5 Things to Know

The G7 is discussing whether to impose an outright ban on most exports to Russia over its war against Ukraine, according to Bloomberg. The approach, which is reportedly being discussed by G7 diplomatic envoys ahead of the group’s summit in May, would flip the existing sanctions regime around, with all exports banned unless exempted, “people familiar with the matter” told the news agency this week. Medications and agricultural products — including food — would probably remain exempted from this punitive measure against Russia, which imports about $66 billion worth of goods from EU alone annually. It remains an open question whether all of members of the EU, which operates by consensus, will agree to such a drastic measure. In any case, these talks have already drawn the Kremlin’s attention.[1]

The total fortune of Russia’s billionaires has increased from $353 billion to $505 billion over the past year, according to Forbes’ latest list of the world’s richest people. The total number of Russian billionaires also grew by 22, reaching a total if 115, even though five billionaires renounced Russian citizenship, according to the Russian edition of Forbes. The increase in Russians' wealth bucked the global trend as the fortunes of the world’s richest people have fallen by a combined $500 billion since 2022. This surge in the collective wealth of Russia’s richest citizens can be explained in part by the fact that their fortunes shrank during the first half of 2022 as the West imposed sanctions in the immediate wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but then rebounded as the sanctions and Russia’s countermeasures led to increases in prices of certain commodities, from the extraction and sale of which many of Russia’s oligarchs profit. However, the 43% increase still raises questions about the effectiveness of the sanctions that have been imposed against Russian oligarchs in hopes that the resulting costs would, among other things, compel them to somehow influence Putin’s decision-making with regard to the war.

NATO’s frontier states, such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, say they are no longer willing to put up with risk of even a temporary Russian occupation, given the alleged atrocities committed by the Russian forces in areas they occupied in Ukraine. This follows from NYT’s exploration of how the Russian-Ukrainian war is revolutionizing NATO’s military strategy. To prevent such an occupation, NATO is “rapidly moving” from deterrence by retaliation to deterrence by denial, which requires more troops to be based permanently along the Russian border, more integration of American and allied war plans, more military spending and more detailed requirements for allies to have specific kinds of forces and equipment to fight, if necessary, in pre-assigned places, according to NYT. 

Ukrainian forces have tried to take the fight against Russia elsewhere, developing plans to conduct covert attacks on Russian forces in Syria with the clandestine assistance of Kurdish forces, according to leaked U.S. intelligence documents. Ukrainian military intelligence officers favored striking Russian forces using UAVs, but Zelensky ultimately directed an end to the planning in December, according to WP. Another leaked document describes a Ukrainian sabotage operation in Belarus, where Ukrainian agents attacked a Russian airborne early warning airplane on the ground with a small drone, according to Newsweek. Ukrainian forces are also reported to have launched cross-border attacks on Russia, using drones and artillery, as well as having deployed sabotage groups. Kyiv denies these claims.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to cling to the edges of Bakhmut, despite the fact that leaked U.S. intelligence documents described the AFU’s position in this eastern city as ''catastrophic” as early as January. The leaked documents reveal that the American assessments of the AFU’s fortunes in Bakhmut were bleak as of January, with U.S. agencies warning at the time that AFU units may be encircled in a month. Yet, Ukrainian forces continued to control parts of the city this week, with even pro-Russian Telegram channels denying that the Russian armed forces have completed an encirclement of the AFU. In the past month of fighting, Russian forces have gained 12 square miles of Ukrainian territory, according to the latest issue of the Belfer Center’s Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi and Kazakhstan's Minister of Energy Almasadam Satkaliyev signed a five-year framework designed to "ensure closer interaction ... in areas related to the development of nuclear power infrastructure, nuclear and radiation safety, food security and nuclear medicine." (WNN, 04.20.23)
• Russia will switch the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant back from U.S.-made nuclear fuel as soon as possible, according to reported comments from Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Rosenergoatom's CEO. (WNN, 04.20.23)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant developments.

Leak:

 Contents of the leak:

• While the documents show that American spy agencies have intercepted Russian military communications, sometimes down to the details of planned Russian attacks, they offer little indication that the United States has been able to eavesdrop on Putin’s conversations (NYT, 04.17.23)

• Several leaked slides show satellite imagery of the aftermath of Ukrainian airstrikes on what are described as “U.S.-produced” targets in Russian-held territory -- new evidence that the United States is providing precise targeting data. (NYT, 04.17.23)
• Russia's quest to sabotage Ukrainian forces' internet access by targeting the Starlink satellite operations, according to a classified U.S. intelligence report. Moscow has experimented for months with its Tobol electronic warfare systems in a bid to disrupt Starlink's transmissions in Ukraine. (WP, 04.18.23)
• A leaked document contains reference to never-before-revealed "Phoenix Strike" training that is taking place in France, Germany, and the Netherlands for Ukrainian special forces. (Newsweek, 04.16.23)
• The leaked documents contain a stark conclusion that Vladimir Putin's army has made little progress. Since last July, it has gained an average of just 2.7 km (1.6 mi) of territory "per month" in its attack around Bakhmut. One leaked document states that 23% (110 of 474) Russian battalion groupings inside Ukraine are "combat ineffective," and 72 of 166 regular army battalions (43%) also combat ineffective.  (Newsweek, 04.16.23)
• U.S. assessments on Bakhmut were bleak as early as January, according to previously unreported classified U.S. intelligence documents. Washington warned of the potential encirclement of Ukraine’s forces in Bakhmut and suggested Kyiv should cut its losses and let the city go. An assessment marked “top secret” cautioned that “steady” Russian advances since November “had jeopardized Ukraine’s ability to hold the city,” and Ukrainian forces would probably be “at risk of encirclement, unless they withdraw within the next month.” (WP, 04.21.23)
• A March 1, 2023, document estimated that 48,600 Russian personnel faced as few as 7,250 Ukraine personnel on the battlefield around Kharkov and its border with Luhansk state. (Newsweek, 04.16.23)
• In the leaked American intelligence documents, Ukraine’s position in the key city of Bakhmut was described as “catastrophic.” (NYT, 04.15.23)
• The leaked documents contain a disclosure that the number of Russian mercenaries fighting around Bakhmut exceeds the number of regular soldiers. According to U.S. intelligence, 22,000 Wagner group fighters constitute 70% of those fighting—thousands more than was previously known and certainly a critical new variable. (Newsweek, 04.16.23)
• PMC Wagner is planning to resume recruiting prisoners for “Project 42174,” an effort to recruit, train and integrate Russian convicts into Wagner units inside Ukraine. It says senior Wagner officials were working to address disparities between the treatment of Wagner contractors and convict recruits who are wounded in action. FT, 04.20.23)
• Russian PMC Wagner unsuccessfully asked China for supplies of weapons earlier this year, according to a leaked U.S. intelligence report. Representatives from Wagner, which is controlled by close Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, “sought munitions and equipment” from China in “early 2023,” according to the previously unreported document. (FT, 04.20.23)
• PMC Wagner asked to buy arms Belarus and Syria, according to the leaked documents. The U.S. report said Belarus “already delivered 50% of unspecified weapons promised” by early January and offered to send Wagner 300,000 VOG-17 grenade launcher rounds. Wagner also bought six SPG-9 grenade launchers and 180 grenades in Syria. (FT, 04.20.23)
• A leaked document reveals that the U.S. has at least 100 personnel in Ukraine, suggesting that there are 100 in the embassy and attending to diplomatic and aid questions, with another 14 special operators in country, out of a total of 97 such commandos, half of whom are British. (Newsweek, 04.16.23)
• A leaked document reports a Ukrainian sabotage operation in Belarus, where Ukrainian agents evidently "violated orders" and attacked a Russian airborne early warning airplane on the ground with a small drone. (Newsweek, 04.16.23)
• The Russian government has become far more successful at manipulating social media and search engine rankings than previously known, boosting lies about Ukraine's military and the side effects of vaccines with hundreds of thousands of fake online accounts, according to documents recently leaked on Discord. The Russian operators of those accounts boast that they are detected by social networks only about 1% of the time, one document says. (WP, 04.16.23)
• Israel simply isn’t willing to give serious help to Ukraine as it battles a Russian invasion. Politico, 04.14.23
• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told NATO officials privately that Canada will never meet the military alliance's defense-spending target, according to a leaked secret Pentagon assessment. The document says "enduring" defense shortfalls led the Canadian Armed Forces to assess in February that it "could not conduct a major operation while simultaneously maintaining its NATO battle group leadership [in Latvia] and aid to Ukraine" - and that the situation was not "likely" to change without a shift in public opinion. (WP, 04.20.23)
• Taiwan is unlikely to thwart Chinese military air superiority in a cross-strait conflict, while tactics such as China's use of civilian ships for military purposes have eroded U.S. spy agencies' ability to detect a pending invasion, according to leaked Pentagon assessments that contain troubling details about the self-governed island's ability to fend off war. (WP, 04.15.23)
• The leaked documents encouraged Ukraine to target massed Russian forces with “dual purpose improved conventional munitions” — a combination of artillery and surface-to-air missiles more commonly known as cluster munitions — to counter assault waves. (WP, 04.21.23)
• Ukraine's military intelligence agency developed plans to conduct covert attacks on Russian forces in Syria using secret Kurdish help, according to a leaked top secret U.S. intelligence document. The plan appeared to be aimed at imposing costs on Russia and its Wagner mercenary group, which is active in Syria. The introduction of a new battlefield also could have forced Moscow to redeploy resources from Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky directed an end to the planning in December. (WP, 04.21.23)
• Last November, Russian forces operating a Pantsir-S1 air defense system fired on a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone flying over eastern Syria, but did not succeed in shooting it down, U.S. Central Command has confirmed. That the incident had occurred at all only emerged recently in one of a number of leaked U.S. military documents. (The Drive, 04.21.23)
• The most damaging files, security analysts say, appear to be the roundups of vetted intelligence material compiled in the CIA Operations Center Intelligence Update. They potentially include information on conversations that the U.S. had intercepted within allied governments. Even more sensitive is the information that appears derived from the U.S. penetration of the Russian government, such as plans by Russian military intelligence to foment an anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian campaign in Africa. (WSJ, 04.17.23)

