Stratfor: Russia's Great Power Strategy

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-foreign-policy-215538

[Crafty_Dog]

Anna Borshchevskaya on Russia's Military Activity in the Eastern Mediterranean
by Marilyn Stern
Middle East Forum Radio
July 5, 2020
https://www.meforum.org/61185/borshchevskaya-on-russias-military-activity-in-libya

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/russian-election-vladimir-putin-voters-approve-constitutional-reforms/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202020-07-06&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart

[Crafty_Dog]

   
    Moscow Under Stress on Its Periphery
Russian interests are being tested in the Caucasus and Levant.
By: Allison Fedirka

Two weeks ago, Russia concluded a constitutional referendum meant to shore up the power of the Kremlin and especially of Vladimir Putin. Under the revised constitution, which was approved by nearly 79 percent of voters, Putin can theoretically remain president until 2036 – by which time he would be in his 80s. The move came not a moment too soon: Crises involving Russia-backed partners are erupting in the Levant and the Caucasus, not to mention the long-standing war in Libya, where Russia is a key player. And as if that wasn’t enough, there are faint signs of anti-government unrest in Siberia. For a while, Russia has faced a number of serious economic problems, and we have been alert to signs of domestic destabilization. Thus, any signs of domestic trouble, not to mention events on Russia’s periphery that threaten its strategic interests and raise the likelihood of high-stakes conflicts, are quick to grab our attention when they appear on our radar.

Domestic Instability

At its core, the internal threat for Moscow concerns the government’s ability – or inability – to maintain a basic standard of living for Russians after a sharp decline due to low oil prices, sanctions and, most recently, the coronavirus pandemic. On July 11, a leading architect of the Russian economy, Alexei Kudrin, made scathing remarks about the government’s management of the economy in recent years. Kudrin called for structural and institutional reforms and highlighted how disappointing Russia’s economic growth has been since the fall of the Soviet Union, a period when output should have surged as the economy transitioned to capitalism. This was one of the harshest recent critiques of the Russian economy, but it was far from the only one. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that economic difficulties lie ahead for the country, and Putin himself said Russian authorities need to act more decisively and make the economy more competitive, or risk becoming mired in an economic “swamp.”

Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Kremlin is struggling to hide the country’s growth slowdown, stubbornly low exports, rising unemployment and declining real incomes from the population. Public dissatisfaction with the socio-economic situation and government policy is rising, especially in those peripheral regions that are remote from Moscow. These regions are mostly poorer and lack the infrastructure and economic diversity of the major urban centers. State welfare programs prop up the few areas with above-average incomes. Indeed, the results of the constitutional vote showed that the Kremlin is losing support in these regions: In the Nenets Autonomous district, which receives generous state subsidies and thus has the country’s second-highest incomes, 55 percent of voters opposed the draft changes. Even farther away from Moscow, in Khabarovsk, which borders China, turnout was only 44 percent, and 36 percent of voters opposed the constitutional changes.
 
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Khabarovsk is interesting for other reasons as well. On July 10, the region’s governor, Sergei Furgal, was arrested in connection with the attempted murder of two businessmen in 2004 and 2005. (He pleaded not guilty.) The arrest has brought out protesters demanding the release of Furgal, who defeated candidates from Putin’s United Russia party to become governor in 2018, for several consecutive days. According to official estimates, 12,000 people rallied in support of Furgal on July 11, though unofficial estimates put the number of participants nearly three times higher. Subsequent protests have apparently not reached the same scale.

The Kremlin is no stranger to large protests, but demonstrations of this magnitude usually occur in places like Moscow or St. Petersburg. The sheer size of the July 11 protest suggests a high degree of organization and logistical support; it would have been difficult to bring out as many as 35,000 people for a completely spontaneous demonstration. The protest is also notable for its cause; typical triggers for unrest are things like wage arrears, not allegedly politically motivated arrests of local officials.
A single protest in Siberia – even several days of protests – is hardly going to destabilize Russia. However, what happened in Khabarovsk is enough of an outlier that – in combination with the country’s increasingly dire economic situation – it warrants Moscow’s attention, as well as our own.

The Caucasus

Besides domestic pressures, Russian interests are also under threat abroad. In a still-murky incident, Russian-led security forces on July 11 wounded and detained a Georgian citizen for unknown reasons in Georgian territory, near the border with South Ossetia, which Russia has occupied since 2008. Detentions by Russian forces are not uncommon in this area, but the shooting of a Georgian citizen stands out as unusually aggressive. The Kremlin itself has not commented on the incident, but it did recently complete major military drills together with units of the local army in the territory of Abkhazia, which was also invaded by Russian troops in 2008.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has grown more antagonistic toward Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. On July 10, during a security council meeting, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan went beyond normal talking points of highlighting Armenia's claim over Nagorno-Karabakh and its strategic value to Yerevan. Pashinyan also emphasized the need to be tough on foreign powers trying to influence Armenian affairs. The next day, there was gunfire along their shared border at Tovuz, far from Nagorno-Karabakh but nonetheless a common point of dispute. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry accused Armenia of violating a cease-fire and targeting civilians. Armenia said the attack targeted army engineering infrastructure and technical facilities. Fighting resumed again on July 13.
 
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This incident is notable because of Turkey’s reaction to it. The Turkish government, normally quiet over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, threw its support behind Azerbaijan. Armenia and Turkey are long-standing enemies, so naturally Armenia accused Turkey of provoking instability.

Because the South Caucasus is a strategic buffer zone for Russia, tensions there naturally draw in Moscow. While Russia doesn’t need to fully control the South Caucasus to maintain territorial integrity, it needs to influence the area enough to reduce the risk of threats on its border. Russia therefore tends to be a moderating force between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, working to ensure no major conflict erupts in the region. But with Turkey submitting an official position, Russia will have a harder time being the voice of reason. Turkey’s involvement would force Russia to throw its support behind Azerbaijan since siding with Armenia would squarely position Russia against Turkey. Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Moscow has already warned of the potential for the situation to escalate into a major conflict. It may come to nothing, as clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh almost always seem to, but Turkey’s mere statement will make Russia uneasy.

The Levant

Finally, there is Lebanon, which is not geographically part of the Russian periphery but part of the periphery of Syria, which is an important Russian ally and recipient of Russian security guarantees. The country is experiencing its worst economic crisis since World War I. Mass economic dislocation has shattered the middle class and has made food financially inaccessible for the majority of the population, many of whom now suffer from malnutrition. Virtually every government effort to remedy the situation has failed. If things don’t improve, the possibility of national instability, even civil war, can’t be ruled out.
 
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So why does this matter for Russia? Because the Eastern Mediterranean is critical to Russia, and the Levant, and Lebanon’s position in it, is critical to the Eastern Mediterranean. Russia has parlayed its presence in Syria into an attempt to restore its image as a powerful military force. Security in Lebanon and in Syria have historically been intertwined. During the Lebanese civil war, the Syrian army occupied Lebanon in 1976 to project influence, counter Lebanese and Palestinian guerilla groups that threatened the Assad regime, and act as a counterweight against Syria’s main rival, Israel. Syrian troops withdrew in 2005, but Lebanon still serves as a buffer zone, with sectarian tensions, political gridlock and economic instability that create ripe conditions for foreign influence.

As Beirut weakens, outside powers will move in to protect and advance their interests. They cannot abide the uncertainty of political instability in Lebanon nor allow one country to acquire more power there at the expense of their own. In this kind of environment, it doesn’t take much for conflict to escalate. Chaos in southern Lebanon may give Israel, for example, the opportunity it has been waiting for to move against Hezbollah. Hezbollah may see war as a better option over isolation and thus draw in Iran and Syria. The U.S. and Russia would not be able to ignore it. The degree of cooperation between Israel and Russia, while variable, would rile the United States. Turkey would have an opportunity to make a play for influence in northern Lebanon where the location lends greater access to the Mediterranean.

Maintaining control over its periphery has always been a challenge for Russia, but it’s not one it can ignore. Which puts Moscow in the position of managing four regions – one domestic, three foreign. Domestically, Russia faces a host of economic challenges. This, combined with signs of brewing public unrest, raises the possibility of regional disintegration and thus is a major threat to Moscow. Whether or not these same forces will be reckoned with through political settlements or military conflict remains to be seen.   

[Crafty_Dog]

   
    Forecasting Russia: Strength and Weakness
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman

Our forecast for Russia, dating back to my earliest books, was two-fold: first, that Russia would reassert itself and at least appear to be a significant force facing the European Peninsula and in the Caucasus, Russia's two essential frontiers, and second, that the forces that brought the Soviet Union to its knees would continue to haunt the Russian Federation. In other words, there would be a resurrection of Russia followed by a second crisis that would tear it apart. The first forecast was accurate. We are now seeing the second unfold.

My view was that with the emergence of Vladimir Putin, an old KGB man, the perception of Russia as broken and weak after the fall of the Soviet Union would be reversed and, once reversed, that Russia would be at once overestimated and underestimated as a global power. It would confront the West enough to be seen as a threat but never enough to go to war.

