Russia Analytical Report, Oct. 17-24, 2022
6 Ideas to Explore
- There is no practical way to achieve Russia’s “strategic defeat” short of full-scale war with the West, writes Leonid Bershidsky for Bloomberg. Despite a shift in Western discourse toward arguments for “a postwar global order that would sideline Russia, rendering it unable to cause further trouble,” Western advocates of this idea “can’t articulate how it can actually happen.” Bershidsky argues that what Russia needs is not “eternal defeat” but inclusion: “The only future that could unite and motivate the ragtag Russian resistance to Putin, the war, Russian imperialism and totalitarianism … is one in which Russia is part of the West.”
- Promising “catastrophic consequences” for Russian nuclear use could backfire on Biden, writes Michael Auslin for Foreign Policy. National security adviser Jake Sullivan’s threat “must be considered U.S. policy until the administration says otherwise,” Auslin writes. “Biden’s comments on Armageddon worry some that Putin’s blackmail could work, but White House rhetoric probably reflects the administration’s belief that invoking catastrophe is likely to lead to Putin never carrying out his threat,” he writes. Walking that fine line, however, “contains manifest dangers” for Washington, according to Auslin.
- Few protests doesn’t mean no resistance: An antiwar movement does exist in Russia and it’s marked by “stealth resistance,” researchers Evgenia Olimpieva, Irina Olimpieva and Masha Galenko write in The Washington Post. Manifestations include the collection and spread of accurate information, acts of sabotage and violence, resistance art, support for Ukrainian refugees and efforts to help Russians avoid conscription.
- China’s timeline for an attack against Taiwan has likely been slowed, not sped up, by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, writes Tai Ming Cheung for Foreign Policy. Given the two countries’ extensive military ties, the battle-tested Russian army’s “sputtering campaign in Ukraine” is giving Chinese leaders a glimpse into “a potential catastrophe that has alarming implications for their own security. Chinese leaders fear that if they were to go to war against Taiwan and fail to take the island, this would lead to the downfall of the Communist Party.”
- Responses to Putin’s catastrophic mobilization highlight the fragility of Russia’s federation, the Wilson Center’s Lucian Kim argues in Foreign Policy: “The more manpower and money Putin expends on the war in Ukraine, the looser his grip on Russia’s far-flung provinces.”
- Ukraine has already won the information war through its “proliferation of Twitter feeds, mass e-mailings and videos displaying exploding tanks, sturdy Ukrainian troops and cities devastated by Russian atrocities,” writes Tanya Goudsouzian for The National Interest. The unprecedented use of YouTube and GoPro cameras “will be a presence, and a precedent, on any future battlefield,” she argues. Russia’s propaganda, however, has the edge in the Global South, writes Peter Rutland, as the West’s depiction of the war in Ukraine “as a justification for NATO enlargement and as a tool to contain Russia” only reinforces the Kremlin’s narrative that the West wants to destroy Russia. Rutland advises that a narrative “focused on Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty” would play better.
I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
Nuclear security and safety:
- No significant developments.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
- No significant developments.
Iran and its nuclear program:
Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:
- No significant developments.
Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:
- "The attacks look like an attempt by the Russian establishment to convince itself and others that Russia still has enough determination, energy, and resources to regain the military initiative.
- "The aerial bombardment was supposed to prevent the growing concern in Russian society from turning into negative feelings toward the authorities. The Kremlin was trying to stop the nascent discord among the ranks of the most loyal sections of the population ... The missile strikes were supposed to reposition Moscow’s actions in the eyes of these people as 'defensive,' and aimed at ensuring the safety of Russia’s own people in response to the degrading actions of its enemy."
- "From a military viewpoint, the mass bombing of Ukraine on Oct. 10–11 enabled the Kremlin to increase the ambiguity surrounding Russia’s intentions. It was supposed to demonstrate Moscow’s determination, but was not accompanied by any explanation of what it was meant to achieve ... The military effectiveness of bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is debatable. The difficulties in relations with other former Soviet neighbors have not been solved. The theory that the mobilization would boost the combat capabilities of Russia’s armed forces has yet to be proven."
- "Nor has the divide in Russian society that occurred in September been bridged. ... There is no consensus on whether Russia has enough resources and energy to undertake further radical measures."
- "For now, therefore, the missile strikes don’t provide an answer to the main question: whether Moscow is prepared to regain the military initiative and start using methods that will yield more concrete results, or whether it is simply reacting to Kyiv’s actions, running the risk of falling into yet another trap."
“How Ukraine Won the Information War,” Tanya Goudsouzian, NI, 10.23.22.
- “[T]here is little doubt that President Volodymyr Zelensky … has invested as much effort into propaganda operations as tactical maneuvers on the battlefield. Western media routinely accepts official Ukrainian reports of casualties and equipment losses sustained by Ukrainian forces, while potentially overstating Russian troop losses and echoing unnamed Pentagon officials’ claims about imminent Russian defeat.”
- “Zelensky went on the information offensive early. … He has been unsurpassed in his use of persuasion, unapologetic in his use of coercion (often humiliation), and unrivaled in his theatrics—not to mention chutzpah. When asking for help from the British parliament, he invoked Winston Churchill; with the U.S. Congress, 9/11; and with the Israeli Knesset, the Holocaust.”
- “Below him is a well-oiled propaganda machine built on a foundation of an established commercial advertising sector and years of Western assistance. Since 2014, propaganda operations have characterized Russia as the bête noire of a Western-leaning Ukraine. When the Russians invaded in February 2022, the propaganda machine was ready, and so was Zelensky. For this, the selective release of information and curating battlefield results have been essential, as has been the proliferation of Twitter feeds, mass e-mailings and videos displaying exploding tanks, sturdy Ukrainian troops and cities devastated by Russian atrocities. The use of GoPro cameras and YouTube videos is unprecedented and will be a presence, and a precedent, on any future battlefield.”
- “Not only have they rallied the citizens of Ukraine to its defense but also engendered an unprecedented outpouring of Western support and assistance. Through an expertly scripted propaganda campaign, Ukraine has skillfully vilified the Russian invasion, the leader who ordered it and the troops who fight it … [W]hile the battlefield operations have a long way to go, propaganda operations have already achieved victory.”
- “There are political as well as military imperatives for the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives. Politically, Ukraine’s leaders felt both domestic and international pressure to show that they could seize back their nation. There was a sense that continued support from the West might depend on it. Some in the Ukrainian high command probably thought that while both sides were exhausted, the Russians were more thinly stretched… These Ukrainian southern and north-eastern campaigns—a one-two punch against Russia—continue to develop. There are several lessons to be drawn from them.”
- “First, the offensives are the result of a series of cleverly orchestrated activities in a unified operational design. The two campaigns are designed to mutually reinforce each other. … This is a very complicated process, demanding the prioritization of limited assets… Surprise and deception are crucial.”
- “Second, … it is apparent that Ukraine has senior commanders who are seasoned strategists and operational planners … skilled at guiding their subordinates through the planning and execution of campaign-level military endeavors. This is an uncommon proficiency that few military institutions possess. In the Ukrainians, this is founded on their knowledge of Soviet operational theory … refined in pre-war NATO training and with battlefield experience.”
- “Finally, the recent Ukrainian campaigns have highlighted the asymmetry in innovation and command philosophies between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries. Ukraine has moved away from Soviet-era approaches and permits its soldiers to innovate and its military leaders the freedom to exploit opportunities. The Russians do not. … This hierarchical rigidity has been a weakness of the Russians that the Ukrainians have consistently exploited.”
- “This war is far from over, but Ukraine has developed a mastery of modern war that many others—including the Chinese—will study closely.”
- “The Ukrainian military has a window of opportunity to make gains against Russia’s army over the next six weeks, according to American intelligence assessments, if it can continue its push in the south and the northeast before muddy ground and cloud cover force the opposing armies to pause and regroup.”
- “American officials say there is little chance of a widespread collapse in Russian forces that would allow Ukraine to take another huge swath of territory, similar to what it claimed last month. But individual Russian units could break in the face of sustained Ukrainian pressure, allowing Kyiv’s army to continue retaking towns in the Donbas and potentially seize the city of Kherson, a major prize in the war. ‘There’s a Ukrainian window of opportunity here,’ said Mason Clark, a Russian military analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. ‘The Ukrainians have the freedom to choose where they’re going to attack.’”
