5 Ideas to Explore

1. “Short of a mutual defense treaty, other forms of military cooperation should be expected to intensify” in the China-Russia dyad, according to RAND’s Mark Cozad et al. The “expanded cooperation might eventually include some form of combined military operation, but this possibility remains uncertain at best,” the authors of the RAND report warn. “Absent high-impact but low-probability events—such as the use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the collapse of the Russian state or a war over Taiwan—China will probably maneuver within the broad parameters it has already set out for the relationship” with Russia, according to Joseph Torigian of Stanford University. “Sometimes Beijing will suggest a close relationship with Moscow, and sometimes it will imply a more distant one, modulating its message as the situation demands,” he writes in FA.
2. Vladimir Putin’s embrace of Kim Jong Un is “hardly a sign that the Russian leader is getting desperate,” in the view of CEIP’s Eugene Rumer. Rather it “is a sign that he is going all in on his murderous course in Ukraine, and that the West is in an open-ended confrontation with a dangerous, determined and capable rogue regime,” Rumer argues in his analysis of the Russian autocrat’s visit to North Korea, which culminated in Putin and Kim signing a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that commits Moscow and Pyongyang to provide military aid using “all means” to each other in case of an armed invasion.
3. Donald Trump’s NSA Robert O’Brien—who is reputed to be vying for a key government post if Trump wins the elections—wrote a programmatic article for FA, in which, among other things, he asserts that America “must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world.” “If China and Russia continue to refuse to engage in good-faith arms control talks, the United States should also resume production of ... the primary fissile isotopes of nuclear weapons,” according to O’Brien. As for Ukraine, “Trump’s approach would be to continue to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, financed by European countries, while keeping the door open to diplomacy with Russia—and keeping Moscow off balance with a degree of unpredictability,” the former NSA writes.
4. The June 23 coordinated and deadly attacks by gunmen in the cities of Makhachkala and Derbent in the majority Muslim region of Dagestan, including the seizure of a church and a synagogue, is raising the specter that Russia may be facing a wave of violence by religious extremists, according to Bloomberg. That wave is rising even as pro-Kremlin media played down a claim from Al Azaim Media, which is associated with ISIS’s Khorasan branch (ISIS-K), that the attack was carried out in response to calls for attacks on behalf of ISIS, according to WP. The June 23 attacks occurred less than a week after ISIS-linked inmates seized hostages in a detention center in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and less than three months after ISIS-K affiliates staged a deadly attack on the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow. Graham Allison and Michael Morell warned in a June 10, 2024, article in FA that the U.S. faces “a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead,” indicated by, among other factors, the rising number of successful terrorist attacks, such as ISIS-K’s deadly raid of the concert hall in March 2024.
5. One year after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, the Wagner Group has continued to serve many different purposes for the Putin regime, but unanswered questions regarding this PMC remain, according to Kimberly Martin of Barnard College. One mystery is who is now controlling the many business enterprises in Africa that belonged to the late Prigozhin. A final and more consequential puzzle is what the continuation of the Wagner Group brand will mean for long-term Russian domestic politics and stability, she writes in PONARS.

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

“Putin and Kim’s New Friendship Shouldn’t Be a Surprise,” Eugene Rumer, CEIP, 06.20.24. 

• “Putin’s embrace of Kim is hardly a sign that the Russian leader is getting desperate. The war is not going well for him, but he is not about to give up. Putin’s economy has proved to be far more resilient than anyone had expected before the war, and his friends in Pyongyang, Tehran, and Beijing are helping him. Anyone betting against him should look at three decades of predictions of the imminent collapse of his new friend’s dynasty. The visit is a sign that he is going all in on his murderous course in Ukraine, and that the West is in an open-ended confrontation with a dangerous, determined, and capable rogue regime postured to make the Soviet Union during the Cold War look restrained by comparison.”

“How the Russian and North Korean Leaders Swapped Roles,” Alexander Baunov, CEIP, 06.24.24. Clues from Russian Views.

• “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ostentatious visit to North Korea last week may seem like a return to the Soviet past, but it is in fact a reconstruction of a myth.”
• “Given North Korea’s image as a country of red flags, portraits of leaders, and collective farms, people assume by default that in the current pairing of Putin and Kim, the Russian leader is a pragmatist and the Korean leader is motivated by ideology.”
  • “The reality could hardly be more different. Kim did not study Juche at the Swiss schools he attended. Quite simply, he inherited ideology along with power, and uses it as a tool for holding onto that power—for his personal salvation. Another thing he inherited was his country’s international isolation.”
  • “Putin, in contrast, brought about Russia’s international isolation himself: it was his choice. His anti-Westernism is newer and accordingly has all the passion fitting of a neophyte. For Putin, modern Russia is not an inheritance, but the work of his own hands: he is building the regime himself, along with its slogans and institutions.”
    • “Putin failed to bring North Korea into the global community, and instead managed to take Russia into North Korea’s small and lonely club.”

“Putin’s Asia Tour” in Tatiana Stanovaya’s “Bulletin No. 12 (142) 2024. Putin’s Asia Tour; Changes At The Presidential Administration; New Rounds Of Sanctions,” R.Politik, 06.24.24. Clues from Russian Views.

• “Putin's visit to North Korea was not a breakthrough: the treaty signed with Kim Jong Un largely replicates a 1961 Soviet-era document; military exchanges are limited due to Beijing's concerns over Pyongyang accessing hi-tech weaponry; economic ties are restricted by the nature of North Korea's dictatorial regime. Putin also had to acknowledge that easing sanctions on North Korea is nearly impossible.”
• “The reception of the Russian delegation by the North Korean leadership was lackluster, raising silent concerns about the direction in which Russia is heading. There was no personal chemistry between Putin and Kim.”
• “Russia's attempts to elevate relations with Pyongyang are driven by an immediate need for ammunition, but also align with long-term efforts to gradually promote Eurasian strategic security as an alternative to what Moscow sees as failing international institutions.”
• “China regards Putin's trip to Pyongyang with limited enthusiasm, but tolerates it. However, the visit is likely to strain Russia's relations with South Korea, which Moscow accepts because it feels that Seoul has ignored Russian warnings about supplying ammunition to Ukraine (even if indirectly).”
• “Putin's visit to Vietnam was more routine: the country is unlikely to help Russia much with its war effort (there is no serious production capacity) and because of its 'bamboo diplomacy' approach; Russian arms supplies are limited by the needs at the front; trade between Russia and Vietnam remains minimal compared to the US, China, South Korea and others.”

“Article by Vladimir Putin in Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Russia and the DPRK: Traditions of Friendship and Cooperation Through the Years. President of Russia,” Vladimir Putin, Kremlin.ru, 06.18.24. Clues from Russian Views.

• “The relations of friendship and neighborliness between Russia and the DPRK, based on the principles of equality, mutual respect and trust, go back more than seven decades and are rich in glorious historical traditions.”
• “Today, as before, Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are actively advancing their multifaceted partnership.”
  • “We highly appreciate the DPRK’s unwavering support for Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, their solidarity with us on key international matters and willingness to defend our common priorities and views within the United Nations.”
  • “Pyongyang has always been our committed and like-minded supporter, ready to confront the ambition of the collective West to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world order based on justice, mutual respect for sovereignty and consideration of each other’s interests.”
• “The United States and its satellites openly declare that their objective is to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. They are doing everything they can to protract and further exacerbate the conflict in Ukraine. ... No matter how hard they tried, all their attempts to contain or isolate Russia have failed.”
• “We are pleased to note that our Korean friends – despite the years-long economic pressure, provocations, blackmailing and military threats on the part of the United States – are still effectively defending their interests.”
• “Russia has incessantly supported and will support the DPRK and the heroic Korean people in their struggle against the treacherous, dangerous and aggressive enemy, in their fight for independence, identity and the right to freely choose their development path.”
• “We will develop alternative trade and mutual settlements mechanisms not controlled by the West, jointly oppose illegitimate unilateral restrictions, and shape the architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.”

“DPRK-Russia Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” KCNA, 06.20.24.

• “Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation, signed the "Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the DPRK and the Russian Federation" on June 19.”
• “According to the treaty, the two sides, taking into account their national laws and international obligations, shall permanently maintain and develop the comprehensive strategic partnership.”
• “The two sides shall exchange views on the issues of bilateral relations and international issues of mutual concern through dialogue and negotiations.”
• “In case a direct threat of armed invasion is created against any one of the two sides, the two sides shall immediately operate the channel of bilateral negotiations for the purpose of adjusting their stands at the request of any one side and discussing feasible practical measures to ensure mutual assistance for removing the prevailing threat.”
• “In case any one of the two sides is put in a state of war by an armed invasion from an individual state or several states, the other side shall provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter and the laws of the DPRK and the Russian Federation.”
• “Each side is obliged not to conclude with any third country any agreement encroaching upon the other side's sovereignty, security, territorial inviolability, rights to freely opt for and develop political, social, economic and cultural systems and other core interests, nor to take part in such actions.”
• “The two sides, with the aim of maintaining international peace and security, shall discuss and cooperate with each other in the matters concerning the global and regional development.”
• “The two sides shall provide mechanisms for taking joint measures with the aim of strengthening the defense capabilities for preventing war and ensuring regional and global peace and security.”
• “The two sides shall strive to increase the volume of mutual trade, create conditions favorable for economic cooperation.”
• “In case any third country takes unilateral compulsory measures against one side, the two sides shall reduce the danger and make practical efforts to eliminate or minimize their direct or indirect impact on the mutual economic ties.”
• “The two sides shall cooperate with each other in combating such challenges and threats as international terrorism, extremism, multinational organized crime, human traffic, hostage taking, illegal immigration, illegal circulation of money, legalization (laundering) of income obtained in a criminal way, financing of terrorism, financing of WMD proliferation, illegal acts posing threat to the safety of civil aviation and maritime navigation and illegal circulation of goods, funds, means of funds, drug, psychic energizer and their ingredients, weapons, and cultural and historical relics.”
• “The two sides shall cooperate with each other in the field of international information security.”

“The summit in Pyongyang and new priorities of Russian foreign policy,” Andrei Kortunov, Paper/RIAC, 06.20.24.¹ Clues from Russian Views. (RIAC is affiliated with the Russian authorities.) 

