Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 99

Economist James K. Galbraith: Sanctions: To Russia with Love

YouTube link here.

“James Galbraith challenges common perceptions about western sanctions and their impact on Russia, revealing unexpected outcomes for its economy and development. Contrary to the goals of defunding the war and degrading Russia’s military capacity, sanctions have led to economic adjustments that have fostered Russia’s independent development. Galbraith points out that despite initial disruptions, Russia adapted by focusing on domestic production and diversifying its economic partnerships. This analysis provides a nuanced view of economic sanctions’ real-world impacts, suggesting that their effectiveness and consequences are more complex than commonly understood.“

The Bell: Moscow concert hall attack: what we know by now

Read Putin’s address to the citizens of Russia on the terrorist attack here.

The Bell, 3/23/24

The biggest terrorist attack in Moscow for 20 years

A group of armed people killed at least 115 people Friday in an attack on a shopping and entertainment center in Moscow – the most deadly terrorist incident in the Russian capital in two decades. Amid the war in Ukraine, Russia’s response is very difficult to predict. [Note: Both and RT a the time of this posting are reporting 133 dead. – Natylie]

The attack began about 8 p.m. in Crocus City Hall, which includes one of Moscow’s biggest concert halls (seating about 6,200 people). Five well-armed people in camouflage entered the hall just before the start of a sold-out performance, shooting the security guards, and then those present in the room. According to officials, at least 150 people were  killed  and hundreds more  injured . A large fire began at about this time, as a result of which part of the roof of the hall collapsed.Initially, there were reports that the attackers had remained in the building, but, at about midnight, the police  announced  they had begun a search for the culprits. On Saturday, the Federal Security Service (FSB)  said  that the four terrorists were detained in th western Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine. Russian state media  posted  videos of their interrogations; one of the attackers said that he was offered to carry out the shooting by a “preacher’s assistant” on messaging app Telegram, and was promised 1 million rubles ($11,000) as a reward.All the recent developments (especially the fact that the shooters were offered a money reward) and the  tone of the propaganda , suggests that the Russian official version will inevitably focus on blaming Ukraine.The political backdrop is extremely concerning. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov  said  Thursday for the first time that Russia is waging a “war” in Ukraine – not a “special military operation,” which has been the preferred official term for more than two years, And the day before, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced plans to establish three new armies – sparking speculation about another round of mobilization to raise the soldiers to man them.Why the world should care

Such a brazen attack in the heart of Moscow could potentially be used by the Kremlin to justify another escalation in Ukraine, or another wave of mobilization. However, Russian officials stopped short of blaming Ukraine on Friday evening. We will look at the attack and its fallout in more detail in our following newsletters.

Wartime economics puts money in pockets of Russia’s poor 

Predictably, Western nations were dismissive of the “election” that saw Vladimir Putin voted in for a fifth presidential term. Of course, the election was neither free, nor fair. However, that does not mean it was meaningless. The words once credited to U.S. political strategist James Carville also apply here: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Even if the votes had been counted accurately, it’s more than possible that the economy would have powered Putin to victory. After all, most Russians have never lived as well as they do now. Nor do people believe that things are about to get worse. This is particularly notable in Russia’s regions, far from the hipsters of Moscow and St. Petersburg. 

An economy that is growing because of the needs of the military and rising government spending has ensured wages outstripping inflation.

After the start of the war, inflation rocketed – but wages more than kept pace. Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina said Friday that the economy’s “production capacity and labor reserves are almost totally committed.” In other words, there is no way of boosting production and the labor shortage is ongoing. That means salaries will continue to rise. Same the inflation.

The fact that Russians are living better is evident from their outgoings. Spending at cafes and restaurants, for example, is increasing.

Demand for non-food goods (i.e. items where purchases can be postponed or even canceled) has recovered from its slump in the months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its rate of growth now exceeds both inflation, and wage increases.

This does not look like the sort of panic buying that happens in a crisis, when many rush out to buy whatever consumer durables they can afford. Instead, Russians appear to have sufficient confidence in their finances to take out personal loans. Consumer confidence is approaching record levels, Nabiullina told reporters on Friday.

Of course, increased prosperity is not universal. But those who have lost out are the more wealthy Russians. The average income of the richest 10% in Russian society has increased by 27% since the start of the war. While this may seem a lot, it’s the lowest rise of all 10 income groups, and barely matches the combined inflation rate for the past two years. Incomes for the poorest in society have grown much faster.

“A large-scale redistribution of resources in favor of the less well-off has prompted a widespread shift in perceptions of justice for the first time since 1990,” Denis Volkov, director of independent pollster Levada Center, wrote in an article last month. According to Levada, the proportion of Russians who feel that the distribution of material wealth in Russia is getting more unfair fell from 45% in 2021 to 25% in November 2023.

Why the world should care

The war has caused disproportionate economic suffering for a small minority of privileged Russians living in big cities, working for international companies (or companies integrated into global networks) and regarding themselves as “citizens of the world.” The Kremlin has apparently given up on this group. Now, Russian citizens who once regarded themselves as forgotten and overlooked are ready to take their place. Both the war, and the Kremlin’s economic policies, resonate in the hearts and wallets of these people.

Putin Prepares For China Visit as Russia’s Dependence Grows

Putin’s first foreign visit after his upcoming inauguration could be to China. The Russian president could head eastward as soon as May, Reuters reported Tuesday. The increasing regularity of meetings between Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is testament to the rapidly deepening ties between the two countries.