- “But even if it is losing momentum now, Russia, according to American officials and military analysts, has not yet lost the war. And it is critical, American officials say, to never underestimate an adversary. Moscow’s military can still conduct large-scale artillery operations, and Russia possesses two potential strengths: an infusion of troops from the forced mobilization Mr. Putin carried out at the insistence of key commanders and an ability to absorb large battlefield losses.”
- “Given the battlefield dynamics, U.S. officials do not think there will be a long pause in combat. Winter snow will not slow the fighting, but the mud of late fall, what Russians call rasputitsa, will. Once the ground hardens in February, around the first anniversary of the invasion, the armies can once again move more quickly.”
- “‘It is often up to the loser to decide when the war is truly over,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at CNA … ‘There is a divergence in people’s expectations of when the fighting might end versus the war being actually over. The fighting may die down, but it doesn’t mean the war itself will end.’”
- "Two simple geographical facts deserve more attention in trying to figure out Putin’s goals in this war: the dependence of Crimea on water supplies from the Ukrainian mainland, and the importance of the naval base at Sevastopol.
- "If Putin wants to restore Russia to its status as a leading European power, something that it achieved under the rule of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, then he needs Crimea. One reason why Crimea is so important is that it hosts the natural harbor of Sevastopol — the only deep-water port on Russia’s Black Sea littoral. ... Without Sevastopol, Russia would not have a home for its Black Sea fleet, which it uses to project power into the Mediterranean—and to wage war in Syria."
- "Crimea is an arid peninsula with insufficient rainfall to meet the needs of its 2 million people. ... After the Russian annexation in 2014, Ukraine dammed the canal ten miles north of the Crimean border. Since then, Crimea has been drawing water from the aquifer, which is now running dry and becoming polluted. Climate change has brought decreased rainfall and higher temperatures to the region, exacerbating the water deficit. Two days after the Feb. 24 invasion, Russia blew up the dam, restarting the flow of water to Crimea. In order to guarantee the supply of water in the long term, Putin wants to control the canal all the way to the Dnipr river, which means occupying the province of Kherson (which was part of the annexations this month)."
- “Russia is massing thousands of troops in its western neighbor Belarus, raising fears that Moscow might plan to open a new front in its war against Ukraine, but officials from Kyiv to Washington are casting doubt on whether the military buildup represents a serious threat. With Russia already struggling to defend territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, it can ill afford to pick a new fight on a third front in the north on the border with Belarus, officials and analysts say.”
- “Some Western officials say the Russian move is probably just a feint or a training mission, while others say it could be preparation for an attack, though likely not a very effective one, but their views come with a heavy dose of uncertainty.”
- “Several thousand newly mobilized Russian soldiers are deployed in Belarus at training sites, Mr. Skibitsky said, but they are not accompanied by the tanks, artillery or fuel trucks and other logistical support they would need to invade and face Ukraine’s battle-hardened troops. … Many Western and Ukrainian officials believe that Belarus’s primary role will be to help Russia train new draftees, many of whom have no military experience, before sending them to Ukraine.”
- “The kamikaze drones used by Russia are believed to be imported from Iran. They ‘are both military weapons and psychological weapons,’ said Samuel Bendett, a Russian-military analyst at the Virginia-based research group CNA. ‘Attacks on major cities that are supposed to be well-defended against aerial threats demonstrate that Russia still has the capacity to inflict damage, whether military or civilian targets are struck.’ But drone attacks have already become a regular feature of the war in Ukraine, with both sides utilizing the deadly aircraft in different ways.”
- “The drones that Russia has been deploying, Ukrainian and U.S. officials say, are manufactured in Iran, where they are known as Shahed-136s. They are designed to strike specific targets with explosives that can be delivered at distances of up to 1,500 miles. Russia has renamed the Shahed-136 as the Geran-2. Iran has denied giving Russia drones for its war against Ukraine.”
- “[T]he scale of use by Russia and the reports that it has bought an arsenal of thousands ‘makes this relatively unique,’ Franke [of ECFR] added. … Russia has largely used kamikaze drones to attack military and infrastructure targets in southern Ukraine.”
- “The United States has pledged to send Ukraine more than 700 of its own kamikaze drones, called Switchblades, and trained some Ukrainian soldiers in April on how to use them. … Ukraine also has been using the domestically developed RAM II kamikaze drones, which were partly paid for by crowdfunding.”
“Why Vladimir Putin Is Likely to Be Disappointed,” RAND’s Dara Massicot, NYT, 10.17.22.
- “Against a turning tide, Vladimir Putin is resorting to desperate measures. … But if Mr. Putin hoped to shift the war’s battlefield dynamics, he is likely to be disappointed. Four factors have combined to steadily diminish Russia’s battlefield prospects: the demands of a high-intensity war on an army unprepared to wage it; early and severe losses to its ground, airborne and special forces; the Ukrainians’ resilience and will to fight; and Western support for Ukraine.”
- “The fact is that none of the Kremlin’s recent gambits—annexation, mobilization or personnel shuffles—can overcome the larger problems facing Russia’s military. And in the months ahead, its difficulties will only worsen. … Mr. Putin’s behavior, intended to show resolve, reveals his awareness that the war is going poorly and his options are shrinking. The months ahead are likely to be volatile, especially if—or when—Russia’s gambits fail.”
Punitive measures related to Ukraine and their impact globally:
- “Eight months into the war in Ukraine, and eight rounds of frantic negotiations later, Europe’s sanctions against Russia run hundreds of pages long and have in many places cut to the bone. … But even now some goods and sectors remain conspicuously exempted. A look at just a few items reveals the intense back-room bargaining and arm-twisting by some nations and by private industry to protect sectors they deem too valuable to give up.”
- “Exports of rough diamonds are very lucrative for Russia, and they flow to the Belgian port of Antwerp, a historically important diamond hub. The trade, worth 1.8 billion euros a year — about $1.75 billion — has been shielded in consecutive rounds of the bloc’s sanctions, despite being raised as a possible target soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February.”
- “Nuclear power plants in France, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and other countries depend on Russian civilian uranium exports. The trade is worth 200 million euros, or about $194 million, according to Greenpeace, which has been lobbying for its ban. Germany and other E.U. countries have supported the calls to ban civilian nuclear imports from Russia, making this another issue likely to come up in the next round of sanctions talks.”
- “One of the most complex and important lobbying efforts to protect a European industry from sanctions is the one mounted by Greek diplomats to allow Greek-owned tankers to transport Russian oil to non-European destinations. This has facilitated one of the Kremlin’s biggest revenue streams. More than half of the vessels transporting Russia’s oil are Greek-owned, according to information aggregated from MarineTraffic, a shipping data platform.”
- “Governments that have readily taken big hits through sanctions to support Ukraine, sacrificing revenues and jobs, are embittered that their partners in the bloc continue to doggedly protect their own interests. … And given that the bloc is a constant negotiating arena on many issues, some warn that what goes around eventually will come around.”
- “Russian sales of nuclear fuel to the EU earn the Kremlin far less than its fossil fuel exports do, and some Western politicians have used that to justify a lack of resolve in the EU to sanction Moscow's nuclear industry. But the amount the industry makes for the Kremlin coffers is beside the point now, as Europe’s dependence on the Russian nuclear industry has become more of a security concern than a financial one.”
- “There are 18 Russian nuclear reactors in operation in the EU: in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. Russia supplies the nuclear fuel they require and there is no alternative supplier. In addition to that, Russia's atomic energy agency Rosatom supplies uranium to French company Framatome, which operates a nuclear fuel facility in the German town of Lingen. … Framatome provides nuclear fuel to nearly all Western European countries with a nuclear power sector. In total, Russia supplies 20% of the uranium consumed in Europe.”
- “By maintaining their nuclear dependence on Russia, European countries are making a very big mistake. They seem to believe they can find a way to deal with Putin to secure further nuclear supplies. But Putin is not Santa Claus and Rosatom was not created to serve Europe. It is the geopolitical arm of the Kremlin … Europe's dependence on the Russian nuclear industry was actually engineered to weaken Europe and bring it under Russian influence.”
- “Weaning Europe off its dependence on Russia's nuclear industry will be a struggle and won’t happen on its own. But choosing to ignore an obvious security threat in a sector as sensitive as nuclear power would be foolhardy in the extreme. European governments must take action.”
