has begun begging for western military trainers to deploy in Ukraine to allow for faster throughput on their mobilization and deployment.

For Russia, therefore, it’s very important to prevent Ukraine from husbanding resources, and that means drawing as many AFU assets into well shaped battles as possible. Kharkov would be an ideal example of this, with an operationally significant pressure point opened up so that the AFU is forced to funnel forces into a furnace. Opening an additional front in Sumy would have a similar effect.

The bigger problem for Ukraine, from a force generation perspective, is their increasing reliance on a small roster of premiere brigades which are constantly being shuttled around the front to fight fires and attend to pressing combat tasks. The most notorious example would be the 47th Mechanized Brigade, which was at the center of Ukraine’s failed Zaporizhian Counteroffensive before being scrambled to Avdiivka, where it was at the center of Ukraine’s fierce, but unsuccessful defensive stand. Now, the 47th is increasingly combat incapable, and a botched attempt to pull it out of the line for badly needed refit led to the debacle at Ocheretyne, where Russian forces exploited a yawning void in the Ukrainian line.

Reopening the Kharkov front creates yet another emergency to suck in these premiere assets. Already, the 93rd Mechanized Brigade has been scrambled into the Volchansk area – or at least, elements of it, as some units of the Brigade appear to still be fighting around Chasiv Yar in the Donbas. In total, the new Kharkov front seems to have absorbed nearly 30 Ukrainian battalions, which would be almost 10% of the AFU’s frontline strength (based on the 33 Division equivalent estimate that I discussed here).

The broader point here is that Russia’s vastly superior force generation allows it to accelerate the burn off of Ukraine combat power in two ways. First, by widening the front, they can create more and more hotspots that force the rapid reshuffling of Ukraine’s premiere assets; secondly, simply extending the active front can force Ukraine to feed newly mobilized personnel into the front faster.

The mess at Ocheretyne provides the best example of this. This sector had originally been under the auspices of the 47th Mechanized – once a premiere asset, now a hollow shell. When an attempt to swap the 47th out of the line went horribly wrong, how did the AFU plug the gap? By rushing in the 100th Mechanized Brigade – a unit which had been constituted less than a month before, and which had not yet even received heavy weapons characteristic of a Mechanized formation.

These sorts of emergencies add up to a simultaneous burn off of both the AFU’s present and future combat power; keeping the 47th in high intensity combat for months degraded a current critical asset, and the ensuing gash in the line forced the AFU to prematurely send an embryonic brigade into combat, burning off the future.

Under conditions like these, it becomes frankly nonsensical to chart Ukraine’s path forward on the ground. An army that is in a constant state of reacting to emergencies can only continue for so long before they stop reacting at all, and an army that is constantly forced to scramble its best brigades around and deploy unprepared units to hold the line can never regain the initiative. It has no ability to accumulate resources, and remains in a permanent state of reactivity and awful, awful churn. Ultimately, this is an army with serious resource constraints and no ability to conserve those resources.

In effect, we’re now seeing Russia reverse the events of Autumn 2022, when the Russian army was forced to accept a radical shortening of the front – withdrawing from west bank Kherson and being run out of Kharkov oblast. In that case, it was Russia that had inadequate force generation. The difference is that Russia had a higher gear – untapped mobilization and a war economy that gave it the prospect of a long term surge in combat power. Ukraine doesn’t have a higher gear. Furthermore, Ukraine lacks the ability to shorten the front. Russia was able to withdraw from large sectors of the battlespace in order to more efficiently allocate resources. Ukraine cannot do this, because giving up sectors of front means letting the Russian army roll over large swathes of the country. Russia has the ability to both shorten and widen the front at will, and Ukraine does not. This pivotal strategic asymmetry is simply the reality for an overmatched country fighting on home turf.

It is possible that Russia will further stretch the front with a similar foray into Sumy oblast – in either case, it’s highly unlikely that we see any serious effort to capture either Sumy or Kharkov. The main purpose of these fronts will be to fix Ukrainian reserves in place and denude Ukraine’s ability to react on other fronts. This war will not be won or lost in Kharkov, but in the Donbas, which remains the decisive theater.

We currently appear to be solidly in the preparatory/shaping phase of a Russian summer offensive in the Donbas, which (likely among other things) will feature a Russian drive on the city of Konstyantinivka. This is the last major urban area shielding the advance towards Kramatorsk-Slovyansk from the south (remembering that these twin cities form the ultimate objective of Russia’s campaign in the Donbas). Let’s make a brief perusal of what the lines of contact and advance look like on this front.

The shape of the Russian advance is already quite clear, and was facilitated by the temporary Ukrainian collapse which allowed Russia to capture Ocheretyne in only a few days. Konstyantinivka (prewar population of some 70,000) sits at the center of a concentric Russian advance out of Ocheretyne and the Bakhmut area, and the emerging Russian operation here promises several major benefits.

The Russian advance out of Ocheretyne will have as its objective the highway connecting Konstyantinivka and Pokrovsk. The latter is among the most important transit hubs in the Donbas (the map below shows the spiderweb of highways running through it, like spokes through the hub of a wheel. Pokrovsk’s nature as an operational hub means that Russia does not need to capture it to render it sterile; simply turning Pokrovsk into a frontline city, with Russian forces screening the eastward highways, will be sufficient to neuter it and handicap Ukrainian sustainment in the region. Ocheretyne also serves as a launching pad to partially (or perhaps fully) envelop the Toretsk-New York defenses.

Toretsk and New York are both strongly held and very well fortified settlements. They have been held continuously by the Ukrainian army since 2014, and accordingly are among the best fortified positions on the map. Russia will clearly aim to avoid a head on assault, and they are well positioned to do so. They can advance out of Ocheretyne and Klischiivka and approach the Toretsk agglomeration obliquely, taking them into a firebag and forcing a difficult Ukrainian decision as to whether to funnel resources into the defense there.

In short, I would expect Russia to begin a dedicated summer operation with Konstyantinivka as its center of gravity, aiming to capture Chasiv Yar for use as a launchpad against Konstyantinivka’s northern flank, while severing the line to Pokrovsk through advances out of Ocheretyne. Moving concentrically on Konstyantinivka in this manner will naturally bypass the Toretsk position.

Eyes on the prize, as they say. The locus of Russian operations continues to be their grind towards Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, notwithstanding the new extensions of the front in Kharkov (and potentially Sumy). By stretching the front, however, Russia is powerfully synergizing two of the critical asymmetries in this war – namely, that Ukraine has to defend on every front (Russia does not) while the Russian army has substantial reserves on hand (while Ukraine does not). The AFU simply does not have the luxury that Russia enjoyed in 2022 of being able to withdraw from large sectors of the front. They are obliged to respond to everything, at the cost of denuding their strength and hollowing out their positions elsewhere.

Command Shakeup

Russia’s extension of the front coincided with two important political events – somewhat oddly, an election that happened, and an election that did not. Vladimir Putin was predictably reelected easily as President of Russia – notwithstanding all manner of complaints about Russia’s state-steered media and regulated political culture, observers in the west have grudgingly admitted that the war in Ukraine has actually strengthened Putin’s popularity. Simultaneously, Zelensky’s legal term in office expired after Ukraine’s elections were cancelled, ostensibly due to the stresses of the war.

Putin’s reelection led almost immediately to a substantial rearrangement of the Russian national security leadership, followed by a currently unfolding series of arrests in the Russian officer corps. Let’s briefly consider the meaning of these changes.

The headline move, of course, was the removal of Defense Minster Sergei Shoigu with Andrei Belousov. Belousov is a technocratic economist by trade, who formerly held the economic development portfolio in the cabinet. Shoigu was shunted over to the secretariat State Security Council, which is still a meaningful role, responsible for the coordination of Russia’s security organs. The fact that Shoigu retains a prominent role means that his removal from the Defense Ministry is not entirely a rebuff, but Belousov is clearly being brought in for a particular reason.

The basic problem, as such, is that Russia’s defense spending has risen dramatically while problems with corruption (particularly in procurement) remain. There is no need to naively idealize the Russian state – corruption, while certainly much improved from the calamitous 90’s, does remain a thorn in the side of good governance, as in almost all post-Soviet states.

The obvious problem for Russia is that the stakes are obviously much higher during wartime, and the ballooning defense budget makes it harder to control such leakages. Simultaneously, Russia needs to chart a sustainable military-industrial policy as defense spending swells to some 7% of GDP. Hence, Belousov – a man known for being a true believing devotee of the state who lives a modest lifestyle and is himself seen as essentially resistant to corruption. The near instantaneous launch of a high-level purging of senior MoD officers under charges of corruption signals a similar sea change.