Putin and Xi met twice last year. In March, the Chinese leader came to Moscow. Then, in October, Putin made a visit to Beijing for the Belt and Road Forum. The Russian leader’s next trip would likely be a mirror of Xi Jinping’s Moscow visit. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s relationship with China has begun to look a lot like dependence. Western sanctions are  pushing  Moscow into Beijing’s embrace, with Sino-Russian trade last year topping $240 billion (China delivered 38% of Russia’s imports, and received 31% of Russian exports). Beijing now holds a monopoly in a range of goods (and, as a result, can charge Russia more than other countries).There was a 594% increase in imports of Chinese cars to Russia in 2023, and an almost 600% increase in imports of Chinese tractors.China is not just Russia’s leading trade partner. It also plays a key role in helping settle accounts with third countries. In just two years, the yuan has become the most important currency for Russian business. In December, 35.8% of Russian exports and 37% of imports were paid for in yuan. That’s more than the ruble (35.7% and 31.5% respectively). The amount of yuan held in Russian business and personal accounts last year even outstripped the U.S. dollar ($68.7 billion vs $64.7 billion). And lending to companies in yuan was up 3.6 times to $36.1 billion in 2023, primarily due to the conversion of debts once held in U.S. dollars and euros.Some media outlets speculated that one of Putin’s reasons for visiting China was to solve the problems some Russian financial institutions had with Chinese banks last year. The issues seemed to arise after U.S. President Joe Biden passed a decree tightening the penalties on third parties helping Russia evade Western sanctions. However, this speculation is probably little more than speculation. It’s true that correspondent banks in China began curtailing relationships with their Russian counterparts after the U.S. decree, and businesses complained of problems. But this did not halt financial transactions. “In general, payments were made and continue to be made,” a source from a Russian export company told The Bell. “It’s just that first-tier banks are being replaced by second and third-tier organizations.”The average time to verify funds received from Russia in China is now 18 days,  according to  the “Business Practice in China” Telegram channel. In other words, payment chains are adapting to new realities. “Before, the relationship was: client – Russian bank – foreign bank – client. Now, there are three or five more banks in the chain. But everything still works,” added The Bell’s source.

Matt Taibbi: State Department Threatens Congress Over Censorship Programs

By Matt Taibbi, Substack, 2/17/24

The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:

The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”

A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”

The culprit was the Global Engagement Center, a little-known State Department entity created in Barack Obama’s last year in office and a surprise focus of Twitter Files reporting. The GEC grew out of a counter-terrorism agency called the CSCC and has a mission to “counter” any messaging, foreign or domestic as it turns out, that they see as “undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States.” The GEC-funded GDI rated ten conservative sites as most “risky” and put the Examiner on its “exclusion” list, while its ten sites rated at the “lowest level of disinformation” included Buzzfeed, which famously published the Steele Dossier knowing it contained errors and is now out of business.

In an effort to find out what other ventures GEC was funding — an absurd 36 of 39 2018 contractors were redacted even in an Inspector General’s report — the House Small Business Committee wrote the State Department last June asking for basic information about where the public’s money was being spent. State and GEC stalled until December 3 of last year, when it finally produced a partial list of recipients. Although House Republicans asked for an “unredacted list of all GEC grant recipients and associated award numbers” from 2019 through the current year, the list the Committee received was missing “dozens” of contractors, including some listed on USASpending.com.

The Examiner and Kaminsky subsequently wrote an article slamming GEC for sending “incomplete” records of the censorship investigation, in the process including links to a “snippet” of the GEC’s contractors:

In response to the outrage of this disclosure, the State Department sent its letter threatening in camera sessions until it gets a better “understanding” of how the Committee will use its “sensitive” information. That’s Beltway-ese for “We wouldn’t mind knowing the Examiner’s sources.”

About that: the State letter wrote that the Examiner’s records were “reportedly obtained from the Committee,” and included a footnote and a link to a Kaminsky story, implying that the Examiner reported that it got the records from the Committee. But the paper said nothing about the source of the documents, which as anyone who’s ever covered these types of stories knows, could have come from any number of places. It’s a small but revealing detail about current petulance levels at State.

“Anti-disinformation” work is not exactly hypersonic missile construction. There’s no legitimate reason for it to be kept from the public, especially since it’s increasingly clear its programs target American media companies and American media consumers, seemingly in violation of the State Department’s mission. The requested information is also not classified, making the delays and tantrums more ridiculous.

There are simply too many agencies that have adopted the attitude that the entire federal government is one giant intelligence service, entitled to secret budgeting and an oversight-free existence. They need pushback on this score and have at last started to get it. Thanks in significant part to the Examiner as well as lawsuits by The Federalist, Daily Wire, and Consortium News, the latest National Defense Authorization Act included for the first time a provision banning the Pentagon from using “any advertiser for recruitment that uses biased censorship entities like NewsGuard and GDI,” as a congressional spokesperson put it in December. We’ll see how it pans out, but congress withholding money for domestic spy programs is at least a possible solution, now in play.

Perhaps it’s time for the State Department to receive a similar wake-up call. If GEC wants to put conditions on disclosure, can we put conditions on paying taxes? SMH, SMH…

Terrorist Attack in Moscow – More than 60 Dead, 145 Hospitalized

Earlier today in Russia, a major terrorist attack took place at a concert hall outside of Moscow. The most up to date coverage from RT is citing 60 dead, however, I’m seeing it reported on Twitter that the number has reached 70 but I haven’t confirmed that yet. TASS News Agency is now reporting that 145 have been hospitalized including several children.

The attack seems to have been well coordinated and intended to inflict maximum death and destruction.

The latest reporting I could find is that Putin has been briefed on the attack but has not yet made any public statements.