Reaction to the leak:

• One of the West's biggest concerns about the leaks has been that Russia would scramble to find and seal off the sources of American intelligence. But in the week since the classified documents were posted, that fear has yet to materialize, two senior U.S. officials said: There is no indication that the Kremlin has taken steps to block the United States from penetrating Russia's security and intelligence services. Nor is there any sign yet that Russian commanders have changed their operations on the ground in Ukraine in response to the disclosures, the two U.S. officials said. (NYT, 04.17.23)
• Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said that the number of Ukrainian troops whose lives have been lost is lower than the number of those killed in the earthquake in Turkey. In early March, Turkish authorities reported that the death toll from the earthquake was 45,968. (Meduza, 04.16.23)
• The Chinese government denied reports in western media that the country has exported drones to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as groundless – and accused the U.S. of engaging in the spread of “fake information.” (Bloomberg, 04.20.23)
• Russia expressed disappointment over remarks by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who said Seoul could consider supplying lethal aid to Ukraine if Russia violated the laws of war with a large-scale attack on civilians." (WSJ, 04.19.23)
• The Ukrainian commander overseeing the fight for Bakhmut, Col. Pavlo Palisa, said he was never formally briefed on this U.S. intelligence or the recommendations on how to leverage the fight in Bakhmut for additional advantage. “I’m not such a big fish,” he said, speaking from a basement command center. (WP, 04.21.23)

Origins, proliferation and investigation of the leak:

• 2020: A chatroom gets started The group where the classified documents first surface was housed on Discord, a messaging and live-streaming app that's popular among gamers. The app allows users to set up their own chatrooms, or servers, which can be public or private. (WP, 04.16.23)

• In Summer 2022: The leaks begin Around eight months ago, OG started typing up transcripts of classified documents he brought home from work and posting them to the server, according to his friend and group member. He annotated some, translating arcane government-speak and acronyms so they'd be more readable to the group. (WP, 04.16.23)
• In late 2022: The leaks escalate OG got angry when members of the group largely ignored his posts. Late last year, he told the group that the transcriptions took hours and threatened to stop posting if members wouldn't pay more attention. To feed the members' interest, he started sending photos of the documents themselves. The group took notice. (WP, 04.16.23)
• In January, a member of a group numbering just over a dozen began to post the files on the Discord messaging platform. The documents, which appear to have numbered in the hundreds, stayed among the members of the tiny group on Discord until early March, when another user reposted several dozen of them to another group with a larger audience. From there, at least 10 files migrated to a much bigger community focused on the Minecraft computer game. (WSJ, 04.17.23)
• On Feb. 28, 2028: The documents start spreading ... For weeks, nobody on Thug Shaker Central showed interest in sharing the documents outside the group. But in late February, a teenager posted dozens of them on a Discord server affiliated with a well-known YouTuber, wow_mao. They included papers detailing Ukraine's defenses and offering insights into how far U.S. intelligence had penetrated Russia's military leadership. (WP, 04.16.23)
• On March 4: The documents are shared more widely From there, the documents proliferated across more Discord servers, accessible to thousands of people. (WP, 04.16.23)
• On March 4, 10 documents were shared on Minecraft Earth Map, a server devoted to the popular video game. Thousands more people could see them. (WP, 04.16.23)

• On April 5, the Donbass Devushka Telegram account posted four of the allegedly leaked classified documents to its 65,000 followers, according to a screenshot seen by The Wall Street Journal. That led several large Russian social-media accounts to pick up on the documents, after which the Pentagon launched an investigation. The person who hosted podcasts as Donbass Devushka and oversees these accounts is a Washington-state-based former U.S. enlisted aviation electronics technician whose real name is Sarah Bils (WSJ, 04.17.23, WSJ, 04.17.23)

• On April 5: Classified materials hit social media Leaked documents landed on social media the first week of April. Classified assessments of the war in Ukraine were posted to Russian channels on the messaging service Telegram on April 5. They also appeared on the far-right message board 4chan. (WP, 04.16.23)
• On April 6: OG shuts down the server. Around this time the Pentagon became aware that secret military documents were circulating online - weeks after they started spreading. (WP, 04.16.23)
• On April 6, OG shut down the Thug Shaker Central server, then set up another to communicate with the group. On the same day, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was investigating. (WP, 04.16.23)

• On April 13: Jack Teixeira is arrested and then charged with the leaks. F.B.I. was able to identify Airman Teixeira after learning his user name on what it called “Social Media Platform 1” from an associate and obtaining records from the company showing that it was tied to an account he created using his real name and address in North Dighton, Mass. (NYT, 03.14.23)
  •  Why did Jack Teixeira have a top-secret security clearance? In his role as a "Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman," Teixeira managed computers and communications systems, a function similar to providing tech support. To do that job, he had maintained a top-secret clearance since 2021. That a 21-year-old with so little authority could have access to a such a vast trove of top secret information might surprise the general public, but people who have worked in the intelligence world say untold thousands of troops and government civilians have access to top secret materials, including many young, inexperienced workers the military relies on to process the monumental amount of intelligence it collects. (WP, 04.15.23, (NYT, 04.13.23)
• “Although certain information has been posted on various social media sites, there is good cause to believe that additional, highly sensitive documents containing U.S. national defense information will be found" by investigators, according to Victoria Horne, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (BG, 04.17.24)