There is, however, another aspect of these anti-corruption arrests which is being overlooked. Most western analysis wants to regard these arrests as a Stalin-esque “purge”, possibly in an attempt by Putin to remove “Shoigu loyalists” from the ministry of defense. In this framework, Putin – like Stalin – fears a rival power center under Shoigu and wishes to neutralize an imagined threat by reassigning Shoigu and arresting “his men.” I think, rather, there is a different and more straightforward explanation. Putin has spoken repeatedly about his desire to promote a new Russian leadership cadre comprised of proven veterans of the SMO in Ukraine. Behind the particular Russian political vernacular, there’s an obvious truth: for the first time in the post-Soviet era, Russia has a growing pool of experienced and battle-hardened officers to promote. The arrested officers represent a class of peacetime promotions, grown soft and corrupt on the largesse of the MOD’s past permissiveness. Under Belousov, it is clearly intended that the MOD be remade with leadership made up of commanders proven in Ukraine. They want a leaner and more economizing defense apparatus led by wartime promotions. Who can blame them?

Putin’s team is clearly aiming to put the war economy on a sustainable footing, which means controlling costs, economizing resources, and cracking down on corruption. There are, however, some conflicting signals as to what this will look like. Belousov is known as a believer in the state’s role as the driver of industrial policy – some have taken this to mean that he will lead the transition to a perennial war economy, with military spending as a critical economic driver in the long run. I rather think it’s the opposite. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov noted that Russia’s defense spending had soared to levels not seen since the late Soviet era, and pontificated that this needed monitoring. Peskov noted that “it’s very important to put the security economy in line with the economy of the country” – in effect an official statement that defense spending is much higher than the government would like in the long run.

The mental picture that I have is one where defense spending ramped up in a somewhat uncontrolled manner as Russia kicked its war economy into gear, with Shoigu overseeing a sort of binging phase. Belousov is now being brought in to trim and economize; as a civilian technocrat, he is not connected to any of the military-industrial cliques and will have the political standoff required to manage the cutting phase.

Some of this is fairly standard stuff – new management for a restructuring phase; someone detached enough to make dispassionate cuts. In the United States, for example, the Truman administration made a series of personnel changes at the top as it attempted to rapidly demobilize from WW2 and bring spending back under control. Secretary of Defense Louis A Johnson even at one point mused that the Marine Corps might be abolished in its entirety. What is different about Russia’s case, of course, is that it is still very much in a state of war. Ordinarily it might be deemed unwise to change horses midstream, but the Putin team clearly feels that the situation on the ground is favorable enough (with Gerasimov keeping his post as chief of the general staff) and the need to rein in spending is great enough that he feels comfortable putting an economist in charge of a wartime defense apparatus.

Rockin’ in the Free World

While Putin was rearranging his cabinet and initiating high profile corruption arrests, a different sort of show was playing in Kiev. American Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in town, mesmerizing the people with his preternatural musical talents, playing hits like “Rockin in the Free World”.

The “Free World”, as the Atlantic Bloc sees itself, remains pivotal to the Ukrainian conflict, as the material and fiscal engine driving Ukraine’s ability to stay in the fight. Aside from the Kremlin, the American government is the decisive actor in Ukraine, and the stance of American policy is always among our chief considerations.

I think it’s worthwhile to think about the way American policy has changed vis a vis Ukraine. Slowly but surely, the United States has pushed through all of its self-imposed limitations on aid to Ukraine. It seems absurd now, but not so long ago the Pentagon was adamant that American tanks would not be sent to Kiev. There were similar hesitations around F-16 fighters, and ATACMs systems. All of those limits were eventually breached. We’ve reached the point where when Washington says there is some system that is off limits, it really means that Ukraine just has to wait a few more months.

Now we come to a point where one of the last remaining American taboos – the use of western weaponry to attack pre-war Russian territory – is being pushed on, with both congressional Republicans and Secretary of State Blinken urging the Biden administration to give the green light.

This seems to have been spurred at least partially by Russia’s new Kharkov front, with Ukrainian leadership complaining that they were unable to disrupt Russian staging due to American rules against firing on Russian territory. This is, of course, not true – Ukraine has been striking Belgorod oblast for many months, and have even made it a point of pride that they have “brought the war home” to Russia. We’re trapped in a narrative disparity where there are regular boasts about Ukraine’s successful strike program on targets in the Russian strategic rear, and yet we are to believe that the Russians were allowed to stage unmolested for the Kharkov operation because the AFU is not allowed to fire into Russia. It’s odd, to say the least.

Regardless, the track record shows that the American government will inexorably yield to every Ukrainian ask, given enough time. Abrams, F-16’s, ATACMs – Ukraine always ends up getting what it asks for. It seems likely that before long, the formal American blessing will be given to accelerate strikes on prewar Russia. Facilities inside Russia will be hit. The Kremlin’s response will underwhelm and infuriate its supporters on the internet.

The problem for Ukraine is that they tend to maniacally focus on token “big ticket” items that do not ameliorate their broader strategic crisis. License to hurl ATACMs at targets inside Russia is not a panacea for Ukraine’s bigger problem. Ukraine has already showed the ability to hit Russian strategic assets – sniping naval installations, radar, and air defense batteries. Ukraine’s successful strikes on such assets have continually trickled in as the west has propped up their strike capability with Storm Shadows, ATACMs, and more. And yet, Ukraine continues to give ground in the Donbas amid an increasingly dire shortage of basic war making necessities like infantry.

The trajectory of the war suggests that the NATO bloc will do everything in its power to prop up Ukraine’s strike capabilities, and that Ukraine will continue to hunt for high profile strategic assets, even as it continues to be ground down in the critical theater, which is the Donbas. When the AFU is finally ejected from their last toeholds along the line – losing Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, being squeezed out of southern Donetsk Oblast, and forced back on the west bank of the Oskil, the temptation in Kiev will be to blame the west – that they gave too little, too slowly, too late. This is one lie that they must not be allowed to get away with. The NATO Bloc has, virtually without exception, given Ukraine everything they’ve asked for. It just didn’t matter.

Gregor Baszak: ‘Ukraine Today Is Not a Democracy’: An Interview with Former Ambassador Jack Matlock

By Gregor Baszak, Antiwar.com, 5/1/24

Jack F. Matlock, Jr. served from 1987 until 1991 as the US ambassador in the Soviet Union and from 1981 until 1983 in Czechoslovakia. Es served in the National Security Council under President Reagan and participated in several arms control summits, including in Reykjavik in 1986. In total he served 35 years in the US Foreign Service, from 1956 until 1991. From 1996 until 2001 he served was the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author of three books: Superpower Illusions (2010), Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (2004) und Autopsy of an Empire (1995). What follows is the transcript of a conversation held on April 22, 2024. The transcript was lightly edited for clarity and length.

Mr Matlock, on April 20 a large bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives approved a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill. It sends $60.8 billion to Ukraine and the rest to Israel, Gaza, and Taiwan. Congress also approved other measures, including the extension of warrantless surveillance in the United States. Many members of Congress, especially Democrats, were  waving Ukrainian flags  on the floor of the House. What went through your head when you saw these images?

I think they’re making a very big mistake. First of all, these appropriations are not coming from the taxpayer. We have to borrow the money to cover these appropriations and we are already tremendously overextended overseas. We now have a national debt in excess of 33 trillion dollars, and it’s rising by as much as two trillion a year. As the chairman of the Federal Reserve has said, this is unsustainable.

Now, what is the purpose of these appropriations? The largest appropriation was for Ukraine. Ukraine cannot win this war on the terms that the Ukrainian leadership has enunciated. As a matter of fact, it would not be in Ukraine’s interest for Ukraine to recover all of the territory that Russia now occupies. The great majority of people there are Russian speaking while the current Ukrainian government has declared that Russian speakers are not true Ukrainians. NATO is already doing what would be required if Ukraine were a NATO member. More arms simply will enable more destruction, most of it in Ukraine itself. The longer this war goes on, the more territory Russia is going to take and probably insist on keeping. If it goes on much longer Ukraine will turn out to be a state which is hardly viable, particularly if it continues to define itself as anti-Russian, its main neighbor, and a country to which its eastern and southern areas belonged for several centuries.

Now, in the case of military aid to Israel, we keep pouring in money and arms when Israel is almost certainly engaging in genocide. This is a serious matter, and even though many of Israel’s actions have been condemned by our President, even though Israel is not doing what he suggests, he keeps arming them.

As for the aid to Taiwan, building up an American military presence there risks provoking the Chinese to try to absorb Taiwan by military means. The U.S. should not revise the policy President Nixon set when the US recognized the Chinese People’s Republic. Taiwan has a remarkably good economy that would hardly survive if China should attack. But if China should decide to invade, it would be folly for the United States to go to war with China. Such a war could easily go nuclear.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the work of Elbridge Colby. He’s a big proponent of what he calls a  “strategy of denial,”  essentially containing China, barring it through Taiwan from further power projection across the island chains in the South China Sea. He’s arguing that this is in America’s national security interest, that this is where America needs to invest. What’s your response to that?