• “Of course, President Putin’s visit to Pyongyang and Hanoi is a clear confirmation of the change in Russian foreign policy and foreign economic priorities taking place before our eyes. Moscow is increasingly changing the vector of its activity toward Asia and other regions of the developing world. This change in vector reflects the Russian leadership’s ideas about the changing balance of power in the world and what the future polycentric and democratic world order should become.”
• “Moscow does not completely agree with all its partners from the countries of the global South on fundamental issues of global development, but with these partners there are always opportunities for equal and interested dialogue. It is no coincidence that after Putin took office again as President of Russia in May of this year, he managed to visit Beijing, Minsk, Tashkent and now went to Pyongyang and Hanoi.”
• “The geography of the state visits that have already taken place speaks for itself. I would not be surprised if in the near future President Putin goes to Tehran or, for example, Ankara, although both Iran and Turkey have traditionally been difficult partners for Moscow. On the other hand, many leaders of countries in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America have already announced their plans to visit Russia in the near future. Of particular importance for the Russian side will be the BRICS summit in Kazan this fall, to which, in addition to the heads of state of the organization’s members, other leaders of the global South will be invited. With his foreign policy activity, President Putin, among other things, makes it clear to Western opponents that any attempts to isolate Moscow in the international arena have no chance of success.”

“Russia and North Korea resume alliance, hitting South Korea where it hurts,” Chang Luowen, Quancha, 06.24.24.^ Clues from Chinese Views. 

• “What attracted the most attention from the outside world was that the heads of state of North Korea and Russia signed the important "Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership". Article 4 stipulates that when one party is invaded by an individual country or multiple countries and is in a state of war, the other party shall immediately take all means to provide military and other assistance in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter and the domestic laws of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation.”
• “The outside world believes that this clause can be interpreted as "automatic military intervention", which means that after 28 years, Russia and North Korea have actually restored their alliance. The treaty also includes content to strengthen military and technological cooperation, which has attracted a fierce backlash from South Korea, which said that it will work with its allies and the international community to resolutely and severely deal with all acts that threaten national security. In response, Kim Jong-un awarded Putin the Order of Kim Il-sung - North Korea's highest honor.”

For more analysis on this subject, see:

• “Russia Struck a Defense Pact With North Korea. What Does It Mean?”, Sue Mi Terry and Stephen Sestanovich, CFR, 06.19.24.
• “Putin and Kim are creating a crisis—Can the US and China rein them in?”, Patricia M. Kim, Brookings, 06.21.24.
• “The New Russia-North Korea Security Alliance,” Victor Cha and Ellen Kim, CSIS, 06.20.24.
• “Putin Once Tried to Curb North Korea’s Nuclear Program. That’s Now Over,” David E. Sanger, NYT, 06.19.24.
• “Russia and North Korea's military deal formalizes a bustling arms trade,” Joyce Sohyun Lee and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, WP, 06.22.24.
• “Kim–Putin ‘strategic partnership’ leaves US and allies with multi-pronged problem,” Edward Howell, Chatham House, 06.22.24.
• “The Russia-China-North Korea Trilateral Masks Hidden Differences,” Hugo von Essen, NI, 06.21.24.
• “Learning to Live With a Nuclear North Korea,” Doug Bandow, FP, 06.21.24.
• "Worry More About Putin’s Visit Than Kim’s Dung Balloons," Gearoid Reidy, Bloomberg, 06.17.24.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant developments.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“Bracing for the Hardest Winter: Protecting Ukraine’s Energy Infrastructure,” Sam Cranny-Evans, RUSI, 06.24.24. 

• “A country cannot survive without power, and Russia is on course to endanger or destroy everything that powers Ukraine. A solution to this challenge is well within the gift of Western powers, and has two strands: defend the infrastructure that remains, and restore what has been damaged.”
  • “Defend: Ukraine requires more air defense. This is not a new problem; however, in this scenario, the problem is potentially less complex than affording air defense to all of Ukraine. The current demand is to protect Ukraine’s remaining power infrastructure, which now relies on five key sites. This means that resources can be focused in both space and time to maximize their efficacy against Russia’s attacks. Eventually, Ukraine will also require protection for its damaged infrastructure during the repair process, which may take more than a year for some of the power plants.”
  • “Restore: The defense of Ukraine’s existing infrastructure must be addressed before restoration is carried out. Russia has not exhausted its missile stocks; instead, it has increased production of existing and novel systems, which has led to greater depth in its stockpiles of key missiles. This means that further strikes will happen, and they will be effective if Ukraine’s air defenses around the five remaining sites, and those plants it chooses to repair, are not properly resourced.”
• “Russia’s 2022 campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is estimated to have damaged close to 50% of its capacity. The affected power stations were repaired and returned to service in 2023. Europe and Ukraine have therefore demonstrated their ability to cooperate and resolve an energy crisis once before. Ukraine’s energy providers are experienced in restoring power as a result, but their efforts will be in vain if Western allies are not able to protect what they rebuild.”

Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

“Drones in Ukraine Get Smarter to Dodge Russia's Jamming Signals,” Heather Somerville and Alistair MacDonald, WSJ, 06.19.24. 

• “As drones play an increasingly prominent role in the war, both sides are pitched in a constantly evolving battle to down enemy craft and keep their own in the sky. Russia and Ukraine's ability to wage electronic warfare—disrupting the signals guiding drones and render them mostly useless—has rapidly advanced. And so too have their efforts to stay ahead of that threat.”
• “ISR Defense’s factory in Ukraine has updated its exploding drone's navigation equipment, antenna and video feed in a bid to avoid frequencies that Russia is targeting. Other drone manufacturers are focusing on making their equipment more autonomous, limiting the information they receive from satellites or operators that can be disrupted. “Russian jamming is a crucial factor when making drones," said Vadym Yunyk, ISR's co-founder. A manufacturer now has to be able to make changes to drones without the usual level of research and development, he added.”
• “Unmanned aerial vehicles have come into their own in the Ukraine war. Surveillance and strikes by drones at the front line mean that almost any movement can be seen and targeted within minutes. With drones now crossing the front line thousands of times a day, maintaining—and disrupting—that capability is a priority for both sides, and could provide an edge as the war grinds on.”
• “Russia and Ukraine are trying to flood each other's drones with static. Russia happens to be very good at it, said Dmytro Shymkiv, co-founder of AeroDrone, a Ukrainian drone manufacturer.”
  • “By the spring of last year, Ukraine was losing some 10,000 drones a month due to Russian electronic warfare, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute”
• “Drone makers are increasingly looking to equipment and software that filters out the useful signals their UAV needs from the noise being sent to disrupt it.”
• “Drones from Quantum Systems have a frequency hopping system that can automatically jump between radio frequencies as jamming occurs. The German company is building drones in Kyiv with a Ukrainian staff of about 40, and brings in parts from Europe to update its UAVs against more aggressive jamming tactics, said Chief Executive Florian Seibel.”
• “One method to reduce drones' reliance on satellite signals used in Ukraine is visual navigation, where a drone navigates by comparing the terrain it sees through its camera with a map it has already stored in its systems. The U.S. Defense Department has contracts with American companies for visual navigation and is also doing its own development work on the technology. Another way for drones to avoid jamming is using a so-called pixel lock, where the drone locks onto a target and follows it without needing to be remotely guided by an operator.”

“How Ukraine's Naval Drones Turned the Tide in the Battle of the Black Sea; Unmanned vessels developed in the fight against Russia are part of a revolution in modern warfare,” James Marson, WSJ, 06.24.24. 

• “The Russian naval corvette had just left the safety of Sevastopol Bay one morning last fall when an explosion ripped a hole in its hull. As tugs pulled the ship back to port on Sept. 14, Russian state news agencies claimed it had fought off the latest attack by Ukrainian naval drones—small, explosive craft that had for months been ramming Russian naval ships in the Black Sea. This time, Ukrainian officials added a twist, saying their forces had used an "experimental weapon" as well as drones.”
• “In an interview, the architect of Ukraine's groundbreaking naval drone program said that the attack marked a first in warfare: The Russian ship had been disabled by a mine laid by a Ukrainian unmanned craft that had hauled it some 250 miles before returning to port. Before, naval drones were used mostly for surveillance or logistics," said Brig. Gen. Ivan Lukashevych of the Security Service of Ukraine, the country's main security and intelligence agency. "We are doing many things that no one in the world has done."
• “Ukraine has sunk or damaged around two dozen Russian ships of all sizes using explosive drones or mines delivered by low-slung craft about the size of a small fishing boat. Sea drones caused severe damage to a bridge from Russia to occupied Crimea that Russia used to supply its forces in Ukraine. Ukraine has also targeted Russian ships and port facilities with missiles provided by the West.”
• “As a result, Russia has dispersed the bulk of its Black Sea Fleet far from Sevastopol. Ukraine has been able to restart exports worth billions from its main port of Odesa. Missiles launched from Russian ships take longer to reach Ukraine, giving air-defense crews critical extra time to intercept them. Russia has relocated reconnaissance planes, jet fighters, helicopters, aerial drones and electronic-jamming systems from the front lines to counter Ukraine's sea drones, easing the pressure on Ukraine's embattled ground forces.”
• “The drones are revolutionizing warfare on the seas much as uncrewed aerial craft have in the skies. They are relatively cheap and hard to detect and defend against. Their use shows how smaller, poorer nations can level the naval playing field against larger, more-powerful navies.”

“Anchored in Freedom: Ukrainians’ Will to Fight Back in Harder Times,” Mikhail Alexseev and Serhii Dembitskyi, PONARS Eurasia, 06.20.24.

• “Ukrainians remain resolute in their will to fight back and in their support for the core Western civic values. The second round of our tracking poll, conducted in December 2023 – January 2024 among 488 of the respondents previously interviewed in June 2023, shows that almost nine in ten Ukrainians have lost a family member, friend, or their own health or property to the war, and just 18 percent of respondents envision an end to the war in the next year.”
• “Deprivation, Russia’s grinding advances along the frontlines, and the delay of U.S. military aid are also very likely reflected in Ukrainians’ growing fears that vital international support at the time was waning. Ukrainians remain deeply appreciative of whatever assistance they get, being keenly aware it would be substantially harder for Ukraine to defend itself without it.”
• “One straightforward practical implication of these findings is that given Ukraine’s resilience with limited and uncertain international military support, consistent, predictable, and modestly increased provision of military aid would probably have greater potential to reverse Russia’s advances than frontline reports might currently lead one to think. It also gives credence to analysts who argue that Ukraine could well prevail in a protracted war against Russia provided its Western allies move faster to beef up their military-industrial complexes, including in partnership with Ukraine.”
• “Our surveys indicate, however, that as dark as the war shadows may have been, they have not diminished Ukrainians’ will to fight back and to uphold the core Western civic values as much as one might have expected under the circumstances.”

Military aid to Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:

“How the Latest Sanctions Will Impact Russia—and the World,” Alexandra Prokopenko, CEIP, 06.20.24. 