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for "effective security guarantees for Ukraine" immediately, even as rescue work continues following a Russian air strike in the Donetsk region city of Slovyansk that left at least 11 civilians dead. (RFE/RL, 04.16.23)
• An interview with two former Wagner Group fighters on their treatment of Ukrainian children and other civilians and prisoners of war further highlights how Wagner has institutionalized systematic brutality as part of its fundamental modus operandi. One Wagner fighter, Azamat Yaldarov emphasized in an interview with Gulagu.net that Prigozhin gave the order for Wagner fighters to ”eliminate” everyone in Soledar, and that Yaldarov was specifically ordered to kill children. (ISW, 04.17.23)
• Russia and Ukraine completed a prisoner exchange that resulted in the return of 130 Ukrainian prisoners, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram on Sunday. Earlier in the week, 106 Russian prisoners were swapped for 100 Ukrainians, the two governments reported. (RFE/RL, 04.16.23)
• Survivors of Russia’s occupation of parts of Ukraine told the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the atrocities they had endured — including torture, mock execution and the forced separation of children — in powerful detail on Wednesday, at a hearing intended to keep the spotlight on Russian war crimes. (NYT, 04.20.23)
• A photo of a wounded pregnant woman being evacuated after a Russian strike on a maternity hospital in March last year has been named the World Press Photo of the Year award. Associated Press photographer Evgeniy Maloletka took the photo during the Russian attack on the port city of Mariupol just weeks after the invasion began. The subject of the photo, 32-year-old Iryna Kalinina died of her injures shortly after giving birth to her stillborn baby, Miron, named for the word for "peace." (WP, 04.21.23)
• The military commandant of Balakliia, a key figure in Russia’s six-month occupation of the eastern Ukrainian town was Valery Buslov, a 46-year-old military police Lieutenant Colonel. (Reuters, 04.20.23)
• The number of temporary protection-status permits issued to Ukrainians in the European Union dropped in most member states in February. EU countries had issued over the course of 2022 more than 4 million permits to Ukrainian nationals, the bloc's statistics institute, Eurostat, said. Reuters, 04.17.23)
• Ukraine’s Black Sea crop shipments resumed on Wednesday, following another brief halt that sparked fresh worries about future cargoes from the key exporter. Kyiv has blamed the disruption to the initiative — which has been crucial for bringing down global food-commodity costs from records reached after Russia’s invasion — on Moscow. (Bloomberg, 04.19.23)
• The European Union is proposing temporary restrictions on Ukrainian food exports to five member states after some of those countries had moved unilaterally to block grain and other commodities from Ukraine. The unusual move is part of an E.U. effort to alleviate discontent over a glut of Ukrainian grain that is testing the bloc’s unity in opposition to Russia’s invasion. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia recently said that they would block imports of Ukrainian grain, citing pressure on domestic farmers, bans that the European Union criticized as “unacceptable.” (NYT, 04.20.23, FT, 04.20.23, Reuters, 04.16.23)
  • Hungary's government has widened its temporary ban on the imports of Ukrainian agricultural products to include honey, wine, bread, sugar, and a range of meat and vegetable products. (AFP, 04.19.23)
  • Hungary’s grain lobby criticized a government ban on agricultural imports from Ukraine, saying it would lead to shortages and undermine efforts to curb the European Union’s highest inflation rate. The country needs to import about 700,000 tons of feed corn after a poor harvest last year and eastern neighbor Ukraine would be the cheapest supplier (Bloomberg, 04.21.23)
  • Bulgaria on Wednesday announced that it will temporarily ban the import of grain, milk, meat, and other food products from Ukraine, following in the footsteps of fellow European Union member states Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
  • Romania says it will hold off on a ban on Ukrainian grain imports as it awaits a decision from the European Union on enforcing proposed measures aimed at easing a glut that has flooded Eastern Europe from Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.21.23)

Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

· In the past month of fighting Russian forces have gained 12 square miles of Ukrainian territory, according to Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. (Belfer Russia-Ukraine War Task Force, 04.18.23)

• On April 15: Intense fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces raged in the devastated town of Bakhmut Serhiy Cherevatiy, the spokesman for the eastern military command, described the fighting in the city center as "unprecedented," adding there had been 17 clashes with Russian troops over the past 24 hours. (RFE/RL, 04.15.23)
  • The Ukrainian commander overseeing the fight for Bakhmut, Col. Pavlo Palisa, said Palisa said ammunition shortages have repeatedly forced his troops inside Bakhmut to withdraw from their positions. “We don’t have enough rounds to engage them,” he said, “and I recognize we are paying with the lives of our soldiers.” (WP, 04.21.23)
  • Street-to-street fighting in Bakhmut has become so intense over the past month that many Ukrainian units need to be rotated out of the city after just two weeks. (WP, 04.21.23)
• On April 15: Russia claimed advances on the northern and southern outskirts of Ukraine's embattled city of Bakhmut. (MT/AFP, 04.15.23

• On April 17:
  • Russia said that it had repelled an "illegal" Ukrainian attempt to infiltrate Russian territory in the southern border region of Bryansk, 11 days after reporting a similar incident. (MT/AFP, 04.17.23)
  • Russian forces launched 25 missile strikes from S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems and 42 air strikes on the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region and the town of Snihurivka in the Mykolayiv region, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in its daily report. (RFE/RL, 04.17.23)

• On April 18:
  •  Russia's Defense Ministry claimed that its forces had captured new territory in Bakhmut, including three new urban quarters in the northern, central, and southern parts of the city. The U.K.'s Defense Ministry said Russia was likely redeploying forces to Bakhmut from the front lines around the city of Donetsk. (WSJ, 04.18.23)
  • Putin made a secretive visit to the headquarters of his troops in the partially occupied Kherson region of southern Ukraine. He also made a stop in the occupied eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk (WP, 04.18.23)
  • Zelensky visited troops in the eastern town of Avdiivka, which has been on the front line with Russian forces since an earlier phase of the conflict that began in 2014. "Our army has already broken the enemy's plans to break through the defenses and deepen (its incursion) in the east," said Mr. Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who accompanied him there. (WSJ, 04.18.23)
• On April 19 Russia launched a drone attack on Ukraine's southern port city of Odesa early Wednesday but there were no reports of casualties, authorities said. "At night, the enemy carried out an attack by UAVs of the Shahed-136 type on the Odesa region," Yuriy Kruk, head of the Odesa district military administration, said in a statement on Telegram. Kruk said Ukraine's air defenses had destroyed most of the attacking drones but some civilian infrastructure had been hit. (MT/AFP, 04.19.23)
• On April 20:
  • The general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Russia had launched 26 drones over the past day, of which 21 were shot down. The target wasn't clear, but the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region's administration said six drones had been intercepted over the region.. (WSJ, 04.20.23)
  • There were no significant gains made by Russian forces in the Bakhmut area, according to Russian telegram channel “Rybar,” edited by an ex-officer of the Russian defense ministry. (RM, 04.20.23)
• On April 21:
  • Yevgeny Prigozhin was quoted by another pro-war Russian telegram channel “Dva Mayora” as saying that it was “too early” to announce that the Ukrainian forces inside Bakhmut had been encircled, contrary to claims made by an advisor to the head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic. Another pro-war Russian Telegram channel “Starshe Eddy” also denied that the encirclement had been completed (RM, 04.21.23)
  • Pro-war Russian telegram channel “WarGonzo” claimed that Russian forces had made some gains in the northern part of Bakhmut, but RM could not find confirmation of this claim in open sources. At the same time, the Ukrainian OSINT Telegram channel “DeepStateUA” acknowledged minor Russian gains along Heolohiv Lane and Hryhoriya Skovorody Lane in Bakhmut on Thursday. (RM, 04.21.23)
  • The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched up to 12 Iranian-made Shahed attack drones from the Bryansk region bordering Ukraine to target Kyiv “After a 25-day lull” It added that eight of the drones were destroyed. (DW, 04.21.23)
•  “Our enemy is using jamming really successfully,” The Ukrainian commander overseeing the fight for Bakhmut, Col. Pavlo Palisa, said, referring to measures that block access to GPS signals. “If we don’t have eyes in the air we can’t engage the enemy by artillery fire. Why it’s important is because we don’t have many artillery rounds. So our artillery fire must be precise,” Palisa said Ukraine has also learned from Russian tactics, most recently employing equipment that masks a drone’s “home point” or coordinates that would reveal the location of the unit operating the device. “If they find our drones, it will give them information that the home point of the drone is somewhere in Australia,” he said. (WP, 04.21.23)
• An open-source project run jointly by the BBC and the Mediazona website has confirmed the deaths of 20,451 Russian servicemen since Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, including 1,820 killed in the past two weeks. (RFE/RL, 04.16.23)
  • One-third (33%) of these KIAs had been civilians before the invasion – volunteers, conscripts, prisoners and newly recruited members of Wagner PMC, according to BBC journalist Olga Ivshina’s account of BBC’s and Mediazona’s findings. The number of recruited prisoners who could be identified by name totaled 3,080. In addition, Russia has lost more than 3,230 elite specialists (SOF soldiers, paratroopers, marines, etc.) since the beginning of the war, while 134 military pilots were among the KIA, according to the findings. Large industrial regions in the Urals report most of the Russian losses. (RM, 04.17.23)
• A graveyard containing scores of dead fighters from Russia’s Wagner mercenary outfit has been discovered in the Siberian region of Irkutsk. The previously unreported 53 graves are in a corner of Aleksandrovsky cemetery some 11 kilometers from regional capital Irkutsk. (MT/AFP, 04.18.23)
• The Molfar OSINT agency analyzed all known facts of the destruction of electronic warfare systems (EWS) and radars of the Russian army from February 2022 to April 2023 to identify 133 incidents of the destruction, damage or capture of electronic warfare systems and radars of the Russian army. (Molfar, 04.14.23)
• A Russian warplane accidentally fired on a city near the border with Ukraine, wounding at least three people, according to state-run media. A discharge of ordinance occurred Thursday evening as a Sukhoi Su-34 plane flew over the city of Belgorod, TASS reported, citing the Defense Ministry. The ensuing explosion left a 20-meter-wide (66-feet) crater on a residential street in the city center. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23
• Ukraine wants to push south and retake the strategic city of Melitopol, a logistics hub for Russian forces with a prewar population of around 150,000 that serves as a key section of the land bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea. Liberating the city would undermine Moscow’s ability to reinforce its army and deal a humiliating blow to the Kremlin. It would also slice the territory under Russia’s control in two. (FT, 04.20.23)
  • Aged from their 20s to their 60s, the former lawyers, interpreters, programmers and retired factory workers are now part of Ukraine’s big push to train up less experienced and completely new troops for its much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russia’s occupying forces. The government expects around 40,000 soldiers to fill out their ranks. (FT, 04.20.23) That, according to FT, Ukraine recruits and trains men in their 60s for the counter-offensive probably indicates considerable shrinking of the recruitment pool.
• Kyiv said Wednesday it had received the first shipments of the American-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system and deployed light-armored fighting vehicles sent by France as it prepares for a major counter-offensive against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. (MT/AFP, 04.19.23)
• Ukraine secured promises of $5 billion in additional funding to support its ongoing fight against Russia amid "fruitful meetings" in Washington this week, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters on April 13 (Reuters, 04.14.23)
• Ukraine will plead for urgent shipments of surface-to-air missiles at a meeting of its western allies this week, fearful that an acute shortage could allow Russia to launch widespread bombing attacks. Defense officials from about 50 nations providing support to Ukraine will meet at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, on Friday for a regular meeting of a group formed to co-ordinate military supplies. (FT, 04.19.23)
• The United States is sending Ukraine about $325 million in additional military aid, including an enormous amount of artillery rounds and ammunition, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The aid resembles other recent weapons packages that sent Ukraine rockets for howitzers and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
• Ukrainian troops will begin training on American M1 Abrams tanks in Germany in the next few weeks, U.S. defense officials say, in what would be a major step in arming Kyiv in its efforts to seize back territory from Russia. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III during remarks on Friday at U.S.-led talks with top defense officials from more than 40 nations, a collective known as the Ukraine Contact Group, said that the continued deliveries of weapons systems (NYT, 04.21.23)
  • Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said he "had a fruitful bilateral meeting with our American counterparts" Friday, as the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group got underway at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. He tweeted his thanks to both Defense Secretary Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "for their leadership in bolstering the anti-Kremlin coalition." (WP, 04.21.23)
• "This is a war of choice by Putin," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in an interview. "We are not in a war with Russia, and we won't be in a war with Russia. … It was Russia's choice to begin with." (WP, 04.18.23)
• "I thought they would do better at combined arms maneuver than they did," Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview, speaking of the early days of the invasion. "I don't want to underestimate, but it does give me more confidence. The Russian military is not as good as we previously assessed," he said. (WP, 04.18.23)
• "We don't have a country on wartime mobilization for industry," Gen. Milley said in an interview. "The lesson really is sustainment rates. What does that mean to us? We are very deliberately reevaluating our own stockage levels and industrial base relative to the war plans we have on the books for various contingencies," Milley said. (WP, 04.18.23)
• "Unlike Ukrainian forces — who are highly motivated to fight for their country, their freedom, their democracy and their way of life — the Russians lack leadership, and they lack will,” Gen. Milley said on April 21. (Defense.gov, 04.21.23)
• The U.S. intelligence agency that develops and buys spy satellites plans a fourfold increase by 2033 in orbiting spacecraft like those now being used to monitor Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (Bloomberg, 04.20.23)
• The Group of Seven nations vowed to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” in its fight against Russian forces. The nations reiterated support for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace plan, while slamming Russia’s “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.” (Bloomberg, 04.18.23)
• Canada announced a new military package for Kyiv during the Friday meeting. The military assistance, worth around $29 million, includes sniper rifles and ammunition and radios, but most of the money is destined for a NATO fund for Ukraine. (WP, 04.21.23)
• Denmark and the Netherlands will jointly donate 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, the two countries said on Thursday. (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)
• Estonia on Thursday announced a new package of aid for Ukraine that includes 155-millimeter artillery ammunition. (dpa, 04.20.23)
• A landmark pledge by the EU to pool cash for joint production of ammunition was supposed to help Ukraine fight a war. Instead, EU member state diplomats are the ones in conflict. EU countries have fought over the details of that promise. On one side, France is leading the “Buy European” approach. On the other, Poland has championed a demand to include factories outside the EU. (FT, 04.23.23)