I don’t think these arguments make sense. We say that our navy must dominate the South China Sea. How would we react if the Chinese, the Russians, or any other country would say, “we’ve got to dominate the Caribbean”? How would we feel if the Chinese were routinely flying around the border, picking up intelligence? We do it around theirs. I don’t buy the argument that the United States has an obligation to dominate the seas of the world. Of course we want them open for trade, and that’s also in China’s interest.

I think that militarizing the relations with China is a huge mistake. The Chinese government in the last 30 years has probably improved the lives of more people faster than any other government has in history. The Chinese GDP is equal to or greater than the American. Some see that as a threat, but I don’t. China has over four times the population of the United States. So why shouldn’t their GDP be at least four times as much as ours? This idea that the US has to be number one in everything, and that any country with an economy growing faster is a threat, is simply a false logic.

In the next couple of questions I wanted to work our way back through history. In 1997 you were a co-signer of an  open letter  by 50 voices from the US foreign policy establishment who called NATO expansion eastward “a policy error of historic proportions.” The letter also argued that NATO expansion would “strengthen the nondemocratic opposition” in Russia and “decrease allied security and unsettle European stability.” Are we reaping today what we sowed back then?

Yes, we are. I was strongly opposed to expanding NATO from the membership that it had in 1991. I was present at several meetings when US leaders, and also British and German leaders, assured Gorbachev and then Foreign Minister Shevardnaze that if East Germany was allowed to join West Germany and the united Germany stayed in NATO that NATO would not move further east. In fact, as Secretary of State Baker said several times, NATO would expand “not one inch.”

At their summit meeting in Malta in December of 1990, when Gorbachev and President George Herbert Walker Bush declared an end to the Cold War, there were several other statements. One of them was that the Soviet Union would not intervene in Eastern Europe if there was political change and the second was that the United States would not take advantage of that situation. Now, expanding a military alliance into those areas would obviously be taking advantage. I would say the whole concept of ending the Cold War was based partly upon the idea that the Western alliance would not expand.

There were good reasons to avoid expansion. Once the Warsaw Pact broke up and the Eastern European countries were allowed to go democratic with the encouragement of Gorbachev, there was no possibility the Soviet Union could invade Western Europe.  That was the original purpose of NATO and it had been achieved.

And there is another aspect here, and that is our triumphalism. We ended the Cold War by negotiation and it was possible to end it when Gorbachev dropped the basic tenet of the Communist Party and its foreign policy, the Marxian “class struggle.” He dropped that totally in a speech to the UN in December 1988. Gorbachev announced that now the Soviet foreign policy was based on “the common interests of mankind.” That is the opposite of the previous Marxist-Leninist policy, and of course it also was the basis for trying to reform the Soviet Union and make it more democratic. If the Soviet Union allowed the East European countries to become democratic and it itself was reforming, why should we include them in a Western alliance which had been there to prevent a Soviet invasion of those countries? There was no longer any threat.

Actually, Russia accepted the initial expansion of NATO and also the expansion to include the Baltic states, but opposed extension to the Balkans and the establishment of foreign military bases there.

But there never was any good reason to expand NATO. At first we offered something called a Partnership for Peace which would have worked very well. It was acceptable to Boris Yeltsin, the then Russian leader, and to others. But the problem with NATO expansion was not so much the Article 5 guarantee that an attack on one will be considered an attack on the others. What was sensitive for Russia was the establishment of foreign and particularly American bases in these countries. The membership itself was not that important. It was only when we began to put bases there at the same time that relations deteriorated. This was during the second Bush administration, when the United States began to withdraw from virtually every arms control agreement which we had made and which were the basis of ending the Cold War.

It wasn’t just these 50 foreign policy experts who opposed NATO expansion. George Kennan and Henry Kissinger did too. William Burns, then in his function as US ambassador to Russia, sent a cable in 2008 that was  published by Wikileaks  clearly laid out the Russian opposition to Ukraine and Georgia’s proposed NATO membership. It was famously titled “Nyet means nyet.” If all that seemed so clear to the foreign policy establishment in Washington DC at the time, how come today you will hardly find any prominent voice opposing NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia anymore? What changed?

It is very clear that during the decades from the late 90s and particularly the first decade of the 21st century there was a concerted effort by the US military-industrial complex to find “peer competitors” in order to justify huge and rising defense budgets. Those of us who negotiated an end to the Cold War were predicting that NATO bases in the free countries of Eastern Europe were going to provoke Russia, and Russia at that time was under very difficult straits economically.

I would remind people who say, “oh, Russia is always the aggressor” that it was the elected leader of the Russian Federation who led and enabled the breakup of the Soviet Union, which occurred in a peaceful way. The Baltic states had Boris Yeltsin’s support the whole time they were trying to get their independence. In this case the elected Russian leader is the one most responsible for breaking up the Soviet Union and when people say, “Russia always does this, Russia always does that,” this is nonsense because the Soviet Union was a Communist state quite different from current Russia. I would say in terms of such things as the use of espionage and propaganda, Russia and Ukraine have exactly the same heritage, and it’s really a competition between who puts out the most tendentious propaganda. But the thing is that people who start from abstract notions and draw conclusions forget all of the details that, in fact, make their conclusions irrational.

Let me just add here that I think that current policy, the policy that has produced many of these current mistakes, has a weak philosophical basis. Many say that it is our mission to promote democracy in the world. They don’t define exactly what democracy is. Actually, the word does not occur in the American Constitution. It does not occur in the oath of office that we take. It does not occur in the pledge of allegiance. We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and the republic for which it stands. Going back to the First World War, one of the reasons Wilson entered the First World War was to protect democracy. Wait a minute. Every country fighting in the First World War was an empire. Britain was as much an empire as Germany and Russia. Britain and France continued to expand their empires when the war was over. And so, did the United States really support democracy?

In other words, you think it’s a fraud that NATO is really defending democracy against authoritarianism in Ukraine.

The idea that an external power can induce another to be democratic gets it absolutely backwards. After all, if democracy is government of, by, and for the people, as Abraham Lincoln put it, how can any outsider impose it? The fact is, when an outsider begins to support certain factions in another country, they’re going to do them more harm than good. Just look at how we reacted to the, I think, false charge that Russia helped Trump’s election in 2016. That was a huge deception which many still consider a fact. Yes, Russia had some propaganda and trolls on the internet, but there’s no evidence it had the slightest effect on the outcome of the 2016 election.

But what I started to say was, particularly from the late 90s and in the 2000s you had the American so-called foreign policy elite, including the media, many of the think tanks and also in the government who tried to develop a policy to spread democracy abroad. Today, when we say we’re defending democracy when we support the Ukrainians, that’s absolute nonsense. The current Ukrainian government is the result of a coup d’etat in 2014 that removed an elected president. Areas that had broken away from Ukraine but Ukraine claims, had no vote. The current government is dictatorial and corrupt.

So what is to be done? I mean from the Russian perspective there is no chance to reinstitute Minsk-2. The former German Chancellor Amgela Merkel said that the Europeans used the Minsk accords to give Ukraine time to rearm (whether she said that to save her reputation is unclear). So, the Russians wouldn’t trust us anyway. We are angry at them for invading Ukraine, so can we just suddenly declare the conflict frozen? What do you think is the most likely and the most preferable outcome that is at the same time the most realistic?

The borders that the current Ukrainian government says they insist upon retaining were created by Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler and in the case of the Crimea by Nikita Khrushchev. These were not borders that were fought over and negotiated over with lots of elections and so on. What is West Ukraine had never been part of the Russian Empire when Hitler gave it to Stalin. Now, why are people shedding blood to recreate a heritage of Hitler and Stalin? And, by the way, in West Ukraine, you do have a very powerful Neo-Nazi movement which is militarized and which has been one of the major irritants to Russia. To deny that is simply to deny the facts.

I don’t understand why it is in the interest of the German people to follow the policies its government has now. Of course it’s up to them. It’s not for me to decide, but as an outside observer I thought they were doing pretty well when they had full economic relations with Russia.  I saw nothing at all wrong with Nord Stream. Before Nord Stream 1 was put in operation most of the Russian gas was passing through Ukraine. The Ukrainians took out what they wanted, often not paying for it and if the Russians tried to collect by cutting back on the flow, the Ukrainians would still take what they wanted and reduce what was being passed to central and western Europe. So it was in the interest of Germany and Russia to build Nord Stream. I think that the objections were always political.

Now, let me just add one thing here that we haven’t talked about. And that was the effort by the United States and the EU to separate Ukraine from Russia. It came to particular shape in 2014 during the Maidan demonstrations in Kyiv. The violence, by the way, was started in the west by those neo-Nazi formations which began firing on the demonstrators. There had been an agreement that there would be an election by the end of the year, and it looked as if there would be a good chance that Yanukovych would lose. But nevertheless a coup d’etat took place, and one which Russia has every reason to believe was fomented by the CIA and by other NATO members, including the UK.