Ukraine-related negotiations:
“Diplomacy should not be a dirty word in the Ukraine war,” FT’s Gideon Rachman, FT, 10.17.22.
- “With the dangers of escalation mounting—alongside the death toll—the absence of serious diplomatic efforts to end the conflict is both striking and worrying. For some of Ukraine’s most ardent backers, even talking about diplomacy amounts to appeasement.”
- “In 1962, nuclear brinkmanship took place against the backdrop of secret diplomacy that eventually defused the Cuban missile crisis. That kind of diplomatic activity is the missing ingredient in the war in Ukraine. The big mistake is to believe that diplomacy is an alternative to strong military support for Ukraine. On the contrary, the two approaches should go hand in hand and be complementary to each other. … [D]iplomacy should not simply be deferred to some point in the future. It needs to be going on at the same time as the fighting. And the Ukrainians have to be involved and consulted at every step.”
- “Although some might assume there is more secret diplomacy going on than meets the eye, those who should know suggest there are few channels open with the Kremlin. Senior members of Biden’s team are believed to have spoken to their counterparts in Moscow. But the results have been less than inspiring, with the Russian side sticking to Kremlin-approved talking points.”
- “Third-party diplomacy might be a more fruitful path. The model here could be the deal that was reached to allow Ukrainian grain to leave Black Sea ports … Recep Tayyip Erdoğan … is not everybody’s idea of a stable intermediary. But he has longstanding links in Washington, Brussels and Moscow. The Indians are also potential interlocutors.”
- “[F]inding creative solutions to intractable problems is what high-level diplomacy is all about. We need to see more of it.”
Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:
“The Wishful Theory of ‘Strategic Russian Defeat,’” Leonid Bershidsky, WP/Bloomberg, 10.19.22.
- “Throughout the eight months of the Ukraine invasion, Vladimir Putin has stressed that his war is an existential struggle for Russia, a fight for a new world order. Now, important Western policy thinkers appear to be coming to the same conclusion: The narrative is shifting from helping Ukraine win to shaping a postwar global order that would sideline Russia, rendering it unable to cause further trouble.”
- “This shift challenges the conventional wisdom that the war will end with some kind of negotiated compromise … Many in the West … will argue that Russia needs to be stripped of its oversized international role. And some will say, increasingly openly, that it must be brought to its knees, like Nazi Germany or its ally Japan, before it can be rebuilt and reintegrated into the world. … However, even as his troops suffer one battlefield setback after another, Putin is still shaping the discourse simply because Western advocates of his ‘strategic defeat’ can’t articulate how it can actually happen.”
- “‘By saying that we are not at war—we are certainly not suggesting that Western leaders declare loudly that we are—we put ourselves in a kind of frame of mind that prevents us from formulating war aims,’ [French political scientist and civil servant Nicolas Tenzer] writes. The disclaimer is important: He’s not actually calling on Western governments to declare war on Russia—but he advocates going for results that can only be achieved in a full-scale war.”
- “The recourse is to accept that Russia is not out of second chances yet and that it can still change from the inside. It’s naive to expect a liberal democracy to emerge immediately from the ruins of Putin’s regime … It’s equally naive, however, to expect that a country of Russia’s size and stamina will somehow slink away if the West applies tougher diplomacy or hardens the already unprecedented economic sanctions.”
- “What Russians must be offered is a vision of inclusion, not hopeless, eternal defeat; we need the kind of optimistic prospect Germany and Japan faced as they reformed. … The only future that could unite and motivate the ragtag Russian resistance to Putin, the war, Russian imperialism and totalitarianism—both inside and, increasingly, outside the country—is one in which Russia is part of the West, with all the constraints and benefits that involves.”
- “Whenever he has a setback, Putin figures he can get out of it, that he can turn things around. … The key is adaptation. Another hallmark of Putin is that he doubles down. … Putin gives himself no way out except to pursue the original goals he had when he went in, which is the dismemberment of Ukraine and Russia annexing its territory. And he’s still trying to adapt his responses to setbacks on the battlefield. … His endgame is to go out of this war on his terms. … He sees this conflict as a full-on war with the West, and he still is adamant on removing Ukraine from the map and from global affairs.”
- “It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin. There was a conference in Aspen in late September when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet … because there should be guaranteed water supplies to Crimea. … It was a very specific reference. … Putin does this frequently. He uses prominent people as intermediaries to feel out the general political environment.”
- “[A] world war is a great power conflict over territory which overturns the existing international order and where other states find themselves on different sides of the conflict. It involves economic warfare, information warfare, as well as kinetic war. We’re in the same situation. … This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.”
- “We haven’t seen Xi repudiating Putin and Russia directly. But we’ve certainly seen some signs of concern. … Once we get past the party Congress in China, we should watch how the Chinese-Russian relationship plays out. China would be instrumental in signaling to Putin how far he can go in terms of pursuing his endgame.”
- “What Putin is trying to do is to get us to talk about the threat of nuclear war instead of what he is doing in Ukraine. … His solution is to have secret diplomacy, as we did during Cuban Missile Crisis, and have a direct compromise between the United States and Russia. But there’s no strategic standoff here. This is pure nuclear blackmail. … There is not going to be a happy or satisfying ending for anybody, and it’s also not going to be happy or satisfying for Vladimir Putin either, honestly.”
- “How do we reconfigure ourselves internationally to deal with this? … We’re not in a proxy war with Russia, just like we weren’t in a proxy war with Germany during World War I … We are trying to help Ukraine liberate itself, having been invaded by Russia. This whole proxy war debate deprives Ukraine of agency. … I see current NATO expansion as a kind of an interim step, a way station to thinking more broadly about how we configure ourselves after Ukraine.”
"Ukraine Is the World’s Foreign-Policy Rorschach Test," Harvard's Stephen Walt, FP, 10.18.22.
- "If we step back a bit, however, the debate on Ukraine can be seen as an illustration of a long-standing divide in foreign-policy circles. This divide was evident in debates on Vietnam in the 1960s and over the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. These competing worldviews are also fundamental to the policy differences between advocates of energetic U.S. interventionism and those who favor greater foreign-policy restraint."
- "Those who favor open-ended support for Ukraine see the world as highly interconnected and sensitive to small changes. In this view, international order is a fragile thing ... For those who think this way, even minor setbacks can destroy a great power’s reputation ... From this perspective, if Russia gets anything out of the war, then Putin’s appetite will grow ever larger, and he is likely to think he can keep blackmailing the West into giving him whatever he wants."
- "But here’s the rub: If Putin and his advisors are thinking along similar lines—and there’s reason to believe that they are—then they also have a bit of an incentive to continue the war (and maybe escalate it if they are losing). ... [K]ey decision-makers on both sides view the war as an all-or-nothing struggle with far-reaching global implications—worsening the risk of dangerous escalation the longer it lasts."
- "But there is another way to think about this whole issue. If you believe world events are only imperfectly interconnected, then what happens in Ukraine is important but not likely to determine the fate of the planet. ... If you think this way, it follows that victory in Ukraine, while desirable, is not going to solve all the world’s problems. Similarly, failure to inflict a traumatic defeat on Russia would not be a catastrophic blow to the global balance of power or the evolving world order. Even if Russia somehow manages to hang on to Crimea and maybe some parts of the Donbas, it is going to get substantially weaker over time, and there’s very little Putin (or a successor) can do about that.”
- "The other way the war in Ukraine could exert a dramatic effect on world politics, of course, would be a shattering of the nuclear taboo, especially if this step leads to a significant nuclear exchange."
- “The majority of the countries in the Global South see the Ukraine war as a problem in that, for example, it has caused energy and food prices to rise, but they are not blaming Russia for starting the war and have declined to join Western sanctions. … The stance of China … was predictable; but it is sobering to see democracies like Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa adopting this position. This phenomenon has not attracted much discussion in the West because it casts a shadow over the dominant Just War narrative and raises uncomfortable questions about America’s role in the world.”
- “The neutral stance of the Global South is partly due to pragmatic economic considerations but also stems from the persistence of the ideological legacy of anti-Americanism from the Cold War and a wariness about U.S. influence rooted in U.S. actions since 1991. This neutral stance can be seen both at the elite level (as reflected in votes at the U.N.) and in public opinion.”