Putin understood that appearing to be a threat is far safer than appearing to be weak. Other countries take advantage of the weak and are cautious around the strong. It followed that Putin would attempt to make Russia stronger and, more important, seem stronger than it was.

Evidence of this strategy abounds. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. It repeatedly threatened to withhold vital (and notably expensive) energy supplies to strongarm Europe. It sent troops to Syria for no strategic reason. And it waged psychological warfare through social media in the hopes of weakening potential enemies.

All the while Russia remained weak, so much so that in 2014, it faced an existential crisis: the uprising in Ukraine, which Russia claimed was fomented by Western intelligence. Since the 18th century, Russia has protected itself from the European Peninsula with buffer states – the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine. Of these, Ukraine was by far the most important. It had gained independence with the Soviet collapse, but there appeared to Moscow to be a tacit understanding that the West would not intrude on these buffer states. But it immediately did, first by integrating the Baltics into NATO and then, from Moscow’s point of view, by deposing the constitutionally elected president of Ukraine and replacing him with a Western puppet. This appears to Moscow to be a deliberate assault on Russian national security.

Putin countered the so-called Maidan Revolution by instigating a pro-Russia uprising in eastern Ukraine and by annexing Crimea, neither of which came close to reversing the revolution. Clearly Russian intelligence had not only failed to mount an effective insurgency but had also misread events in Kyiv, failing to understand the forces arrayed against it. This failure is central to the story. Intelligence services have been vital to Russia ever since it was ruled by czars. A vast country required a powerful force to control it. The Soviet Union had a superb intelligence service. By 2014, it couldn’t even manage events in a region it knew well. For a while, Russia asserted itself by using energy exports as a weapon to cow Europe, but as oil prices fell, Russia could no longer afford to continue, as it needed income to support its centralized economic system. It continued to act as a great power, and this appearance had value, but underneath it, Russia was the Soviet Union, with all the weaknesses that broke it.

After all, it wasn’t a popular uprising that felled the Soviet Union; it was the fact that it was a Third World country, heavily dependent on the export of primary commodities, particularly oil and natural gas, whose price it could not control. It was also the fact that the Soviet Union had engaged in military competition with the United States whose primary currency was expensive advanced technology. The U.S. could bear the price readily. Between falling oil prices and a large share of its economy devoted to defense, the Soviet Union simply broke under the pressure. It was never able to develop a modern economy that could effectively serve its people or win it a stable place in the international system. There were moments, such as the 1950s, where this seemed possible, but it was never to be. The Soviets had convinced the U.S. that it was a great power, and the U.S. responded as if it were. The Russian belief in the bluff turned into an agonizing Cold War, where the U.S. feared the Soviet Union so much that no effort was spared to match it. The Soviets' efforts had to go to pretending they were dangerous without fully achieving it. The question was asked at NATO: If the Russians are so powerful, when will they attack? The answer, never uttered, was that they won’t attack because they know they will lose.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a global sense that the world had entered a new age, with Russia part of it. It had abandoned its costly and dangerous Eastern European empire. It had allowed many of the Soviet republics to go their own way. It had freed itself from the burdens these countries imposed and had cleared the way for turning Russia into a modern country faithful to its own culture.

Alexei Kudrin, a former Russian finance minister who is still highly respected, provides a statistic that quantifies the problem. Since 1990, the economy has grown 30 percent, or roughly 1 percent per year. Forgetting the collapse of oil prices, or the weakness of the FSB, or any other data, this fact is staggering. Russia had been badly organized and managed before 1990. Even minimal measures should have stimulated the country’s economy for a while. That didn’t happen.

There are many reasons for this, but for me there is always the staggering reality of Russia: its size, the distances that must be traveled, the transportation system, the roads and rail lines, challenging conditions, and so on. A nation cannot grow if its products cannot readily reach its markets, nor if its producers are so spread out that it’s impossible to know what the market is demanding and providing. Russia always suffered from its wealth in space, people and products. Large nations must invent their own geography. Russia lived with its geography.

The ongoing decline in oil prices – even though they have modestly recovered – is a crisis for Russia. Moscow collects the taxes and distributes the money to the rest of the country. This pays teachers, nurses, police and most other government workers. Under Boris Yeltsin, the money didn’t come and the people suffered. This problem went away under Putin at first, but there are increasing reports that these workers aren’t being paid now. The memory of the 1990s burns in their minds, and there are the first signs of a return to that period. There are demonstrations in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk, for example, where tens of thousands have been protesting for weeks against Moscow's arrest of a popular mayor. Why he was arrested and why they are demonstrating is unknown to me, but there has to be more here than meets the eye.

The Yeltsin years recreated a Russia where the countryside was extremely poor. It was my belief that this would happen again, because it is built into the weakness of the Russian economy and the politics of distributing scarcity. I think the next phase will come, and the weaknesses will show themselves again. Bear in mind that few expected the first collapse or the apparent recovery. Russia hides itself well.   

[Crafty_Dog]

   
    In Russia, Mercenaries Are a Strategic Tool
Companies like the Wagner Group fill in certain security blanks.
By: Ridvan Bari Urcosta

Belarusian intelligence has accused Russia of sending private citizens to interfere in the country’s affairs and generally engage in acts of provocation. These same citizens participated in the annexation of Crimea a few years ago and fought on Russia’s behalf in the breakaway region of Donbass, according to officials in Ukraine, who demanded their immediate extradition to Kyiv. Instead, the Belarusian government sent them back to Russia.

To no one’s surprise, the citizens were members of the infamous private military company known as the Wagner Group, which over the past few years has been involved in every international conflict strategically important to Russian interests. The case of Belarus and Ukraine – the first instance on record of Wagner operating so close to NATO’s eastern flank – underscores just how useful a political tool Wagner has become for the Kremlin.

Organization and Formalization

Private military companies are by no means unique to Russia, but Wagner has a unique Russian flavor. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the concomitant depression left thousands of Russian soldiers rudderless. They were unemployed but well trained and ready to fight, so they informally banned together in the 1990s to sell their services throughout Eurasia. By 2008, there were no fewer than a dozen private military companies in Russia. The most famous of them, the one that would serve as the blueprint for Wagner, was officially created in 2013 in response to the Syrian civil war. Known as the Slavonic Corps, the group comprised former Russian special forces whose primary task was to protect the oil fields near Deir el-Zour. This naturally led to clashes with the Islamic State.

Among the members of the Slavonic Corps was Dmitry Utkin, a former special forces commander in the GRU, Russia's military intelligence unit, more commonly referred to by his call sign, “Wagner.” Most would be arrested for mercenary activities when they came back to Russia. (The legal status of private military companies is murky. Officially they are illegal, but they are “coincidentally” deployed to areas vital to Russian interests. One of the Wagner Group’s biggest benefactors, a billionaire named Yevgeny Prigozhin with oil and mining operations in Africa and the Middle East, is tight with Russian President Vladimir Putin.) Either way, the Wagner Group returned to Syria in 2016 and cooperated closer with Russian regular forces. They are believed to have participated in the assaults on Palmyra in 2016 and 2017, and they are rumored to have fought with Syrian forces, and thus against U.S. forces, in the battle of Khasham in 2018.

The group has since expanded its reach considerably, particularly in Africa. It trains the military in Sudan, which reportedly granted mining concession agreements to a company tied to Prigozhin. It has participated in military parades in the Central African Republic, and is thought to be in Burundi as well. Its most high-profile client, of course, is Libya. The United Nations estimates that more than 1,000 Wagner members are fighting alongside the Libyan National Army, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. The document says that mercenaries help to repair military equipment and also perform the functions of gunners, sappers and specialists in electronic warfare. Putin denies funding or supporting them; in fact, he has said explicitly that they do not represent the Russian government in any way. But curiously, Haftar met directly with Putin and Prigozhin back in 2018, and by 2019, the group was reportedly assisting in Haftar’s attempt to retake Tripoli.
 
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Leverage and Maneuverability

This partly illustrates the allure of Russia’s private military companies: plausible deniability. They simply don’t have the political baggage of total state affiliation, which gives Moscow political leverage and maneuverability. They are well trained, they have their own equipment and training facilities – the primary one located in Molkino in Krasnodar Krai near the Black Sea – and even have their own airfield. Yet, they are also relatively cheap on the global market. Salaries for the average soldier start at $2,000 per month but can go as high as $20,000 per month. The low end of that spectrum may seem low, but it’s higher than enlisted pay in the Russian armed services. (It should be noted that reports from 2017 suggested salaries had dropped.) Money comes from private sources, local governments that want to use their services and, allegedly, classified disbursements from the Ministry of Defense.
 