You like to point out that at the close of the Cold War it was the official position of the United States to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union. President George H. W. Bush supported President Gorbechev’s proposed  Union Treaty  and said during a  remarkable speech  he gave inside the chamber of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine in Kiev on August 1, 1991: “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” Unsurprisingly, this line angered American hard-liners and Ukrainian nationalists and had no effect: Later that year, the Ukrainians still overwhelmingly voted for independence from the Soviet Union. But could you explain why President Bush Sr. took this position at the time?

I was on the plane with Bush when we flew from Moscow to Kyiv, and as he was preparing his speech for the Verkhovna Rada he personally put in and worded those sentences that you quoted. He did not want to see the Soviet Union break up. He did want the three Baltic states to acquire their real independence, and he supported that totally. The United States had never recognized the Baltic countries as legitimately part of the Soviet Union. As for the other Soviet republics, we did recognize that they were legal parts of the Soviet Union.

There were at least two reasons that Bush supported Gorbachev’s effort to create a voluntary union. One was that if they were going to be suddenly set loose before there was more democratic reform, the local Communist rulers would simply take over. Gorbachev was trying to change the system, and of course the red directors, as you would say, those who actually ran the system, were in opposition to these reforms.

The other reason was that we did not want to see a proliferation of nuclear weapons. We thought that would be very dangerous. Earlier there had been nuclear weapons stationed in many of these republics. By the time the Soviet Union broke up, there were nuclear weapons in only four, and it was very much part of American policy that if they broke up we wanted the weapons to be concentrated in Russia where they could be more easily kept under control. Many of these weapons were scheduled to be destroyed under the START treaty that was in effect. So we really did not want to see the breakup.

Well, your critics could object: Now wait, so you said we wanted to prevent nuclear proliferation, and we wanted to prevent Ukraine from becoming run by a despot. Those critics would say, today it’s a glowing beacon of democracy and that proliferation didn’t happen. So Bush was wrong, and the hawkish strategy toward the Soviet Union was right.

Proliferation didn’t happen because Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan transferred the nuclear weapons to Russia as the US demanded. But it is a travesty to say that Ukraine today is a democracy. It isn’t. It’s probably less democratic than Russia. And as I pointed out before, the current government is the result of a coup d’etat in 2014. From its very beginning as an independent state in December, 1991, Ukraine was deeply divided politically.

I went to Kyiv, it must have been either 1993 or 1994, with a group of people who had worked on our National Security Council. We had an agreement with the Ukrainian government to come and describe to them how we operated in the National Security Council in Washington. When we finished our presentation, a senior Ukrainian official commented: “You are talking about foreign relations, but our problem is internal.” And then they showed us maps of where the voting had been, with one side beginning with 85, 90% of one party in the West and then in the East 85 or 90% in the other party. And actually these elections were split almost 50-50. Over the following years, sometimes one side would get 50.1%, sometimes the other side, but it was always very close.

What made this particularly dangerous was the Ukrainian constitution which had the President name what we would call the state governors, the provincial chiefs. There was no election at the provincial level the way we Americans have. Obviously, that would not work if the country is very much divided, but that was how the problem started there and they got deeper and deeper and by 2014 the violence was started in the west and primarily by these Neo Nazi groups who first of all started taking over the provincial governors’ offices.

This is why one of the requirements of the Minsk agreements was that Ukraine would adopt a federal constitution that would let these Russian speaking entities elect their own leaders the way citizens of American states elect their governors. If we Americans had had the sort of system Ukraine had, we would have broken up long ago. You need a federal system like Switzerland has, for example, or Belgium, or in Finland where the Swedish minority has full cultural rights. But this is something the current Ukrainian government, those who control it, never conceded and, as I said, that was one of the requirements of the Minsk agreement. Why Germany and France didn’t insist that the Ukrainians abide by it if they were going to get any more aid, I don’t know. The United States should have, too. We approved the agreement, though we were not a signatory.

The current tragedy is that it is bad for everybody. Obviously the people suffering most are the Ukrainians and we also know that a few weeks after the Russian invasion they came very near coming to an agreement but were discouraged by Boris Johnson. They were also, I’m sure, discouraged by the United States.

You were a close adviser to President Reagan, who most people think of as a particularly hawkish figure with regard to the Soviet Union and Russia. He called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.” The received historical narrative is that he won the Cold War for us. He essentially outspent the Soviet Union because he sought its demise. In fact, his name is regularly invoked by Russia hawks in the West as someone who’d today be tough on President Putin and that Mr Reagan would be  “turning in his grave”  if he witnessed the opposition by some Republicans to more military aid for Ukraine, as the Polish President Donald Tusk put it recently. The Reagan you describe in your books, by contrast, was far from the hawk many of us read about. What did the Reagan you knew stand for in regard to Russia and America’s role in the world?

We were dealing with the Soviet Union and not Russia as an entity then. President Reagan knew the difference between the Soviet Union and Russia. He saw no conflict of interest between us and Russia. His problem was communism and the Soviet attempts to impose communism on others. Yes, he called the USSR an “evil empire,” but also by 1988 when he visited there he said that was in the past, that it’s no longer true, and he gave Gorbachev credit for changing it. So yes, he was an opponent of communism and of Soviet expansionism. But he was acutely aware of Russian losses during World War II and their contribution to the victory over Germany.

Another thing which differentiated Reagan’s approach from that of our more recent presidents is that, as much as he criticized Communism, he never publicly insulted a Soviet leader by name. When he met Gromyko, the hardline Soviet Foreign Minister, he shook hands saying, “We hold the peace of the world in our hands. We must act responsibly.” He made his main effort to try to understand Gorbachev and to build a spirit of trust with him.

Reagan was not an intellectual who had a great knowledge of history, but was eager to learn. He was a person who knew how to deal with other people. The last thing he would do would be to insult a Soviet leader publicly. As I said, he understood that Russia had suffered greatly during the Second World War, more than the United States, and that Russians needed respect for that. In fact, to the letters to Soviet leaders that I would draft for him he would always add in his handwriting something about the great respect he had for their performance during the war and their tremendous losses.

Later when our Western leaders refused to invite President Putin to World War II celebrations, such as on the anniversary of the Normandy invasion, and began to demonize him, largely for things he’s done at home, not anything he’s done to us—that is the very opposite of what Reagan would have done or did.

Basically Reagan was a man of peace and a man who knew how to negotiate, who didn’t start so much from abstract ideas as from concrete facts. As he would say at times, they have got a lousy system, these Communists, but if that’s what they want, it’s their business. And he thought the United States should be a shining city on the hill, an example for the world, not one that would go out getting involved in the politics of other countries. The negotiating approach he approved was one which was almost the opposite of what we’ve done since then. He tried to understand where Gorbachev was coming from, what he needed and we put all of our goals, not as demands that they do something we wanted them to do, but as suggestions that we cooperate to achieve a common end. We didn’t say, you’ve got to clean up your human rights situation. We said, let us cooperate to improve respect for human rights. In his first meeting with Secretary of State George Shultz Shevardnaze said, “can we talk about the status of women and blacks in the United States?” Shultz said, “Absolutely, I think we’re making progress, but we’ve got a ways to go, and we can use all the help we can get.” Everything we asked was reciprocal. We actually cooperated to end most of our confrontation in other hotspots.

Since then, there’s been this triumphalism and we saw Russia first as a defeated adversary and then an enemy when they had done nothing to threaten us. And I must say where the line is between Russia and Ukraine has never been a vital issue for the United States or any NATO member. It’s not our business. The current fighting has all of the emotional elements of a civil war. Ukraine and Russia have a deeply intertwined history and there’s not going to be peace between them unless they come to terms in a way which is accepted by both sides.

Many NATO analysts believe that within a few years Russia will be capable and also likely invade NATO territory. Just plain foolishness?

I don’t think they have the capability nor the desire. In fact, I don’t think there’s any desire to control those Ukrainians in Western Ukraine. I doubt that they would want to take Kyiv, for example. I doubt that very much. Now, if they keep advancing, they could take Kharkiv and they could take Odesa. And if we keep pouring in arms and some of these are used to hit territory in Russia proper, I don’t know. They have reserved the right to use nuclear weapons if necessary and I hope that that would never be considered necessary by them.

But I would also point out that there seems to be in the United States, and also among elements in Germany and the UK, the idea that all things Russian are inferior. And it’s true Russia has at times in their history been backward on some aspects of technology, although in the forefront of others. They were the first in space. There were times when we couldn’t get to the space station without using Russian rockets. So the idea that somehow they’ve got totally inferior technology, and we can weaken them by cutting them off, forgets that they are a country with enormous resources, both human and physical, and in a number of areas when we have applied pressure, they have leapfrogged us.