• “Washington introduced yet another package of sanctions against Russia’s financial, energy, and technological infrastructure on June 12. Two years after Russia’s central bank was banned from using dollars, the Moscow Exchange and its subsidiaries the National Clearing Center and the National Settlement Depository were added to the sanctions list.”
• “The latest measures effectively isolate the sanctioned companies from the global dollar system and forced the Moscow Exchange to stop trading U.S. dollars and euros, followed the next day by the Hong Kong dollar.”
• “The new sanctions are turning the yuan into the main currency of exchange trading and settlements in Russia once and for all. In May, its share in exchange trading once again hit a new record, reaching 53.6 percent. Its share in the over-the-counter market was 39.2 percent. The Chinese currency accounted for just over a third of the total volume of foreign trade in the last year. Despite U.S. sanctions, yuan trading continues, although the new restrictions cannot fail to have an impact on that too.”
• “The new package of sanctions and broader definitions will be extremely painful for the Russian economy. They reduce productivity, increase costs, reduce profits, and fuel inflation. Still, the Russian government and businesses have been in survival mode ever since the start of the war, and devising various ways to keep doing business under ever stricter sanctions has become part of everyday life. Moreover, Russians are not constrained by the procedures and approvals faced by Western bureaucracies, and are buoyed by previous successes on the sanctions front.”
• “In the two and a half years of war, an entire infrastructure of intermediaries in various jurisdictions has sprung up, schemes for swiftly restoring supply chains interrupted by sanctions have been developed, and payments in yuan and rubles have been settled using local infrastructure. The new sanctions, therefore, could only really have seriously wreaked havoc with the Russian economy if they had been introduced at the beginning of 2022. Now their influence will only be fully felt in the long term—and the impact will not be limited to the Russian economy.”

For more analysis on this subject, see:

• “Why do the US and its allies want to seize Russian reserves to aid Ukraine?” Sam Boocker, Alexander Conner and David Wessel, Brookings, 06.17.24. 

Ukraine-related negotiations: 

“Morality Is the Enemy of Peace. The conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine can only end with deals that don’t satisfy anyone completely,” Stephen M. Walt, FP, 06.13.24.

• “Now consider how the war in Ukraine is framed by each side. ... The conflict is widely framed by each side as a clash between competing moral principles.”
• “Unfortunately, framing this conflict in moral terms makes it harder to reach a peace settlement, because anything short of total victory inevitably invites a powerful backlash from critics fearing that these critical values are being sacrificed. If the United States or NATO were to push Ukraine to cut a deal short of total victory, they would face a chorus of denunciations from those who believe that only a humiliating Russian defeat and Ukraine’s entry into NATO will satisfy the demands of justice. If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to negotiate a cease-fire today, he might well be ousted by hard-liners seeking to fight on. Putin faces fewer internal constraints, but even he might be leery of a compromise at odds with the moral claims he has used to justify the war and retain public support.”
• “And then there’s Gaza.... the two sides’ positions ultimately rest on competing moral claims to the territory lying between the river and the sea, claims that combine one-sided historical narratives, religious beliefs, and firm conviction that the other side has committed numerous crimes in the past and continues to do so today.”
• “The conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine will end with agreements that won’t satisfy anyone completely. None of the parties will get everything they want, and the strident moral declarations that leaders and pundits have issued while these wars were underway will ring hollow. The longer the participants cling to them, the harder it will be to bring the carnage to a close. If Talleyrand were alive today, I suspect he’d say, “I told you so.”

“Putin, Ukraine and Nukes” in Tatiana Stanovaya’s “Bulletin No. 12 (142) 2024. Putin’s Asia Tour; Changes At The Presidential Administration; New Rounds Of Sanctions,” R.Politik, 06.24.24. Clues from Russian Views.

• “Putin used the final press conference at the end of his Asia tour to discuss broader issues, including Ukraine. He addressed a question about Russia's recent “proposal” for negotiations, stating that he anticipated the West would initially reject his “plan.” He said: “I was expecting exactly this kind of reaction at the first stage. But time will tell what will happen later.”
• “Putin again expressed readiness for talks with Ukraine, stating they could occur on any platform, whether in Minsk, Istanbul or Switzerland. He named the speaker of Ukraine's parliament (the Verkhovnaya Rada) as the only “legitimate" leader on the Ukrainian side for negotiations. Notably, Putin speculated that the West might get rid of Zelensky in the first half of 2025 — an indication that Moscow, as in other Western capitals, expects this period to be pivotal in terms of the geopolitical dynamics around Ukraine.”
• “Based on Putin’s statements, it seems the Kremlin would not immediately dismiss an invitation to participate in any follow-up to the Switzerland peace conference, should such an invitation be extended. However, the actual chances of such participation appear slim, as Moscow does not believe these talks genuinely seek to posit a solution in terms that the Kremlin could accept.”
• “Putin also said Russia was “considering what could be changed” in its nuclear doctrine. While at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) earlier in June, he had suggested that changes could be driven by deeper Western involvement in Ukraine, this time he emphasized Western efforts aimed at lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. Specifically, he noted that ultra-low-power nuclear explosive devices are being developed. However, he dismissed the notion that Russia would consider a preventive strike, stating that “the enemy would be guaranteed to be destroyed in a retaliatory strike.” Putin also commented rather nonchalantly on NATO's discussions about the combat readiness status of nuclear warheads. “The Russian Federation always maintains its strategic nuclear forces in a state of permanent combat readiness. We are not overly concerned about the current actions of Western countries,” he added.”
• “Putin's statements suggest that Moscow views the beginning of 2025 as a potentially decisive moment for the war in Ukraine. This period could bring significant shifts globally, including a possible new president in the United States following the election, that could change the landscape of Western support for Kyiv. In Putin's mind, he is also pushing the idea that Zelensky could depart/be removed, either as a result of a loss of support domestically or through exhausting the patience of his “Western handlers.” 

“Putin's Peace Proposal Is a Sham,” Alexander Baunov, WSJ, 06.19.24. Clues from Russian Views.

• “Vladimir Putin last week announced what looks like a peace proposal. Speaking to Russian diplomats before the Ukraine-organized Peace Summit in Switzerland, Mr. Putin said Ukraine could have peace in exchange for handing over four regions and other familiar military and political concessions. Mr. Putin's intention is obvious: He wants to seem like the party that's ready to negotiate.”
• “It's a sham. Mr. Putin's so-called peace proposal resembles the ultimatum he gave before invading Ukraine in February 2022: Ukraine must never join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It must demilitarize, banish foreign troops and cede regions that Russia claims. These conditions are unacceptable to Kyiv, as they were then.”
  • “In 2022 Mr. Putin demanded two Ukrainian regions as his price for peace. Now it's up to four and includes the regional capitals of Kherson, which Ukraine's military reclaimed in 2022, and Zaporizhzhia, which Russia never conquered. ... Putin is acting like a victor.”
  • “The current proposal shares other similarities with Mr. Putin's 2022 ultimatum. Then, Russian officials accused Ukraine and its allies of breaking the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 that ended the war over the Donbas region. Now they are doing the same with 2022 peace negotiations that took place between the two parties in Istanbul.”
  • “Another similarity is the obsession with declaring Ukrainian leadership illegitimate.”
• “In 2014 and 2022, Russia exploited the fear of war. Now it is capitalizing on Ukraine's war fatigue and attempting to blame Mr. Zelensky for continued conflict -- declaring the weak culpable, since demanding concessions from the strong is less promising. Summer is also more suited for active military operations, making Kremlin threats more credible. One may think Mr. Putin is merely staking out a tough position as a negotiating tactic. But it is more likely that his "peace proposal" is a prelude to a new chapter of his war on Ukraine.”

“If a Ukraine Deal Is Possible, Can Biden Deliver? It would be hard for the president in the videos to lead Americans to take real risks for peace,” Holman W. Jenkins Jr., WSJ, 06.21.24. 

• “One war, the war for Ukraine's independence, is over and Ukraine won. The other war, for Mr. Putin's survival, is lately trending in his direction, which could be his incentive to deal.”
• “The common idea that Mr. Putin is waiting for President Trump might need a careful rethink. Mr. Biden has an ace in hand: Any Trump deal would be painted in the U.S. press as a sellout. The identical terms from Mr. Biden would be seen as wise statesmanship. Ukraine’s friends, who would find lots of elite U.S. support to thwart a Trump proffer, would find none to resist a Biden deal.”
• “Mr. Putin can figure this out too. Understand: A cease-fire wouldn’t stop him the next morning from continuing to seek to increase his sway over Ukraine and other neighbors. It wouldn’t end his cooperation with a destabilizing rogues’ alliance extending from Beijing and Tehran to Pyongyang. At the same time, contra the Putin-is-10-feet-tall crowd, I doubt Mr. Putin really thinks that, by continuing to fight, he can reverse the major outcomes of his blunder, like Ukraine’s emergence as a strong, pro-Western military power or an expanded, more vigilant NATO on his border.”

“Negotiations with Ukraine: a civilized divorce,” Alexander Kolbin, Russia in Global Affairs, 06.18.24.^ Clues from Russian Views. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• “Wouldn’t it be more useful for Russia now to formulate even more clearly and record the security guarantees it needs, normalize the situation on the Western border, where NATO and Finland are already at the fences of St. Petersburg dachas [country houses] and offer some guarantees to Kyiv in exchange for guarantees to themselves? Isn’t this what the Eurasian initiative voiced by Vladimir Putin is aimed at, with the need to take into account the security interests of everyone, including NATO countries?”
• “If we take a realistic look at the results of the tragedy that has lasted for more than ten years in the relations between two once fraternal states, then today, in my opinion, a situation is emerging where both Russia and Ukraine (and the West?) could divorce in a civilized and final manner. No longer harboring harmful illusions about mutual destruction, not forcing each other to live together in a “single cultural field” burned by years of hostility, stopping the bloodshed leading nowhere.”
• “Perhaps just such a civilized divorce could be the ideological basis for the future—very difficult, but still calm, without breaking dishes—a “big conversation” about security on the continent. Here it’s time to recall the classic—the creator of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic [V. Lenin]: “Before uniting, and in order to unite, we must first resolutely and definitely disengage.”

For more analysis on this subject, see:

• “Why Wars Don’t Always End with Negotiations. The Falklands Example,” Lawrence Freedman’s Substack, 06.22.24. 

Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

“A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is. Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy,” Ben Rhodes, FA, July/August 2024. 

“The Return of Peace Through Strength. Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy,” Robert C. O’Brien, FA, July/August 2024.

“Project Trump, Global Edition. Cut off all economic ties with China? End all aid to Ukraine? The ex-President’s men have a plan,” Susan B. Glasser, Politico, 06.21.24. 