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

• Five of the world’s major nations supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion are forming a working alliance to try to end Russia’s expanding sales of nuclear fuel around the world, according to a statement from the British government. The announcement of the move by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France and Canada came after an agreement was reached over the weekend by energy ministers at a Group of 7 meeting in Sapporo, Japan. (NYT, 04.17.23)
• The G7 is discussing whether to impose an outright ban on most exports to Russia over its war against Ukraine, according to Bloomberg. The approach, which is reportedly being discussed by G7 diplomatic envoys ahead of the group’s summit in May, would flip the existing sanctions regime around, with all exports banned unless exempted, “people familiar with the matter” told the news agency this week. Medications and agricultural products — including food — would probably remain exempted from this punitive measure against Russia, which imports about $66 billion worth of goods from EU alone annually. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23, RM, 04.21.23)
• After ten packages of sanctions against Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine February last year, the EU may well have reached the bottom of the barrel. According to officials working on the bloc’s future sanctions, additional actions are likely to be limited to expanding the list of individuals subject to asset freezes and travel bans (currently at almost 1,500 people and more than 200 entities), and steps to tighten up existing measures by closing loopholes. (FT, 04.20.23)
• The U.S. Justice Department is looking for new ways to cut off Russian sanctions evasion by focusing on overseas investment advisers, hedge funds, law firms and private equity managers that have previously escaped scrutiny. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23)
• Congress recently gave the Justice Department authority to transfer the proceeds of assets seized because of sanctions violations to Ukraine, though that doesn’t extend to assets, such as airplanes, restrained under export control violations. About $5.4 million in funds has been authorized for transfer. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23)
• The United States has made no determination the Russian private military Wagner Group is a "foreign terrorist organization," despite its ongoing actions in Ukraine, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday. (Reuters, 04.20.23)
• Adjusting for exchange rate movements, the dollar has lost about 11% of its market share since 2016 and double that amount since 2008, according to Stephen Jen and his Eurizon SLJ Capital Ltd. colleague Joana Freire. “The dollar suffered a stunning collapse in 2022 in its market share as a reserve currency, presumably due to its muscular use of sanctions,” Jen and Freire wrote. “Exceptional actions taken by the U.S. and its allies against Russia have startled large reserve-holding countries,” most of which are emerging economies from the so-called Global South, they said. (Bloomberg, 04.18.23)
• Switzerland says it is adding the Russian private mercenary group Wagner and the RIA FAN news agency to its sanctions list. (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)

• A Swiss commodity trader’s Abu Dhabi subsidiary has been able to buy tens of millions of dollars of Russian gold despite a ban on Swiss entities undertaking such activity, the latest evidence of a gap in western sanctions against Moscow. provision in Swiss law allows its companies’ overseas subsidiaries to trade Russian commodities as long as they are “legally independent.” (FT, 04.17.23)

• The Kyiv School of Economics, which follows 3,141 foreign companies through its Leave Russia project, reports that only 211 companies have exited — fewer than 7% — while 468 have announced plans to leave. But 1,228 are staying, and more than 1,200, despite pausing or scaling back, are still doing business or keeping their options open, according to the project director, Andrii Onopriienko. Onopriienko said the public companies his group is tracking paid taxes of $24 billion to Russia in 2020 and generated revenue of more than $300 billion that year. (WP, 04.07.23)
  • Russia has another surprise for the foreign companies preparing to pull out of the country with a plan for a new levy on top of demanding they sell at a 50% discount and get government permission to leave. A windfall tax being rolled out in Russia will also apply to those lining up an exit deal. There will be no exemption because the budget needs the money (Bloomberg, 04.20.23)
    • A series of asset sales by firms from countries opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have helped weaken the ruble by 9% against the dollar this year, the worst performance among emerging-market currencies after the Argentine peso. (Bloomberg, 04.17.23)