RT reporting:

Russia suffered one of the worst terrorist attacks in its modern history on Friday. At least 40 people were killed and scores injured by a group of gunmen who stormed a large music venue just outside of Moscow.

Details are still emerging, but it appears that the attack was well prepared and designed to maximize casualties. Here is what is known so far.

A packed venue

The terrorists struck at Crocus City Hall, a concert venue located in Krasnogorsk, a settlement on the western outskirts of the Russian capital. It is part of a larger entertainment complex opened in 2009, which also includes a shopping mall and hotel.

The concert hall holds up to 7,500 people and was almost packed when the terrorists launched their assault. The popular rock band Picnic was set to perform.

Shooting spree

According to footage circulating online, some five gunmen took part in the shooting. They appeared to be carrying automatic firearms and had other military gear.

They reportedly killed the security guards – who were unarmed – at the main entrance to the venue, and blocked it before continuing their rampage inside.

Large blaze follows

Once the terrorists reached the concert hall, they reportedly set chairs inside on fire. The blaze spread across the building and reached the roof before firefighters could start combating it. Helicopters were seen pouring large quantities of water on the building following the attack.

Dozens killed

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has put the preliminary death toll in the attack at 40, adding that around 100 people have been injured.

At least 70 ambulances were dispatched to the scene to attend to the wounded, according to officials.

A list of wounded released by the Moscow Region Health Ministry has more than 140 entries, some of which are yet to be identified by name. Dozens of victims were said to be in serious condition.

Five people on the list are children as young as seven, while an 11-year-old girl is also listed.

Fate of the perpetrators

Russian law enforcement did not report any arrests in the wake of the shooting. Commando units were dispatched to the scene, but it was not immediately clear whether they confronted the gunmen inside.

Unconfirmed media reports said that several Crocus employees had been detained.

Dozens killed

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has put the preliminary death toll in the attack at 40, adding that around 100 people have been injured.

At least 70 ambulances were dispatched to the scene to attend to the wounded, according to officials.

A list of wounded released by the Moscow Region Health Ministry has more than 140 entries, some of which are yet to be identified by name. Dozens of victims were said to be in serious condition.

Five people on the list are children as young as seven, while an 11-year-old girl is also listed.

Fate of the perpetrators

Russian law enforcement did not report any arrests in the wake of the shooting. Commando units were dispatched to the scene, but it was not immediately clear whether they confronted the gunmen inside.

Unconfirmed media reports said that several Crocus employees had been detained.

READ MORE: US condemns Moscow terrorist attack

Identity of the terrorists

No terrorist group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Senior Ukrainian official Mikhail Podoliak posted a video statement on social media shortly after the news broke. The aide to President Vladimir Zelensky distanced the Ukrainian government from the tragedy, claiming that Kiev does not resort to terrorism in its fight against Russia.

Reactions from abroad

International organizations and foreign governments, including those that Russia considers unfriendly, have condemned the terrorist attack.

White House White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby, who was giving a daily briefing shortly after the incident, called the images from the scene “hard to watch,” adding: “Our thoughts obviously are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack.”

Security alerts in March

Earlier this month, the US issued a warning to its citizens in Russia, urging them to avoid public places and mass gatherings. The embassy claimed that “extremists” had imminent plans for an attack in Moscow. Several other embassies followed suit, issuing similar alerts.

Kirby stressed that Washington had “no advanced knowledge” of Friday’s shooting.

***

There is reporting that ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks. According to CNN:

ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack at a popular concert venue complex near Moscow Friday that left at least 40 dead and more than 100 wounded after assailants stormed the venue with guns and incendiary devices.

The terror group took responsibility for the attack in a short statement published by ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq on Telegram on Friday. The group did not provide evidence to support the claim.

Video footage from the site of the attack, the Crocus City Hall concert venue, shows the vast complex, which is home to both the music hall and a shopping center, on fire with smoke billowing into the air. State-run RIA Novosti reported the armed individuals “opened fire with automatic weapons” and “threw a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which started a fire.” They then “allegedly fled in a white Renault car,” the news agency said.

State media Russia 24 reported the roof on the venue has partially collapsed.

***

Judging from the commentary on Twitter, many are expressing skepticism at ISIS’s claim of responsibility as well as suspicion about the US government’s warning earlier in the month that extremists may attack Moscow. Let’s pray that neither Ukraine nor the US was behind this in any way. I understand that Putin is a long-term thinking and patient leader who tends to not let his opponents press him into unwise moves or relinquishing his own control of his responses. However, unlike other provocations, like the attack on Nordstream 2, I don’t think the Russian government would be able to let this one go for long.

Biden Administration Doubling Down on Losing in Ukraine – Seymour Hersh’s Latest

An excerpt from Seymour Hersh’s “The Iron-Clad Pinata” published on 3/21/24:

The American official, who is kept abreast of the ongoing talks between leaders of the two armies at war, said that officials of the Biden administration, working with Zelensky, continue to rebuff any chances of significant progress in peace talks. The reality, he said, is “that the lands in dispute”—four oblasts formerly in Ukraine’s control and Crimea—“from north to south and east to west all are Russia’s. So stop talking about it and make a deal.” Right now, “Putin could drive to Lviv”—near the border with Poland in western Ukraine—“but what would he gain in terms of his current dominance? US vacillation and peace at home? He wants Kharkiv, and he will get it when he forces Zalensky to capitulate. 