• “A foreign-policy manifesto for another Trump Administration, released this week by Robert O’Brien, Trump’s fourth and final national-security adviser—and, it seems, an aspirant to return to high office along with him [is] sensational. Writing in Foreign Affairs, O’Brien offers an array of plans for Trump 2.0—some of which, like sending the entire Marine Corps to the Pacific, seem wildly implausible; others, such as the complete decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies, both improbable and dangerous. In a single clause in a sentence explaining how Trump’s “unpredictability” will somehow lead to a negotiated settlement with Russia, O’Brien asserts that future lethal aid to Ukraine would come not from the United States but entirely from Europe. (Europe, are you listening?)”
• “O’Brien may envision Trump as a Reaganesque military hawk, but other voices with Trump’s ear, such as that of the Ohio senator J. D. Vance, see him as the reincarnation of Charles Lindbergh, a full-on America First isolationist who will pull up the drawbridges and let the rest of the nasty world fight it out.”
• “Watching the two dictators [Kim and Putin] in Pyongyang this week, one finds it worth remembering not the fairy-tale Trump of his apologists but the actual Trump, who lauded Putin as a strategic “genius” on the eve of his invasion of Ukraine and never stopped bragging of his “love affair” with Kim. His own summits with the two men were, in many ways, the apotheosis of his foreign policy during his four years in the White House. Out of those meetings came not peace but humiliation. Ronald Reagan, R.I.P.”

“Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is part of his revolution against the West,” Stephen Covington, The Economist, 06.20.24.

• “The Russian leader’s goal is not just to break Ukraine and stop its quest for a place in the family of Western democracies, but to dismantle the American-led security system that emerged after the second world war. In that sense Mr. Putin is fomenting a revolution: using the strategy and tactics of revolution against the Western system. His war against Ukraine is inextricably linked to the strategic objective of his revolution.”
• “Mr. Putin now asserts that the Western system poses an existential threat to the sovereignty of Russia and the values it should hold. He speaks of two sharply contrasting visions of the future: either the Western system continues to exist and Russia is strategically defeated, or the Western system is replaced and Russia continues to exist. He is convinced that Russia has reached a historical crossroads in its post-Soviet development and that dismantling the existing global order and building a new one is fundamental to Russia’s greater-power aspirations. His revolutionary push is motivated by both internal power-preservation aims and external power-expansion aims.”
• “His “all of Russia” revolution and war are now shaping how Russia is organized, how society is mobilized, how industry is prioritized, how foreign policy is aligned, how the army is structured and how communications are conducted. His legitimacy as a leader of Russia—and his place in history—are now inextricably tied to this revolution. He portrays himself as the only leader who can guide Russia through this crossroads of history. Mr. Putin’s pursuit of advantage and power is unlikely to be replaced by caution in pursuit of stability.”
• “In Ukraine he is pursuing several strategic actions simultaneously. By intensifying military operations and attacking Ukraine’s infrastructure he hopes to weaken its defense, demoralize its armed forces and create among the broader population a sense of inevitable Russian victory. He is also seeking to divide Ukraine politically. And he wants to damage the West’s will to continue supporting Ukraine in the war.”
• “The signs are that Mr. Putin will continue to pursue this revolution-and-war approach, further locking the country’s politics, economy and armed forces into a structure that can only sustain revolution and war.”
• “The West must continue to support Ukraine’s right to self-defense and strengthen the collective security and defense of the Euro-Atlantic area and globally, as part of a strategic pattern to manage Russia’s pressure and assault on a global security system.”

“Russia is punching back at NATO in the shadows,” David Ignatius, WP, 06.21.24. 

• “The Biden administration is warning its NATO allies that Russia is intensifying a covert campaign of sabotage and hybrid warfare against supporters of Ukraine. To counter this rising Russian threat, U.S. intelligence agencies are pushing to their European partners information they can use to disrupt the saboteurs.”
• “Media accounts show the scope of alleged Russian actions. The targets have been mostly linked to European logistical support for Ukraine. "This is [Vladimir] Putin's way to turn up the heat," said a senior administration official. It's a characteristic approach for the Russian president: Attack aggressively but covertly - to maximize the disarray and damage for his adversaries and minimize the danger to himself. To attempt to hide its hand in the recent attacks, U.S. officials told me, Russian intelligence hired local thugs to carry out its operations. The alleged Russian attacks span Europe.”
• “The sabotage is a new turn of the screw in the increasingly deadly Ukraine conflict. According to U.S. officials, Putin worries that NATO is moving toward direct involvement against Russia, following U.S. approval of $61billion in military aid in April and Biden's subsequent decision to allow U.S. weapons to be fired into Russia itself. The New York Times published an early account of the sabotage effort last month.”
• “Russian operatives might be trying to spread fear with attacks on civilian sites as well.”
• “This covert Russian campaign doesn't appear to have killed civilians yet. But if that happens, administration officials warn that the victim nation might request urgent consultations with NATO, under Article 4 of its charter, to discuss a collective response.”
• “As in the early days of the war, the administration is pushing to exchange as much information as possible with allies to help them identify and disrupt attacks - and increase collective resilience. The message they want to send Russia is that the sabotage campaign won't dissuade NATO from supporting Ukraine, and it will only deepen Putin's troubles.”
• “The Ukraine conflict keeps moving inexorably up the escalation ladder: Russia attacks, Ukraine defends; NATO pumps military aid to Ukraine, Russia responds by sabotaging NATO supply lines. Each rung higher, the danger of a misstep gets worse.”

“Will NATO attack Russia?” Igor Istomin, Valdai Club, 06.19.24.^ Clues from Russian Views. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• “So far, Western politicians have not directly voiced the idea of ​​an armed attack on Russia. Currently, we are talking about raising rates on the assumption that Moscow will not dare to respond. Moreover, the thesis continues to be heard that NATO and its member states do not want a direct military confrontation.”
• “In relation to the question in the title, the analysis shows that with a high probability the answer may be positive. In this regard, Russia faces the difficult task of containing escalation in conditions of low receptivity of the West to the signals sent to it. Attempts to convey the seriousness of the situation are either brushed aside or interpreted as manifestations of Russian aggressiveness.”
• “Of course, Western attempts to raise rates must be responded to. At the same time, it is worth focusing the damage on the NATO member states themselves, and not just their proxies (this is where the emphasis should be on the notorious “decision-making centers”). Statements about the possible transfer of long-range weapons to US opponents, as well as the visit of Russian ships to Cuba, are logical steps in this regard. Perhaps the range of responses could also include the defeat of drones conducting reconnaissance for Ukraine over the Black Sea. Moreover, the latter circumstance legitimizes the announcement of a direct ban on their flights in adjacent waters. Russian deterrence measures could also be complemented by holding maneuvers in the Baltic, Mediterranean or North Atlantic together with other states that have earned the status of adversaries of the West.”
• “Calculations for intimidation actions should be weighed against historical experience, which shows that the reaction to them is often the enemy’s bitterness, rather than concessions. This, in particular, calls into question the validity of the previously expressed proposal for nuclear strikes for demonstration purposes. Such actions are more likely to lead to consequences opposite to those assumed by their authors - they will bring a direct military clash with NATO closer, rather than further.”

“The Most Dangerous Game: Do Power Transitions Always Lead to War?”, Manjari Chatterjee Miller, FA, 06.18.24.

For more analysis on this subject, see:

• “Nigel Farage’s claim that NATO provoked Russia is naive and dangerous,” The Economist, 06.22.24.
• “Ukraine Needs a ‘Wet Gap Crossing’ to NATO,” Ann Marie Dailey, FP, 06.18.24.
• "Putin’s Hybrid War Opens a Second Front on NATO’s Eastern Border," Kati Pohjanpalo, Aaron Eglitis, Milda Seputyte, and Ott Tammik, Bloomberg, 06.20.24.
• “Will Debt Sink the American Empire?” Gerald F. Seib, WSJ, 06.21.24.
• "US Exceptionalism Is Dead No Matter Who Wins the Election," Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg, 06.18.24. 

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“Future Scenarios for Sino-Russian Military Cooperation. Possibilities, Limitations, and Consequences,” Mark Cozad, Cortez A. Cooper III, Alexis A. Blanc, David Woodworth, Anthony Atler, Kotryna Jukneviciute, Mark Hvizda and Sale Lilly, RAND, 06.18.24. 

Key findings:

• “From Moscow's perspective, partnership with China is a strategic imperative for Russia to maintain its claim to great-power status. China's support has helped Russia withstand some of the most negative consequences of Western sanctions, particularly through China's purchase of record amounts of energy from Russia.”
• “The Russia-China partnership is also critical for Beijing. With no alliances of its own, Beijing views Moscow's mutual support as its most important strategic relationship and an effective counterweight to U.S. power. As the de facto senior partner in the relationship, Beijing simultaneously sees a significant opportunity to exploit Russia's weakness, which Beijing has leveraged to gain access to inexpensive energy, advanced military technology, and strategic resources.”
• “Strategic cooperation and coordination in the overall military-to-military relationship suggests that expanded cooperation might eventually include some form of combined military operation, but this possibility remains uncertain at best. However, cooperation is not the same as interoperability.”
• “The likely costs of direct military confrontation with the United States make the willingness of either country to enter into such an operation — either independently or as a coalition — unlikely, especially from Beijing's perspective.”
• “Short of a mutual defense treaty, other forms of military cooperation should be expected to intensify.”
• “Deeper integration would likely result in more-complex and more-frequent training and exercises between Russian and Chinese forces — interactions that likely engender expanded technology and skills transfers. Similarly, increased integration could potentially lead both militaries to consider operating in new geographic areas or domains, perhaps with new operational concepts they develop jointly.”

“Xi Jinping’s Russian Lessons. What the Chinese Leader’s Father Taught Him About Dealing With Moscow,” Joseph Torigian, FA, 06.24.24. 

“China and Russia have chilling plans for the Arctic,” The Economist, 06.19.24.

• “China’s support for Russia is fueling Western distrust of the Asian power’s 'polar silk road' plans. But China is not retreating from the Arctic. It still sees a chance to boost its influence there, and to benefit from the area’s wealth of natural resources.”
• “Western governments have long been cautious about China’s Arctic activities, worrying that the country’s growing economic influence in the region might give it political sway and open doors to a Chinese security presence that would add to the Arctic challenge that Russia already poses.”
• “The war in Ukraine has compounded Western skepticism about any big project involving China, which calls itself neutral but also boasts a 'no-limits' friendship with Russia and is giving huge support to Russia’s defense industry.”
• “Russia controls about half of the Arctic’s shoreline and a huge share of its oil and gas reserves. For now, Chinese ships may not be pushing to use the Northern Sea Route (Russia charges stiff fees for the use of its icebreakers).”
• “During a visit by Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, to Beijing in May the two countries vowed to 'promote the Arctic route as an important international transport corridor' and encourage their companies to “strengthen co-operation in increasing Arctic route traffic volume and building Arctic route logistics infrastructure.”