• Western technology goods are winding up in Russian missiles, raising questions about the efficacy of sanctions. Late last month, American and European Union officials noted a surge in chips and other electronic components being sold to Russia through Armenia, Kazakhstan and other countries. Russia’s chip imports crept up, particularly from China and Hong Kong. Imports between October and January were 50% or more of median prewar levels each month. (NYT, 04.18.23)
• Swedish vodka brand Absolut will halt its exports to Russia, reversing an earlier decision to restart shipments despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago. (FT, 04.18.23)
• Poland has begun building a state-of-the-art electronic barrier at its land border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to monitor and counteract any illegal activity. (AP, 04.18.23)
• The Kyiv city council plans to terminate the land lease agreement with the Russian Embassy amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)
• On Saturday Lithuania plans to disconnect its power grid from Russia’s to gauge the Baltic country’s ability to sever its last remaining energy link to Moscow. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23)
• Cypriot corporate service provider MeritServus helped Konstantin Malofeev, an oligarch sanctioned for his support of Russian-backed separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, transfer debt worth tens of millions of dollars even after he was blacklisted, leaked documents show. (OCCRP, 04.18.23)
• Albania has decided to cancel the visa-free regime for Russian citizens. (Meduza, 04.21.23)
• A Moscow court on Friday ordered the arrest of Christo Grozev, a top investigative journalist with open-source group Bellingcat (MT/AFP, 04.21.23)
• Yandex has bought out Uber's remaining share in their joint business, Yandex.Taxi, for just over $700 million. Regulators have approved the deal, according to Yandex, as reported by Forbes. (Meduza, 04.21.23)
• Lithuanian lawmakers on Thursday reiterated their move to impose softer restrictions on Belarusian citizens and place stricter limits on Russians, overriding a bid by President Gitanas Nauseda to keep the restrictions the same for citizens of both countries. (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)

Ukraine-related negotiations:

• French President Emmanuel Macron plans to approach China with a plan that he believes could potentially lead to talks between Russia and Ukraine. Macron has tasked his foreign policy adviser Emmanuel Bonne to work with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, to establish a framework that could be used as a basis for future negotiations, according to people familiar with the plans. (Bloomberg, 04.18.23)
  • “Macron is dealing with exactly what a Western leader should not be dealing with,” Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Estonia’s parliament, told the public broadcaster ERR Wednesday. “Where does he get the fact that China can be trusted as an honest mediator in the current situation?” (Bloomberg, 04.20.23)
  • Ukraine’s de facto presidential spokesman, Mikhail Podolyak, said in a television interview in response to the Bloomberg story that Kyiv couldn’t envisage any compromise that preserved the status quo with regards to territory Russia has occupied. “This is not a peace plan — it’s a way of Ukraine’s capitulation.” (Bloomberg, 04.20.23)
• President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil met in Beijing on Friday with Xi Jinping, and the two leaders declared in a joint statement that negotiation was “the only viable way out of the crisis in Ukraine.” In the statement, they avoided the words “invasion” or “war” and offered few specifics about how to bring Russia or Ukraine to the table after more than a year of war. While in Beijing Lula da Silva told reporters it was “important that the U.S. stops encouraging war and starts talking about peace.” His government then invited Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the South American country, where Brazil Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira criticized sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies. (NYT, 04.13.23, Bloomberg, 04.18.23)
  • It is too early to make any kind of judgment about da Silva’s initiative on a Ukrainian settlement, as it is necessary to understand its nuances first; Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will have an opportunity to clear everything up during his visit to Brasilia, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. (TASS, 04.19.23)
  • The White House has sharply criticized Brazil after its president accused the United States of encouraging the war in Ukraine, saying he was "parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda without looking at the facts." (RFE/RL, 04.17.23)
  • .Larry Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary, spoke of “troubling” signs that America was losing global influence. He added that someone from a developing country had told him: “What we get from China is an airport. What we get from America is a lecture.” (FT, 04.17.23)
• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has cast doubt on efforts to bring about peace in his country's war with Russia, saying during a visit to Iraq that Moscow "wants war." Kuleba’s visit to Baghdad comes after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the Iraqi capital in February. (AFP, 04.17.23)
• G7 officials said on Monday there was an “open exchange of views” in the talks on the approach to the Ukrainian conflict, including on “future prospects” for bringing the war to an end, which Rishi Sunak has said would eventually be around the negotiating table. (The Guardian, 04.18.23)

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

• NATO’s frontier states, such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, insist are no longer willing to put up with risk of even temporary Russian occupation, given the alleged atrocities by the Russian forces in areas they occupied in Ukraine. This follows from NYT’s exploration of how the Russian-Ukrainian war is revolutionizing NATO’s military strategy. To prevent such an occupation, NATO is “rapidly moving” from deterrence by retaliation to deterrence by denial, which requires more troops to based permanently along the Russian border, more integration of American and allied war plans, more military spending and more detailed requirements for allies to have specific kinds of forces and equipment to fight, if necessary, in pre-assigned places, according to NYT. (NYT, 04.17.23)

• In Kyiv, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine's “rightful place” is in NATO. The topic of Ukraine’s NATO membership and security guarantees will be “high on the agenda” at July's NATO summit, he said. “Ukraine’s future is in NATO. All allies agree on that,” Stoltenberg said. The official said that he expects NATO allies to “agree to further strengthen NATO's package for Ukraine” at the July summit. Stoltenberg added on Friday that the alliance's main focus now is to ensure Ukraine prevails against Russia's unprovoked invasion and that, once the war ends, Kyiv has "the deterrence to prevent new attacks." Stoltenberg and Austin were talking at the start of a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany. (RFE/RL, 04.21.23, CNN, 04.20.23)
  • Zelensky pressed NATO to invite Ukraine to join the military alliance, while also calling for more shipments of fighter jets and long-range weapons during his meeting with Stoltenberg in Kyiv. (MT/AFP, 04.20.23)

• Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said he hoped that objections to Sweden’s NATO accession would be ironed out by midsummer. (NYT, 04.19.23)
• At the next NATO summit this July, a new spending plan will be agreed, with 2% of G.D.P. regarded as a minimum. Given Russia’s difficulties in Ukraine, if major countries spend between 2.5% and 3% of G.D.P. on the military over the next decade, that should be sufficient, a senior NATO official said. (NYT, 04.17.23)
• Finland's border guard on Friday unveiled the first section of a 200-kilometer border fence with Russia being built after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year. Finland joined NATO just a week ago and its 1,300-kilometer border has also doubled the frontier between the U.S.-led military alliance and Russia. (MT/AFP, 04.14.23)
• Russia may have been using civilian ships to prepare sabotage by gathering intelligence in Nordic waters, according to an investigative report by public broadcasters in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The Kremlin denied the report. (Bloomberg, 04.19.23)
• Of the 50 countries that Freedom House counts as “dictatorships,” 35 received military aid from the U.S. government in 2021, according to Matias Spektor’s commentary in FA. (RM, 04.17.23)