- “The Global South’s tolerance for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has worrying implications for the rules-based international order, and suggests that those countries may be willing to break the Western sanctions and step up their trade with Russia. Western leaders … [describe] the war as a battle between democracy and autocracy, as a justification for NATO enlargement, and as a tool to contain Russia—or even break up the Russian Federation completely. Those arguments work well in the West but fall flat in the rest of the world. Ironically, they reinforce the Kremlin’s own narrative—that the war is about NATO expansion and the West’s desire to destroy Russia.”
- “NATO enlargement is a narrative that plays badly in the Global South, where it is seen as a cover for U.S. influence. … A Western narrative that focused on Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia as a vengeful ex-colonial power, and Russian war crimes, would play better in the Global South than a narrative of democracy and NATO enlargement.”
“Meet NAFO: The Virtual Army Disarming Russian Disinformation,” Maximiliana Wynne, NI, 10.19.22.
- “Roughly four months into the war in Ukraine, images of a cartoon Shiba Inu dog were popping up all over Twitter. It started when the Georgian Legion, a volunteer military unit fighting Russian forces in Ukraine, was trying to raise money for equipment. … Shortly after, the North Atlantic Fellas Organization (NAFO) took social media by storm, and internet memes of Shibas quickly became a movement devoted to countering pro-Kremlin disinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
- “NAFO gained international momentum in June when Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov entered into a digital squabble with a fella over civilian threats on Twitter and was eventually chased off the platform for a week. Today, the cross-cultural global alliance of internet warriors weaponizing memes comprises members of government, national security experts and regular Twitter users. Government officials supporting the #NAFOfellas include U.S. representative Adam Kinzinger, Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Rezniko, and Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas, among others.”
- “On average, more than 5,000 tweets a day link to NAFO, most of which can be found in threads from Russian officials. In addition to making wholesome Shiba memes and fundraising, the Fellas have also created a Discord server to strengthen the NAFO community by providing tips on what content could be targeted, sharing news about the war in Ukraine, and debunking Russian disinformation. … NAFO’s reactive approach is the first of its kind to effectively counter pro-Kremlin disinformation campaigns at this scale.”
- “Considering the Kremlin’s track record of operating mass influence operations, it is only a matter of time before pro-Russia actors attempt to infiltrate the organization—if they are not already attempting to.”
- “In today’s digital age, the internet is at the forefront of ideology and is undisputedly the dominant source of news and information for consumers worldwide. Narratives increasingly shape outcomes by feeding biases and fears that cause populations to think, act and even sway public opinion to vote in certain ways. NAFO has shed light on new methods for countering state-sponsored disinformation, highlighting the importance of assembling and backing online movements seeking to set the message straight in the cyber world. Disarming disinformation campaigns in the future will require a shared responsibility among those who govern and the governed.”
- “If there had been any lingering post-Cold War hopes that the United States could forge a partnership with Russia, they have been swept away by the 2022 National Security Strategy, released this month. The Biden administration endorses the position that no progress can be reached on repairing the relationship as long as Vladimir Putin remains in office, saying ‘it is now clear he will not change’; instead, the White House awaits a future when the Russian people have empowered a different government that is committed to working within the parameters of the U.S.-guided liberal international system.”
- “Indeed, the shift in U.S. thinking is so pronounced that this strategy does not even anticipate the possibility of a cooperative approach. Whereas past U.S. documents of this sort, even when emphasizing points of divergence and rivalry, maintained that there was a robust shared agenda (strategic stability, anti-terrorism, energy and so on), the 2022 iteration does not even use the term ‘cooperation,’ let alone ‘partnership.’ Instead, we find a very carefully constructed turn of phrase: ‘pragmatic modes of interaction.”
- “[T]he overall strategy beyond the sections specifically related to Russia calls for the United States to assemble a coalition of partners from around the world to work together on a series of next-generation issues related to climate and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The implication is clear: A Russian natural resource base increasingly based on fueling 20th-century industrial economies will become less relevant as critical supply chains and new technologies bypass Russia or no longer require its hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, a Russia that remains cut off from the global economic mainstream will be unable to transform its economy and society.”
- “Iran’s supreme leader used a recent address to academics to praise the effectiveness of his country’s military drones, which according to Kyiv and the west are being sold to Russia and used to pummel Ukraine’s big cities. … Iran and Russia deny any trade in combat drones, but what are not in doubt are the increasingly cordial relations between Moscow and Tehran since the full invasion of Ukraine in February.”
- “Iran’s leaders are capitalizing on the chasm that has opened up between Russia and the west since the invasion to establish a strategic relationship with the Kremlin that can help minimize the impact of painful U.S. sanctions, analysts say. Curbs have severed Iran’s links to the global financial system and ability to trade, and deprived it of the revenues needed to keep its economy functioning. Better relations with Moscow can offset that, through trade and investment. Access to Russian military hardware is another aim.”
- “There are few signs yet that Moscow views Tehran as a permanent partner, Iranian analysts say, with the relationship for now largely dependent on the course of the war and the stalled process to restore the 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear program.”
- “The emergence of a Moscow-Tehran alliance has multiple international implications, potentially dimming prospects for a new agreement to rein in Iran’s nuclear program and raising the pressure on Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, to take Ukraine’s side in the war.”
- “Aside from weapons, the two have found some common ground on energy, oil and gas. Russia has worked on Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant for decades, but extensive delays and multibillion-dollar cost overruns have turned it into a sore point in relations.”
- “The deepening alliance between Russia and Iran ‘should be seen as a profound threat and something that any country should pay very close attention to,’ said Vedant Patel, a deputy spokesman for the U.S. State Department, at a Monday news briefing. ‘We’re in close touch with our allies and partners, including those in the United Nations, to address Iran’s dangerous proliferation of weapons to Russia.’ The European Union is closely monitoring the use of drones, said Josep Borrell Fontelles, its foreign policy chief.”
- “‘In their view, the West is either irreconcilably hostile or unreliable,’ Mr. Vaez said of Iran. ‘I think in this conflict in Ukraine, they see an opportunity for consolidating the relationship with the East as a way of trying to neutralize the pressure they face from the West, be it economic, military or political.’”
"Israel, Iran, and the metastasizing war in Ukraine," Gabrielle Debinski, GZero, 10.20.22.
- "The news that Iran has now become deeply involved in Russia’s war effort, by supplying the Kremlin with 'suicide drones' for the bombardment of Ukrainian targets, has ricocheted deep into the Middle East, raising tough questions for one state in particular: Israel. Since the beginning of the war, the close U.S. ally has tried to walk a fine line: supporting Ukraine in principle but without antagonizing Putin in ways that might upset Israel’s relationship with Russia."
- "But now, with Russia openly using Iranian kit to bombard Ukrainian cities, Israel faces renewed pressure to send Kyiv its renowned advanced missile defense systems – particularly the Iron Dome. But Israel’s considerations are complicated."
- "The Kremlin is, in fact, a strategic partner for Israel not by choice but by necessity. In recent years, the Kremlin has allowed Israeli warplanes to target Iranian strategic assets in Syria ... Russia, for its part, has been willing to turn a blind eye to Israel on these aerial missions in part because it is competing with Tehran for dominance inside Syria."
- "[I]f Israel supplies advanced weapons to the Ukrainians, the equipment could fall into Russian hands and get passed on to Tehran. If that happened, it could undermine Israel’s qualitative military edge over the Iranians. ... There is also a cultural dimension: Russia has a large Jewish population, many of whom are now trying to flee to Israel in the wake of the Russian mobilization. ... Lastly, there are domestic political considerations at home. ... 41% of Israelis oppose sending arms to Ukraine."
- "As Iran props up Russia in Ukraine, Israel is clearly taking a cautious step towards greater involvement in the conflict. But it may need to take more decisive action in the coming months as the extent of Russia's impact on the Iranian arms industry becomes clearer."
- “Not in decades has the U.S. faced such prospects of near-term military confrontation in several separate theaters. … Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has ignited Europe’s largest conflict in generations and provoked a great-power proxy fight. In East Asia, the chances of war are growing… In the Middle East, the U.S. may have to choose between fighting Iran and accepting it as a nuclear threshold state.”
- “Nightmare scenarios usually don’t materialize, of course. … [But] today’s crises are more deeply interrelated than they appear. America’s antagonists may not be formally allied, but they are aligned in a critical area—the Eurasian heartland—and in critical ways. An overstretched U.S. cannot react to one problem without considering the impact on its ability to deal with others.”