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So even though Moscow can claim not to use private military companies, it makes sense that it would. Groups like Wagner can secure facilities conventional militaries can’t or won’t for political purposes, and thus they are perfect for non-linear and limited-scale conflicts. (They tend to fare worse against conventional militaries.) They usually work more closely with local security forces and help to organize those forces. Moreover, military campaigns conducted between states can be complicated and logistically complex. Private companies can simplify this process. And ultimately they give Russia another contingent of forces to work with. When Putin announced plans to partially withdraw from Syria, Moscow thought it could offset the losses with private military companies.

Notably, Russia’s preference for private military companies is a relatively recent development, one ushered in by the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, which made it clear to Moscow that the Wagner Group is an effective supplementary global tool. Maintaining semi-official groups enables the Kremlin to send them into dangerous places to secure Russian companies’ interests without officially claiming responsibility. They fill out the strategic blanks, forming a sort of symbiosis between the state and the private groups whereby the state allows soldiers of fortune to earn money. In return, the state gets subordination and partial cover-up. It’s a small but important part of the Russian grand strategy. Russia will continue to use the private military companies as an instrument of its global strategy in the near future especially under Putin’s rule.   

[Crafty_Dog]

September 14, 2020   View On Website
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    The Kremlin's Unusual Silence
The problems for Russia's central government keep growing, but the leadership seems reluctant to act.
By: Ekaterina Zolotova

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not fly to New York this week for the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly, reportedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Putin’s annual television program and Q&A show, which usually happens in June but was postponed this year, also will not occur in 2020 – because of the pandemic. In general, the Russian president has limited himself lately to vague decrees and brief comments, usually in online interviews. It’s easiest for the Kremlin to blame the pandemic for Putin’s relative absence from the spotlight, but Moscow is under pressure from many directions, and the virus is just the best distraction. There’s the instability in neighboring Belarus, Russia’s most important buffer and its last remaining ally to the west. There’s the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which threatens to bring down new sanctions against the Kremlin and endangers the future of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is important for the Russian economy. There are unending protests in Khabarovsk and, of course, the economic impact of COVID-19 and the fall in oil prices and consumer demand.

The pandemic has strained governments the world over, but what’s interesting about the Russian case is the government’s silence and apparent inaction in the face of not just COVID-19 but also many other challenges. All this creates the impression that the Kremlin is struggling to maintain its strength and the country’s economic stability.

Silencing, or Ignoring, Criticism

Arguably the clearest sign that something strange is happening in Russia is the apparent poisoning of Navalny last month. The 44-year-old anti-corruption activist was aboard a plane from Tomsk to Moscow on Aug. 20 when he fell violently ill, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing so that Navalny could be rushed to a hospital in Omsk. On Aug. 22, he was moved to Berlin’s Charite hospital, where specialists reported signs that Navalny had been exposed to Novichok, a deadly nerve agent that was used in the assassination attempt against Russian defector Sergei Skripal in the U.K. in 2018. For obvious reasons, accusations focused on Moscow, and Western governments began discussing new sanctions against the Kremlin.

It’s uncertain who is to blame, but there are at least two main possibilities. The first is that Moscow fears its power in the regions is weakening and authorities wanted to warn the opposition. Perhaps not coincidentally, Navalny’s poisoning and a government raid of the headquarters of the opposition United Democrats both occurred just before a general election on Sept. 13. The second possibility is that a government rival of Putin wanted to destabilize his position, since the poisoning will hurt the government’s support. In either scenario, Moscow is dealing with uncertainty that affects its ability to govern throughout Russia’s immense territory.

This is also demonstrated by the ongoing protests in the Far East city of Khabarovsk. On July 9, the former governor of the Khabarovsk region, Sergei Furgal, was arrested and sent to Moscow, where he was accused of involvement in the murders of several businessmen in the 2000s. On July 11, thousands of people turned out in Khabarovsk to protest the arrest, saying that it was politically motivated. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Furgal was never a serious opponent of the Putin regime, but skepticism of Moscow’s intentions in Khabarovsk remains high. The emergence of protests is itself notable: This is the first time in modern Russian history that a governor accused of a criminal offense has received massive public support. Protests popped up in other cities, and they have occurred daily in Khabarovsk since they began, with help from the Russian opposition via social networks. Also notable is their durability, even though the protests are smaller than they used to be.
 
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Moscow’s response – or lack thereof – is also unusual. Located nearly 4,000 miles (6,000 kilometers) from Moscow, Khabarovsk is near the border with China. In theory, the stability of a border region in such a distant area should be a priority for the Kremlin. But since the arrest, the central government has been largely absent. Putin does not comment on events in the region, security forces have not suppressed the protests, and the Russian media is focused on unrest in Belarus. It’s possible that the Kremlin worries that attempting to disperse the rallies would cause greater instability and fuel greater discontent, with the potential to spread to other regions. Meanwhile, some political force – the ex-governor’s supporters or other opponents of the Kremlin – has an interest in keeping the protests going, organized and productive. Moscow’s hesitance to engage suggests that it is uncertain about its position and afraid of sparking a larger, more widespread rebellion, especially in other remote cities and regions.

The Price of Stability

Another challenge for Russia – one not of its own making – is energy prices. The Russian economy and budget are heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, but the coronavirus-induced recession has sent energy prices plummeting. The global economic recovery overall has proceeded slowly, and demand for energy hasn’t recovered. Russia’s revenues from oil exports from January to July amounted to $43.9 billion, a decline of 37.7 percent compared to the same period in 2019. Export revenues from gas fell by 51 percent. This translates into greatly reduced budget revenues for the state.
 
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Less revenue means less money to distribute among the population and regions, and this is an especially sensitive time, as COVID-19 has affected standards of living throughout the country. During the lockdown, more than 1.2 million Russians were left without work. At the end of the second quarter, the purchasing power of Russians for basic food products dropped to its lowest level in the past 10 years. Regions continue to develop unevenly, poverty remains an issue, and government subsidies are needed to create demand. And although the economy is not yet an inspiration for protests, a prolonged decline in living standards may exacerbate negative trends in society. The Kremlin fears that at a time when the population and economy need a boost, it will lack the funds to distribute because oil prices are expected to remain low for a while.
 
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In times like these when money is tight, the Kremlin typically looks to the oligarchs and heads of the largest companies to replenish the budget, and this time is no different. The heads of the largest Russian oil companies (Rosneft, Lukoil, Gazprom Neft, Tatneft and Zarubezhneft) complained to Putin about the Ministry of Finance’s plans to raise taxes on hydrocarbon production, but their concerns apparently fell on deaf ears. Russian billionaires have lost some $16.7 billion since the beginning of the year because of the pandemic, and it will get worse: The personal income tax rate of 13 percent, which has been the same for everyone for 20 years, is set to increase to 15 percent next year for those earning more than 5 million rubles (approximately $67,000).

Russia still has $177.6 billion, about 11.7 percent of gross domestic product, in its national wealth fund, but the Kremlin is determined to save what it can for tough times ahead. Without a significant increase in energy prices, Moscow’s only choice to replenish the budget is to raise taxes on the rich to redistribute to the rest of the population. This would help Putin’s popularity with the majority, but it could lead to dissatisfaction and a loss of support among the wealthy and may cause additional capital flight, which would hurt the economy.

Finally, there’s Belarus, the last Russian ally in the west and the only thing standing between U.S. troops in Poland and Russia’s borders. Protests and strikes in Belarus have continued unabated since that country’s disputed presidential election on Aug. 9 and the announcement of incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko’s victory. Labor collectives from the largest Belarusian companies have joined the action. Moscow supports Lukashenko but it is in no hurry to intervene. Russian military assistance in suppressing mass protests would mean an invasion, which, of course, would only worsen Russia’s position in international trade and would mean more severe economic sanctions, which Russia’s slowing economy may not withstand.

Russia’s territorial size is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The different regions of Russia are unequal, are at different stages of economic development and are only loosely connected. A stable government, a strong security apparatus and calm borders are important for preserving the unity of this vast territory. Moscow also needs substantial buffers, as the flattened borderlands act almost as a highway to the capital for foreign armies. Buffers also create a kind of economic zone, sometimes with a large amount of resources (including labor), through which Russia can supply resources to the world market and bypass sanctions. Russia’s security and territorial integrity are a constant challenge, especially when Moscow has fewer financial resources to support the country’s poorer regions, the buffer zones are unstable and the ruling party lacks the confidence to act.

Why Russia has been relatively quiet is unclear. Putin has avoided making loud statements, leaving that to his team: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is in talks with Cyprus and Syria; Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who last week brought together the defense ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; and press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who is preparing for a visit by Lukashenko. None of this means the Kremlin isn’t under pressure. More likely, it means the leadership is aware of its weaknesses and trying to hide it from Russia’s competitors.   

[Crafty_Dog]

Russia's Endgame Isn't What You Think It Is – It's Worse
By Kim Iskyan

You probably don't realize it, but Russia is getting its way... again.

I'm not talking about a plan to infuse the U.S. water supply with vodka. Or to put a furry shapka on every American's head this winter. Or to get its guy – whoever that is – in the American White House.