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

• President Vladimir Putin praised ties between the Russian and Chinese militaries, underscoring Moscow and Beijing’s strategic relationship as he met with China’s defense minister Li Shangfu on Sunday. (Bloomberg, 04.16.23)
  • Putin told Li that he had discussed military-to-military cooperation with Xi during the latter’s three-day visit to Moscow, the Kremlin reported. “We have also been proactive in our military-to-military relations by regularly sharing actionable insights and cooperating on defense matters. We also hold joint military exercises in various theatres of operation, including in the Far East, Europe, at sea, on land, as well as in the air. I do believe that this constitutes a major track for strengthening the trust-based strategic relationship between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China,” Putin said. (RM. 04.17.23)
  • Li told Putin: “As of late, military and military-technical cooperation between Russia and China is developing very well. This is making a major contribution to maintaining global and regional security,” according to the Kremlin. “There are plans to implement your agreements with President of China Xi Jinping, reached during his March visit to Moscow. … This is my first foreign visit since I became Defense Minister of China. I specially chose Russia, so as to emphasize the special nature and strategic significance of our bilateral relations,” he said. (RM, 04.17.23)
    • Bloomberg reported, citing Chinese company NetEase Inc.’s short-video platform that Li called Putin “an extraordinary state leader” and cited Putin’s “important contributions to promoting world peace and development,” Kremlin’s account of the meeting contains no such citations, however. Rather Li told Putin that “peace is in great demand, peaceful relations between countries are in great demand,” according to Kremlin’s account of Li’s remarks. (RM, 04.18.23)
  • In their meeting this week, Li and Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu vowed to develop more cooperation between their military theater commands, various forces and academic institutions. They also reiterated that both sides would “firmly support” each other to defend their “core interests, primarily on sovereignty, territorial integrity, security and development issues,” as well as support each other’s opposition to “external interference on domestic affairs.” The two ministers agreed to maintain close, high-level communications. (Bloomberg, 04.19.23)
    • Li said during his meeting with Shoigu that "the armed forces of Russia and China will certainly carefully implement the agreements reached by the heads of state and promote military and military-technical cooperation and military trade between Russia and China. We will definitely take them to the next level.” (TASS, 04.18.23)
    • Describing Li’s April 16-19 visit, Tan Kefei, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense, said on Wednesday “the sides reached consensus on many issues and achieved fruitful results.” The sides also discussed the implementation of global initiatives in security and ensuring peace in the world, according to Tan. (TASS, 04.19.23)
    • Members of the Chinese delegation visited several facilities at Russia’s National Defense Command Center. (TASS, 04.19.23)
    • The military delegations of Russia and China have signed a memorandum of understanding between the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the National Defense Academy of the Chinese People’s Liberation. The number of Chinese students attending the Military Academy of the General Staff of Russia will increase, the Russian Defense Ministry said. This autumn, more than 20 senior officers from China will begin their higher academic courses in Russia. (NVO, 04.17.23, TASS, 04.19.23)
• China intends to buy two Il-76 aircraft from Russia with water discharge gear used to fight fires, Russian Minister of Emergencies Alexander Kurenkov told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of heads of emergency departments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. (TASS, 04.21.23)
• LNG supplies from Russia to China increased by 67.7% in January-March 2023 in annual terms to 1.62 million tons, the General Administration of Customs of China reported on Friday. In value terms, China’s LNG imports from Russia soared by 80.8% in the reporting period to over $1.32 billion (TASS, 04.21.23)
• China’s slice of global gross domestic product expansion is expected to represent 22.6% of total world growth through 2028, according to Bloomberg calculations using data the fund released in its World Economic Outlook released last week. India follows at 12.9%, while the U.S. will contribute 11.3%. Brazil, Russia, India and China — known by the acronym BRIC — are expected to add almost 40% of the world’s growth through 2028. (Bloomberg, 04.17.23)
  • India has overtaken China as the most populous country in the world, according to the United Nations. With roughly 2.4% of the world’s land mass, India is now home to nearly a fifth of humanity — over 1.4 billion people, or more than the entire population of the Americas or Africa or Europe. (Bloomberg, 04.19.23)
• Bangladesh is to make its payments to Russia for the Rooppur nuclear power plant construction in Chinese yuan as a result of sanctions stopping payments in U.S. dollars. (WNN, 04.18.23)
• A previously unreported assessment from inside Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media suggests that some senior Russian officials are worried that Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. could come to dominate the Russian market and may pose a risk to the country’s information security and networks. The report, drafted in the summer of 2022, highlights chips, network devices and electronics as areas of particular vulnerability. (Bloomberg, 04.19.23)
• Intelligence gathered by Ukrainian experts from the battlefield and shared with Reuters stated that Chinese-made components were found in a navigation system in Orlan aerial drones that had previously used a Swiss system. (Reuters, 04.17.23)
• Russia and China pose the greatest threats to the national security of the Netherlands, according to Dutch intelligence agency. (Bloomberg, 04.18.23)
•  On her first visit to Beijing, Germany’s Annalena Baerbock and China’s Qin Gang traded sharp words in Beijing on Friday, with Germany’s top diplomat demanding China do more to urge Russia to stop its invasion of Ukraine and her Chinese counterpart quipping that his country did not need a “teacher from the West.” (NYT, 04.14.23)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

• Western leaders are preparing for Vladimir Putin to use “whatever tools he’s got left” including nuclear threats and cyber-attacks in response to an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russia. British officials at the G7 foreign ministers’ summit in Japan said they were expecting Russia to retaliate and “must be prepared” for extreme tactics as it attempted to hold on to Ukrainian territory. Russia’s nuclear rhetoric has united the G7 ministers, who issued a statement after their two-hour meeting on Monday condemning the threats as “unacceptable” and criticizing Putin’s plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. (The Guardian, 04.18.23)
• The United States and its NATO allies must remain alert for signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon in a "managed" escalation of his war in Ukraine, a U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman issued the warning during an annual NATO arms-control conference in Washington. "We have all watched and worried that Vladimir Putin would use what he considers a nonstrategic tactical nuclear weapon or use some demonstration effect to escalate, but in a managed-risk escalation," Sherman said. "It is very critical to remain watchful of this." (Reuters, 04.19.23)
• On Capitol Hill, there is discussion of whether the coming expansion of China’s arsenal requires an entirely new approach. Some Republicans have begun talking about expanding the nuclear arsenal after New START expires, so that it could match a combined Russian-Chinese force, used in a coordinated way against the United States. Others call that an overreaction. “I think it is insane to think that we will be fighting two nuclear wars at the same time,” said Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor who tracks nuclear weapons. (NYT, 04.19.23)
• Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote via his Telegram channel on Friday: “Britain was, is and will remain our eternal enemy. So it will be so long as this insolent and disgustingly damp island of theirs does not sink into the depths of the sea from the waves created by the newest Russian weapons system.” (RM, 04.21.23)

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI:

• Capita, one of Britain’s biggest outsourcing companies, is investigating whether sensitive data had been stolen from its systems after a Russian-speaking cyber gang posted a cache of documents online, the Telegraph reported. (Bloomberg, 04.17.23)
• “Wagner-like” Russian hacker groups are seeking to attack and damage critical British infrastructure, the government has warned, as it urged businesses to strengthen their cyber defenses. Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden will warn in a speech on Wednesday that the primary motive of these emerging threats is “to disrupt or destroy” and are unlikely to show the same restraint as Russia’s usual intelligence-linked cyber services. (FT, 04.17.23)
• When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, cyber attacks targeting EU countries accounted for 9.8% of the global total. That jumped to 46.5% by September, according to a report by French industrial group Thales. (FT, 04.18.23)
• The number of data breaches in Russia surged last year and is on course to increase further in 2023, the RBC news website reported Monday, citing data from cyber-security firms. According to Group-IB, 1.4 billion pieces of data such as names, phones, addresses and birthdays appeared online in 2022. That marks a 42-fold increase from the 33 million pieces of data leaked the previous year. (MT/AFP, 04.17.23)
• Vlad Kliatchko, a computer engineer originally from Russia, was named chief product officer, in charge of all of Bloomberg’s technology, engineering and data operations. (FT, 04.20.23)

Energy exports from CIS:

• Russian oil exports to the U.A.E. more than tripled to a record 60 million barrels last year, according to data-commodity provider Kpler. By contrast, Russian oil exports to Singapore, another large trading hub, only rose 13% to 26 million barrels in 2022, according to Kpler. Russian gas oil now accounts for more than one in 10 barrels of the product stored in Fujairah, the U.A.E.'s main oil-storage hub, second only to Saudi Arabian gas oil, according to Argus Media, a market-data provider. Russia is shipping 100,000 barrels a day to Saudi Arabia, according to Kpler, compared with virtually none before the war. That would equate to more than 36 million barrels annually. (WSJ, 04.17.23)
• Russian companies increased gasoline exports by almost 40% year-on-year to 1.8 million tons in the first three and a half months of this year. (Kommersant, 04.16.23)
• G7 countries have pledged to accelerate a gradual phaseout of fossil fuels and the shift towards renewable energy. The G7 committed “to accelerate the phaseout of unabated fossil fuels so as to achieve net zero in energy systems by 2050.” (FT, 04.16.23)No significant developments.
• The U.S. Treasury Department has published a warning to U.S. companies about possible evasion of a price cap on exported Russian oil, pointing specifically to oil exported through the Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline and ports in eastern Russia. (RFE/RL, 04.17.23)
• India’s imports of Russian oil hit a record of 1.65 million barrels a day in March, with refiners lapping up discounted barrels, according to Vortexa Ltd. (Bloomberg, 04.20.23
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman talked about OPEC+ cooperation by phone, the Kremlin said. The two leaders expressed “satisfaction with the level of coordination within OPEC+ in order to ensure the stability of global oil market,” according to a statement on Friday. The phone call was initiated by Saudi Arabia. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23)
• EUs storage totaled 55.7% of capacity at the start of the month according to the industry body Gas Infrastructure Europe — the highest level for early April since at least 2011. The level is around 20%age points above the average for the previous five years and has risen further to 56.5% in the past two weeks. (FT, 04.19.23)
• The EU’s LNG imports from Russia reached 22.1bcm [billion cubic meters] last year, a rise of 39% on 2021, and accounting for 16% of the year’s overall seaborne imports, according to data from Refinitiv. (FT, 04.19.23)
• A Gazprom official told the UN Security Council that at the time of the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines the system contained about 800 million cubic meters of gas, a quarter of Denmark’s annual consumption. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23)