For more analysis on this subject, see:

• “Russia and North Korea’s Defense Pact Is a New Headache for China,” David Pierson, Choe Sang-Hun, NYT, 06.22.24.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“Are Russia and the West on the Cusp of a New Nuclear Arms Race?”, Alexander Golts, Russia.Post, 06.19.24. Clues from Russian Views.

• “Almost simultaneously with conducting nuclear exercises, Russia was given a very real casus belli – indeed, for a nuclear war: on May 23 and May 26, Ukraine attacked two missile attack warning system (MAWS) stations in Armavir and Orsk.”
• “With intimidation still limited to words, the Kremlin decided to make its threats more serious.”
• “It is obvious ... that the strategy of rhetorical deterrence is reaching the end of the road, and Putin’s threats frighten the West less and less. And this in itself poses a danger. The Kremlin is faced with a choice: either forget about nuclear blackmail forever (which essentially deprives Moscow of its main foreign policy argument) or follow the insane recommendations of Karaganov and go for nuclear escalation.”
• “Basically, Putin laid out the first stages of nuclear escalation, which can be set in motion if necessary.”
  • “First, there would be a pointed change in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, possibly including a clause on a preventive nuclear strike during a local conflict ... This would be followed by an announcement that, according to Russian information, the US intends to conduct nuclear tests, and that Russia should also carry them out as a preventive measure. Such an escalation would inevitably lead to a direct nuclear showdown.”
    • “Unfortunately, to prevent such a scenario there are no other ways than NATO, and mainly the US, bringing back traditional, “hard” nuclear deterrence. And this is already underway.”
      • “For example, recently Pranay Vaddi, the senior director for arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation at the US National Security Council, explicitly indicated that the US does not rule out seriously building up its nuclear arsenal, as China and Russia are “forcing the US and our close allies and partners to prepare for a world where nuclear competition occurs without numerical constraints.”
      • “And on June 16, the UK newspaper The Telegraph published an interview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in which he said the bloc must show its nuclear arsenal to the world while calling for transparency to be used as a deterrent.”
• “So, a nuclear arms race is once again becoming a reality. Given the Kremlin’s nuclear threats, this is still not the worst-case scenario.”

“Role of nuclear weapons grows as geopolitical relations deteriorate—new SIPRI Yearbook out now,” SIPRI, 06.17.24. 

• “Nuclear arsenals being strengthened around the world”
  • “The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued to modernize their nuclear arsenals and several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023.”
  • “Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12 121 warheads in January 2024, about 9585 were in military stockpiles for potential use.”
  • “Russia and the USA together possess almost 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons. ... Transparency regarding nuclear forces has declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and debates around nuclear-sharing arrangements have increased in saliency.”
    • “Notably, there were several public claims made in 2023 that Russia had deployed nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, although there is no conclusive visual evidence that the actual deployment of warheads has taken place.”
  • “SIPRI’s estimate of the size of China’s nuclear arsenal increased from 410 warheads in January 2023 to 500 in January 2024, and it is expected to keep growing. For the first time, China may also now be deploying a small number of warheads on missiles during peacetime.”
    • “‘While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as cold war-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,’ said SIPRI Director Dan Smith. ‘This trend seems likely to continue and probably accelerate in the coming years and is extremely concerning.’”
• “Tensions over Ukraine and Gaza wars further weaken nuclear diplomacy.”
• “Global security and stability in increasing peril ... “We are now in one of the most dangerous periods in human history,” said Dan Smith, SIPRI Director. “There are numerous sources of instability—political rivalries, economic inequalities, ecological disruption, an accelerating arms race. The abyss is beckoning and it is time for the great powers to step back and reflect. Preferably together.””

“Answers to questions from Russian journalists. In conclusion of his state visit to Vietnam, Vladimir Putin answered questions from Russian media,” Kremlin.ru, 06.20.24. 

• “You know, I think I have said that we are still thinking about what can be changed in this doctrine and how. This is because new elements are arising (at least we know that the potential adversary is working on it) related to lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. In particular, ultra-low-power nuclear explosive devices are being developed, and we know that expert circles in the West are entertaining the idea that such weapons could be used, and there is nothing particularly terrible about it. It may not be terrible, but we must be aware of this. And we are. This is what my statement that we are thinking about possible changes in our strategies is related to.”
• “[When asked about a preventive strike:] We do not need a preventive strike yet, because the enemy will be guaranteed to be destroyed in a retaliatory strike.”
• “[When asked “NATO is now openly discussing the combat readiness status for nuclear warheads. How does Russia perceive this move and what impact will it have on global stability and security?”:] The Russian Federation always maintains its strategic nuclear forces in a state of permanent combat readiness. This is why we are not greatly concerned about the current actions of Western countries. However, we are, of course, closely monitoring the situation, and if the threat grows, we will respond appropriately.”
• “[When asked if the use of Western long-range weapons can be viewed as an act of aggression:] This matter requires further investigation, but it is close. We are looking into it. What are we dealing with in this case? Those who supply these weapons believe that they are not at war with us. As I have already said, including in Pyongyang, we reserve the right to supply our weapons to other regions of the world. I would not rule out this possibility in terms of our agreements with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. We can also adopt the same position on the question of where these weapons end up. Take the West, for example. They supply weapons to Ukraine, saying: We are not in control here, so the way Ukraine uses them is none of our business. Why cannot we adopt the same position and say that we supply something to somebody but have no control over what happens afterwards? Let them think about it. Therefore, at this stage, our primary objective is to defend against these strikes.”
• “[With North Korea] We replicated the 1960, or the 1962, treaty after it expired. ... South Korea, the Republic of Korea, has nothing to worry about because assistance in the military sphere under the treaty that we have signed will only be provided in the event of an aggression against either signatory party. To the best of my knowledge, the Republic of Korea is not planning to launch an aggression against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Consequently, there is no need to fear our cooperation in this sphere. Regarding possible deliveries of lethal weapons to the combat operations zone in Ukraine, this would be a grave mistake. I hope that it will not happen. If it happens, we will also make the necessary decisions that the leadership of South Korea will hardly welcome.”

For more analysis on this subject, see:

• “How would humans react to nuclear catastrophe?” Adam Thomson and Paul Ingram, ELN, 06.19.24. 

Counterterrorism:

“Deadly Attack in Russia Stirs Fear of Wave of Extremist Violence,” Henry Meyer, Bloomberg, 06.24.24. Graham Allison and Michael Morell warned in a 06.10.24 article in FA that the U.S. faces “a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead,” indicated by, among other factors, the rising number of successful terrorist attacks, such as ISIS-K’s deadly raid of a concert hall outside Moscow in March.

• “A deadly attack by gunmen in the majority Muslim region of Dagestan just months after the assault on a Moscow concert hall is raising the specter that Russia may be facing a wave of violence by religious extremists. Security services said that terrorists were behind Sunday’s attacks that targeted churches and a synagogue in the often violence-wracked region in southern Russia. At least 15 police officers and four civilians, including a priest, were killed, Russia’s Investigative Committee said on June 24 on Telegram. Among six militants who were killed, three were sons and a nephew of a local official.”
• “A close ally of President Vladimir Putin, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, alleged Russia had information of “confirmed foreign funding” for the attack”
• “The assault came three months after gunmen carried out the worst atrocity in Moscow for two decades, killing more than 140 people in a March 22 attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue. Russia initially pointed the finger at Ukraine for the assault that was claimed by Islamic State. Security services eventually acknowledged that Islamic State’s branch in Afghanistan was behind the Moscow attack.”
• “The latest attacks stood out for their coordination and scale.”
• “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the idea of a wave of extremist violence, saying, “Now Russia is different,” according to Interfax.”
• “A Dagestani lawmaker from the ruling pro-Kremlin party, Abdulkhakim Gadzhiev, accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organization states and Ukraine of plotting the latest attack.”
• “Dmitry Rogozin, a senator in Russia’s upper house of parliament who has served as deputy prime minister, warned that ascribing every homegrown terrorist act to NATO and Ukraine “will cause big problems for us,” in a post on his Telegram account.”
• “Russia’s insistence on blaming radical Islamic violence on Ukraine and its allies is making it impossible to counter it effectively, said Gregory Shvedov, an expert on southern Russia’s mainly Muslim regions. “The biggest problem now is they are refusing to acknowledge the threat,” Shvedov, who’s editor-in-chief of Caucasian Knot, said by phone. “These attacks bear all the hallmarks of Islamic State and there are large numbers of sympathizers who operate beneath the surface.”

“After attack in Dagestan, Russian officials minimize Islamic State claim,” Francesca Ebel and Robyn Dixon, WP, 06.24.24.

• “Russian lawmakers on June 24 quickly blamed external forces, including Ukraine and NATO, for terrorist attacks on June 23 that killed at least 20 people in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region of Russia in the North Caucasus that has long been a hotbed of violence by Islamist militants.”
• “The gunfire attacks on June 23 — at a police post, a synagogue and Orthodox churches in the regional capital of Makhachkala and a second city, Derbent — killed at least 17 police officers and an Orthodox priest, authorities said.”
• “Pro-Kremlin media appeared to play down a claim from Al Azaim Media, a Russian-language channel associated with the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, which posted a statement late June 23 that the attack was carried out in response to calls for attacks on behalf of the Islamic State organization, or ISIS.”
• “While Russia’s deadly war in Ukraine overshadows virtually all other events in Russia these days, some officials cautioned against seeing Kyiv’s hand in every incident. If every terrorist attack is “blamed on the intrigues of Ukraine and NATO, this pink fog will lead us to big problems,” Russian senator Dmitry Rogozin said.”
• “But even before local and national law enforcement had gained control over the violence on June 23, officials were already blaming the United States and Ukraine.”
• “A local lawmaker, Abdulkarim Gadzhiev, blamed Sunday’s attack on “the special services of Ukraine and NATO countries.” The pro-Kremlin head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Leonid Slutsky, who heads the foreign affairs committee in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, blamed “outside forces” aiming to divide Russians and “sow panic.”
• “Valentina Matviyenko, the head of the Federation Council, the upper chamber, called the attacks “a tragedy” planned outside Russia.”

For more analysis on this subject, see: 

• “Event in Review: Terrorist attacks in Dagestan targeting religious institutions,” Mark Youngman, Threatologist, 06.24.24. 

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

“How AI is changing warfare,” The Economist, 06.20.24. 