Russia's agenda today is very different from its Soviet-era aim of global domination with a bread-line flavor... Back then, overrunning the world with its perverted vision of socialism – or annihilating the Earth many times over if that didn't work – seemed credible enough to be concerned about.

Russia's aspirations today are a lot more modest... yet destructive in a different way.

Since its days as a superpower, Russia's three-decade descent toward irrelevance is breathtaking. Today, the country's gross domestic product ("GDP") is smaller than that of France or Canada – and on a per-capita basis, its economic output is somewhere between Costa Rica and Malaysia. And it's falling further behind every day, with average annual economic growth of just 1% since 1990 – compared to a global average of 3.6%.

Russia's currency has lost more than half of its value relative to the U.S. dollar over the past decade. The market capitalization of its stock market amounts to less than half that of Apple.

With 145 million people, Russia has fewer people than Nigeria, Bangladesh, or Brazil. The country's most valuable asset is leaving as fast as it can... Around 2 million Russians have emigrated to the west over the past 20 years. (Many of the people I knew in Russia – from living there for nine years from 1996 to 2008 – have long since left.) The average Russian man lives about 12 years less than his counterpart in Spain.

Despite its rapid decline, Russia is still punching above its weight. Russia's "influence across the world is far-reaching and important," explained CNBC in February, pointing to its outsized role as a power broker, investor, and meddler throughout Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. As recently as May, U.S. President Donald Trump called for Russia to rejoin the Group of 7 club of industrialized countries.

A tally of mentions in the Financial Times suggests that the world's business decision-makers (or those who write their newspaper) are deeply preoccupied with Russia... The word "Russia" has racked up 8,347 mentions in the FT over the past three years, compared with 6,247 for India – which has 10 times more people and an economy that's 70% bigger. Japan, with an economy that's three times larger, got just 8% more mentions. (By this highly scientific gauge, Donald Trump is precisely 2.45 times more important than Russia, with 20,466 mentions.)

Why Do We Even Still Talk About Russia?

With twice the landmass of the contiguous 48 U.S. states – or 25 times the size of Texas – Russia is big. By dint of occupying one-eighth of the earth's land surface (and being 70% bigger than Canada, the world's second-largest country), Russia's voice is going to be loud, even if it's the bellow of a wounded bison missing a leg.

Plus, it's the world's second-largest oil exporter and natural gas producer. Perhaps fossil fuels are the new tobacco and will eventually be taxed and regulated into oblivion. Despite needing to cough up $15 for a pack of Marlboros (hello, New York), there are still around 1 billion smokers in the world... And it will be a long time before today's wind speed matters more to financial markets, or ordinary people, than the price of oil.

We also can't forget that Russia is still the world's largest nuclear power... It can turn the Earth into Mad Max land many times over. You can't ignore the big guy who's bristling with guns and knives and nuclear hand grenades.

And there's yet another reason: Vladimir Putin. Russia's unrivaled leader since 2000, Putin is a master strategist, both within Russia and on the global stage. And despite Russia's other advantages, it's only thanks to Putin that the country has even a faint cry of relevance.

Putin solidified and has maintained power in part by playing factions within the government against each other. Would-be power players who want to earn (or stay in) his good graces do a Tony Soprano to the oppositions politicians who threaten to gain too much support – or journalists who get too close to the truth.

He's kept the country's powerful business moguls in check by making an example of a few who stepped out of line. The threat of 10 years in prison – what happened to one of them – helped motivate the others to keep their Scrooge McDuck moves (and opinions about politics) behind closed vault doors.

To further solidify his position, Putin recently pushed through changes to the constitution to ensure that he can stick around until 2036... Term limits are for wimps. He's centralized control in himself (it's called the "power vertical" in Kremlin-speak) to a degree greater than the leader of any other big country in the world.

But Putin's dictatorial power at home is a liability on the global stage... To most of the rest of the world – except for the likes of China, Brazil, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia – Putin's frosty relationship with democracy, the rule of law, and basic human rights loses Russia serious points at the global grown-ups table. And few world leaders are impressed by the manly-man image that the Putin – who stands a Tom Cruise-like 5 feet, 7 inches tall – has cultivated through shirtless horseback riding and tiger hunting photo ops.

Meddle Me This...

But despite Putin's efforts – and the country's other natural advantages – Russia's glory days are long gone. The best that Russia can do is play spoiler... And it's been gold medaling at that.

One of the few arenas where the Soviets genuinely excelled – besides waiting in lines and making toasts – was in propaganda. Since well before the 2016 elections were just a glint in Donald Trump's eye, Russia has been spraying poisonous pixie dust through its propaganda firehose all over the world.

A 2017 study found that Russia has meddled in 27 elections since 1991. Until around 2014, Russia focused mostly on other former Soviet states – in particular, in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.

Then, Russia's horizons widened. It intruded in elections in the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Malta, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. It poked its nose into the Brexit vote in 2015... Italy's constitutional referendum... the Catalonia independence referendum... France's elections... and others.

And then there's the big borscht... Russia's (supposed) heavy involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections – evidence of which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell characterized as "indisputable" in July of 2018.

Russia isn't alone in wanting to influence what happens in other countries' elections. Governments in upwards of 70 countries have orchestrated political disinformation campaigns abroad, to interfere, distort opposing views, and discredit opponents. (Facebook was the most frequently used social network used to spread disinformation.)

But Russia has elevated meddling in other countries' affairs to an art form...

Russia has pioneered new and unwelcome ways of disseminating propaganda. Russia explored, exploited, and exported a new array of weapons – troll farms, fake news, fake Facebook accounts, leaked e-mails, fake WikiLeak documents, and cyberattacks on voting registration systems, for starters – that today occupy a prominent place in the toolbox of every self-respecting propagandist.

And in terms of bang for buck, propaganda is a lot more effective than your father's kind of war. Why bother with blood and gore if you can hardwire into the brains of the enemy? The cost of a handful of F-35 fighter jets ($94 million to $122 million per unit) – or Russian MiG-35s ($50 million each) – can fund a lot of Internet trolls, Facebook ads, and other light but lethal weapons in the propaganda wars.

Has Russia's propaganda worked? Judging by the success of its campaigns (which may not be the best indicator), it doesn't look like it...

The University of Toronto researchers found that of the 11 cases of Russian interference in the affairs of its post-Soviet world in 1991 to 2014, Russia got its way just four times. In the next three years – when it focused on elections outside the former Soviet Union – the side that Russia was rooting for won in nine of 16 elections.

"It's not at all clear that Russia's efforts made any difference," the study's authors concluded. And just three election results can be partly attributed to Russian efforts.

But the bigger question is whether Russia cares much about whether Scotland is independent, or Macedonia's name, or who is elected prime minister of the Netherlands or Sweden... or who is president of the United States.

Except for the rare cases Russia has a direct economic interest (in, say, an oil pipeline), it's usually indifferent to the outcome of most of the elections in which it inserts itself.

Russia (and Putin) Crave Relevance

It's a long fall from being a superpower to struggling just to be in the conversation... As Irish dramatist Oscar Wilde said, "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

The quick way for Russia to get attention – and as any adolescent will tell you, bad attention is better than none at all – is disruption. And Russia goes for the jugular, to undercut the foundations of democracy, by de-legitimizing elections and the institutions they support.

"Russian disinformation has evolved from its earlier objective of elevating preferred candidates and platforms to a greater focus on discrediting elections and institutions entirely," explained U.S.-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies in July.

In other words, it doesn't matter who wins or loses – for Putin's Russia, success is defined by how much havoc it can wreak... by dragging democracies down to their level.

According to geopolitics media company Gzero...

The Kremlin is less concerned with the outcome of any single vote than with more generally sowing doubts about the integrity of elections and political institutions in the West. So far, it's working. Until governments in targeted countries find a way to hit the right Russian state officials and their backers exactly where it most hurts, Russian meddling will continue – in the 2020 U.S. elections and beyond.

What's more, the strategy isn't going to change. Putin has survived four U.S. presidents – and any number of strategic re-sets, policy shifts, approach redirects, blueprint redesigns, and relationship talks with his American counterparts.

Regardless of who is in the American White House, Russia will continue to sow the seeds of chaos – because if it can't be on top, it can at least play the spoiler. Meanwhile, Russian meddling, in elections in the U.S. and elsewhere, will become more sophisticated... and more damaging.

That's bad news for western democracies and institutions – which are already under fire from the inside in many countries.
And if you start to doubt it all yourself – well, Vladimir Putin might be cracking a small smile somewhere deep inside the Kremlin.

[Crafty_Dog]

October 13, 2020   View On Website
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    In Search of a Solution to Russia’s Strategic Problem
By: George Friedman

Russian President Vladimir Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in history. Though it may not be true of all of history, it is certainly true of modern Russian history, because it cost Russia what it needs most: strategic depth. Until 1989, Russia’s western border was effectively in central Germany. The Caucasus shielded Russia from the south. Central Asia was a vast buffer against South Asia and potentially China. The Russian heartland, in other words, was secure from every direction.