- “In some ways, America’s predicament resembles the period before World War II. … Then as now, the international system was being battered from many directions. … There was little intimacy among these revisionist states [Japan, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and the Soviet Union] … [yet] there was a deep, destructive synergy among the programs of radical expansion they pursued.”
- “[Around Ukraine there] is a violent, unstable equilibrium, one that cannot hold forever as committed participants pursue irreconcilable goals. … Meanwhile, the countdown to conflict may have begun in the Taiwan Strait. … There is vigorous debate in Washington over when the threat of Chinese aggression will become most acute; even the most worried observers think a showdown is at least two to three years away. … Then there is the perpetually flammable Middle East, a region Americans would love to ignore.”
- “Healthy regional systems underpin healthy global systems. When multiple regions implode at once, they can bring the global order crashing down. Europe, the Persian Gulf and East Asia collectively form the strategic core of the larger theater—Eurasia—that has been the focal point of global politics in the modern era. By sowing upheaval within their regions, the revisionists are shaking several pillars of the system at once.”
“Xi Jinping’s China and the rise of the ‘global west,’” FT’s Gideon Rachman, FT, 10.24.22.
- “At a time when Russia is waging war in Europe, it is striking that the U.S. nonetheless identifies China as the bigger threat. The Americans view China as a rival superpower with global ambitions—while Russia is seen as a declining, but dangerous, power increasingly dependent on Beijing. In its efforts to win what President Joe Biden calls a ‘contest for the future of our world’ with China, the U.S. is increasingly looking to an international network of allies, which can loosely be called the ‘global West.’”
- “The sharpest edge of the Beijing-Moscow challenge is military and territorial—with Ukraine and Taiwan on the front lines. But the global West is also increasingly alive to the risk of economic coercion—whether it is Russia cutting off energy supplies to Europe; or China’s trade sanctions against countries that anger it, such as South Korea or Lithuania.”
- “The countries of the global West argue that they are banding together to defend universal values, underpinning a liberal world order. But China and Russia instead present the global west as an attempt to rebuild a hierarchy with its roots in imperialism and white supremacy. Opinion polls in the global South suggest that these Russo-Chinese arguments often find a receptive audience. … If it is to keep this new alliance together, the U.S. will have to persuade its partners that the darkest fears about Russia and China are justified.”
China-Russia: Allied or aligned?
- “[E]ight months into the war in Ukraine Russia’s serial failures have amounted to a drawn-out approximation of what a rash or poorly prepared Chinese campaign in Taiwan might look like. From a strictly military perspective, the Ukraine crisis has very likely pushed the timeline for Chinese attack against Taiwan backwards, not forwards.”
- “Russia and China have an extensive if volatile history of close military cooperation … When Chinese leaders see Russia’s tens of thousands of dead or wounded troops over the course of its sputtering campaign in Ukraine, its loss of several thousand fighting vehicles, its inability to achieve battlefield objectives that once seemed easily attainable and the end of its military’s ability to inspire any real fear, they are glimpsing a potential catastrophe that has alarming implications for their own security. Chinese leaders fear that if they were to go to war against Taiwan and fail to take the island, this would lead to the downfall of the Communist Party.”
- “The command-and-control structure of the PLA, with an over-dependence on inexperienced junior and mid-ranking officers because of a structural deficit of non-commissioned officers, is modeled on that of a Russian military whose leadership has proven stunningly poor in recent months. Perhaps most worryingly from a Chinese perspective, the army that is currently bogged down in Ukraine is far more battle-tested than China’s.”
- “Still, it would be a mistake to think that the Ukraine war will convince China never to attempt a takeover of Taiwan, or that it will prevent China from using force to pursue its territorial claims in the South China Sea, India, or anywhere else.”
- “The lessons of the Russian war against Ukraine shows that China militarily needs much more time to strengthen and revamp its war-fighting establishment to address the glaring weaknesses and gaps highlighted on the Ukrainian battlefield. Politically though, Beijing is becoming increasingly anxious that its goal of reunification with Taiwan is at growing risk because deepening ties between Taiwan and the U.S. and its allies. The PLA may find itself being called into action well before it is combat-ready.”
Missile defense:
- No significant developments.
Nuclear arms:
- “The threat of nuclear war should not be taken lightly. However, we should also understand that we are at least several steps away from the point at which that threat will be close to implementation—and that there are things we can do to avoid getting there.”
- “The messaging from Russian officials has been consistent: Russia will defend itself if attacked by the West. … It is one thing for a leader to promise to defend his country in a global confrontation; it is quite another for him to reach for nuclear weapons because his army is not performing well on the battlefield. There is considerable distance between these narratives, and we will see a dramatic change of rhetoric when it comes to nuclear weapons before we see any movements that could bring us closer to nuclear use.”
- “Another step that has not been taken is the physical movement of weapons. … The one step that is unlikely to be detected is the most important one: the decision to use nuclear weapons. Russian military doctrine is very clear that this decision can only be made by the president. While it would appear Putin has a free hand to order a nuclear strike, the reality is somewhat more complex. There are a number of lines that he would have to cross before he could actually issue such an order.”
- “The first is that Russian military doctrine specifies nuclear weapons can only be used in a case of conventional aggression ‘putting in danger the very existence of the state.’ … The West can make this line harder to cross by stating openly and clearly that it has no intention of ever putting in danger the existence of Russia itself.”
- “Another factor to consider is the way in which nuclear weapons can be used. Most experts agree that nuclear weapons could achieve few military objectives on the battlefield, especially in this war. That leaves the option of using them in a strategic sense … [T]o be truly shocking a strike of this kind would have to involve an attack on civilians and lead to mass casualties. Probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, would be doomed to die. … There is little doubt that such use of nuclear weapons would be universally condemned, and that Russia would quickly find itself in complete isolation.”
- “We are still some steps away from the nuclear abyss and it is within our power to ensure we do not get there.”
"The Dangers of ‘Catastrophic Consequences,’" Hoover Institution's Michael Auslin, FP, 10.21.22.
- "After a generation in which the threat of great-power nuclear conflict played no role in Washington’s strategy, the Biden administration is suddenly re-creating the lost art of nuclear deterrence on the fly. ... Biden’s comments on Armageddon worry some that Putin’s blackmail could work, but White House rhetoric probably reflects the administration’s belief that invoking catastrophe is likely to lead to Putin never carrying out his threat. It is a fine line the administration must walk, and its position contains manifest dangers that could boomerang on Biden."
- "Sullivan’s threat [of 'catastrophic consequences'] must be considered U.S. policy until the administration says otherwise. The warning was clearly designed to counter Putin’s blackmail and raise the stakes for him to an unacceptable level, thereby deterring him from nuclear use. ... Any U.S. policy of catastrophic consequences therefore raises several urgent questions. Above all, what is the threshold for risking direct conflict with Russia, military or otherwise?"
- "As Biden has indicated, any Russian nuclear use and U.S. response increases the likelihood of an uncontrolled escalation. If Biden ... retaliated with a major conventional attack on Russian targets in Ukraine or somewhere else outside Russia, gaming out future rounds suggests Washington could still be drawn into using nuclear weapons. ... What’s more, a 'catastrophic' response by Washington risks expanding the geographical boundaries of the war."
- "From a strategic perspective, Biden’s best response to Russian nuclear deployment would be to give the Ukrainians the ability to defend themselves against ballistic missiles and inflict massive and decisive damage on Russian forces inside Ukraine. ... making the U.S. response proportionate is critical, especially in the case of limited Russian nuclear use."
- "In the midst of a crisis, Washington must play the cards it has. But it should also plan for the longer term to ensure that the West cannot be held hostage to similar nuclear blackmail in the future. First, this would include reversing the post-Cold War hollowing out of Russia expertise in government, think tanks, and academia. ... Second, a renaissance in U.S. nuclear strategy and doctrine is long overdue. ... Third, from a military perspective, tactical nuclear weapons will have a more important role in U.S. strategy. ... Finally, Biden must understand the spillover risk of his threat to Putin in the eyes of other potential adversaries, most notably Iran and China."
- “The United States and Ukraine have made clear that they consider Russia’s annexations as illegitimate and a ‘sham,’ and rightly so. Ukraine, with U.S. support, will continue its military campaign to push Russia out of these regions—thereby crossing Russia’s redline for using nuclear weapons. This is a horrifying game of nuclear chicken, and there could be a head-on collision soon.”