• “There is even talk of using AI in nuclear decision-making. The idea is that countries could not only fuse data to keep track of incoming threats (as has happened since the 1950s) but also retaliate automatically if the political leadership is killed in a first strike. The Soviet Union worked on this sort of “dead hand” concept during the Cold War as part of its “Perimeter” system. It remains in use and is now rumored to be reliant on AI-driven software, notes Leonid Ryabikhin, a former Soviet air-force officer and arms-control expert. In 2023, a group of American senators even introduced a new bill: the “Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act”. This is naturally a secretive area and little is known about how far different countries want to go. But the issue is important enough to have been high up the agenda for presidential talks last year between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping.”
• “For the moment, in conventional wars, “there’s just about always time for somebody to say yes or no,” says a British officer. “There’s no automation of the whole kill chain needed or being pushed.” Whether that would be true in a high-intensity war with Russia or China is less clear. In “The Human Machine Team,” a book published under a pseudonym in 2021, Brigadier-General Yossi Sariel, the head of an elite Israeli military-intelligence unit, wrote that an AI-enabled “human-machine team” could generate “thousands of new targets every day” in a war. “There is a human bottleneck,” he argued, “for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.”
• “In practice, all these debates are being superseded by events. Neither Russia nor Ukraine pays much heed to whether a drone is an “autonomous” weapon system or merely an “automated” one. Their priority is to build weapons that can evade jamming and destroy as much enemy armor as possible. False positives are not a big concern for a Russian army that has bombed more than 1,000 Ukrainian health facilities to date, nor for a Ukrainian army that is fighting for its survival.”
• “NATO countries know they might have to contend with a Russian army that might, once this war ends, have extensive experience in building AI weapons and testing them on the battlefield. China, too, is pursuing many of the same technologies as America.”

For more analysis on this subject, see: 

• “Western Law Enforcement Agencies are Going on the Cyber Offensive,” Gavin Wilde and Emma Landi, RUSI, 06.21.24. 

Energy exports from CIS:

“How Russia is using nuclear power to win global influence,” Anastasia Stognei, Benjamin Parkin, Jamie Smyth and Malcolm Moore, FT, 06.20.24. 

• “Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia already accounted for about half of all international agreements on nuclear power plant construction, reactor and fuel supply, decommissioning or waste management. Its main competitors in the nuclear power sector — China, France, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. — accounted for about 40% combined.”
• “Despite sanctions on its economy, Russia continues to be an unrivaled exporter of nuclear power plants. It is involved in more than a third of the new reactors being constructed around the world at the moment, including in China, India, Iran and Egypt.”
• “Nuclear plant construction takes about 10 years, with a reactor lifespan of 60 years for newer plants. Dismantling preparations, including removing radioactive parts, take another 10-20 years and require substantial funds, says Vladimir Slivyak, a co-chair of the Russian environmental group Ecodefense, who has studied the country’s nuclear energy sector for decades.”
• “Rosatom has been a key part of Moscow’s efforts to court the global south. Over the past two years, its director-general, Alexey Likhachev, has visited these countries almost as many times as he did in the entire period from his appointment in 2016 to 2022. The company has signed nearly two dozen memorandums of understanding with African and Latin American countries, including Zimbabwe, Mali, Burkina Faso and Brazil. In Ghana, Russia has begun preparing a bid to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, alongside vendors from the U.S., China, India, South Korea and France. This year, Russia and Uzbekistan signed an agreement to build a small modular reactor with a capacity of 330MW.”
• “In addition to building reactors and supplying operating units, Rosatom also uses soft diplomacy to wield influence. In 2023, it began discussions with Nicaragua, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan about establishing medical centers, according to Rosatom’s annual report. In Bolivia, Russia completed a nuclear research center in 2023 and, a few months later, secured a lucrative contract for lithium extraction.”
• “Even in Europe, Russia is not completely shut out. The Hungarian Paks 2,400MW plant, awarded to Rosatom without competition in 2014, has not been affected by the Ukraine invasion.”
• “For Rosatom, foreign projects — including the construction of nuclear power plants, the export of enriched uranium and other initiatives — account for about half of its total revenue, according to annual reports. In 2023, Rosatom earned $16.2 billion from these projects, up from $11.8 billion in 2022. This revenue has more than doubled in the past decade. Operation costs and contributions to the state, however, eat up most of Rosatom’s earnings, bringing the group’s net profit to $2 million-$3 million a year. By 2030, Rosatom’s total revenue is expected to reach over $56 billion, more than double the current level, according to the company’s development strategy.”

“Europe’s messy Russian gas divorce,” Samantha Gross and Constanze Stelzenmüller, Brookings, 06.23.24. 

• “In retrospect, it is clear that the Kremlin’s preparations for the weaponization of Europe’s dependency on Russian oil and gas began well before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in the form of slowed-down supplies and near-empty storage facilities. After February 24, 2022, when Russia completely shut down its two major gas pipelines to Germany and Central Europe, its actions created a massive supply and price shock that reverberated across the continent and could well have led to widespread socio-economic upheavals and political paralysis.”
• “Yet Europe’s overall reaction has been (with the help of some remarkable luck) surprisingly resilient. While the G-7 price cap on Russian oil has had mixed results, Europeans were able to wean themselves off Russian gas almost completely through demand reduction and substitution with LNG, leading to what Alexandra Gritz and Guntram Wolff of the German Council on Foreign Relations call a “massive adaptation of the energy system.” As the Cambridge economist Helen Thompson drily notes, “gas dependency has not proved to be the weapon Putin envisaged during the mid-2010s…for Russia, Europe’s resilience has been a geopolitical disaster, since unlike with oil, Gazprom cannot replace European customers with Asian ones.” Natural gas prices are back to pre-crisis levels.”
• “Yet, as this paper shows, the trajectory of decoupling and adaptation has been quite different from one country to the next; and it has come at a high price: severe hits to energy-intensive industries, controversial subsidies and beggar-thy-neighbor policies, and heightened political tensions within and between European countries. Above all, it is incomplete and vulnerable to future shocks, such as continued blackmail against the remaining European importers of Russian gas, the end of the Ukrainian gas transit agreement, an unfavorable election outcome in the U.S., or the high political and price volatility that is typical for the LNG market. In sum, Europe, for now, remains largely dependent on imported gas; it has just diversified its suppliers and increased its relative dependence on more expensive LNG. Maintaining European industrial competitiveness, given high LNG prices and immense government subsidy schemes for clean energy in the United States and China, will be a challenge. Energy autarky is, of course, unattainable for Europe. But the experience of 2022-2024 should be a powerful driver for strengthening supply security, assuring cross-border flows, and investing in renewables and the green energy transition.”
• “Finally, key policy questions still need to be addressed: what should the relative roles of markets and governments be in managing the gas economy and allocating scarce resources? If gas supply security is now part of the security posture of an interdependent, open, and globalized continent, what does that mean for the status of critical infrastructure and energy companies? What role should the EU play in integrating the European gas market, and in addressing inequalities of distribution and beggar-thy-neighbor fiscal policy responses? And finally, how does all this play into the trans-Atlantic alliance—should energy security be part of NATO’s remit, and if so, in what form? Future papers in this series will address these questions and more.”

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• No significant developments.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Late-stage Putinism: The war in Ukraine and Russia’s shifting ideology,” Mikhail Komin, ECFR, 06.18.24. 

• “The Russian regime’s political ideology – both its content and role in the political system – has evolved since the all-out invasion of Ukraine.”
• “The Kremlin has increasingly adopted a more hostile stance towards the West, made a particular interpretation of Russia’s historical role and global position, and placed a growing emphasis on ultra-conservative values, promoting a new kind of “patriotism” in Russia.”
• “While the Kremlin continues to use ideology as a tool for bolstering regime legitimacy among citizens and elites, this is also becoming a core element of Russia’s domestic and foreign policy.”
• “Domestically, the Kremlin needs ideology to gain at least “performative support” from its population for the war in Ukraine. In foreign policy, the Kremlin is using this to attract the countries of the global south with the aim of forming a new conservative alliance.”
• “To support this new ideology, the Kremlin is refining its previously varied ideological narratives into a more unified discourse and establishing new infrastructure for disseminating its ideology among the Russian population.”
• “This ideological infrastructure already penetrates deeply into Russian society, including into the education system, the healthcare system – and even the personal lives of Russian citizens.”

“I am not a foreign agent,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, WP, 06.24.24. 

• “Solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison in Siberia is not particularly eventful. Among the few distractions (and welcome opportunities to leave my cell) I get here are my regular court appearances by video link from the prison office.”
• “Every month, I get a visit from a couple of polite officials from Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s censorship agency, who present me with administrative court summons for violating Russia’s “foreign agent” law.”
• “Trying to defame political opponents as “agents of foreign influence” is an old Soviet tactic — one of many adopted by Vladimir Putin’s regime.”
• “The blacklisting is very real: Individuals designated as “foreign agents” are prohibited from engaging in a wide variety of activities, including teaching, organizing public events, conducting anti-corruption audits, monitoring elections, advertising on social media and so on — not to mention informal bans such as the one on books by “foreign agents” in bookstores and libraries. Amendments signed by Putin last month prohibit “foreign agents” from participating in elections and holding elected office at any level.”
• “But perhaps the most insulting requirement of the “foreign agent” law is that people have to label themselves with public disclaimers — something even the Soviet KGB hadn't come up with. Those who refuse are faced with administrative and then criminal prosecution — hence my regular rendezvous with the Soviet district court. My criminal trial here in Omsk will likely start in the fall — and the outcome, of course, is well known. It seems that my current 25-year sentence will not be the limit. But on the upside, I will get more welcome opportunities to leave my prison cell.”

“Martin Wolf and Fiona Hill on Democracy’s year of peril,” Roula Khalaf, FT, 06.22.24.

• “FH: I think we’re certainly witnessing an enormous challenge to global democracy, but I’m not sure whether actually we’re witnessing as yet the actual defeat. ... I think it’s still for me, and at least the jury’s out as to whether this is necessarily the defeat of democracy.”
• “FH: There’s a lot of behind the scenes in Russia. Putin isn’t an as unassailable person as he might seem if we think about his recent plebiscite to reaffirm his presidency in Russia, where he got 88 percent of the vote. The highest he’s ever got since 2000. But behind that, there was no competition. There was his only real competitor Alexei Navalny, of course, died in a Siberian prison a month before the election. Anybody who ran against him was pretty marginal or marginalized. And we know that there’s a lot of dissent because we’ve had a million plus people leaving Russia because of the war in Ukraine. But we also see more apathy than anything else. And, you know, if we think back to a year ago when we saw a mutiny and insurgency by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group, what was really notable there was the lack of reaction of the population, either in support of Prigozhin himself or certainly also in support of Putin, which goes to show that not all is well for that particular strongman, just as it wasn’t necessarily for President Erdoğan in the case of Turkey.”
• “FH: In Russia itself there’s all these different dynamics. And, you know, one man, if you have a one-man system, the vertical of power in Russia and Putin falls off it, just accidentally dies, you know, as people tend to, that kind of shifts the whole thing as well. And in an age of strongmen, if the strongmen disappear, do the systems that they’ve created really stay intact. And, you know, history tells us all kinds of different things. So it is a very decisive, pivotal, period but I think we’re in for a lot of surprises ahead.”