Despite the sanctions.  

I think that the whole policy of economic sanctions has been overused. I can’t think of a time when economic sanctions have produced political changes that have to do with security. We have developed an enormous bureaucracy to sanction not only people who are enemies, but sanctions for things they’re doing at home which should be their business and also, secondarily, to sanction other countries that are not under our jurisdiction. I think this is a misuse of the position that we are in, and it’s going to undermine it. And the fact that we are doing this, actually increasingly on borrowed funds, is not sustainable indefinitely. I wonder how many Europeans, especially Germans, are paying attention to that.

At 94, you still chime in on current events. In February you  wrote in an essay  that Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Ivan Aboimov quipped to you in December 1989: “We have given the Brezhnev Doctrine to you with our compliments. Consider it a Christmas gift.” What did he mean by that? Is the West pursuing a Brezhnev Doctrine of sorts today?

I think we are. Our policy today is called the “rules-based international order.” Of course we violate those terms when we wish. In many cases it seems that we’re operating on the same principles that brought us the First and Second World Wars, that is fighting over who controls what territory. If we didn’t learn in the first half of the twentieth century that that is a loser for everybody, then I think we are ignoring the history that should have taught us some vital lessons.

According to Marx and Lenin, there was going to be a worldwide proletarian revolution which would eliminate the bourgeois class, the ruling class, as they put it, and create socialism which would develop into communism. The Brezhnev doctrine was that if a country had achieved socialism, it was the duty of other socialist countries to protect it if it was opposed. That was the rationale that the Soviet Union used to invade Hungary when it revolted in 1956, and then later Czechoslovakia when the Prague Spring began to democratize it. This was the Brezhnev doctrine.

What we now say is that we must protect and defend democracy overseas and create it for other people. Isn’t this saying the same thing that Brezhnev was saying about socialism? Never mind that the socialism they had was not what Marx had predicted. The idea was that it is in one’s interest to change the form of government that other countries have and that if they have your form of government, they would be friends. Of course, all of our historic experience refutes that, even in the case of the Soviet Union. First you have Yugoslavia and Albania breaking from Soviet control, then the great split with China. Later our fear was that if the Communist Vietnamese won, Moscow would control virtually all of Eurasia. In reality, the same form of government did not necessarily make countries friends.

When we think that we can create democracy elsewhere or even facilitate it by direct intervention in their affairs, I think that gets it backwards. We should go back to the idea that Senator Fulbright expressed in two of his books: the only way to spread democracy is to prove how it works at home. And I must say we’re not setting a great example these days.

Countries become authoritarian because they feel threatened and they need a strong leader to push off those threats. That’s why many Russians, though uncomfortable with the war in Ukraine, still support it. They see it as defense against NATO and the United States. We have declared that we are trying to weaken Russia. We have imposed sanctions that are normally permissible only during a declared war. And so we have a esituation where most likely a greater percentage of Russians approve Putin’s policies than the percentage of Americans who approve of either Biden or Trump.  They’re both running about 40% or lower. Who’s more democratic?

My last question might sound odd. If anybody else had said what you just said, the critics who are reading this interview, the Anne Applebaums of the world, will say, ”well, Jack Matlock is a Kremlin stooge. He’s a Putin puppet. He’s spreading misinformation.” Heck, they will say this even about you. What goes through your head when you see this type of rhetoric, where domestic opposition to US foreign policy is regarded essentially as high treason?

I think that is absolutely ridiculous. First of all, these critics never cite anything I have said that is Kremlin propaganda. I didn’t want any of these conflicts to happen and that’s why I warned against NATO expansion. The war in Ukraine was predictable for reasons I’ve given. The sort of actions “the West” took were going to create a reaction, and I think it is a tragedy. It is a tragedy what has happened to Russia, what is happening to Ukraine. And of course I agree that Putin’s invasion was a crime. I’m also quite aware that my presidents have committed crimes, and I think in some cases with less provocation. Iraq was not a threat to the United States. A Ukraine with NATO bases would be a threat to Russia. Let’s face it. Why can’t people understand that? I certainly don’t defend Putin, but I also don’t defend my own President when he sends bombs to Israel to create a genocidal war. So this is not propaganda. I speak from experience, from having lived through different periods, trying to learn from them, and from having helped to devise a group of policies that brought an end to the very dangerous Cold War, policies which have been reversed since and are bringing us to another crisis.

The interview was led by Gregor Baszak, a Chicago-based writer and academic. His writing has appeared in The American Conservative, The Bellows, Cicero, Sublation, UnHerd, and elsewhere. Follow Gregor on X @gregorbas1

Ukrainian Strike on Russian Early Warning Radar Threatens To Unleash Nuclear World War

EIR News, 5/25/24

Over the course of Wednesday night and Thursday morning [May 22-23], Ukrainian drones struck the Armavir Radar Station in Russia’s southwestern Krasnodar Krai region, a part of Russia’s early warning radar system designed to detect an incoming ICBM attack. This radar is one of the pillars in Russia’s nuclear posture system which, along with other such installations, plays an existential role in the strategic security of the Russian Federation. Far beyond escalating tensions with Ukraine alone, this attack has now brought the world another step closer to the verge of a thermonuclear war.

Russian Senator and former Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin responded to this development by noting that, while one could imagine a Ukrainian were behind this, in reality it is Washington that has “hired an irresponsible bandit” to carry out its dirty work. “Thus, we stand not only on the precipice, but on the very edge, beyond which, if the enemy is not stopped in such actions, an irreversible collapse of the strategic security of nuclear powers will begin,” Rogozin wrote on his Telegram channel.

This madness must be stopped now. The Armavir attack occurred just days after Russia carried out high-profile tactical nuclear military exercises, as if to declare to President Putin: “You are bluffing.” Playing a nuclear chicken game while threatening to destroy a nuclear superpower which is already at war, threatens to annihilate the entire human species.

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in addressing a meeting of the International Peace Coalition on May 24, drew people’s attention to the solutions to the crisis. She insisted we must end the West’s belief in geopolitics, which has made people believe that Russia and China are our enemies, and instead establish a new security and development architecture that respects the interests of all nations. “If that cannot be overcome, I’m afraid that the chances we will end up in World War III are approaching 100%,” she said.

Numerous military and intelligence specialists consulted by the Schiller Institute have expressed their grave concern over the meaning of the Armavir attack and its consequences:

The Russian satellite-based early warning system is very limited and cannot be used to cover the blind spots created by damage to the radar. The Atlantic, Pacific, and Northern radar warning corridors are more important, and the Russians also have radars in Moscow. However, the radars in Moscow will only see threats at a later time, resulting in yet shorter warning and decision-making times—thereby increasing the chances of a catastrophic accident.

The commanders of the Strategic Rocket Forces, who serve the political leaders, will be really, really concerned, and they will have no choice but to treat this situation as quite serious. They will almost certainly choose to operate their nuclear strike forces at a higher level of alert, which will further increase the chances of accidents that could lead to an unintended global nuclear war.

— Dr. Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, nuclear weapons expert

The U.S. has begun directing missile attacks on the Russian nuclear Early Warning System (EWS), which is made up of a series of ground-based radars and satellites… ANY such attacks against these EWS systems could trigger the Russian nuclear response system. So this U.S.-directed attack is insanely dangerous. Washington is playing nuclear chicken with Russia.

The site attacked was within range of the U.S. ATACMS; I don’t know if any other similar Russian facilities are within range of the ATACMS, or possibly even the German Taurus missiles, which have a longer range than the ATACMS and the U.K. Storm Shadow missiles. Unfortunately, we may soon find out, as the madmen in Washington, Kyiv, and Brussels seem determined to start World War 3.

— Steven Starr, Professor, University of Missouri, expert on nuclear war

There are obviously forces in Ukraine and also in NATO that are prepared to take the risk of a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia. German politicians would be well advised to take the Russians’ warnings of a new world war seriously and ensure that the final red lines are not crossed. As a modern industrialized country at the heart of Europe, Germany is unfit for war in a major European conflict—even without nuclear weapons. German politicians must do everything in their power to de-escalate the increasing military confrontation and commit themselves to a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

— Colonel (ret.) Prof. Dr. Wilfried Schreiber, Senior Research Fellow at the WeltTrends Institute for International Politics, Potsdam, Germany

This is a continuation of the pattern in which the NATO forces recognize they are losing the war in Ukraine, with the fragile lines of defense breaking, and the NATO response is to escalate. This is not accidental, but very deliberate. It is not the first attack on the Russian nuclear triad. The ideological folks are seeing their world crumbling, after flying the rainbow flag over conservative countries and [waging] perpetual wars. They are frantic and could escalate to nuclear war to get out of the bind. They are taking a series of baby steps, and respond that ‘they don’t do anything in response,’ and so they keep taking baby steps until one of them lands on a land mine and we are into World War III. I’ve said it, Helga [Zepp-LaRouche] has said it. Putin is very aware of the disconnect in the West, who keep saying he is just saber rattling, but he is not—he is informing the West of the dangerous reality.