- “What can the Biden administration do? Less than you might think. There is no way to prevent Russia from launching a nuclear attack against Ukraine. Russia has far too many nuclear weapons in its stockpile (about 4,500) for the United States to even consider any kind of pre-emptive attack. Nor could missile defenses reliably intercept a Russian attack against the United States or Ukraine.”
- “[D]eterrence works only if leaders are making rational decisions and make no mistakes. But Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was a major miscalculation bordering on delusion. He expected Kyiv to fall quickly and for the Western response to be divided, and yet the exact opposite has happened. We cannot expect Putin to suddenly become wise when it comes to nuclear weapons. Depending on deterrence to work with Putin is taking a dangerous gamble.”
- “Right now, deterrence is all we have, so we will roll the nuclear dice again, just as we did sixty years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then we got lucky and avoided nuclear war. But as any gambler knows, at some point our luck will run out.”
- “If we are fortunate enough to get out of this crisis, we need to get serious about reducing nuclear arsenals and weaning ourselves off nuclear deterrence and replacing it with something better—before it’s too late.”
- “The good news is this is not yet the Cuban Missile Crisis, where JFK believed that the risks of a nuclear war were greater than one in three, an assessment with which I agree. But it’s the closest the U.S. and the Soviet Union-Russia have come to using a nuclear weapon against each other in six decades.”
- “Many people imagine that since the Cold War’s over and we won, nuclear weapons must have been consigned to the dustbin of history. No—Putin has a full-spectrum nuclear arsenal. A tactical nuclear weapon can basically turn Kyiv into Hiroshima. But the good news for America is that, in Biden, we have a seasoned cold warrior who has thought about the Cuban Missile Crisis and has thought about nuclear war.”
- “What’s the most plausible scenario in which Putin orders a nuclear strike? If conditions on the battlefield force him to choose between a humiliating defeat on the one hand — which would not be existential for Russia, but which I think he believes, and I bet he’s right, would be existential for him — and escalating the level of destruction up to and including a tactical nuclear strike on a target in Ukraine, I think there’s every reason that he chooses the latter.”
- “[V]ery deliberately, in that famous American University speech, [Kennedy] said that the central lesson for nuclear statecraft going forward is that ‘While defending our vital interests, we must avert confrontations that force an adversary to choose between humiliating defeat and nuclear war.’ I think that’s what Biden is hoping and trying to do. But that’s very easy to say and hard to do, particularly since what’s driving events on the ground are the very legitimate aspirations of Volodymyr Zelensky to liberate his country.”
- “While dangerous in itself, Moscow’s [nuclear] threats are balanced by an equally dangerous reaction from the West, where multiple officials and experts have proposed that the United States take nuclear deterrence completely off the table. Ironically, this may make Putin more likely to use nuclear force. … However, any move toward a ‘no use’ policy would be a huge mistake for five reasons.”
- “First, keeping the U.S. response at the conventional level will not necessarily prevent Russia from subsequently employing nuclear force. If Russia knows it can be defeated by the use of American or NATO conventional armaments alone, why would Russia not use nuclear force for the very same reason it intended to initiate nuclear strikes in the first place?”
- “Second, the advocates of ‘no use’ must know that U.S. military planners, when asked by Congress, explain that the United States can win a conventional military conflict against Russia only if nuclear weapons are not introduced into the fight.”
- “Third, advocates of responding only with conventional strikes miss that in April 1999, Russia changed its strategy to … an ‘escalate to win’ doctrine that explicitly calls for the development of small-scale and highly accurate battlefield nuclear weapons with high political and diplomatic leverage.”
- “Fourth … Putin sees a strategic gap between the U.S. vs Russian theater or shorter-range nuclear weapons capability.”
- “And fifth, taking nuclear deterrence off the table completely … gives Putin and such adversaries a relatively free hand to use nuclear weapons with impunity, which obviously reduces the threshold at which nuclear war would be waged.”
- "Western capitals are abuzz with alarm over Russian president Vladimir Putin’s repeated nuclear threats. ... But the mistake is to talk or even think about it all the time and, above all, to be distracted by it from other threats that are at least as serious and perhaps more likely.”
- "The threats involving nuclear weapons, as well as the continuous shelling of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, have the same goal: instilling fear and paralysis. Policymakers in Berlin should contemplate the possibility that this latest variant of Kremlin messaging is precision-targeted at German public opinion, which has been jittery about nuclear disasters ever since having had front-row seats for ‘mutually assured destruction’ during the cold war. ... Western intelligence officials are careful to say that so far they have seen no signs of Russian nuclear forces going on alert."
- "Consider, in contrast, the recent explosions which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the cable cuts which brought trains across northern Germany to a halt and the hacking of the computers of several U.S. airports. ... Sabotage ... offers a far better benefit-to-cost ratio than nuclear weapons. Attacks on physical and digital infrastructure are hard to prevent and even harder to attribute. They undermine confidence in government and exploit the fissures and vulnerabilities of western societies. They permit an adversary to elude retribution and play for time. Expect more such incidents, perhaps many more."
- “Russia’s invasion, the argument goes, shows that nuclear weapons can provide a shield that enables conquest. … At the same time, Russian aggression shows how difficult it is for nonnuclear states to deter their nuclear adversaries. According to this line of argument, if only Ukraine had its own nuclear arsenal, Russia wouldn’t have dared attack it … The lesson thus seems clear: Whether you’re a status quo power or a dissatisfied aggressor, you’ll be better off with the bomb.”
- “Although the logic of these arguments is persuasive at first glance, they are not well supported by the history of nuclear proliferation, in large part because they overlook the complexity of nuclear decision-making. From the 1950s onward, analysts and government officials have been predicting proliferation cascades or domino effects … These predictions were never borne out: The number of states with nuclear weapons has grown rather slowly … Between 1945 and 1970, six states acquired the bomb (about one every four years). Since then, only four countries have additionally done so (about one every 13 years).”
- “Why has proliferation proceeded so slowly? In large part because leaders like Kennedy worried about it and adapted their policies to prevent proliferation cascades. … This architecture is still in place today and in some ways stronger than it has ever been. Today, almost every state without nuclear weapons is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and perhaps for the first time since 1945, there are no states currently known to be seeking nuclear weapons. (Iran is producing enriched uranium very close to weapons grade, but according to the U.S. intelligence community, as of December 2021, there is no evidence it has made the decision to build a bomb.)”
- “[O]ne could still argue there is something unique about the current conflict in Ukraine that would overwhelm these historical dynamics. But this is far from the first time a nuclear-armed state has attacked a nonnuclear state, nor is it the first time a nuclear state has used its nuclear arsenal to backstop coercion or aggression.”
- “Is it possible that some countries might rethink their security options as a result of what happens in Ukraine? Absolutely. But countries are just as (or perhaps more) likely to conclude that they are better off finding or getting closer to a nuclear-armed ally … Even if one or two countries decide to seek a bomb, they will have to overcome substantial obstacles to successfully acquire one.”
Counterterrorism:
- No significant developments.
Conflict in Syria:
- No significant developments.
Cyber security:
- No significant developments.
Energy exports from CIS:
- “While supplies of Russian pipeline gas, which made up the bulk of Europe’s gas imports before the Ukraine war, are down to a trickle, European importers have been quietly splurging on frozen Russian gas delivered by giant ships. Importers argue that the shipments aren’t covered by EU sanctions and that buying LNG from Russia alongside other suppliers is needed to help keep European energy prices in check. Yet the trade runs counter to the EU’s efforts to deprive Russia of fossil-fuel revenues. The EU will ban most imports of Russian crude oil in December but has spared gas imports so far.”
- “‘Russian LNG has been the dark horse of the sanctions regime,’ said Maria Shagina, research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.”
- “Last month, France was the biggest importer of Russian LNG, followed by Spain and Belgium, according to commodities data provider Kpler. In the first eight months of the year, Russian LNG comprised 17% of the EU’s total LNG imports, while the U.S. made up 45%, according to the EU. … Russia is now the world’s fourth-biggest LNG exporter after Australia, Qatar and the U.S. Huge projects including Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 and Gazprom’s Ust-Luga plant on the Baltic Sea were designed to catapult it higher up the global rankings this decade.”