“Putin Has Tainted Russian Greatness,” Serge Schmemann, NYT, 06.20.24.

• “The émigrés I grew up with, and those I came to know in America and as a reporter in Israel, rarely felt troubled by the sins of their motherland. Why would they? There were no politics in the usual sense in the Russia they came from, no sense among the vast majority of the population that they had any say in what their self-perpetuating leaders did for them or to them from behind the Kremlin ramparts.”
• “The Russian invasion of Ukraine — so cruel, so pointless, so devastating — has changed all this, at least for those not mesmerized by Mr. Putin’s recidivist claptrap. It’s hard not to feel shame at the evidence of Russians killing and raping people who did them no wrong, people who share so much of their history and culture.”
• “And it has become difficult to feel pride in all the things that Russians can genuinely boast about — the great books, the Bolshoi, the hockey stars, the spirituality — when Mr. Putin is dispatching waves of boys to kill and die for his false version of Russia’s manifest destiny and his personal grievances against the West.”
• “When the Russian tanks began their grim parade toward Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022, Russians, too, were in shock. “We, the Russians living inside and outside of the country, will have to bear the shame of this situation for years to come,” wrote Anastasia Piatakhina Giré, a psychotherapist in Paris, shortly after the invasion.”
• “That is the tragic irony of Mr. Putin’s war. His attempt to “restore Russian greatness” through violence and hatred has tainted Russia’s real greatness for years to come, just as his attempt to quash Ukrainian nationhood has steeled its foundations. We know from the Germans’ postwar history that restoring a battered national identity is a project of decades, maybe more.”

“Moscow’s Loyal Mayor: Sergei Sobyanin’s Views on Russia, Ukraine and More,” Olga Kiyan, RM, 06.20.24.

• “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s post-inaugural reshuffles have created ripples in the pool of potential successors. … [T]here is one more contender whose experience and political savviness is superior to that of [Aleksey] Dyumin’s and the younger Patrushev’s combined: Sergei Sobyanin. Sobyanin has been among the list of speculative successors for some time, with St. Petersburg think tank Peterburgskaya Politika once ranking him as the second most likely individual to follow Putin, behind Dmitry Medvedev and before Dyumin.”
• “In 2001, Sobyanin was elected to his first major political position as the governor of his home Tyumen region. From Nov. 14, 2005, to May 7, 2008, he served as the Head of the Presidential Administration for Putin, and was also a permanent member of the Security Council from 2005 to 2010. Since May 2008, Sobyanin served as Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation - Chief of Staff. Sobyanin was then appointed mayor of Moscow in October 2010 after the scandalous removal of Yuri Luzhkov from this post. This decision, made during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, was at the time attributed to Sobyanin’s loyalty to Putin as well as to his political expertise. Sobyanin has since been re-elected to the position of mayor in 2013, 2018 and most recently in 2023.”
• “He has continued to feature in various lists of Putin’s successors compiled both in Russia and abroad. In no small part, this has been a result of Sobyanin’s ability to toe whatever lines Putin has set on key aspects of Russia’s internal policies while staying mum on some of the tricky-to-navigate external policies (Russia’s war in Ukraine being one exception).”

Defense and aerospace:

“Where’s Wagner Now? One Year after the Mutiny,” Kimberly Marten, PONARS Eurasia, 06.21.24.

• “The Wagner Group has served many different purposes for the Putin regime in its decade-long existence. One of its most important attributes has been its flexibility: it served as a contracting mechanism to send personal guards and trainers to the Central African Republic in 2018, highly trained and disciplined snipers to Haftar’s civil war against the Libyan government in 2020, and both counterinsurgency and ordinary infantry units to many places where it has been deployed. It is currently unclear whether the group’s placement under Rosgvardia will allow it to maintain that flexibility in the future, since Rosgvardia’s uses have been more limited.”
• “The Wagner Group also allowed Putin to experiment with expanding Russia’s reach in places like Syria and Africa while keeping casualties out of the news at home.”
• “Unanswered questions remain.”
  • “One mystery is who is now controlling Prigozhin’s many business enterprises in Africa. There was a flurry of speculation in fall 2023 about who was competing to take them over, but that topic has now largely disappeared from major news sites.”
  • “A final puzzle is what the continuation of the Wagner Group brand will mean for long-term Russian domestic politics and stability. In the short term, Prigozhin’s death seems to have strengthened Putin’s control. It did not provoke much of a reaction from Wagner Group members, many of whom continue to work on behalf of the regime, and Prigozhin has not been portrayed as a martyr. But that may only have been because he himself had no combat experience and was making money off the lives of Wagner Group fighters.”
• “The last chapter of the Wagner Group has not been written, and it remains to be seen what roles its armed and potentially dangerous members might play in a post-Putin transition.”

“Five reasons why Russian military spending will grow,” Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 06.21.24.

• “The Russian government this week began discussing next year’s budget. In last year’s budget, the assumption was that the situation would already be returning to “normal” by this point in 2024 and it expected that military spending would drop almost by a third in 2026. However, as the war in Ukraine drags on, this seems highly unlikely. Putin shows no sign of backing down militarily, or politically, and Russia’s economy is fast becoming entirely dependent on record levels of military spending.”
• “Even if Russia sticks to last year’s plans, expenditure on the army and security services will account for about a third of total spending. However, this is extremely unlikely to happen. It’s far more likely that the military will require more money. We have identified five reasons why we think Russia’s defense spending has a long way yet to rise:”

1. “The war continues”
2. “Defense spending drives growth”
3. “Inflation and a tight labor market”
4. “Inefficient command economy”
5. “Rise in global military spending”

• “Under the slogan “all for the front, all for victory,” the state is flooding the inefficient defense sector with cash, driving itself into the trap of increased military spending. This has interesting consequences. The mostly market nature of the Russian economy means a bloated defense sector causes “Dutch disease” – i.e., it gobbles up all the available labor and capital to the detriment of other sectors. The lack of effective management and built-in inefficiencies compound the issue, much like what happened in the late Soviet Union.”
• “And we even know how some of this increased spending will be financed: this week, the State Duma passed a tax reform bill on first reading. More than 1.6 trillion rubles will be generated when corporate income tax goes up by 5 percentage points. It’s likely that this money will go directly to the defense sector.”

See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

“Russia Is Storing Up a Crime Wave When Its War on Ukraine Ends,” Bloomberg, 06.22.24.

• “Crimes committed by servicemen that aren’t linked to the war increased by more than 20% last year, according to data from Russia’s Supreme Court. While the overall numbers are still small and many returning servicemembers don’t go on to commit offenses, there was a jump in cases of violent crimes as well as thefts and drug-related transgressions.”
• “The figures exclude crimes involving tens of thousands of convicts released from jail to join the war under a program set up by the late Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. Those who survived six months at the front were able to gain a pardon from Putin and return to Russia as free men. … In prison, “they are treated like ‘we are nothing,’ then it all gets even worse at the front,” said Kazan-based sociologist Iskender Yasaveev. “The experience they return with is a trauma that will manifest itself for decades.”
• “The return of prisoners who fought for Wagner is offering an early signal of what may lie in store once hundreds of thousands of men brutalized by the fighting return to civilian life… Before his death in a plane crash, after he led an abortive mutiny against the Defense Ministry’s leadership in June last year, Prigozhin claimed 32,000 convicts he’d recruited had returned to Russia from the war. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to widespread public disquiet by telling reporters in November that criminals pardoned by Putin “atone with their blood for their crime on the battlefield.”
• “Still, a law that took effect in March quietly removed the right to a pardon after six months of service, forcing criminals who join up to remain in the military until the end of the war, like others drafted into the army. Nevertheless, they return, often by deserting. Crimes involving the military increased fourfold to 4,409 in 2023 compared to 2021, the Supreme Court data show.”
• “One deserter, Artyom, said he fled after half his squad of assault troops were killed during four months in Ukraine. The 34-year-old, who asked not to be identified by his family name, joined the army to escape harsh treatment in the prison colony where he was serving a sentence for drug trafficking. Nobody told him the service was indefinite, he said.”
• “A postwar surge in crime may cost Russia as much as 0.6% of its gross domestic product, said Alex Isakov, Russia economist at Bloomberg Economics.”

“Does the Rostov-on-Don Hostage Incident Reflect a Systemic Problem with Russia’s Prisons?”, Kiril Titaev, Russia.Post, 06.21.24.

• “In mid-June several people convicted and accused of terrorism took hostage two officers of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN). According to some reports, one of them was quite high-ranking. The terrorists were killed (we do not actually know whether they were terrorists and, most likely, we will never know, but the fact of hostage-taking made them terrorists beyond any doubt), and the hostages were released, according to the FSIN, unharmed.”²
• “Obviously, unfortunate combinations of circumstances can periodically lead to disasters or tragedies, and they cannot be foreseen. But what happened in Rostov-on-Don might also reflect systemic problems at the FSIN.”
  • “The entire penal system in Russia is aimed at causing suffering. The thesis “prison is not a resort” can be found on the Russian internet more than 25 million times.”
  • “External control – public monitoring commissions and the prosecutor’s office – in most cases is completely ineffective.”
  • “Another serious problem is the shot morals of FSIN officers. All possible practices of formal (punishment) or informal (torture and beatings) violence are widespread, and the recent terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall in Moscow once again showed that the torture of suspects does not cause public backlash.”

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s external policies, including relations with “far abroad” countries:

• No significant developments.

Ukraine:

“Ukraine claims to be winning its war on corruption. The West says: Do more,” David L. Stern and Michael Birnbaum, WP, 06.19.24.