“We were on the verge of a reasonable negotiation several months ago before Putin’s re-election and Zelensky’s military degradation. The US leaders got wind of the possibility and gave Zelensky the ultimatum—‘No negotiations or settlement or we won’t support your government with the $45 billion in non-military funds [that Ukraine is now receiving annually]. Biden has staked his presidency on meeting the Russian threat to NATO and outsmarting the monster, and he will not change course now, under any circumstances, and the end is inevitable. There is no road to victory for Ukraine, and it will end with Putin as an historical icon in Russia, having recovered a national jewel[Kharkiv]from the West.” 

Krishen Mehta: Learning from Seneca…in the context of the Russia Ukraine War

By Krishen Mehta, ACURA, 2/23/24

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC–65 AD) was a Stoic philosopher of ancient Rome and tutor to emperors. Known for his philosophic works and essays dealing with thorny moral and political issues, Seneca used philosophy as a compass to navigate the challenging terrain of life. Recently, as I was reading a new translation of Sentences from Seneca, it struck me that some of Seneca’s teachings may apply to the tragic conflict that is still unfolding in Ukraine. In the spirit of bringing the wisdom of the past to bear on the present, I offer four of Seneca’s sentences as ways of illuminating the problems of the war.

Teaching 1: It is not he who has too little, but who craves more, who is poor

On Sept 7, 2023, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the European Parliament that President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was “to prevent more NATO” expansion along Russia’s borders. This was essentially an admission that the war could have been avoided if the West had agreed to Russia’s repeated requests not to expand NATO into Ukraine.

In spite of promises made to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East” if Russia allowed for Germany to be unified, the expansion into Eastern Europe that began under President Clinton only sped up under his successors. Yet the Western powers felt that even the incorporation of Poland and the Baltic states into NATO wasn’t enough — Ukraine had to come next. But has NATO expansion made the world safer and more peaceful? Or has it made it poorer, less safe, and more confrontational?

Perhaps Seneca was right: it is he who craves more who is poor.

Teaching 2: Reason wishes its judgment to be just. Anger wishes its judgment to appear just.

Vladimir Putin reasons that, although the territory of present-day Ukraine has a long history, Russia and Ukraine are like Slavic brothers who “share the same soul.” Left-bank Ukraine (east of the Dnieper River) was already incorporated into the Tsardom of Russia in 1667 under the Treaty of Andrusovo. Parts or all of Ukraine remained within the Russian Empire or the USSR through the early 1990s. Allowing Ukraine, formerly an integral part of its empire, to become part of a hostile military alliance right at its border was not something Russia could accept. For that reason, its leaders felt that the special military operation was both just and necessary.

The West, for its part, also wants to justify its response to the war in which billions have been spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and various economies forced into decline. Even though Ukraine has fought valiantly, the war has shattered the established global order, and the countries of the world are more divided than ever before.

US President Joe Biden, at a press conference with the Finnish President on July 13, 2023, said that “Putin’s already lost the war. There is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made similar statements to the effect that “Putin was trying to erase Ukraine from the map, subsume it into Russia, and that has already been a failure.” Maybe, for the sake of global peace, we can concede victory to the West, agree to an armistice-like arrangement based on the current territorial realities, negotiate Ukraine’s neutrality for the foreseeable future, and end this conflict. In this manner, improvising on Seneca’s insight from over two thousand years ago, those who feel just and those who wish to appear just can both be satisfied.

Teaching 3: Those whom they have injured, they also hate. 

Russia was attacked by Germany in World War I and suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914. Further setbacks fueled the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Russian Civil War followed, lasting until 1922, during which time various foreign factions intervened to determine Russia’s political future. Russia was attacked again less than 20 years later, this time by the Nazi war machine. Over 26 million Russians died in the war that ensued.

From Russia’s perspective, it was their sacrifice in World War II that ended up saving Western civilization by smashing almost 80% of Germany’s military force. In comparison, France lost about 600,000 lives and the US only about 400,000. It would be little exaggeration to say that no country experienced more pain, injury, and suffering than Russia did during the Second World War.

Yet after the end of the Cold War, Western powers stifled or denied Russia’s efforts to integrate with their economies. Russia’s offer to join NATO was rejected. Its leaders experimented with capital reforms, as advised by the West, but without the financial support needed for the reforms to succeed, their economy went into a free fall. Living standards collapsed.

Do Western leaders have compassion or understanding for what Russia experienced in World War II and thereafter? No — in fact, Russophobia has never been more widespread in the West than it is right now. Why? Maybe Seneca could tell us: those whom they have injured, they also hate.

Teaching 4: Nothing is ours but time…and time discloses the truth.

No one knows how this war will end. For Ukraine, almost an entire generation has been traumatized, either killed or wounded in battle or forced into exile as refugees. Russia has also suffered painful military and economic losses. One day, historians will write about how the war started, whether it was truly unprovoked, the security guarantees that could have been negotiated while there was still time, the missed opportunity for peace in Istanbul in April, 2022, and how the war changed our world.

Meanwhile, two years into the conflict, we are at a crossroads. Time will test Russia’s belief that this is a civil war and fratricidal conflict that has divided families and friends and relatives. Time may also tell if the war could still have happened without the maleficent, intrusive behavior of the Western powers. And time will tell how the people of Ukraine will survive in a postwar future, living at peace with their fraternal family. If one believes in God, one must believe in the power of healing.

As Seneca says, nothing is ours but time…and time discloses the truth.

Krishen Mehta is a former partner at PwC and now a Senior Global Justice Fellow at Yale University

Tarik Cyril Amar: From a Big Lie to the Biggest War?

By Tarik Cyril Amar, Website, 3/17/24

The current situation in the conflict between Ukraine – serving (while being demolished) as a proxy for the West – and Russia, can be sketched in three broad strokes.