- “One problem for Russia is that its ability to increase LNG exports is constrained by a Western ban on the sale of technologies that Russia used to develop the industry. Most of Russia’s existing plants rely on equipment made by Western companies, whose exports to Russia are now banned by the EU. Analysts say Russia’s ability to fulfill its LNG ambitions will depend on its success in finding alternatives to that gear and on replacing the expertise of Western services companies.”
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:
“Can Putin’s Center Hold? The elites used to need the Russian president. Now he needs them,” Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, FP, 10.19.22. Clues from Russian Views.
- “[T]here have been no signs, at least publicly, of divisions over Putin’s decision to launch the war. Make no mistake, a significant part of the Russian elite considers the war a catastrophe. Some view it as a lesser evil but nonetheless an evil; some regret it, and still others have considerable doubts over the way Putin is conducting the campaign. But no one dared to act—until now.”
- “Putin’s decision to launch the war came as a massive shock to the elites, who were not consulted and received no advance notice. Despite this … the elites rallied around Putin but with very different motives. … After September, that started to change. … The overall situation seems … very bad, while Putin appears inappropriately and overly optimistic, which scares people.”
- “The lack of clear vision of how Russia can win has sparked tectonic shifts among Russian elites, who are now seeking ways to adapt to the deteriorating situation. For the first time ever, we may see an important part of the elite daring to intrude in Putin’s decision-making and imposing on the Kremlin its own vision of how the war should unfold.”
- “[T]he pro-war camp has set its sights on the Defense Ministry and army leadership, relying on support from state TV. … [T]o prevent Russia from losing the war, this part of the elite has succeeded in reaching out to Putin and convincing him to shift tactics to take a more critical approach to the military top brass and even implement personnel reshuffles.”
- “[Putin’s] public messages suggest that he does not intend to fight the Ukrainian army but merely stop it from advancing… Putin, having failed to implement every part of his plan so far, has been becoming more dependent on those who invested in this war, who have become a part of this war, who justify it, push it and lose their people in the fighting. … It’s not so much how the elites can threaten Putin but how Putin’s own position will gradually weaken as his plans fail. Even as they remain pro-Putin, the elites are becoming bolder and more decisive.”
- “[T]housands of young Russian men are now fleeing the country for fear of being forced to fight in the war—suggesting that Putin’s warnings about an imminent threat to the homeland and grandiose yet baseless accusations are not swaying an important part of the population. That’s in part because propaganda is not always intended to persuade its audience. Sometimes its primary purpose is to intimidate.”
- “As in any autocracy, it is difficult to know in Russia why people claim to support the ‘special military operation’ in surveys and refrain from protesting. Is it because they agree with the government—or because they fear the consequences of opposing it? For this reason, the response to the military call-up last month was revealing. … People with skin in the game revealed they did not buy the claim that Russia was fighting an existential battle against the West.”
- “Does the limited scale of antiwar protests in Russia mean that Russian society is either unwilling or unable to challenge Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? Research on resistance to autocratic governments suggests that it may take a deeper look to reveal evidence of opposition. In countries with a long authoritarian history, a repressive regime and lack of protest culture, street protests make up only a fraction of societal resistance.”
- “Our research suggests an antiwar movement exists in Russia, despite weak street-level resistance. To understand how Russian society has opposed the war, one needs to look beyond protests, to identify acts of stealth resistance. Stealth resistance can take different shapes as it adapts to new political realities.”
- “Since February, here are some of its manifestations in Russia: collection and dissemination of true information about the war, acts of sabotage, individual acts of violence, resistance art and activism to support Ukrainian refugees. More recently, the resistance has started to include efforts to help Russians avoid conscription, and efforts to sabotage the government’s mobilization plans.”
“Vladimir Kara-Murza from prison: In Putin’s Russia, dissent is now ‘treason,’” jailed Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, WP, 10.18.22. Clues from Russian Views.
- “[Last week] the chief investigator on my case … was going to present the final indictment, unifying my two previous charges: for publicly denouncing Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine (in official Kremlin-speak, ‘spreading deliberately false information about the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation’) and for organizing a conference in support of Russian political prisoners (‘carrying out the activities of an undesirable organization’).”
- “[But there was a third charge] that overshadowed them all. The words ‘high treason’ stood out immediately on the first page.”
- “My case marks the first moment in post-Soviet Russia when public criticism of the authorities is officially clarified as ‘treason.’”
- “According to the indictment, my speeches ‘threatened the security and constitutional order of the Russian Federation,’ ‘damaged the international reputation of the Russian Federation,’ and gave Russia an ‘image as an aggressor state in the eyes of the international community.’ (While flattered by the Investigative Committee’s assessment of my influence, I must admit that Putin has done a far better job on all three counts than I ever could.) And, unlike what is customary in actual treason cases, no foreign country benefited from my actions.”
- “[E]ach count of treason carries up to 20 years of imprisonment—this in addition to 14 years on my two previous charges. I won’t lie: It’s not a pleasant feeling… But what really helps—apart from the knowledge that I am right and they are wrong—is my background as a historian. Why? Because all of this has happened before, and we know how it will end. Aggressive wars launched by Russian and Soviet rulers for domestic political purposes … ended up backfiring badly on their masterminds, who managed to turn both their own people and the world against them.”
"Why the World Should Be Worried About Chechnya," Wilson Center's Lucian Kim, FP, 10.19.22.
- “As Putin’s blitzkrieg to seize Kyiv … faltered, turning into a slog to hang onto occupied territory, [Chechen leader Ramzan] Kadyrov has emerged as one of the most vocal proponents of the Kremlin’s pitiless war. ... Kadyrov has boasted of Chechen fighters’ prowess in crucial battles, called for the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine and recently posted a video of him receiving—with a smirk—an award for holding the world record in most personal sanctions for one person: 15.”
- “[I]t would be a mistake to see Kadyrov’s public displays of fealty as a sign of Russia’s successful pacification of Chechnya. In fact, the outsize role Kadyrov has come to play only highlights the fragility of Russia’s purportedly multiethnic federation. ... Chechnya, like most of Russia’s 80-odd regions, is dependent on the Kremlin’s largesse in redistributing oil and gas revenues. ... But the more manpower and money Putin expends on the war in Ukraine, the looser his grip on Russia’s far-flung provinces… If Putin’s empire-building project fails, Chechnya … could once again become a source of instability for the Russian state.”
- "Putin’s fateful decision to draft ordinary Russians for his war … has renewed interest in regional autonomy, not just along ethnic lines. 'The situation has been brought to a head by mobilization,' [North Caucasus expert Denis] Sokolov said. 'Mobilization equals death, and people will resist it.'"
- “'If chaos should break out in the Kremlin, Kadyrov will be the first to declare independence,' [Ingush human rights defender Zarina] Sautieva said. [Chatham House’s Nikolai] Petrov, on the other hand, argues that Kadyrov likely has much bigger ambitions. Kadyrov’s powerful allies in Moscow include Viktor Zolotov, a former Putin bodyguard who now heads the National Guard."
- "Yet Petrov cautioned that the main risk to Russia’s unity comes not from the regions themselves but from decisions made for them in the Kremlin. When the central government runs out of money because of the war and international sanctions, it will be forced to consider new models of cohabitation. ... Putin’s successor may well be more concerned with keeping Russia together than in conquering new territories."
Defense and aerospace:
“As War Hits the Home Front, Russia’s Defeat Inches Closer,” Meduza’s Alexey Kovalev, FP, 10.19.22. Clues from Russian Views.
- “Corruption lies at the heart of the Russian military’s dysfunction on and off the battlefield. BBC News Russian found at least 559 documentable cases of criminal loss of property in the army since 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine.”
- “Investigative reporters and anti-corruption activists have documented the extravagant palaces owned by Russia’s military elite, only to be jailed or driven to exile for their work. Now, some pro-Kremlin bloggers are adopting the same rhetoric, but it’s too little and too late to salvage Russia’s war in Ukraine. … [A] country cannot launch a complete top-to-bottom overhaul of its military … while in the middle of an all-out war.”
- “Putin’s ‘partial mobilization’ … has also been a failure on all levels. … No matter what they tell pollsters—and whether they support Putin’s imperial war or not—it’s clear that the majority of Russian men don’t want to go anywhere near the front. If they did, they’d have joined the ‘volunteer’ battalions set up since the Ukrainians first beat back the Russians in March, battalions that mostly failed to materialize. … What’s more, mobilization has irrevocably broken the social contract wedding Russians to their regime: a modicum of stability and prosperity in exchange for complete disengagement from politics.”