— Col. (ret.) Richard H. Black, former state senator from Virginia

I expect that the U.S. military, faced with a vital situation, are going to behave more reasonably and consciously than the civilians.

— Gen. (ret.) Dominique Delawarde, Intelligence expert, France

This clearly could not have happened without full U.S. support. I can’t comment adequately until I learn more, but it is obviously escalatory, and I will look into it.

— Graham Fuller, former diplomat, CIA officer, and vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council

They’re on an escalating treadmill, especially after what Blinken told Ukraine—they could ‘do what they want with their missiles.’ It demonstrates the irresponsible American leadership. We’re headed for the nuclear escalator. The West is facing defeat in Ukraine, and therefore they’re escalating to avoid defeat.

— Prof. Richard Sakwa, Emeritus Professor of Russian and European Politics, Kent University (U.K.); prolific author on Russia and Ukraine

Sarah Lindemann-Komarova: The Social Contract in a Russian Village: Part Three SitRep Two Years Into the SMO

By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Echo of Siberia, 4/30/24

Sarah has lived in Siberia since 1992. Was a community development activist for 20 years. Currently, focuses on research and writing.

Pictures available at link above. – Natylie

Spring #3 of the SMO has sprung. This past year has been a defining moment in Post Soviet Russia’s search for meaning, connection, and ownership. The rupture with the West is indisputable forcing everyone to think about their country, their future and make a choice, commit. For some that meant signing a contract to fight. 

In Manzherok, a Village in the Altai Republic, spring brought with it news of the loss of our first soldier. He was a veteran, a builder, and, according to the Village chat, initially volunteered to serve in a city reconstruction effort. While in Mariupol, he signed a contract to participate in the SMO and he was killed in the Donetsk Region. Posts with candle icons and words of condolences from neighbors followed the announcement.

For others committing meant leaving but most of those who wanted to leave are long gone. The Levada Center’s March survey supports that assumption recording a 34 year low in the number of respondents who wanted to move abroad, 9%, down from a high of 22% in 2021.  In Manjerok, commitment means taking advantage of new opportunities to start your own business or get a new job because they are plentiful and salaries are up. 

Until recently, economic development in the region consisted of “green tourism” that allowed people to generate income taking tourists into their home or guest house. Initially this inspired hostility.  In 2007, a woman described the problem as jealousy, “people started counting the number of cars parked at a neighbor to see how much money they were making”.

In the 2022 Ria Novosti social-economics and overall ratings the Republic came in at #82 out of 86 regions. On the plus side, the lack of economic development yielded one tangible benefit, Altai remained, one of the most pristine and beautiful places in the world. Sometimes referred to as the Switzerland of Russia, it is thought by some to be the gateway to the Buddist/Hindu spiritual kingdom Shambhala. And into that world stepped Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. 

A number of years ago, young families were encouraged to stay with free plots of land up on the mountain. Their neighbor on the mountain became the Sberbank 5 Star year round Manzherok Resort that currently boasts 30+km of ski trails. Construction of a children’s adventure park and other features will continue on for years. Thousands of people paid holiday rates of $23 a day for ski passes, $13 for night skiing. A four cheese burger costs $9, the same as Fo Bo soup with beef. Manzherok water is $3.30 making classic Coca Cola (still available) a bargain at $2.70.  

When the SMO began, the ski lift was operating and the 5 Star Hotel was set to open in a year. The opening was delayed due to sanctions related to the planned Italian interior. Sanctions also moved domestic tourism up the national budget priority list so the building of a four-lane highway through the center of town is in Manzherok’s near future. A week ago, Sberbank became the sole owner of the local airport that will be expanded to accommodate international flights with a focus on China. One lane Village roads have become major thoroughfares as navigators re-route cars away from traffic jams on the current two-lane highway. New chain stores have appeared pushing out or challenging locally owned businesses. All this in a community that only 9 years ago suffered a flood that made it possible for the last people on my street to get indoor plumbing through government disaster relief. 

One room 50 year old Village houses are on sale for more than half a million dollars. Only Sber has spent that kind of money buying properties they now need for the ever-expanding resort. The rumored numbers were even higher but there is no evidence of a market for an old village house getting anything like that kind of money. But, expectations are high. That is the Year 3 and moving forward challenge for Russia, making it possible for people to realize their potential, prosper, and feel good about their children’s future.

Last fall the Mayor of 32 years was replaced by a former Sber Resort Manager. All winter rumors were flying, trees were disappearing, and electricity outages were more frequent. But it was the appearance of 3 letters KRT (somewhat analogous to eminent domain) that got everyone’s attention.  

The forces in charge now are of a whole other magnitude but an impressive group of individuals has surfaced to represent and defend the interests of residents. Most are small business owners.  A few are elected local deputies, one beat a United Russia opponent to become a District Deputy, one serves as monitor for services on the mountain pushing for quick repairs when the electricity, and thus public water, are out. One tried to run for Mayor but his candidacy was disqualified. The rest are just active citizens with skills and knowledge. It would be a mistake to think of these people as oppositionists. These are community and results-oriented people with a real sense of ownership.

This new constellation of forces has inspired in form, if not in substance the appearance of governance.  There have been several public hearings and the Regional Deputy appeared to provide an account of his work and respond to concerns about KRT. The school gym was packed for a town meeting where the Mayor, the District Head, and heads of a number of departments responded to questions. The head of development promised everyone that KRT was not being considered for any residential areas. She seemed surprised that people did not share her excitement and belief in the need to respond positively to big interest from outside investors. Residents want more attention paid to their problems and supporting local entrepreneurs. On the way home we passed an electric station flaring out. We reported it and that street spent another February night without electricity.

There are four WhatsApp chats where information exchange and lively discussions take place.  Often, they focus on what to do with the cows or wild dogs. Overall, you get the sense that it is the pace and breadth of change that can come without warning, despite all the formal meetings, that scares people. Nobody is against development but they did not expect their way of life to be liquidated.

A week ago, news surfaced in a chat that there will be an architectural code issued and it was suggested that people building wait for the code. Rumor has it green or red roofs and fences. One neighbor commented, “Minimum to paint a new roof is 300,000 r, no one has that kind of money”. Another suggested there be a more comprehensive approach to the code, “For example, in all two-story houses, women must wear red miniskirts, in one-story houses with old slate, they must wear black long skirts and black scarves, men must wear colored shirts, and the administration must wear red caps with bells to make them special. Tourists will be delighted! Also, to make us stand out, we should put a large fly near our noses.”

In April student sociologists patrolled the streets with a questionnaire about development and the Resort. The “for” or “against” options did not provide the kind of nuance that exists here. There was also a focus group in preparation for the upcoming Gubernatorial election. A participant told me none of the 9 people there were happy. The degree of discontent left the moderator struggling to make sense of it all as she asked what type of person would be best for Governor pitching such options as someone with strong federal ties, a leader from a neighboring region etc.

Perhaps expectations are too high on all sides but something is happening in Manzherok. If not a negotiation, there is at least a dance taking place and it brings evidence of an important change. On the train from Moscow to Novosibirsk in February 1992, my coupe mate Baba Masha told me there are two words you need to know to understand Russia, terpellivwi (patient) and peredjit (living through it).  This new generation of citizen leaders in Manzherok is patient. They are almost Zen like in their ability to absorb rejection and keep going. What they are not, is willing to live through it. Is it too little too late? Maybe, but it ain’t nothing.

Reports on Desires for Ceasefire/Negotiation on Ukraine

By Guy Faulconbridge & Andrew Osburn, Reuters, 5/24/24

MOSCOW/LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond.

Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin’s entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to rule out talks.

“Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire – to freeze the war,” said another of the four, a senior Russian source who has worked with Putin and has knowledge of top level conversations in the Kremlin.

He, like the others cited in this story, spoke on condition of anonymity given the matter’s sensitivity.

For this account, Reuters spoke to a total of five people who work with or have worked with Putin at a senior level in the political and business worlds. The fifth source did not comment on freezing the war at the current frontlines.

Asked about the Reuters report at a news conference in Belarus on Friday, Putin said peace talks should restart.

“Let them resume,” he said, adding that negotiations should be based on “the realities on the ground” and on a plan agreed during a previous attempt to reach a deal in the first weeks of the war. “Not on the basis of what one side wants,” he said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on X that the Russian leader was trying to derail a Ukrainian-initiated peace summit in Switzerland next month by using his entourage to send out “phony signals” about his alleged readiness to halt the war.

“Putin currently has no desire to end his aggression against Ukraine. Only the principled and united voice of the global majority can force him to choose peace over war,” said Kuleba.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said Putin wanted Western democracies to accept defeat.