First, Russia now clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield and could potentially accelerate its recent advances to achieve an overall military victory soon. The West is being compelled to recognize this fact: as Foreign Affairs put it, in an article titled “Time is Running Out in Ukraine,” Kiev and its Western supporters “are at a critical decision point and face a fundamental question: How can further Russian advances… be stopped, and then reversed?” Just disregard the bit of wishful thinking thrown in at the end to sweeten the bitter pill of reality. The key point is the acknowledgment that it is crunch time for the West and Ukraine – in a bad way.

Second, notwithstanding the above, Ukraine is not yet ready to ask for negotiations to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia, which would be less than easy for Kiev. (Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, reiterated in an important recent interview that Moscow remains principally open to talks, not on the basis of “wishful thinking” but, instead, proceeding from the realities “on the ground.”)

The Kiev regime’s inflexibility is little wonder. Since he jettisoned a virtually complete – and favorable – peace deal in the spring of 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky has gambled everything on an always improbable victory. For him personally, as well as his core team (at least), there is no way to survive – politically or physically – the catastrophic defeat they have brought on their country by leasing it out as a pawn to the Washington neocon strategy.

The Pope, despite the phony brouhaha he triggered in Kiev and the West, was right: a responsible Ukrainian leadership ought to negotiate. But that’s not the leadership Ukraine has. Not yet at least.

Third, the West’s strategy is getting harder to decipher because, in essence, the West cannot figure out how to adjust to the failure of its initial plans for this war. Russia has not been isolated; its military has become stronger, not weaker – and the same is true of its economy, including its arms industry.

And last but not least, the Russian political system’s popular legitimacy and effective control has neither collapsed nor even frayed. As, again, even Foreign Affairs admits, “Putin would likely win a fair election in 2024.” That’s more than could be said for, say, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz, or Emmanuel Macron (as for Zelensky, he has simply canceled the election).

In other words, the West is facing not only Ukraine’s probable defeat, but also its own strategic failure. The situation, while not a direct military rout (as in Afghanistan in 2021) amounts to a severe political setback.

In fact, this looming Western failure is a historic debacle in the making. Unlike with Afghanistan, the West will not be able to simply walk away from the mess it has made in Ukraine. This time, the geopolitical blowback will be fierce and the costs very high. Instead of isolating Russia, the West has isolated itself, and by losing, it will show itself weakened.

It is one thing to have to finally, belatedly accepted that the deceptive “unipolar” moment of the 1990s has been over for a long time. It is much worse to gratuitously enter the new multipolar order with a stunning, avoidable self-demotion. Yet that is what the EU/NATO-West has managed to fabricate from its needless over-extension in Ukraine. Hubris there has been galore, the fall now is only a matter of time – and not much time at that.

Regarding EU-Europe in particular, on one thing French President Emmanuel Macron is half right. Russia’s victory “would reduce Europe’s credibility to zero.” Except, of course, a mind of greater Cartesian precision would have detected that Moscow’s victory will merely be the last stage in a longer process.

The deeper causes of EU/NATO-Europe’s loss of global standing are threefold. First, its own wanton decision to seek confrontation instead of a clearly feasible compromise and cooperation with Russia (why exactly is a neutral Ukraine impossible to live with again?) Second, the American strategy of systematically diminishing EU/NATO-Europe with a short-sighted policy of late-imperial client cannibalization which takes the shape of aggressive deindustrialization and a “Europeanization” of the war in Ukraine. And third, the European clients’ grotesque acquiescence to the above.

That is the background to a recent wave of mystifying signals coming out of Western, especially EU/NATO elites: First, we have had a wave of scare propaganda to accompany the biggest NATO maneuvers since the end of the Cold War. Next Macron publicly declared and has kept reiterating that the open – not in covert-but-obvious mode, as now – deployment of Western ground troops in Ukraine is an option. He added a cheap demagogic note by calling on Europeans not to be “cowards,” by which he means that they should be ready to follow, in effect, his orders and fight Russia, clearly including inside and on behalf of Ukraine. Never mind that the latter is a not an official member of either NATO or the EU as well as a highly corrupt and anything but democratic state.

In response, a divergence has surfaced inside EU/NATO Europe: The German government has been most outspoken in contradicting Macron. Not only Chancellor Scholz rushed to distance himself. A clearly outraged Boris Pistorius – Berlin’s hapless minister of defense, recently tripped up by his own generals’ stupendously careless indiscretion over the Taurus missiles – has grumbled that there is no need for “talk about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage.” Perhaps more surprisingly, Poland, the Czech Republic as well as NATO figurehead Jens Stoltenberg (i.e., the US) have been quick to state that they are, in effect, not ready to support Macron’s initiative. The French public, by the way, is not showing any enthusiasm for a Napoleonic escalation either. A Le Figaro poll shows 68 percent against openly sending ground troops to Ukraine.

On the other side, Macron has found some support. He is not entirely isolated, which helps explain why he has dug in his heels: Zelensky does not count in this respect. His bias is obvious, and his usual delusions notwithstanding he is not calling the shots on the matter. The Baltic states, however, while military micro-dwarfs, are, unfortunately, in a position to exert some influence inside the EU and NATO. And true to form, they have sided with the French president, with Estonia and Lithuania taking the lead.

It remains impossible to be certain what we are looking at. To get the most far-fetched hypothesis out of the way first: is this a coordinated bluff with a twist? A complicated Western attempt at playing good-cop bad-cop against Russia, with Macron launching the threats and others signaling that Moscow could find them less extreme, at a diplomatic price, of course? Hardly. For one thing, that scheme would be so hare-brained, even the current West is unlikely to try. No, the crack opening up in Western unity is real.