The fall of the Soviet Union pulled its western border back behind the Baltics, Ukraine and Belarus. Russia retained the North Caucasus but lost the South Caucasus – Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. Central Asia broke down into independent states. This contraction of Russia represented not only a diminution of size but a decreased distance between potential enemies.

Russia inevitably sought to redraw the borders before a serious threat emerged. That no serious threat existed gave Russia some time. But for a country like Russia, insecurity can manifest quickly. Germany went from being a national wreck to an existential threat in less than a decade. The Russians had to increase their strategic depth, but they had to do so without triggering the attack they feared before their depth was increased.

We have seen three events in recent months – one in Belarus, one in the South Caucasus, one in Kyrgyzstan – that together encompass portions of the borderlands Russia lost. To be clear, it is always possible to see three disconnected events connected by logic, and to assume that this logic has anything to do with Russia’s strategic problem. Coincidences abound in history and these three events do not even constitute a perfect coincidence. Even so, where coincidences are accidents that appear to be deliberate, it is easy to dismiss deliberately connected events as simple coincidence. The answer to this is to simply note that a coincidence has occurred, and that regardless of intent by anyone, a coincidence could have the same consequence as an intentional event.

In Belarus, a key buffer on the North European Plain, longtime President Alexander Lukashenko was reelected in what many describe as an illegitimate election in August. Protests against the results have gone on more or less ever since. Russia’s relationship with Lukashenko is complicated – he tries to balance between Russia and the West when he can – but Lukashenko could hardly be described as pro-West. He and Moscow have their differences, but Moscow has always been very influential in Minsk and thus has always had an imperfect solution to its strategic dilemma to the west. If Lukashenko were replaced with someone more antagonistic toward Russia or more sympathetic to the West, it could effectively move NATO, Poland and the
Americans farther east, relegating cities such as Smolensk to border towns.

In Kyrgyzstan, which sits between Russia and China, there is similar political unrest. Here, too, an election has resulted in claims of fraud and large-scale demonstrations. The Russians have some military facilities there, but the most important point is that it provides a buffer between Russia and China. Russia and China are not currently at odds, but they fought each other as recently as the 1960s. Though that was 60 years ago, geopolitics tends to repeat itself, and whatever current interests might guide them, both are old hands at the shifts of history, and neither wants the other to have an advantage. It’s unclear whether the Belarusian playbook will work here, but Moscow has a stake in what happens, and given the likelihood that an arbiter will be needed, involvement would not be surprising.

In the South Caucasus, a war has broken out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed enclave governed by ethnic Armenians inside Azerbaijan. Broadly speaking, Azerbaijan is backed as before by Turkey, a country with whom Azerbaijan has an ethnic affinity, while Armenia is supported by Russia. But the conflict is much more complicated than that. For one thing, Azerbaijan has important relations with Russia that it cannot afford to sever. For another, Russian intelligence would surely have been aware of war preparations in Azerbaijan and so would have advised them to back off given Moscow’s relations with Armenia. That didn’t happen. Last, Russia has noted that the treaty it has with Armenia does not include Nagorno-Karabakh and that therefore Moscow has no obligation to intervene militarily on Armenia’s side. The Russians are clearly using the war to increase their influence with Azerbaijan, the most powerful and wealthy country in the South Caucasus. (Moscow helped to broker a cease-fire, but it quickly fell apart.) Without Russia, Armenia has few options. Georgia, which was invaded by Russia in 2008, won’t be much help, and the United States, which helped Georgia in said war, will likely choose to abstain.
 
(click to enlarge)

By appearing to shift their support from Armenia to Azerbaijan or, more precisely, bringing them both into the Russian orbit, the Russians solve a vital strategic problem. First, it helps to secure the South Caucasus, which, second only to Eastern Europe, is the path most likely taken by potential invaders. Second, by increasing control of the South Caucasus, the North Caucasus are made more secure. Of course, Russia already controls the North Caucasus and maintains a strong line of defense there, but Chechnya and Dagestan are home to militant Islamist movements, which Moscow claims are supported by the U.S. through intermediaries from the South Caucasus. True or not, Moscow isn’t taking any chances.

So we see events in Russia’s western and southern frontiers playing out in such a way that the geopolitical catastrophe Putin spoke of is being rectified. There are no tanks rumbling in either direction, but the politics of the situation appear to be heading that way. Of course, all of this may be coincidence. But it’s interesting to note the process that coincidence or calculation seems to have put in motion. But the Russians aren’t fools, and with Armenia and Azerbaijan aligning with Russia and Turkey excluded from the game, Georgia is isolated, and a repeat of 2008 would undermine the subtlety of the Russian move.   

[Crafty_Dog]

April 5, 2021
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The Arc of Instability in Eastern Europe
The question now is whether, when and how Russia will continue collecting territory.
By: Ridvan Bari Urcosta

It’s no secret that President Vladimir Putin, taking pages from the playbooks of Russian leaders of yore, is trying to secure strategic depth. Much of that depth naturally lies in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, which have been contested since at least the 16th century as Russia began to reclaim lands of Kievan Rus. Stalin continued to incorporate these territories before and after World War II, and in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, they became vast borderlands from the Baltics to Central Asia comprising newly independent states.

Russia’s latest attempts to recreate its buffer zone have created an arc of instability from Eastern Europe to the South Caucasus. Many of these states were already unstable, of course, and Russian revanchism has only made things worse. The question now is whether, when and how Russia will continue collecting territory.

Existing Instability

To briefly recap Eastern European instability: The region has been essentially dissolved three times in the past few hundred years. The first was when Eastern Slavs lost Kievan Rus, a loose federation stretching from present-day Ukraine to present-day western Russia. The second time was when Moscow partially lost its control over Eastern Europe in 1917. The third and greatest happened in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. In 2014 or so, modern Russia returned to the idea of rolling back some of the geopolitical “successes” of the West, creating a line of confrontation with the West in Ukraine, Moldova, Crimea and the Caucasus.

Four main factors contributed to Russia’s success in reclaiming lands it holds as its own: an international order that favored the geopolitically ambitious; political instability in the areas it meant to reclaim; the emergence of domestic groups in these countries that want to be part of Russia; and a strong military. Notably, actual military invasion has rarely been Moscow’s preferred course of action. It tends to rely on a mix of other tactics. For example, in Moldova, Belarus and Armenia, Moscow relied heavily on pro-Russia groups and on regional geopolitical factors. In Georgia, Moscow worked hard to maintain close relations with the Orthodox Church and conservative groups. Elsewhere, it has leveraged its role as diplomatic mediator to gain a foothold. Russia believes that resolving the Ukraine issue would resolve geopolitical tensions in the entire region. (It isn’t resolved, and it didn’t.)

Turning Point

The turning point for the entire region happened late last year, starting with the Belarusian presidential election held last August. Pro-Russia incumbent Alexander Lukashenko won in what many considered a sham election. Partly with Russia’s help, Lukashenko fought off protesters by redirecting their anger and undermining their resources.

Then, in late September, war broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory de facto managed by ethnic Armenians located entirely inside Azerbaijan. Moscow helped negotiate an end to hostilities, and in doing so made Armenia much more beholden to it. Its generally pro-West prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, is now fighting for his political life as pro-Russia officials reap the benefits. Moreover, the war’s resolution established a Russian military presence in the Caucasus through its deployment of peacekeepers. It’s also important to note that the West did not resolve the crisis. Washington either couldn’t or wouldn’t, leaving Russia and its historical competitor Turkey as the guarantors of regional security.


(click to enlarge)

A few days later, on Sept. 31, Georgia held parliamentary elections. The results were disappointing for opposition parties, which refused to recognize the results and abstained from any political dialogue with the ruling party. Now they are demanding new elections. The incident has put the West in a tough position. It has tried but failed to manage the crisis – odd, considering both sides in Georgia are generally pro-NATO and pro-EU. The West’s failure has given Russia the tools to further undermine democracy and stability in the country. Moscow can, and does, discredit Western influence and legitimacy and provides support for various groups. For Moscow, it will be important to see if things deteriorate further and, if they do, whether they lead to the emergence of non-democratic groups, since that would also complicate ties between Tbilisi and the West.

Then there is Moldova, a country with a population of 2.6 million that is likewise in the throes of instability. Last November, the country held presidential elections in which pro-West candidate Maia Sandu won over pro-Russia candidate Igor Dodon. Yet Dodon and pro-Russia forces have a majority in parliament, and they have vehemently resisted Sandu’s attempt to consolidate control. Naturally, Russia keeps a close eye on Moldova. Moscow would like to see strong and effective pro-Russia policy, but the country is too geographically isolated for Russia to intervene even if it wanted to. (This might be possible only if Moscow establishes control over southern Ukraine.)