NOT “ETERNAL WAR”

The appointment last week of economist Andrei Belousov as Russia’s defence minister was seen by some Western military and political analysts as placing the Russian economy on a permanent war footing in order to win a protracted conflict.

It followed sustained battlefield pressure and territorial advances by Russia in recent weeks.

However, the sources said that Putin, re-elected in March for a new six-year term, would rather use Russia’s current momentum to put the war behind him. They did not directly comment on the new defence minister.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in response to a request for comment, said the country did not want “eternal war.”

Based on their knowledge of conversations in the upper ranks of the Kremlin, two of the sources said Putin was of the view that gains in the war so far were enough to sell a victory to the Russian people.

Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War Two has cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides and led to sweeping Western sanctions on Russia’s economy.

Three sources said Putin understood any dramatic new advances would require another nationwide mobilisation, which he didn’t want, with one source, who knows the Russian president, saying his popularity dipped after the first mobilisation in September 2022.

The national call up spooked part of the population in Russia, triggering hundreds of thousands of draft age men to leave the country. Polls showed Putin’s popularity falling by several points.

Peskov said Russia had no need for mobilisation and was instead recruiting volunteer contractors to the armed forces.

The prospect of a ceasefire, or even peace talks, currently seems remote.

Zelenskiy has repeatedly said peace on Putin’s terms is a non-starter. He has vowed to retake lost territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. He signed a decree in 2022 that formally declared any talks with Putin “impossible.”

One of the sources predicted no agreement could happen while Zelenskiy was in power, unless Russia bypassed him and struck a deal with Washington. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Kyiv last week, told reporters he did not believe Putin was interested in serious negotiations.

SWISS TALKS

The Swiss peace summit in June is aimed at unifying international opinion on how to end the war. The talks were convened at the initiative of Zelenskiy who has said Putin should not attend. Switzerland has not invited Russia.

Moscow has said the talks are not credible without it being there. Ukraine and Switzerland want Russian allies including China to attend.

Speaking in China on May 17, Putin said Ukraine may use the Swiss talks to get a broader group of countries to back Zelenskiy’s demand for a total Russian withdrawal, which Putin said would be an imposed condition rather than a serious peace negotiation.

The Swiss foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In response to questions for this story, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said any initiative for peace must respect Ukraine’s “territorial integrity, within its internationally recognised borders” and described Russia as the sole obstacle to peace in Ukraine.

“The Kremlin has yet to demonstrate any meaningful interest in ending its war, quite the opposite,” the spokesperson said.

Kyiv says Putin, whose team repeatedly denied he was planning a war before invading Ukraine in 2022, cannot be trusted to honour any deal.

Both Russia and Ukraine have also said they fear the other side would use any ceasefire to re-arm.

Kyiv and its Western backers are banking on a $61 billion U.S. aid package and additional European military aid to reverse what Zelenskiy described to Reuters this week as “one of the most difficult moments” of the full scale war.

As well as shortages of ammunition after U.S. delays in approving the package, Ukraine has admitted it is struggling to recruit enough troops and last month lowered the age for men who can be drafted to 25 from 27.

TERRITORY

Putin’s insistence on locking in any battlefield gains in a deal is non-negotiable, all of the sources suggested.

Putin would, however, be ready to settle for what land he has now and freeze the conflict at the current front lines, four of the sources said.

“Putin will say that we won, that NATO attacked us and we kept our sovereignty, that we have a land corridor to Crimea, which is true,” one of them said, giving their own analysis.

Freezing the conflict along current lines would leave Russia in possession of substantial chunks of four Ukrainian regions he formally incorporated into Russia in September 2022, but without full control of any of them.

Such an arrangement would fall short of the goals Moscow set for itself at the time, when it said the four of Ukraine’s regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – now belonged to it in their entirety.

Peskov said that there could be no question of handing back the four regions which were now permanently part of Russia according to its own constitution.

Another factor playing into the Kremlin chief’s view that the war should end is that the longer it drags on, the more battle-hardened veterans return to Russia, dissatisfied with post-war job and income prospects, potentially creating tensions in society, said one of the sources, who has worked with Putin.

‘RUSSIA WILL PUSH FURTHER’

In February, three Russian sources told Reuters the United States rejected a previous Putin suggestion of a ceasefire to freeze the war.

In the absence of a ceasefire, Putin wants to take as much territory as possible to ratchet up pressure on Ukraine while seeking to exploit unexpected opportunities to acquire more, three of the sources said.

Russian forces control around 18% of Ukraine and this month thrust into the northeastern region of Kharkiv.

Putin is counting on Russia’s large population compared to Ukraine to sustain superior manpower even without a mobilisation, bolstered by unusually generous pay packets for those who sign up.

“Russia will push further,” the source who has worked with Putin said.

Putin will slowly conquer territories until Zelenskiy comes up with an offer to stop, the person said, saying the Russian leader had expressed the view to aides that the West would not provide enough weapons, sapping Ukraine’s morale.

U.S. and European leaders have said they will stand by Ukraine until its security sovereignty is guaranteed. NATO countries and allies say they are trying to accelerate deliveries of weapons.

“Russia could end the war at any time by withdrawing its forces from Ukraine, instead of continuing to launch brutal attacks against Ukraine’s cities, ports, and people every day,” the State Department said in response to a question about weapons supplies.

All five sources said Putin had told advisers he had no designs on NATO territory, reflecting his public comments on the matter. Two of the sources cited Russian concerns about the growing danger of escalation with the West, including nuclear escalation, over the Ukraine standoff.

The State Department said the United States had not adjusted its nuclear posture, nor seen any sign that Russia was preparing to use a nuclear weapon.

“We continue to monitor the strategic environment and remain ready,” the spokesperson said.

***

Russia Matters, 5/24/24

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters that the June 15-16 peace conference in Switzerland is to focus on ensuring nuclear security, the safety of shipping in the Black Sea and Azov Sea, the return of Ukrainian children from Russia to Ukraine and the exchange of all POWs. While all these issues have earlier appeared in Zelenskyy’s peace formula, the peace formula has included several other components, including the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and prosecution of Russian officials in the International Criminal Court. However, Reuters’ summary of the 57-minute interview with Zelenskyy doesn’t include these additional issues, and it remains unclear if the Ukrainian president will try to discuss them at the summit.1 Meanwhile, Zelenskyy’s main diplomatic push to secure broader global support against Russia’s invasion at the pending summit has suffered a double blow, according to Bloomberg. First, Brazil and China announced a rival initiative early on May 24, inviting other nations to support their call for an international conference involving Russia and Ukraine to discuss an end to the war. Second, it emerged that U.S. President Joe Biden would likely be a no-show at the event because it clashes with an election fundraiser in California, according to Bloomberg.

Major European Banks Paying Russia More in Taxes Than Before Ukraine Invasion – FT

Moscow Times, 4/29/24

Major European banks that continue to do business in Russia paid the government four times more in taxes in 2023 than in the year before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times reported. [https://www.ft.com/content/cd6c28e2-d327-4c2a-a023-098ca43eacfb]

The seven lenders — Austria’s Raiffeisen, Italy’s UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, the Netherlands’ ING, Germany’s Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, as well as Hungary’s OTP — reportedly paid around 800 million euros ($857 million) in taxes to the Russian state last year.

In 2021, those same banks paid 200 million euros in taxes, according to FT.

At the same time, the seven banks reported a combined profit of more than 3 billion euros last year, though part of these funds cannot be withdrawn from Russia due to wartime restrictions on dividend payouts. It is because of this increase in profitability that the seven banks paid more in Russian taxes in 2023, according to an analysis by FT.

The amount of taxes paid by the major European banks to the Russian government totals around 0.4% of Russia’s non-energy budget revenues expected in 2024, which highlights the role foreign companies continue to play in propping up Moscow’s financial stability despite Western sanctions and an exodus of foreign companies following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Western sanctions imposed in response to the war, which cut Russian banks off from the Swift international payment system, have increased the appeal of Western lenders among Russian clients who seek to maintain access to the West — but they have also benefited the banks themselves.

For example, Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) saw its Russian profits more than triple to 1.8 billion euros between 2021 and 2023, a figure that is half of RBI’s total profit. Raiffeisen, which has repeatedly said it plans to exit Russia, also paid an additional 47 million euros in 2023 as a windfall tax imposed by the Kremlin on some companies, according to FT.

FT said its report did not include U.S. banks like Citigroup or JPMorgan as they “do not report comparable Russian results on the group accounts used” for its calculations.

Citigroup paid Russia $53 million in taxes last year, while JPMorgan paid $6.8 million, according to calculations by the Kyiv School of Economics.