Regarding Macron himself, too-clever-by-half, counter-productive cunning is his style. We cannot know what exactly he is trying to do; and he may not know himself. In essence, there are two possibilities. Either the French president now is a hard-core escalationist determined to widen the war into an open clash between Russia and NATO, or he is a high-risk gambler who is engaged in a bluff to achieve three purposes. Frighten Moscow into abstaining from pushing its military advantage in Ukraine (a hopeless idea); score nationalist “grandeur” points domestically in France (which is failing already); and increase his weight inside EU/NATO-Europe by “merely” posturing as, once again, a new “Churchill” – whom Macron himself has made sure to allude to, in all his modesty. (And some of his fans, including Zelensky, a grizzled veteran of Churchill live action role play, have already made that de rigueur if stale comparison.) 

While we cannot entirely unriddle the moody sphinx of the Elysée or, for that matter, the murky dealings of EU/NATO-European elites, we can say two things. First, whatever Macron thinks he is doing, it is extremely dangerous. Russia would treat EU/NATO-state troops in Ukraine as targets – and it won’t matter one wit if they turn up labeled “NATO” or under national flags “only.” Russia has also reiterated that it considers its vital interests affected in Ukraine and that if its leadership perceives a vital threat to Russia, nuclear weapons are an option. The warning could not be clearer.

Second, here is the core Western problem that is now – due to Russia undeniably winning the war – becoming acute: Western elites are split between “pragmatists” and “extremists.” The pragmatists are as Russophobic and strategically misguided as the extremists, but they do shy away from World War Three. Yet these pragmatists, who seek to resist hard-core escalationists and reign it at least high-risk gamblers, are brought up short against a crippling contradiction in their own position and messaging: As of now, they still share the same delusional narrative with the extremists. Both groupings keep reiterating that Russia plans to attack all of EU/NATO-Europe once it defeats Ukraine and that, therefore, stopping Russia in Ukraine is, literally, vital (or in Macron’s somewhat Sartrean terms “existential”) to the West.   

That narrative is absurd. Reality works exactly the other way around: The most certain way to get into a war with Russia is to send troops to Ukraine openly. And what is existential for EU/NATO-Europe is to finally liberate itself from American “leadership.” During the Cold War, a case could be made that (then Western) Europe needed the US. After the Cold War, though, that was no longer the case. In response, Washington has implemented a consistent, multi-administration, bipartisan, if often crude, strategy of avoiding what should have been inevitable: the emancipation of Europe from American dominance.

Both the eastward expansion of NATO, programmed – and predicted – to cause a massive conflict with Russia and the current proxy war in Ukraine, obstinately provoked by Washington over decades, are part of that strategy to – to paraphrase a famous saying about NATO – “keep Europe down.” And the European elites have played along as if there’s no tomorrow, which, for them, there really may not be.

We are at a potential breaking-point, a crisis of that long-term trajectory. If the pragmatists in EU/NATO-Europe really want to contain the extremists, who play with triggering an open war between Russia and NATO that would devastate at least Europe, then they must now come clean and, finally, abandon the common, ideological, and entirely unrealistic narrative about an existential threat from Moscow.

As long as the pragmatists dare not challenge the escalationists on how to principally understand the causes of the current catastrophe, the extremists will always have the advantage of consistency: Their policies are foolish, wastefully unnecessary, and extremely risky. And yet, they follow from what the West has made itself believe. It is high time to break that spell of self-hypnosis, and face facts.

Leader of the Free World: Biden Repeatedly Confuses Ukraine & Russia & Iraq (Matt Orfalea Video Mashup)

YouTube link here.

An old man with dementia can be expected to mix up the names of sons, wives, mistresses. If Iraq and Ukraine are in the same mental sock drawer for President Biden, we have a seriously under-noticed problem. You can watch Orf’s video for laughs, but this one is more horror movie than most of his productions. – Matt Taibbi

Sarah Lindemann-Komarova: Russia Moving On: The Economic Front (Part Two: SitRep SMO Two Years In )

By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Medium, 2/22/24

Two years into an SMO that no one expected or wanted, it has become a fact of life with two fronts, the battlefield and economic. The focus here is on economics and life after two years of Western sanctions. The headline is “moving on”.

According to the Levada Center, 75% of respondents look forward to 2024 with “hope”, 8% with uncertainty”, and 13% with “anxiety”. Inflation is real and felt but people are coping in part because of a labor shortage that has forced salary increases in the private sector. Public sector service jobs continue to lag behind, one of the reasons there are 12 vacancies at the Manzherok Village school and no full-time medical staff in the clinic. There are plans to build “social housing” for these professionals but a local entrepreneur does not think this will make a difference, “No one is going to work for that kind of money now”.

Manzherok Village, community in transition with 5 Star Resort ski trails looming over the Village

Sanctions are rarely mentioned. If they are, it is to reflect on how scary it was when they were announced followed by admiration at the soft landing Central Bank Head Elvira Nabiullina has pulled off. There is no arrogance in this assessment, just pride and a little bit of wonder. One businessman expressed a different kind of wonder, why the Europeans are signaling to investors and depositors around the world that Europe is not a safe place. He moved his money after receiving threatening messages from a Swiss Bank. It is now in Kazakhstan, Dubai, Cyprus and he is also investing in Russia.

LS/Levi Shop in Novosibirsk Mall (Photo:2GIS)

During holiday shopping at a mall in Novosibirsk, a 22 year old translates: Pull & Bear = Dub, Maag = Zara, LS = Levi’s, etc. The massive IKEA remains empty but the French Leroy Merlin and Auchan continue on as always although Leroy Merlin appears to be assuming more and more IKEA product lines. The high prices were mitigated by surprisingly great pre-holiday sales up to 70% in most stores.