- “The entire myth of Putin’s infallibility is coming apart: Russia’s much vaunted military prowess, the ‘stability’ he promised in his first terms as president, the supposedly omnipotent propaganda which is now forced to make U-turns and admit previously unthinkable retreats, the ‘power vertical’ now torn apart by infighting among Putin’s associates, and a population lined up behind its president.”
- “What does this mean going forward? Putin’s final and irreversible retreat from Ukraine seems like a fantastical notion. But it wouldn’t be the first time post-Soviet Russia has admitted a humiliating military defeat. … Unless Russia faces a national reckoning after losing the war in Ukraine—something akin to Germany’s reinvention after World War II—the cycle of imperial resentment and revanchism will only repeat itself.”
“Vladimir Putin’s Cannon Fodder,” Editorial Board, WSJ, 10.17.22.
- “Tens of thousands of Russians have fled the country to escape military conscription, and now reports say Russia is resorting to press gangs to hunt and snatch male civilians to send to the front lines. … A raid last week on a homeless shelter in Moscow reportedly netted dozens of, uh, recruits.”
- “Russia’s mobilization goal had been 300,000 troops. Mr. Putin said Friday [Oct. 14] that 220,000 have been registered so far, with 16,000 of them already deployed for combat after mere days of training. … ‘[There have been] anecdotal reports … of untrained, unequipped, and utterly unprepared men being rushed to the frontlines, where some have already surrendered to Ukrainian forces and others have been killed.’”
- “Putin has been brutal toward Ukraine, and it takes nothing away from that outrage to note that he is also brutal toward his own people. … [F]rightening options are all that many Russians have left. Time may be on Ukraine’s side, not Mr. Putin’s.”
- “Mounting evidence of ill-equipped Russian conscripts deployed to Ukraine with almost no military training has sparked bafflement and anger among friends and relatives who spoke to The Moscow Times about the experiences of their loved ones.”
- “A political gamble intended to solve the army’s manpower problem, Russia’s mobilization has been plagued by problems and excesses. Bringing the Ukraine war home to many Russians for the first time, polling data suggests it has put a dent in Putin’s popularity.”
- “Worried about the lack of military training, relatives of soldiers from western Russia’s Bryansk region published a video appeal to Putin over the weekend, asking the president to intervene to bring their mobilized sons and husbands back home.”
- “A lack of official transparency has prompted wives and other relatives of mobilized soldiers to create groups and chats on social media to try and find out more information. Many users in such groups surveyed by The Moscow Times complained that they hadn't heard from their sons and husbands for weeks.”
- “While there is little evidence that friends and relatives of dead soldiers are ready to take to the streets in protest, anger toward officials appears to be on the rise. … Amid the discontent, the Kremlin has appeared keen to signal that mobilization, as it enters its fourth week, is already drawing to a close.”
See also section on “Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts” above.
Security, law-enforcement and justice:
- No significant developments.
III. Russia’s relations with other countries
Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:
“Russia deepens its influence in West Africa,” columnist Ishaan Tharoor, WP, 10.24.22.
- “At the end of September, Burkina Faso experienced its second coup of the year. A military putsch … brought down the prevailing junta and made 34-year-old Capt. Ibrahim Traoré the youngest national leader in all of Africa. The coup, largely bloodless, was denounced by the African Union, and E.U. and U.S. officials. But cheers came from a conspicuous corner of the world.”
- “Yevgeniy Prigozhin, … head of the Wagner Group, a shadowy mercenary company that Western experts view as a Kremlin proxy, said Traoré’s power grab ‘was necessary’ … and cast the grave security troubles wracking the West African nation as part of France’s imperial legacy. … Scenes of jubilant pro-coup supporters in the capital Ouagadougou showed some waving Russian flags.”
- “Burkina Faso is in the grips of a harrowing security crisis. Islamist militants control swaths of the country. Thousands of civilians have been killed this year alone, while some 2 million people … have been displaced by the fighting. … [T]he previous coup leader … seized power in January on grounds that the government was failing the military in its battles against insurgents.”
- “Experts now see Russia exploiting the vacuum. Since at least 2018, the Wagner Group has been enlisted to help fragile African regimes crack down on Islamist extremist insurgencies. In the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Libya and now Mali, Russian military contractors have operated on the ground alongside local forces. In some instances, they’ve been linked to reports of human rights abuses and possible war crimes.”
- “[I]n Burkina Faso, there have been growing suggestions that the new junta will consider forging a new ‘strategic partnership’ with Moscow… ‘In previous coups Russia has tried to position itself as an accidental beneficiary of regime changes,’ Samuel Ramani, an analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC. ‘This time around Russia is a lot more proactive in support for the coup, and that has led to speculation that Russia has played a coordinating role.’”
- “Though it’s unclear what actual presence Russia does or will have in Burkina Faso, the coup sets the stage for a new chapter in a broader geopolitical contest.”
Ukraine:
“Ukraine has a Russia problem not a Putin problem,” Taras Kuzio, Atlantic Council, 10.17.22. Clues from Ukrainian Views.
- “[M]ost Ukrainians are well aware that Russia will continue to pose an existential threat to their nation for decades to come. … It is not entirely clear what would constitute victory for Ukraine. As the war has progressed and Ukrainian battlefield successes have mounted, the country’s goals have become bolder. While concessions to the Kremlin might have been plausible in the early days of the war, Ukraine’s leaders now speak confidently of liberating the entire country. … [J]ust 5% of Ukrainians would be prepared to recognize Crimea as Russia and 2% would accept Moscow’s attempts to annex … Donbas.”
- “Following a string of stunning counteroffensive advances … many now believe Ukraine could push Russia back to the front lines of February 24 by the end of this year and return the rest of the country to Ukrainian control by the middle of 2023.”
- “[Putin’s] successor will not be a democrat. … Given the political climate in Russia, any successor would almost certainly be a nationalist figure from within the ranks of the current elite. However, he (and yes, it would inevitably be a ‘he’) would probably be more pragmatic and therefore less prone to ranting about Ukraine.”
- “At the same time, numerous major obstacles to a sustainable peace settlement would remain. One of the most immediate challenges … will be the quest for justice. In practice, this will mean attempting to charge the leaders of a nuclear power with war crimes. … Another urgent question will be how to make Russia pay for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction.”
- “While most available evidence confirms overwhelming Russian public support for the war in Ukraine, … the Levada Center, has found that a clear majority of Russians do not believe they are morally responsible for the deaths of Ukrainian civilians or the widespread destruction … in Ukraine. Such attitudes are hardly surprising in an authoritarian society where nobody has ever been held accountable for the horrors of the Soviet era. Nevertheless, it is in everybody’s interests to end this cycle of impunity and encourage Russians to confront the crimes being committed in their name.”
Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:
- “Previously, the open borders had always been considered a one-way street benefitting so-called ‘low skilled’ workers from Central Asia heading to Russia for better wages and careers, while Russians typically tended to look more toward Europe. Now, in a bid to avoid being sent to fight in Ukraine, Russians are looking east and south, however temporarily.”
- “The Kazakh Interior Ministry reported that about 200,000 Russians entered the country in the two weeks following September 21, when the mobilization was announced, with many subsequently going elsewhere: 147,000 left the country during the same period. This massive movement has already created chaos on the borders and flooded Kazakh cities with Russian men, disrupting daily life there for residents.”
- “[T]he costs of accommodation and other services in some capitals have doubled and tripled. In unregulated markets, landlords are evicting local families so that they can charge more to affluent Russian tenants. Students and vulnerable groups have become the primary victims. The Kazakh authorities have warned against replacing local workers with new Russian arrivals, although anecdotal evidence suggests that is already happening. Since March, the influx of arrivals from Russia has sparked a deficit of dollars, causing major problems on local financial markets.”
- “The current mass movement has polarized local societies. Various groups of ordinary people have sprung up to help the draft dodgers with medical assistance, food, shelter and information. Others are less enthusiastic, accusing their more welcoming compatriots of having a colonial mentality for being willing to help the Russians.”
- “The official positions of Central Asian governments are more restrained, but tension and unease can still be detected. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has said that Kazakhstan ‘should look after and protect’ Russians arriving there. Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has stated outright that draft dodgers should not fear extradition.”
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