Finally, there is Ukraine, where three distinct and important trends have emerged. First, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has failed to deliver on his promise to stabilize Donbass, the breakaway territory in the east. Russia expected that he would be at least partially successful, perhaps by creating a new grey zone or frozen conflict like in Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Transnistria. But the situation has only grown worse. Second, local elections returned Ukraine to the pre-Maidan revolution era, at least somewhat. Pro-Russia forces made serious gains in regional parliaments, the biggest of which were in the so-called region of “Novorossiya,” which Russia considers extremely important. Third, Zelenskiy started to prosecute pro-Russia oligarchs and to close pro-Russia TV channels and newspapers despite the fact that such measures would be considered undemocratic in any country.

Conflict in Eastern Ukraine
(click to enlarge)

Ukraine is a unique challenge for Russia. It is vitally important, but Moscow won’t simply invade; it considers much of the local population to be part of “Russian civilization,” and it would be immediately opposed by the West. Both Russia and the West would like to minimize direct contact there.

In short, within the past six months, Russia has achieved serious successes in Belarus and Armenia. It helped the Lukashenko government survive against well-organized democratic protests, and military integration is at historic new levels. It managed to increase its military presence in the South Caucasus by keeping Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenian control. (And it did so without the participation of the West.) Relations with Yerevan and Baku remain stable for now. In Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine, however, the situation is less certain. Russia would like to use Georgia against the West, but the most it can hope to achieve there is a normalization of relations in the next few years. In Moldova, Moscow would like to see a friendly political regime, ready to maintain a status quo and avoiding any joint anti-Russia actions together with Ukraine. The arc of instability, for now, is here to stay. The bigger danger, however, is that this arc could extend from the political to the military realm, especially in Ukraine.

[G M]

Vlad knows that the Kidsniffer McAlzheimers and the Ho and their stringpullers in the shadows can't/won't stand up to him.

[Crafty_Dog]

But, , , but , , , but , , , he called Putin a killer!

[Crafty_Dog]

June 8, 2021
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Russia as a Developing Nation
By: George Friedman\
Richard Moore, who heads Britain’s foreign intelligence service, or MI6, was quoted in the Sunday Times as saying that “Russia is an objectively weakening power in economic and demographic terms.’’ In President Vladimir Putin, the statement touched a nerve.

Responding to a question about the statement at the St. Petersburg International Forum, he said:

“You mentioned that the new head of MI6 gave such assessments, but he is new and a young leader in that sense. I think he will gain experience, and he will change his assessments. This is first. Second - if Russia is a weakening power, then why worry? If this is the case, keep calm and don't worry about this, and don't deteriorate Russian-British relation. And if you don't interfere, then a trend that is gaining strength will continue. Great Britain is among the few countries in Europe, and in the world, with which we have maintained a good pace of development of economic ties. Even during the past pandemic year, when our trade volume shrank with many countries in the world, with Great Britain it rose by 54%. This is a record high figure. So, if you don’t interfere, then everything will be all right and probably, with the help of mutual trade, from a weakening country Russia will transform into a thriving state. We would very much like for Russian-British relations to facilitate this process.”

The statement reflects several possibilities. One is that his comments were mistranslated. The problem is that I can’t find any denial of the translation. Another is that he was being sarcastic. Though tempting, I think Putin is savvy enough to know that sarcasm from a world leader doesn’t usually translate well. Given that I think Moore’s assessment is correct, and the point made is that Moore should be more supportive of British-Russian trade relations, Putin seemed to be conceding the point: that he recognized Russia’s real and ongoing economic decline and the need for robust trade with Britain.

I laid out my model for Russia in “The Next 100 Years,” which I wrote in 2007 and was published in January 2009. I argued that Russia would have to become more aggressive in its efforts to contain Western incursions into the buffer spaces of the former Soviet Union. The first step of that process was the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, a relatively mild event. The overthrow of the pro-Russia government in Ukraine a few years later, and its replacement by a pro-West regime, created a fundamental shift in Moscow that is being played out now in Belarus, the South Caucasus, Moldova and of course Ukraine itself. In my analysis then and now, Russia could not accept the geographic and political realities that the fall of the Soviet Union created and would become increasingly aggressive within the former Soviet Union and in a more limited sense globally, as in Syria.


(click to enlarge)

The problem Russia would have is the problem encountered by the Soviet Union. As politico-military actions increased, the cost of defense spiraled. That spiraling cost collided with the fact that Russia failed to create a modern economy. The center of gravity of Russia’s economy is the production and sale of energy – exports account for about 30 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product, and about 40 percent of its exports are energy – but it doesn’t control the price of energy or the associated whims of the market, which can inflict major damage on the economy.

This is what broke the Soviet Union. On one hand, it had to finance a massive military capability. On the other hand, a large part of its economy derived from the export of a single commodity. This is the definition of a developing economy: dependence on a single commodity. The Soviets had a developing economy while paying for a developed military. This limited the possibility of economic development outside of defense and energy, and limited social development.

The same fundamental process is underway today. Geopolitically, Russia had to transform its military from the rubble of the 1990s into a force capable of restoring its former borders (at least effectively if not formally) and cope with a possible response from the United States. At the same time, its ability to create a balanced modern economy was limited by the outflow of capital, thanks to the rise of the oligarchs and the arrested development of a large, technically proficient middle class. Russia never had the breathing room needed to first build a modern economy and then deal with geopolitics. It has been forced to resort to the old standby – energy – whose pricing is Russia’s great unknown.

In “The Next 100 Years,” I forecast a period in which Russia would become more assertive, followed by a period of increased economic weakness and social disappointment. The fall of the Soviet Union failed to deliver what Russia has always longed to be: a modern European country. It remains a significant military power but one that is not strong enough to impose its will by direct force because it cannot alienate countries like Britain that could deny it access to their markets. Like the Soviets of the 1980s, the Russians are trapped between geopolitical necessity and economic reality, and in my opinion, we are entering a period in which the contradiction will be less and less sustainable.

Putin obviously understands as much, and he understands that the countries that matter to him understand as much too. He had to dismiss Moore, the head of MI6, as an inexperienced kid but could not deny anxieties over the possibility of declining trade with Britain. He may have intended to sound sarcastic, but he could not avoid expressing the truth. Russia needs a robust economy to pursue its geopolitical imperatives, but it doesn’t have one. And it can’t afford MI6 making life harder for it. But MI6 is not Russia’s problem; economic reality is its problem.

[Crafty_Dog]

June 10, 2021
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Brief: Russia’s Eastward Turn
Ahead of next week's Geneva summit, Moscow is holding its largest Pacific drills since the days of the Soviet Union.
By: Geopolitical Futures

Background: Russia is following the trend and looking east, hoping to solidify its position on the Northern Sea Route and defend its remote eastern borders, some of which are still the subject of disputes with Japan. In a declaration of its eastern focus, Moscow is gradually building up, modernizing and training its Pacific Fleet.

Russian Pacific Fleet Naval Assets
(click to enlarge)

What Happened: As many as 20 surface warships and submarines as well as approximately 20 aircraft from Russia’s Pacific Fleet started exercises in the central Pacific. Participating ships include the Varyag missile cruiser, the Admiral Panteleyev anti-submarine ship and the Marshal Shaposhnikov frigate, and the aircraft include Tu-142MZ anti-submarine planes and MiG-31BM fighter-interceptors, among others. According to Russian media, it’s Russia’s largest Pacific exercise since the Soviet Union. A former chief of the Russian navy’s General Staff said the drills were unprecedented in scale and were taking place far from coastal support infrastructure.

Bottom Line: In less than a week, Russian President Vladimir Putin will sit down in Geneva with U.S. President Joe Biden. It’s impossible to separate these unprecedented drills from the wider context of that visit. Moscow is signaling its might and its determination to have a seat at the table in the Asia-Pacific region.

[Crafty_Dog]

The Geopolitics of Climate Change: Russia’s Paradigm Shift

undefined and Senior VP of Strategic Analysis
Rodger Baker
Senior VP of Strategic Analysis, Stratfor
8 MIN READJun 30, 2021 | 10:00 GMT





A view of Russia’s northernmost military base on the island of Alexandra Land on May 17, 2021.
A view of Russia’s northernmost military base on the island of Alexandra Land on May 17, 2021.

(MAXIME POPOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Editor’s Note: This is part of an occasional series exploring the geopolitical and strategic implications of climate change.

The U.S. Defense Department is increasingly considering climate change in its assessments of future threats and challenges. In numerous reports, climate change implications are often characterized as “threat multipliers” — that is, elements that exacerbate existing trends or instabilities. But there are aspects of climate change that have even deeper implications by changing either the physical geography of particular spaces or their perceived relative significance. These are the geopolitical impacts, ranging from shifts in critical natural resources to the radical transformation of the Arctic.

Changes in climate patterns alter humanity’s interaction with geography directly and indirectly. There are immediate physical impacts, like shifts in land use, water availability, coastlines and soil stability. And there are also secondary impacts, like technological developments to adapt to or alter the physical environment, changes in migration patterns, or new competition over routes and resources.