Sign in Chery Dealership “Official Automobile Partner BRICS”

The Chinese are rapidly cornering the car market as the French, Germans, and Americans, who had factories in Russia, left with options to buy back. Chery was making deals and the dealership was full. The $30,000 + Tiggo ProMax 7 could be had for $11,000 with a Renault Duster trade-in. Haval was not making deals. During the test drive, salesman Emile from Azerbaijian explained the differences between the Haval Dargo (Big Dog in Chinese) made in Tula, 193 km from Moscow, and the Dargo X made in China. The opening of the Tula Great Wall Motor Company factory in June 2019 was a big moment celebrated in person by Xi Jinping and Putin.

Great Wall Motor Co. Opening (Photo Tularegion.ru)

Emile, also talked about getting his degree in Novosibirsk and spending two summers in Ocean City Baltimore on the Work and Travel Program. He liked America and considered staying, but decided it wasn’t for him. His family is here and “you can make money in the US but you have to work all the time. Here, you can take a few months off and do other things you want to do.”

Tolmachevo International Airport Novosibirsk

Two weeks before the SMO began, the new, improved Tolmachevo International Airport opened. At that time there were regular flights to Prague, Seoul, and various German cities. The expectation was that this major expansion would support growth in the role of Novosibirsk as the human and cargo hub between east and west. Instead, the billowing columns in the massive new entrance hall are now only serving international travelers to and from Central Asia, Yerevan, Baku, China, and the transit gateways to the West, Dubai and Istanbul. They are also welcoming vacationers exploring newly popular domestic tourism destinations like Kamchatka, Vladikavkaz, Kaliningrad, Gorno Altaisk, and Vladivostok.

Kaliningrad, the orange spot on the Baltic Sea, and it’s European neighborhood

The weekly flight to one of those destinations, Kaliningrad, now requires a detour over Baltic Sea international waters. The Region is surrounded by Europe (Lithuania and Poland) and the air space was closed in response to the SMO. In June of 22, Lithuania announced a ban on sanctioned goods traveling to Kaliningrad. Russia objected and a month later, the EU issued some new guidelines that allowed the goods to move.

1968 B-413 Submarine Visitors: are welcome to tour the entire ship

Despite the precarious location and intensification of the conflict, there was no trace of that turbulence or other possible threats in October 2023. In Kaliningrad, people were moving in and moving on. The cab’s children’s car seat and toys were not evidence of a caring grandfather, but a career change. The 50+ driver’s previous lucrative business was transporting goods from Lithuania. He sold his trucks, bought a baby seat, and moved on.

St. George the Victorious Church 1360 (1992 Germans and Russians began the restoration of the ruin)

After life as Prussia and Poland, Kaliningrad was the German City of Konigsberg until 1945 when it was given to the Soviet Union in the Potsdam Agreement. Over the next couple of years German residents were expelled and people from other parts of the USSR moved in. That flow has continued generating a steady population increase since 1950. It has long been the destination for Siberians who want to stay in Russia but live in Europe or escape the cold climate. A young cab driver from Novokuznetsk moved three years ago because of the cold and bad environment in his native coal mining region. Initially he wanted to move to Petersburg, but he couldn’t afford an apartment and didn’t want to get a mortgage. He ended up mortgage free and happy in Kaliningrad.

Jim Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (the Blues Brothers) outside cafe/museum Zheleznodorozhny, Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad was a world class destination for tourists before options were limited. 13th century on, pick an era and you will find the most eclectic mix of sites including where Napoleon slept, a Cold War era submarine, Kant’s grave, and Blues Brothers statues outside a café/museum with record players from 1840–1940. There is also the resort town Zelenogradsk. Founded in 1252, in 2010 it branded itself a “cat town” and now features cat murals, cat traffic lights, cat food machines, even the war memorial had a white cat lounging by the flame.

Zelenogradsk “Cat Town” Kaliningrad War Memorial

On the way to the Kaliningrad flea market, selling everything from fish shot glasses to German helmets with bullet holes, the cab driver boasted that his Grandmother was one of the first people to move here in 1946. He goes on to say that everything is great. Yes, housing is twice as expensive but there is plenty of work if you are ready to work. He had no negatives about the current development boom. He is proud and excited for his 4th generation daughter’s future with huge investments going into culture, including affiliates of the Tretakov Gallery and Bolshoi Theatre, and education with apartments for teachers.

Curonian Spit (UNESCO Heritage Site)

Others are less enthusiastic complaining about change, getting used to change, and the taming of what once were wild places. The gripes about the prices and congestion that come along with being a booming tourist destination. One cabbie/fisherman cited 4 hour summer traffic jams to get on the Curonian Spit, a 98 km. forested sand dune separating the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon. Half of the Spit is a National Park in Russia and the other half is in Lithuania.

Kant Island Kaliningrad (Konigsberg Cathedral spires in the background)

Even the more ancient relics are coated with references to the Great Patriotic War (WWII). The 14th Century Konigsberg Cathedral was jam packed on a Tuesday night, hundreds of people paid 500 rubles to hear an organ concert. The building was partially destroyed, along with most of the City, by Allied bombing in August 1944. Passing remnants of forts and churches outside the City, the guide explained that none of the old buildings were damaged by bombs. Their semi-demolished state was the result of local inhabitants taking the bricks to build homes after the war. Most haunting are the remains of the Allenberg Psychiatric Hospital. It was the best in Germany before an SS Division affiliated with the Dachau Concentration Camp moved in and used it for experiments.