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, in his first letter to his family since being arrested in Russia on an allegation of espionage, said he remains optimistic, looked forward to seeing them and joked about prison food. “I want to say that I am not losing hope," he wrote in a brief, two-page note that his family in Philadelphia received on Friday. "I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good." (WSJ, 04.15.23)
• Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia on espionage charges, has lost his appeal in a Moscow court to be released from pre-trial detention. Lynne Tracy, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, attended Gershkovich’s hearing after visiting him in prison on Monday. Tracy said she found Gershkovich "in good health." (FT, 04.18.23, MT/AFP, 04.17.23)
  • A court in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg has ordered two months of detention for a local activist who was interviewed by Gershkovich and helped the jailed Wall Street Journal reporter before the American journalist was arrested on espionage charges. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
  • More than 40 countries have signed on to a statement criticizing Russia over the detention of Gershkovich and protesting Russia's moves to intimidate the media. (WSJ, 04.17.23)
• A federal grand jury in the U.S. state of Florida has indicted four U.S. citizens and three Russian nationals over allegations that they took part in a “malign campaign” to influence U.S. voters. The U.S. Justice Department announced the indictment on Tuesday, saying the seven individuals had worked in conjunction with FSB to conduct the campaign. (RFE/RL, 04.18.23)

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

• The total fortune of Russia’s billionaires grew from $353 billion to $505 billion in the past year, according to Forbes’ latest list of world’s richest, and their number increased by 22 to total 115 even though five billionaires renounced their Russian citizenship, according to the Russian edition of Forbes. This increase in Russians' wealth bucked a global trend: the fortune of world’s richest has decreased by $500 billion since 2022. Andrey Melnichenko, the founder of Eurochem and SUEK, took first place in the Russian Forbes list for the first time - his fortune more than doubled over the year, to $ 25.2 billion (RM, 04.20.23)
  • New York again topped the list of the world’s wealthiest cities, boasting some 340,000 millionaires last year, according to investment migration firm Henley & Partners. In contrast The number of millionaires calling the Russian capital home plunged 44% from a decade earlier, while St. Petersburg saw a 38% slump. (Bloomberg, 04.18.23)
• Russia's Minister of Agriculture, Dmitry Patrushev, has predicted that the country's grain harvest in 2023 could exceed 123 million tons, including 78 million tons of wheat, significantly less than last year’s all-time record harvest. Last year’s harvest of 153 million tons of grain, including 104.2 million tons of wheat, according to RosStat, smashed all records (BNE, 04.20.23)
• The way Russians gather information/news has remained practically unchanged since autumn of last year, according to the Levada Center. In April, 64% of respondents said television was the main source of news. As of October 2022, internet publications, social networks and Telegram channels account for the sources of news for 41%, 33%, and 19% of respondents news intakes, respectively. (Levada, 04.20.23)
• A Levada Center survey conducted between March 23-29, 2023, revealed two-thirds of Russians regularly use social networks. Four-fifths of respondents use instant messengers. The share of daily internet users continues to slowly increase: 65% in November 2019, 68% in March 2022, 70% in April 2022 and 72% in March this year, according to Levada. (RM, 04.18.23)
• A Russian opposition activist who also holds British citizenship has been jailed for 25 years for treason and “discrediting” the armed forces after criticizing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The sentence handed down to Vladimir Kara-Murza, who likened his case to the show trials of the Stalin era, is the toughest to be imposed on a political opponent of Vladimir Putin since the start of the war, and signals a stark warning to other Kremlin critics. (FT, 04.17.23)
  • The United Kingdom has sanctioned five Russians after the sentencing to 25 years in prison earlier this week of Kara-Murza who holds British citizenship. (RFE/RL, 04.21.23)
  • Moscow said on Tuesday it had summoned the U.S., British, and Canadian ambassadors for "gross interference" in Russia's domestic affairs. The envoys, who a day earlier denounced a 25-year-sentence against Kara-Murza. (AFP, 04.18.23)
  • The European Parliament has passed a resolution condemning the "politically motivated conviction" of Kara-Murza and the continued imprisonment of opposition politician Alexei Navalny. (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)
• Navalny is severely ill and his condition is worsening rapidly, according to a key member of his team who raised the possibility that the politician may be being poisoned. Navalny was suffering from stomach pains and had lost more than 8kg in body weight in just over two weeks, Ruslan Shaveddinov, a member of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said in a phone call on Friday. (FT, 04.14.23)
  • Navalny may face a new charge, this time of "disrupting" activities at the correctional colony where he is incarcerated, according to his lawyer Vadim Kobzev. (RFE/RL, 04.18.23)
  • On April 26, the Basmanny Court of Moscow will begin hearing a new criminal case against Navalny. As Navalny's associate Leonid Volkov said, this is a "political case, which retroactively declares all the work of [Navalnys’ Anti-Corruption Foundation] since 2011 as extremism, and Navalny will be sentenced to 35 years." (Meduza, 04.21.23)
• The Moscow City Court dismissed Wednesday an appeal against jailed Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin’s eight-and-a-half prison sentence handed down last year under Russia’s wartime censorship laws. (MT/AFP, 04.19.23)
  • Russian lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, who has defended noted opposition figures such as jailed politicians Kara-Murza and Yashin, as well as the late Boris Nemtsov, has fled Russia fearing for his safety. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
• A court in Russia on Thursday prolonged until late July the pretrial detention of lawyer Dmitry Talantov, who was arrested in June 2022 on a charge of discrediting Russia's armed forces over his online condemnation of its invasion of Ukraine. Talantov was the lawyer for Ivan Safronov, a former prominent Russian journalist who was sentenced to 22 years in prison. (RFE/RL, 04.21.23)
• Svetlana Anokhina, a noted rights defender in Russia's North Caucasus region of Dagestan, is under investigation over her posts on Instagram criticizing Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.18.23)
• A court in Russia's southwestern Astrakhan region has sentenced three Jehovah's Witnesses to seven years in prison each amid a crackdown on the religious group. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
• Human rights group the Sakharov Center held its final public event Sunday before closing down its premises in the center of the Russian capital as a result of an eviction order from the local authorities. (MT/AFP, 04.17.23)
• The number of those convicted in Russia of charges of the incitement of terrorism, extremism and riots has reached a 10-year high. Opponents of the war in Ukraine are often prosecuted under these articles. (Istories, 04.19.23)
  • The State Duma swiftly adopted amendments to the Criminal Code imposing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for high treason. Previously, the code stipulated that treason sentences ranged from 12 to 20 years. The bill also toughens punishment for sabotage, which can now lead to a 20-year sentence. (Istories, 04.18,23)
  • Russia is increasingly using treason and espionage laws to smother criticism of the war. Sentences are often longer than they were before last year's invasion, Russian lawyers and human-rights defenders said, and prosecutors often add more severe charges including terrorism and extremism to acts of dissent that were previously punished with petty fines or suspended sentences. (WSJ, 04.20.23)
• Yevgeny Prigozhin has said that a long conflict in Ukraine could lead to the dissolution of Russia. In a statement published on Telegram on April 15, Prigozhin urged Moscow to declare its goals in Ukraine as "achieved" and bring an end to the fighting there. Prigozhin wrote that "many of those who yesterday supported the special operation today either have doubts or are categorically opposed to what is happening." (RFE/RL, 04.16.23)
  • Prigozhin is seemingly regaining some favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin, likely as a result of the Russian conventional military’s inability to accomplish the tasks Putin had set for it during the winter offensive in Donbas. (ISW, 04.17.23)
• Rustyam Abushaev, the mayor of the Russia city of Bolshoi Kamen who is wanted for fraud, says he has joined Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.17.23)

Defense and aerospace:

• Putin on April 14 signed a law on electronic military enlistment aimed at making it more difficult for potential draftees to evade duty. Earlier, It took the Russian parliament just twenty-three minutes to vote on the second and third readings of the bill. (RFE/RL, 04.14.23, (MT/AFP, 04.14.23)
• The Russian military has begun using Moscow’s vast video surveillance system to find conscripts who evade compulsory service, Moscow’s chief draft officer Maxim Loktev said (MT/AFP, 04.18.23)
• At least 53,000 army recruitment advertisements have appeared on the Russian social media outlet VKontakte since the beginning of March. (MT/AFP, 04.19.23)
• The number of prisoners in penal colonies across 35 Russian regions decreased by 17,248 in 2022, according to the report released Monday by independent news outlet Mediazona. The drop, according to Mediazona, was likely the result of the recruitment of prisoners for the Wagner mercenary group. (MT/AFP, 04.17.23)