National power — whether measured in economic opportunity, human capital or military strength — has long been shaped and influenced by geography. Natural resources, however, are not distributed evenly across the globe, nor is arable land, natural transportation routes or conducive conditions. Geography is not deterministic, but it clearly provides uneven opportunities and challenges around the globe. And today we are seeing climate change potentially alter fundamental geopolitical structures, with the Russian Arctic at the forefront.

A New Arctic Emerges
Perhaps the most immediate and obvious impacts of climate change can be seen in the Arctic. A May report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) recognized that the Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the globe, even faster than reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only a few years ago. With less ice protecting shorelines, winter storm erosion is eating away at coastal villages. Arctic and near-arctic fish stocks are moving to adapt to changing water temperatures. Arctic fires are becoming more frequent and covering greater areas. Thawing permafrost is undermining existing infrastructure around human settlements, military installations, and critical energy and mineral projects. Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR), meanwhile, is opening nearly year-round, with increased access even without icebreakers.The U.S. military has taken note of these impacts on its airstrips, radars and missile defense installations in Alaska. Russia, too, has stepped up the modernization of its Arctic defense facilities, and Moscow, as the new Chair of the Arctic Council, is emphasizing managed resource exploitation in the Arctic.

A Map Showing Arctic Sea Ice and Shipping Corridors
Both countries, along with NATO, are increasing military exercises and naval patrols in the Arctic, both for national security and in recognition of the likely increase in search and rescue and disaster response in much more accessible seas. But beyond these reactive aspects, there is a deeper geostrategic change underway — a fundamental restructuring of Russia’s strategic position.

The Thawing Eurasian Heartland
Modern Western geostrategic thought pays homage to British geographer Sir Halford J. Mackinder’s observations at the turn of the last century on the inherent insularity of a Eurasian “Heartland,” as well as on Mackinder and American geopolitician Nicholas Spykman’s considerations of the competition between traditional continental and maritime powers. Mackinder’s primary observation was that the core heartland of Eurasia was largely impenetrable to sea power, but could serve as a base of resources and manpower that, when brought together under a single power, would then be able to exert its power beyond the continent to the surrounding seas. Spykman emphasized that the clash between maritime powers and continental powers would take place where they met along the coastal periphery, or what he called the Rimland.

A Map Showing Russia's Major Rivers and Population Density
Key to the Eurasian heartland concept was the idea that the region had limited access by sea, but could maintain robust internal lines of communication, particularly with the advent of rail. This heartland was protected by strategic depth (something the French and Germans both discovered at different times in their drives toward Moscow), and was shielded along its entire northern frontier by ice. The rivers of the heartland also drained into inland seas, or into the inaccessible Arctic — limiting their use as internal transit corridors, but also as routes of maritime access and invasion.

These ideas shaped U.S. strategic thinking in its intervention in World War II, as well as its containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And they remain alive today, as the United States sees China’s Belt and Road Initiative as just the latest attempt by a Eurasian continental power to connect Eurasia and Africa and harness its inherent resources and strength.

A Shift in Russia’s Strategic Perspective
Despite the interest in Arctic and Far East resources, Russia has traditionally oriented away from its icy Arctic frontier, pushing either west toward Europe, south toward the Middle East and India, or east toward the Pacific coast. This has included attempts to access alternative sea routes and resources, as Russia’s naval reach is geographically constrained by bottlenecks in the Baltic and Black Seas or by Japan along the Pacific coast.

A more open and less frozen Arctic fundamentally alters Russia’s geography. It provides greater access to critical energy and mineral resources and, most significantly, opens a vast new maritime frontier. Moscow has placed the Arctic at center stage in its future economic development. Russia is investing in the infrastructure necessary to monitor and control the NSR. It has also announced plans for new rail links connecting its Arctic frontier to the core of Russia west of the Urals, and has launched an incentive drive to coax more internal migration into the Arctic and Far East regions.

A Mixed Blessing
Moscow has rapidly rebuilt its long depleted Cold War defense architecture along the Northern frontier, recognizing that access to the seas is not just a benefit, but a potential threat. Despite new efforts, Russia still has a minimal population in the Arctic, a poorly developed transportation infrastructure to link the Russian core to its Arctic frontier, and sees this newly open Northern flank as a strategic vulnerability. Moscow’s attempts to control all shipping through the NSR is but one additional response to this mixed blessing of an open Arctic.

From a geopolitical perspective, a Russia that now has an extensive coastline is a fundamentally different Russia than ever encountered in history. If Moscow is able to connect its Arctic frontier to its traditional core and take advantage of both the resources and the routes, it can begin to mitigate the traditional Western containment strategies, opening the path for a new dynamic in Russian strategic thought.

Rarely does geography change so quickly and so radically across such a broad space. A man-made example would be the opening of the Panama Canal, a transformative geopolitical event that allowed the United States to be not just a trans-continental power, but a two-ocean power. The opening of the Arctic provides similar new strategic opportunities for Russia if it is able to develop the infrastructure along its new maritime frontier. Already Moscow is building transshipment ports at each end of the NSR to better facilitate trans-Arctic transit and establish Russia in control of a key alternative link between Asia and Europe. The warming climate also opens the possibility for shifting land use in the Russian Far East, in addition to expanded resource extraction.

Great Power Competition
But it also creates new risks for Russia by opening maritime access to its competitors and opponents across a long and unprotected coast. Russian and Chinese cooperation in developing Russia’s Arctic energy infrastructure is tainted by differences in views on the use of the NSR. Russia considers the NSR internal waters, subject to Russian control and transit fees, while China considers it international waters, open to free passage. And Beijing is also exploring ways to sail further north, bypassing Russia’s NSR altogether.

China’s growing interest in the Arctic, coupled with Russia’s expanded military facilities, have also triggered responsive attention and actions in Europe and the United States. With the deployment of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to supplement the F-22, Alaska is emerging as the largest concentration of fifth-generation fighters in the world. The U.S. Army is also reshaping its Arctic strategy, stepping up Cold Weather training. And the U.S. Navy is slowly resuming Arctic patrols as well. In addition, the United States is stepping up joint bilateral and multilateral training and exercises in Arctic areas with Canada and Europe, as well as with its Pacific partners. Renewed calls to keep the Arctic a “zone of peace” are complicated by the physical realities of climate change in the Arctic, and by national responses.

As attention to the Arctic increases, Russia is faced with a new strategic reality. It must shift its traditional southward focus and secure its newly open northern flank, while also trying to encourage internal population migration and fund infrastructure to facilitate connectivity and resource development. Russia’s relations with the West remain strained, and its strategic partnership with China hides underlying distrust and a growing imbalance of power in Beijing’s favor. Russia’s new need for more robust naval capabilities will compete with its longstanding risks along its extensive land borders. How Moscow manages these competing geopolitical realities will determine whether the opening of the Arctic is a new opportunity for Russia to reshape its future, or a new risk that leaves Moscow vulnerable as the world changes around it.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/07/information-warfare-looms-larger-russias-new-security-strategy/183717/

[Crafty_Dog]

November 23, 2021
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Russia’s Move
By: George Friedman

Russia is not a trustful country – for good reason. Germany invaded it twice in the 20th century, France invaded it once in the 19th century, and Sweden once in the 18th century. These were not the nibbling incursions that Europe was used to, but deep penetrations meant to capture the Russian heartland and permanently subordinate it. Each century saw an assault on Russia that threatened its existence. It’s hard to forget something like that, and it’s hard for Russia not to be suspicious of moves on its periphery. There is nothing in Russian history to cause its leaders to think otherwise.

This attitude makes Russia a threat to its neighbors. The West saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as Russia simply giving independence to foreign countries. The Russians, stunned by what had happened, were prepared to view it this way as well. Moscow assumed the best from the West. It assumed that the newly independent countries would be neutral and would therefore not be a threat to Russia. The dynamics of history are not so orderly, and over time the Ukrainian government and Russia drifted closer. This threatened to undermine the Western vision of the post-Soviet world – as well as the expectation of many Ukrainians.

Just 24 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a revolution in Ukraine toppled the country’s pro-Russian government. From the Western (and particularly the American) standpoint, Ukraine was an independent nation – its affairs had nothing to do with Russia. Russia had a corrupt and repressive regime, and as part of the American moral project, the U.S. would support those who rose up against that regime and claimed their democratic rights. Russia saw things differently. From its perspective, the overthrown government was the legally elected government of Ukraine, and the United States (and others) had engineered a coup in order to impose a pro-Western government. In so doing, the United States capitalized on the collapse of the Soviet Union to take control of Ukraine. For scale, Poltava, Ukraine, where the Russians halted the Swedish advance in the 18th century, was only 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Moscow. The actual distance from the Ukrainian border to Moscow was substantially less than this.