Remnants of Allenberg Psychiatric Hospital

The path to moving on in Russia is often viscerally informed by national history. Two women reminded me of this when we discussed sanctions. One, born around the time Brezhnev and Nixon signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, is a corporate executive. The other was born during Perestroika and recently moved her yoga business from Novosibirsk to Altai. They both grew up sharing bedrooms with brothers, sleeping on foldout couches with a table to do homework.

“40 jars of cucumbers, that was our record”, the younger woman boasted about summers spent helping her Grandmother in a Kazakhstan village.

The other responded describing her great-grandmother, “She never ever threw anything out. If someone left a little piece of bread, she would take it, dry it into a crouton, store it in a bag hanging from the kitchen door, and when others had bread, she would eat from the bag.”

Akademgorodok Tree Allee in honor of 3.5 million Soviet children held in Fascist concentration camps

Moving on is also bounded by the status quo and no one expects the sanctions will end even when the shooting stops. People here are more comfortable with the idea that nothing is perfect, there is always a work around so “Plan B” is built into the hardware, you adapt and keep going. Even today, for many like the corporate executive, the legacy of the impact from past western invasions came first hand, “There were two wars, one after the other, and there were no men so she had to be tough”.

Part Three: The Social Contract and the Next Gen

Andrew Korybko: Putin’s Talk Of Setting Up A “Sanitary/Security Zone” In Ukraine Hints At A Potential Compromise

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 3/18/24

President Putin declared in his re-election speech early Monday morning that Kiev’s cross-border terrorist raids and use of long-range Western weaponry to strike deep into Russian territory could “force” his country to establish a “sanitary zone” that he also described as a “security zone”. He first spoke about this in January, which was analyzed here, and his latest remarks follow former President and incumbent Deputy Chair Security Council Chairman Medvedev’s talk about Russia’s “strategic borders”.

The larger context within which this scenario is being contemplated is the prospect of a conventional NATO intervention in Ukraine via a “coalition of the willing” that would likely be led by France, the UK, and Poland if it happens with the predictable participation of the Baltic States as well. At the same time, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post all finally admitted that Russia won the “race of logistics” with NATO after the New York Times was the first to acknowledge this last September.

In other words, the “worst-case scenario” from Kiev’s perspective might soon materialize whereby Russia’s lead in the “race of logistics” results in a breakthrough across the Line of Contact (LOC), which could prompt the “worst-case scenario” from others’ perspective of a conventional NATO intervention. The risks of sparking World War III by miscalculation would spike unless there’s a tacit understanding between NATO and Russia over how far west and east each would respectively go in that scenario.

Therein lies the importance of President Putin once again bringing up the possibility of establishing a “sanitary/security” zone in Ukraine since a compromise could be for the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) to carry out as orderly of a retreat as possible over the Dnieper if Russia breaks through the LOC. Russia would then go as far as the administrative borders of its newly reunified regions short of crossing the Dnieper while NATO would stay west of the Dnieper as peace talks resume to formalize this deal. 

In that way, the risks of World War III being sparked by miscalculation could remain minimal, while the US and Russia could then hash out the details of Ukraine’s asymmetrical partition. NATO would establish a “sphere of influence” over the western half of the country, the West would tacitly accept Russia’s control over the four former Ukrainian regions that reunified with it in September 2022, while the rest of eastern Ukraine would remain under Kiev’s political control but become a demilitarized buffer zone.

The merits of this proposed compromise are that it meets some of each side’s interests but leaves space for the other party to agree to this by not accomplishing either of their maximalist goals. Russia secures its newly reunified regions and establishes a sanitary/security zone in the rest of eastern Ukraine, while Kiev clings to the alleged “legitimacy” of its pre-2014 borders and NATO formalizes its presence in the country. NATO and Russia would then balance each other along the new LOC and the Belarusian border.

Russia would have the advantage in the event that the Korean-like armistice that former NATO Supreme Commander James Stavridis suggested last November is broken since the demilitarized region in eastern Ukraine directly abuts Belarus, pre-2014 Russia, and its newly reunified territories in the south. Therein lies the reason for formalizing NATO’s presence in the western half of the country in order to reassure the bloc that Russia wouldn’t exploit this position to strike first lest they then retaliate in Belarus.

President Putin also acknowledged the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine during his re-election speech, hence the proposal for formalizing this in a way that reduces the risks of World War III by miscalculation such as if they conventionally intervened in a “Race to the Dnieper” if the LOC collapses. This could happen in parallel with the UAF retreating as orderly as possible over the Dnieper to demilitarize the rest of the eastern Ukraine in that event while Russia stays within its new regions’ borders.

This plan is admittedly dependent on: 1) an impending Russian breakthrough across the LOC; 2) that in turn prompts NATO to participate in a “Race to the Dnieper”; 3) which could raise the risks of World War III being sparked by miscalculation in a sequence of events that no responsible policymaker wants. It could of course be that no such breakthrough occurs, NATO doesn’t conventionally intervene if one does, or it intervenes with the intent of “escalating to de-escalate” by openly flirting with World War III.

If the military-strategic dynamics remain on track and the West is still led by “rational” leaders with an interest in preventing a nuclear apocalypse, then President Putin’s “sanitary/security zone” could lay the basis for a potential compromise aimed at responsibly managing Ukraine’s asymmetrical partition. A trusted mediator like the Pope and/or India should be relied upon by Russia to probe the West’s interest in this, which the US might be receptive to as it prepares to “Pivot (back) to Asia” to contain China.