Ron Paul: The Vietnamization of Ukraine

By Ron Paul, Antiwar.com, 5/21/24

As Ukraine’s defeat in the war moves closer, the neocons are desperate to draw the US further into the fight. Over the weekend, former US State Department official Victoria Nuland told ABC News that the US must help facilitate Ukrainian missile attacks deep inside Russian territory. The Biden Administration has to this point avoided involvement in such attacks, likely because Russian president Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia will strike any facility that supplies or facilitates strikes inside of Russia, wherever they may be.

It’s a clear warning from a nuclear power, but as Nuland and her fellow neocons see their Ukraine project failing, they demand escalation. This is just what they did in their previous disastrous projects like the Iraq War, the attacks on Syria and Libya, and the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. For them the failure is never because it was a bad idea in the first place, but that not enough lives and resources were poured into that bad idea to create a good outcome.

But Russia is no Iraq nor is it Libya. This time they are playing with World War III and nuclear destruction and no one in DC seems concerned.

Last Thursday the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, said that NATO trainers deployed within Ukraine was inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said. This, of course, is exactly how we got the Vietnam War, but Russia in 2024 is hardly late -1950s Vietnam. Russia of today is a country that can fight back and can project military power all the way to the source, which means the United States.

Is Nuland’s Ukraine project worth dying in a nuclear war over?

The whole US involvement in this proxy war has been based on lie after lie. They said we had to help Ukraine defeat Russia because democracy itself was at stake. Then Ukrainian president Zelensky cancelled elections, so they told us we have to help Ukraine defeat Russia because Putin won’t stop there – he’ll soon be marching through Berlin, London, and maybe even New York!

Doesn’t it remind you of how the neocons were warning us that Saddam was going to attack the US mainland with drones and that he was operating mobile weapons labs? Anything to get the public on board for their war.

The fact is the neocons and warmongers lie constantly. They will do whatever it takes to get their wars and sadly we do not have an independent media in the US to challenge them on their lies. Our media is so closely tied to the military-industrial complex that it is also a stakeholder in war profits, so they aren’t about to rock the boat.

Anyone who thinks we cannot get sucked into another war like we were with George W. Bush’s lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction is not paying attention. It is happening again, in real time.

The fact is we live in a deeply corrupt society dominated by individuals who do not believe in truth. When you don’t believe in truth you will have no qualms about manipulating others to do your will. So unless they are stopped, neocons like Nuland will demand more attacks on Russia, more US troops in Ukraine, more escalation. Until Russia fights back. Then it will all be over. Is this what we want?

The Daily Telegraph (UK): Why should I return to fight?’ Ukrainian men living abroad say

By Roland Oliphant, The Daily Telegraph (UK), 4/28/24

When Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, Vladimir sent his ex-wife and their four-year-old son abroad for safety.

Like most Ukrainian men, he stayed behind, barred from leaving by martial law. But after two years alone, and having been declared medically unfit to serve, he decided to join the family in Germany.

“A child needs a father,” he said.

Now, he could be stranded after a controversial law stripped fighting age men abroad of consular assistance. Those between 18- and 60-years-old will only be able to replace their passports in the Ukraine, meaning they will have to return to the country – and risk the draft.

The move, designed to help plug a dire manpower gap in the country’s armed forces, addresses long-running tensions over men who managed to evade a ban on foreign travel for the duration of the war. But critics, including some serving soldiers, have warned it may be unconstitutional and will simply encourage those who are already overseas to stay away. Poland has suggested it could even deport Ukrainian men back to their home country for conscription.

For his part, Vladimir, 39, will not be heeding the call and returning: “It was morally difficult [to leave] but I decided my family needs me. I don’t feel any kind of pressure from family or friends to go back. My mates all understand my situation.”

Units undermanned

Ukraine’s military commissariats, or local recruiting offices, were overwhelmed with volunteers in the first months of the invasion. But ebbing enthusiasm and high casualties over the past two years have left many units dangerously undermanned.

Ukrainian and Western military planners have identified the manpower shortage as one of three critical issues that must be addressed if Ukraine is to resist the current Russian offensive and eventually regain the initiative.

“The immediate focus has been on munitions, especially air defence artillery, on fortifications, which includes proper defensive lines, and thirdly, on this question of manpower,” one Western official said of recent talks with Ukraine.

“As far as putting people on planes goes, we have not been asked about that and I don’t imagine being asked about it either,” the official added when asked if his government would send Ukrainian men home.

The Ukrainian government has taken a number of measures to raise new recruits, including lowering the draft age from 27 to 25.

But Wednesday’s announcement appears to have caused some confusion within the Ukrainian government. One Ukrainian official told the Telegraph that they were not entirely sure how the law would work because issues like exemptions for those legitimately unable to fight – such as Vladimir – do not seem to have been addressed.

Dmytro Lazutkin, the press secretary of the Ukrainian ministry of defence, said there were no plans to issue conscription notices overseas.

“The ministry of defence cannot comment on the actions of the foreign ministry. I think it’s pretty unrealistic,” he told Radio Free Europe.

It has also drawn a mixed reaction from Ukraine’s allies. Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland’s defence minister, said “Ukrainian citizens have obligations towards the state”, and that Warsaw would help “in ensuring that those who are subject to compulsory military service go to Ukraine”.

German authorities have said some Ukrainian men will be able to extend their residency in the country even if their passports expire as long as there is some way to identify them.

Men between the ages of 18 and 60 have officially been banned from leaving Ukraine since the president Volodymyr Zelensky introduced martial law on the first day of the Russian invasion in 2022.

In practice, many were able to obtain exemptions, either by being declared unfit for military service, having three or more children, or by gaining special permission to travel from the government. Others have tried to leave illegally, some by smuggling themselves across Ukraine’s western borders. Mr Zelensky cracked down on officials abusing exemptions to travel last year. The bar for being passed fit to serve has also been lowered.

The European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, says 4.3 million Ukrainians are living in EU countries, 860,000 of them men 18 years of age or older. The British government says it has issued 256,200 visas under its scheme for Ukrainian refugees. It is not clear how many of them were for fighting age men.

Ukrainian men living abroad told the Telegraph they had no plans to return to fight and considered the law unfair.

“The law is not fair”

“My passport is still valid,” 39-year-old Vladimir said, “but I think for many people who came here from occupied areas like Mariupol, the situation is a bit insulting. Russia destroyed their homes, and now their own country is taking a stick to them.”

Volodymyr, a builder from Western Ukraine who has been living and working in the Czech Republic for most of the past eight years, said: “The law is not fair. And all my Ukrainian friends from the Czech Republic, Lutsk and Kyiv think so. Nobody is happy with it. The government is forcing us, and with such laws we will step away from them. We will take citizenship in other countries.”

“People won’t return. The longer the war goes on, the more laws like this are passed, the more people hate Ukraine and the government. Why should I return to fight? For what? Why didn’t the government care about labour migrants like me before the war?”

“Every day we have less and less territory and fewer and fewer people. Some have been killed, others swam the Tisza river just to escape.” The Tisza, a tributary of the Danube, marks a 10-mile stretch of Ukraine’s border with Hungary.

One man, who admitted leaving the country illegally and is currently in Indonesia, said he felt no obligation to fight for the country and considered himself an observer rather than a participant in the war.

Perhaps surprisingly, the law has even drawn criticism from some soldiers. “I absolutely agree with them,” said Nikita Rozhenko, a recruiting sergeant with Ukraine’s Kharkiv-based 113th brigade, when asked what he thought of their opinions. “To tell them they left Ukraine so they are not Ukrainians any more is not normal. We need to invite people back, to greet them gladly, and not tell them they are not Ukrainians. It’s bulls***.”

“This law won’t work properly. It is a political compromise and no one wants to take responsibility. It is not good for the military and it is not good for civilians. It is for everyone and no one.”

Sgt Rozhenko, who lost an eye in the first year of the war but like many wounded is still deemed fit for service and cannot demobilise, admits current recruitment is dire. While his ideal soldier would be 27- to 30-years-old, the average candidate is around 45 or 50, from the social and economic margins of society, and often in poor health.

“The doctors pass them as capable. When they get to their units the commanders see people who are tired, with bad health, some with chronic diseases,” he said.

The fix, he argues, is not threatening people overseas, but allowing people to choose their units.

“No one has listened to the military. The military wants straight recruitment to the brigades without going through the commissariats. It will be much more effective and much fairer. This will lead us to victory and the people will serve where they want, how they want, and with people they want,” he said.

“Lots of people want to serve, they just don’t want to be assigned to a ‘meat brigade’,” he said, using soldier’s slang for units where “low level commanders and high level commanders don’t give a f*** about their people.”

He refused to give examples, but said all soldiers knew who the good and bad units and commanders were.

“Brigades who understand people are very valuable and must be kept alive” would naturally expand and grow stronger, while the poorly one units would wither and eventually disappear, he argues. Ultimately Ukraine would end up with a more efficient and professional military.

“It would be like free market recruitment – and now we have the USSR.”