• The commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet, Admiral Sergei Avakyants, resigned following a snap inspection of the military preparedness of the fleet's units, a presidential envoy in the Far East Federal District, Yury Trutnev, said on Thursday. Admiral Viktor Lyina, who held the post of commander of the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy, was then appointed commander of the Pacific Fleet. Vice Admiral Vladimir Vorobyev, who previously held the position of Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was appointed the new commander of the Baltic Fleet. (Meduza, 04.21.23, RFE/RL, 04.20.23)

• Russia said Thursday that it had finished snap navy drills in the Pacific, stressing its forces were ready to repel "aggression" during an armed conflict at sea. (MT/AFP, 04.20.23)

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

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• The head of Ingushetia, Mahmud-Ali Kalimatov, announced via his Telegram channel that four individuals who allegedly attacked police officers were killed during a counter-terrorist operation between late March and early April. Two others were arrested and are now in custody. In addition, the security forces detained nine "accomplices of the bandit group." Regional authorities claim all of them are supporters of the Islamic State. (Mediazona, 04.15.23)
• Russia's largest labor union announced Friday that it was canceling its demonstrations planned for the popular Labor Day celebrations on May 1, citing heightened terrorist threats amid Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. (MT/AFP, 04.14.23)
• Russia on Tuesday canceled annual processions in remembrance of relatives who fought in World War II amid apparent security concerns linked to the fighting in Ukraine. (MT/AFP, 04.18.23)
• A military court in Moscow on Tuesday fined a colonel from Russia's General Staff 40,000 rubles ($490) for demanding a washing machine from the chief of a local enlistment center responsible for recruiting soldiers for the ongoing war in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.18.23)
• A Moscow court on Thursday ordered the arrest of former Russian Deputy Culture Minister Olga Yarilova on suspicion of involvement in a fraud that led to the alleged embezzlement of 200 million rubles ($2.5 million). (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)
• A Moscow court has arrested former police major Ivan Rybin on charges of violating privacy and abusing his authority. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Russian law enforcement have linked his case to the murder of Daria Dugina, the daughter of Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin. (Meduza, 04.21.23)

 

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

• Russian officials sought to build up antiwar sentiment in Germany to dampen Europe's support for Ukraine, according to a trove of sensitive Russian documents largely dated from July to November that were obtained by a European intelligence service. As part of that goal, the Kremlin sought to unite Germany's political extremes from the left and right. (WP, 04.21.23)
• Companies tied to Russian ownership were able to secure €2.5 billion in public tenders across the EU since last February when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an analysis by Czech think-tank Datlab shows. (BNE, 04.21/23)

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Tuesday for like-minded countries to "join forces" against the "blackmail" of Western sanctions during his tour of Latin America that included Brazil, Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba. Discussing Russia's war on Ukraine Caracas, Lavrov referred to allies Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua as countries "that choose their own path." On Friday he made a final stop in Cuba where he met with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. Earlier he visited earlier this week. (WSJ, 04.21.23, MT/AFP, 04.18.23, Reuters, 04.20.23)

• Russia has declared the Norwegian nongovernmental environmental group Miljostiftelsen Bellona an "undesirable" organization amid an ongoing crackdown on international and domestic NGOs, civil society, and independent journalists. (RFE/RL, 04.18.23)
• Serbia’s economy is benefiting from an influx of thousands of skilled, educated Russians who have fled their country since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said. (Bloomberg, 04.21.23)

Ukraine:

• A Ukrainian former deputy defense minister and another ministry official have been served with "notices of suspicion" accusing them of wrongdoing over contracts for food purchases for the army, the state anti-corruption agency said on Friday. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) said in a statement that their actions had resulted in losses to the state of almost 12 million hryvnias ($328,000). It did not name the suspects or say how they had responded to the accusations. (Reuters, 04.21.2023)
• A fierce debate has broken out in Ukraine over allegations that a clampdown on corruption is being used to frame high profile business advocates of state reform, raising wider doubts about Ukraine’s internal political trajectory – and its ability to absorb billions in European reconstruction funds once the war ends. The concerns have been expressed to the U.S. Department of State and UK Foreign Office, and are shared in part by Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigners. The issue is diplomatically sensitive since critics are wary of playing into a Russian narrative that Ukraine is endemically corrupt, or suggesting that anti-corruption institutions, which western allies and Ukrainian civil society played a large part in establishing, have gone off the rails. (The Guardian, 04.18.23)
• An association representing the families of those killed in the downing of a Ukrainian commercial flight by Iran more than two years ago has criticized the verdicts issued in Iran against the alleged perpetrators as a "show trial." (RFE/RL, 04.17.23)
• President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed Mexican lawmakers on Thursday. “Ukrainians and Mexicans hurt equally when we see innocent lives taken by cruel violence, where true peace could reign,” he said. (WSJ, 04.21.23)
• Italy’s rightwing government is blaming the country’s courts for the embarrassing escape from house arrest of Russian businessman Artyom Uss wanted in the U.S. for sanctions evasion. Meanwhile the father of Uss, Alexander Uss, has stepped down from his post of governor of the Krasnoyarsk region. (FT, 04.21.23, MT/AFP, 04.21.23)

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• Armenia unequivocally recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and is ready to sign a relevant peace treaty with Baku, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said. Pashinyan’s previous statements on the subject have stoked Armenian opposition claims that he is ready to help Baku regain full control over Nagorno-Karabakh (Azatutyun, 04.18.23, Politico, 04.18.23).
  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov likewise said in December that Pashinyan effectively recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh in Prague. Lavrov said the Armenian leader thus all but precluded a different peace deal favored by Moscow that would indefinitely delay an agreement on Karabakh’s status. Artak Beglaryan, an adviser to Nagorno-Karabakh's state minister, said that Pashinyan "should not damage the protection of our security and rights, including the right to self-determination.” (Azatutyun, 04.18.23, Politico, 04.18.23).
  • Many in Armenia today say they cannot forgive Russia for shirking its responsibility to defend their country from neighboring Azerbaijan, with whom they have fought two wars for control over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. (MT/AFP, 04.16.23)
• Azerbaijani media say 20 people allegedly affiliated with Iran's Intelligence Ministry were arrested on Wednesday as relations between the two countries fray. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
• Direct flights between Moscow and the Georgian capital Tbilisi appeared Friday on flight schedules at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, despite ban introduced by Russia in 2019 on air travel to the South Caucasus country, according to media reports (MT/AFP, 04.14.23)
• Russia's ambassador to Moldova, Oleg Vasnetsov, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to be informed that two of the embassy staffers had lost their diplomatic access permit to the Chisinau airport following their treatment of Moldovan airport-security officers acting on orders to ban the entry of a Russian delegation to the country. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
• Estonia’s prosecutors indicted six former employees of Danske Bank A/S’s local branch for taking part in one of Europe’s biggest money laundering scams. The Estonian charges involve at least eight offenses associated with Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Switzerland, the U.S. and Iran, the office said. (Bloomberg, 04.18.23)
• Kazakh Energy Minister Almasadam Satqaliev has warned citizens of the oil-rich country of an expected increase of liquefied gas prices in the coming months as the government looks to avoid a repeat of deadly mass protests that took place in January 2022 after an energy price hike. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
• Authorities in the North Kazakhstan region said on Tuesday that three members of a group called the People's Council in the regional capital, Petropavl, have been arrested on separatism charges and face up to seven years in prison if convicted. (RFE/RL, 04.18.23)
• A man from the Russian region of Kalmykia has been granted asylum-seeker status in Kazakhstan after he left a military unit to avoid taking part in the war in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)
• A Kazakh student at Tomsk State University in Siberia, Marghulan Bekenov, was forced to join the Russian private mercenary group Wagner in March, his mother says. (RFE/RL, 04.20.23)
• Early voting has started in Uzbekistan in a referendum on a new constitution that would allow 65-year-old President Shavkat Mirziyoev to run again and opens the way for him to retain power until 2040. (RFE/RL, 04.19.23)
• Russia has suspended the import of dairy products from Kyrgyzstan after the chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s National Commission for the State Language and Language Policies, Kanybek Osmonaliev, said his country is ready to start working on switching the Kyrgyz language from Cyrillic to a Latin-based alphabet. (RFE/RL, 04.21.23)
• Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Thursday that Tajikistan had bought Mexico's presidential plane for $92 million, adding that the money will be used to build two hospitals in impoverished Mexican regions.. (RFE/RL, 04.21.23)

Quotable and notable

• "The last thing we need is Russia fragmenting and the fate of all those nuclear weapons being uncertain," former U.S. defense secretary and CIA director Robert M. Gates said recently. "We need a coherent Russian state, and we need a strong government in Moscow." (WP, 04.18.23)

 

 

[1] Here and elsewhere italicized text represents contextual commentary by RM staff.