• “Ukrainian officials insist they are battling corruption as fiercely as their troops are fighting Russia’s invaders in the east. But Western governments, including the U.S., say it is still not enough — a source of increasingly raw tension between Kyiv and some of its strongest supporters that poses constant peril to additional economic and military assistance. Nearly every month adds a new case to a string of high-profile arrests and dismissals.”
  • “In late May, the former deputy head of the presidential administration, Andrii Smyrnov, was charged with “illicit enrichment” by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which said he had acquired real estate, vehicles and other assets worth more than 10 times his reported salary and savings.”
  • “In April, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired Illya Vitiuk, the head of Ukraine’s Security Service’s cybersecurity department, days after local media reported that Vitiuk’s wife had bought an apartment for more than $500,000 in an elite Kyiv neighborhood.”
  • “Within the past year, the country’s chief justice, Vsevolod Knyazyev, was charged with taking more than $2 million in bribes and promptly dismissed. And a prominent oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, who was once a stronger supporter of Zelensky, was jailed on suspicion of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering, and then charged with financing a murder-for-hire scheme in the early 2000s.”
• “Ukrainian officials say the cases are evidence of a concerted — and successful — effort to fight graft. All the accused maintain their innocence, and their cases have not yet come to trial… Western capitals, however, aren’t so sure. Billions are at stake in Ukraine’s fight against corruption — not just the country’s own tax money but also Western military and economic aid.”
  • “While there have been no direct allegations of American money or weapons being mishandled or misappropriated, Republican members of Congress cited corruption concerns as among their reasons for obstructing a $61 billion aid package — a months-long delay that allowed Russian forces to advance.”
• “U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, say it [Ukrainians’ current drive to fight corruption] is still not enough. Ukraine “has taken important steps,” Blinken said in Kyiv last month. “But more remains to be done.” In a speech, he said Ukraine needs “a strong and predictable regulatory environment; open and fair competition; transparency; the rule of law; effective anti-corruption measures. “Winning on the battlefield will prevent Ukraine from becoming part of Russia,” Blinken added.”
  • “A meeting between Zelenskyy and Blinken was tense — with the Ukrainian leader expressing his appreciation for U.S. military aid but appearing frustrated by Blinken’s focus on corruption.”
  • “Senior officials in Kyiv, including Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, bristled at the scolding.”
• “Many in Zelenskyy’s camp argue privately that, though corruption remains a challenge, an anti-corruption effort would distract from what they say should be the primary focus: defeating Russia.”
• “Whatever we do is never seen as a real success,” said Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna. But given the billions in aid flowing to Kyiv, she said, she understands that Ukraine needs to be seen “as saintlier than the pope.”

“A Big Step Back’: In Ukraine, Concerns Mount Over Narrowing Press Freedoms,” Andrew E. Kramer, Maria Varenikova and Constant Méheut, NYT, 06.18.24. 

• “Journalists and groups monitoring press freedoms are raising alarms over what they say are increasing restrictions and pressures on the media in Ukraine under the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky that go well beyond the country’s wartime needs.”
  • “It’s really disturbing,” said Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information, a nonprofit that monitors media freedoms.”
• “Ukrainian journalists largely accepted wartime rules… They have also acknowledged some self-censorship, holding back on critical coverage of the government to avoid undermining morale or to prevent reports of corruption from dissuading foreign partners from approving aid.”
• “Journalists and media groups say that a string of recent cases have pointed to an increasingly restrictive reporting environment. Ambassadors from the Group of 7, which comprises many of Kyiv’s key military allies, issued a joint statement in January supporting press freedom in Ukraine.”
• “Analysts say the government’s efforts to control the media appear to be aimed at crimping positive coverage of the opposition and suppressing negative coverage of the government and the military.”
• “Reporters for the state news agency, Ukrinform, which is supposed to be nonpartisan, received a list from their management late last year of opposition figures and local elected officials labeled “undesirable” for quoting in articles. The NYT reviewed the instructions to Ukrinform reporters, which blacklisted elected officials and civil society activists, including some military veterans.”
• “The Ukrainian authorities have also had sometimes tense relationships with Western news organizations, including The Times. They have revoked military press passes for journalists from several outlets after critical reporting, and amid disputes over rules for covering military operations, though the credentials were later restored.”
• “In the city of Odesa, reporters were instructed to cite only presidential appointees in some cases.”
• “In Lviv, reporters were told to avoid quoting the elected mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, a prominent politician seen as a possible future candidate for the presidency.”
• “A day after Yuriy Stryhun, the Ukrinform reporter in Chernihiv, who is 57, appeared on the public broadcaster, Suspilne, to talk about the reporting instructions on May 30, he received a notice to renew his draft registration, he said.”
• “Maryna Synhaivska, a former deputy director of Ukrinform, resigned this year over the political meddling.”
• “Ukraine’s raucous and competitive television news landscape before the war was consolidated by Mr. Zelenskyy’s government into [Telemarathon,] a single, state-controlled broadcast after Russia’s invasion… A U.S. State Department report said the program had “enabled an unprecedented level of control over prime-time television news” in Ukraine.”
• “In January, it emerged that Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U., had secretly filmed reporters attending the holiday party of an investigative news site, Bihus, by drilling peepholes into coat racks in the hotel rooms where they were staying.”
• “Despite the pressure, Ukrainian journalists have scored scoops, including reports on issues such as corruption, that have led to resignations and arrests.”

“Eastern Europe: A Feminist Policy in the Light of War,” Sabine Fischer, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, 06.21.24.

• “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is putting many basic assumptions of feminist foreign policy (FFP) to the test. With its aggression, the authoritarian regime in Moscow has not only forced the neighboring country into an existential defensive struggle. The entire region of Eastern Europe is suffering the con­sequences of this imperialist war, with which Russia has dealt a hard blow to the European security order.”
• “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 means that gov­ernments in Europe have made deterrence, defense, military and security policy (even) more central to their policies. NATO has acquired a new significance and has accepted new members. Ukraine’s accession after the end of the war has become a real possibility.”
• “In Russia’s war against Ukraine, the gender dimension is particularly charged. Russia’s domestic and foreign policy is characterized by aggressive anti-femi­nism and hyper-masculinity. So-called traditional values and extremely pronounced patriarchal struc­tures have become increasingly important legitimizing pillars of the political regime. This can be seen in repressive laws that are explicitly anti-feminist and anti-LGBTIQ+ or in the decriminalization of domestic violence.”
• “Anti-feminism and the cultural war against the allegedly decadent and effeminate homosexual Europe (“Gayropa”) play a central role in Russian poli­tics and propaganda. The official narrative of the Putin regime claims that Russia must defend itself against Western “decadence.” Anti-feminism and LGBTIQ+ hostility are important components of Rus­sia’s policy of influence and destabilization towards its immediate neighborhood and Europe as a whole.”
• “A feminist Ukraine policy should work in two directions. On the one hand, it should support Ukrainian society in defending itself against Russia’s aggression. In addition to imperialism and nationalism, Russia’s invasion of their neighboring country also stems from extreme anti-feminism and Russia’s idea of a cultural war against “Gayropa.”

“Ukraine needs sizeable private debt forgiveness,” FT editorial, 06.23.24. 

• “Kyiv has to meet the fiscal expectations of sovereign and multilateral creditors, whose funding is supporting the war effort and keeping the economy alive. Simultaneously, it needs to remain alluring to private investors, whose cash flows will be crucial to the day after the war — when reconstruction must begin in earnest. But those goals are clashing as Ukraine grapples with $20 billion of outstanding private bonds.”
• “Ukraine’s best path is to stare down bondholders, and seek around a 40% debt reduction, commensurate with market expectations. The country cannot be distracted by a lengthy bankruptcy deal and must stem financial outflows as the cost of the war mounts. Annual payments will be necessary to maintain its appeal to future creditors, but should be small and symbolic.”
• “Kyiv should, though, be wary of pushing bondholders too far. Disgruntled bondholders might then sell their claims to hedge funds or other private entities. As Zambia and Ghana have shown, sovereign defaults become messier as the number of creditors rises.”

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Cooperation and Dependence in Belarus-Russia Relations,” Dara Massicot, Michelle Grisé, Kotryna Jukneviciute, Marta Kepe, Casey Mahoney, Krystyna Marcinek, Yuliya Shokh and Mark Stalczynski, RAND, 06.20.24.

• “Overall, Belarus and Russia are aligned in many respects.”
  • “There is a great deal of close cultural affinity, and the two countries share political, economic, defense industrial, and military ties that are codified in multiple agreements and treaties.”
  • “Long-standing defense-industrial cooperation between the countries is influenced by their mutual Soviet legacy. The Belarusian defense sector is almost totally dependent on contracts with Moscow.”
  • “Russia and Belarus are moving forward with Union State integration, and this process will result in closer military integration, Russian military forward stationing in Belarus, a joint military doctrine, and more-integrated responses in crisis and conflict with regional neighbors or NATO more broadly.”
• “Belarus’s sovereignty marks a point of departure between the two countries.”
  • “The Russian government views Belarus as a “brotherly nation” that defers to Moscow in all important matters. The Belarusian government, opposition, and people see themselves as different from Russia and attempt to demonstrate they are a sovereign country — even if these demonstrations are symbolic or suppressed.”
  • “Belarus has sought to carve out a role for itself as a mediator of sorts between Russia and the West. Those diplomatic opportunities have now mostly been curtailed, but Minsk is still able to position itself as a mediator when needed.”
  • “Russia prefers to contract for components rather than final military products, which limits Belarusian industry’s ability to grow beyond a certain point. As one Russian military expert noted, Russia still treats Belarus as the “assembly shop of the Soviet Union.”

“The West’s Azerbaijan Question: Pragmatism over Values?”, Callum Fraser, RUSI, 06.18.24.

• “As Azerbaijan’s leader revels in his victory in the recent Karabakh conflict, the West faces the all-too-familiar choice of whether to engage with an unsavory regime for geopolitical gain, or to stay true to its values in the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism… Azerbaijan’s rapid rise in geopolitical influence places it in a dominant negotiating position over Armenia. However, months after they began, peace talks are still meandering in the preliminary stages. Ultimately, peace does not suit Aliyev, and the West should be cautious about repeating the same mistakes that it made with Ukraine.”
• “While Azerbaijan’s policies may not directly threaten the West, its equidistant approach between Russia and Western powers raises significant concerns. As the West deepens its economic ties with yet another authoritarian state, the mirroring of errors made over the last decade is obvious, with the West indirectly financing another authoritarian state’s military ambitions.”
• “This raises a pertinent question over the future of Western rules-based ideals: do current geopolitical tensions require a pragmatic adaptation, or is supporting democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world a cornerstone of the liberal international order? Regardless of the decision that it comes to, if the West is to survive multipolarity, its stance must be clear and consistent. Peace is beneficial for the South Caucasus, but it may not suit its most powerful politician. The chances of conflict remain high in the region as long as the West fails to learn from its mistakes.”

For more analysis on this subject, see: 

• “Putin’s Proxies Work to Thwart Moldova’s Embrace of the West,” Alan Crawford, Lina Grau, and Peter Martin, Bloomberg, 06.18.24.

Footnotes

1. The Paper’s version of the article can be found here.
2. State media said that some of the men had been convicted of terrorism offenses and were accused of affiliation with the Islamic State militant group, which claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall in March, according to Reuters.

The cutoff for reports summarized in this product was 11:00 am Eastern time on the day this digest was distributed. Unless otherwise indicated, all summaries above are direct quotations. 

*Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute a RM editorial policy.

^ Machine-translated.

Slider photo by Kremlin.ru shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.