Conflict in Eastern Ukraine
(click to enlarge)

Whatever the Americans thought they were doing, the Russians saw this as violating Russia’s right to national security, using the pretense of encouraging democracy to threaten Russia. From the American point of view, Ukraine had the right to national self-determination. From the Russian point of view, it did not have the right to pose an existential threat to Russia. From a geopolitical point of view, the American intent didn’t matter. Intentions change, and a pro-American Ukraine was merely a new chapter in a long story of Russian insecurity. Russia had survived previous invasions by putting distance between an invader and Moscow. All of the previous centuries’ invasions failed because invaders had to traverse so much territory that a summer invasion would end in the Russian winter. With Ukraine an American “puppet,” that distance is dramatically reduced, the buffer zone dissolved. What had guarded Russia for centuries no longer guarded it.

Russia's Buffer Zones
(click to enlarge)

For Russia, this was the tipping point of the post-Soviet era. Ukraine was a critical element of Russia’s defense, but it wasn’t the only element. The main line of attack into Russia is the North European Plain, which stretches from France almost to Moscow. The Soviet Union’s western frontier was Belarus and was anchored on its border with Poland.

A second, more difficult line of attack into Russia is through the Caucasus, which separate Russia from Turkey, Iran and their allies. The Soviets controlled the massive North Caucasus mountains, including Chechnya and Dagestan. Though they formed a solid barrier against the south, they were populated and thus potentially destabilized by Islamist militants. The South Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia), formerly part of the Soviet Union, is also an important buffer.

A third line of attack lay in Central Asia. The countries of the region pose no threat to Russia themselves, but the withdrawal of the U.S. from Afghanistan has muddied the waters. There is a real threat of spillover violence from Islamists, and the U.S. continues to seek air bases in the region to support limited operations in Afghanistan. For Russia, Central Asia is thus important to secure.

To the east, there is the border with China. Russia shares an interest with China in blocking the United States, but there is a deep historic distrust between the two countries. The Russians had previously invaded China and Manchuria. The Soviets considered bombing Lop Nur, China’s nuclear weapon center, and approached the United States in collaborating on the operation. There were serious border conflicts between China and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, including a major battle along the Ussuri River. Mao was hostile to the Soviet Union. The entente between the United States and China in the 1970s and 1980s was directed against Russia. Given this history, The Chinese-Russian border is a place of vulnerability.

In other words, Russia is surrounded by vulnerabilities. So it has developed a soft approach to deal with them. It does not send in tanks; it uses political and economic problems to increase its influence. Thus is the case in Belarus, where the instability under President Alexander Lukashenko allows Russia to increase its power and destabilize the border with Poland. In Central Asia, it uses economic relations and the tension between Central Asian states to increase its influence. In the South Caucasus, it has inserted peacekeepers to maintain a truce between Azerbaijan and Armenia, giving it various avenues for leverage. It maintains good relations with China of course, but both remain wary of the other.

The North European Plain, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Chinese border are all vital. But the central issue for Russia is Ukraine. Ukraine is where the United States has, from the Russian point of view, sunk its claws. Russia can manage Belarus, but it cannot exert soft power in Ukraine because of the potential for American intervention. There are rumors of a Russian invasion in the coming weeks, but real invasions are not announced. On the other hand, invasions you do not want to launch (because you could lose) should be announced. It becomes a psychological weapon to try to force a settlement in which Russia holds a strong veto on internal processes.

It should be remembered that Russia is facing a bunch of complex and dangerous challenges on its borders. Any one of them might spin out of control. And like all nations, Russia has limited bandwidth. Moscow is clearly trying to move sequentially, rather than simultaneously, but that assumes it has time. And since the U.S. is unlikely to act, time may well be on Moscow’s side. But Russian fears feed on themselves and can cause imprudent actions. And most important, in managing regions that host enemies, a defining crisis can arrive without invitation.

Russia, from its point of view, has to at least mitigate the threats of the Soviet era. So the pressures on Russia are great, but there are plenty of opportunities to act. Russia tends to move deliberately, but reality might not give it the option. The Americans are, among other things, unpredictable these days.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-kazakhstan-crisis-much-bigger-deal-western-media-letting?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=406

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2022/01/06/russia_struggles_to_secure_its_rapidly_changing_eastern_frontier_810878.html?fbclid=IwAR2nVitVjBnikXDUrpGowSLKIARkOmBuZq6tY0OPwk4ZM4FIb-PQ6kpvIII

[Crafty_Dog]

THE INTERPRETER

For Putin, Propping Up Allies Is Turning Into a Perilous Bargain
The Russian leader is fighting fires on multiple fronts, illustrating the danger of his strategy of relying on force to aid his autocratic neighbors.



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A state media photo of President Vladimir V. Putin attending an emergency meeting on Monday of the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to discuss the situation in Kazakhstan.
A state media photo of President Vladimir V. Putin attending an emergency meeting on Monday of the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to discuss the situation in Kazakhstan.Credit...Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Max Fisher
By Max Fisher
Jan. 13, 2022, 3:00 a.m. ET
Leer en español
From Eastern Europe to the oil fields of Central Asia, President Vladimir V. Putin is straining to maintain a sphere of influence that will keep the forces of history at bay.

The Russian leader’s allies, perched atop former Soviet republics, are growing old in office or face rising discontent. The bulwarks they have provided against the expanding frontiers of democracy and Western military power look increasingly shaky.

So Mr. Putin is relying more on brute force to hold it all together: preparing a possible invasion of Ukraine to keep it out of NATO, sending troops to Kazakhstan to suppress protests and threatening to do the same in Belarus.

Coercing allies is hardly unusual for great or regional powers. The Soviet Union, whose loss Mr. Putin often laments, sent tanks into Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Still, it bonded its empire through Communism, which instilled a common mission and a sense of existential conflict with the capitalist West.

Now, with capitalism and at least pretensions of democracy the norm on both sides of the old Iron Curtain, there is little to justify fealty to Moscow beyond the shared desire of post-Soviet strongmen to help one another cling to office.

“There’s no real ideological glue to hold together this motley alliance of people with very different interests,” said Timothy M. Frye, a Columbia University political scientist.


Mr. Putin’s sphere of influence, for all the trouble it causes the West, is increasingly a cage of his own making. The more that he relies on force to prop up aging, unpopular autocrats on his periphery, the more besieged his alliance becomes, both by dissent at home and Western pressure abroad.

As a result, the very threats that Mr. Putin hoped to avert are instead growing. Ukraine is rushing into the West’s arms. Provocations by Belarus, rooted in its crackdown on rising dissent, are uniting Europe against its pro-Moscow leader. And protesters in long-stable Kazakhstan are demanding change.

Mr. Putin has sought to turn his reactive escalations into a strength at home, portraying his interventions into those countries’ problems as reclaiming Soviet greatness.


But a tepid public reaction, as well as the Kremlin’s recent crackdowns on civil society and political rivals, Dr. Frye said, indicated that “the usual narratives that Putin has used to shore up his rule are just not working as well.”


Imposing Loyalty

Mr. Putin’s fear of democratic encroachment is often traced to the so-called color revolution democratic uprisings that swept several former Soviet republics in the 2000s. He and his deputies still speak often of those events, usually as Western plots to subvert Russian power.

But Mr. Putin’s response did not crystallize until 2012, when he cracked down violently on protests against him in Russia. Many of the demonstrators belonged to the Russian middle class that had once widely backed him. This elevated hard-liners within his administration, while also leading Mr. Putin to shift his power base to security services.

The Kremlin, increasingly hawkish and nationalistic, even paranoid, settled on a strategy of propping up neighboring leaders who would control dissent and oppose the West.

As a result, Mr. Putin came to believe that only leaders who look like him — autocratic strongmen — could be trusted to  keep the dangers of democracy and Western influence at bay.

Any others would have to be forced into loyalty.

After Ukrainian protesters ejected their country’s pro-Moscow president in 2014, Mr. Putin did not seek to persuade newly empowered Ukrainian voters to align with Moscow. Rather, hoping to strong-arm Ukrainian leaders into obedience, Russia invaded and annexed one part of Ukraine and sponsored separatists in another.


So far, this strategy has largely backfired. Western powers increased their support for Ukraine, and Ukrainian voters, once divided over relations with Russia, turned sharply against it. But Mr. Putin, perhaps unable to see a neighboring democracy as anything other than a threat, has only escalated his efforts, and is now threatening a major invasion of Ukraine.

This may well forestall overt alignment between Ukraine and the West, or even force Washington to redouble its acknowledgment of Russian interests there. But one danger for Mr. Putin is that it may not work forever and, once failed, could see yet another former Soviet republic join the European institutions that he insists are a threat to him.

A Shrinking Circle

Mr. Putin’s reliance on fellow strongmen has proved nearly as risky.

Strongman-ruled countries, which concentrate power in one person’s hands at the expense of governing institutions, tend to be more unstable, more corrupt and less economically effective, all of which deepen public dissatisfaction.

The dangers of this can be seen in Kazakhstan, where a carefully planned transition from one leader to the next broke down into violent unrest.

Understand the Protests in Kazakhstan
Card 1 of 5
What’s happening? Protests in Kazakhstan incited by anger over surging fuel prices have intensified into deadly clashes over the future direction of the autocratic Central Asian country. Here’s what to know about how the protests started and why they matter:

What led to the protests? The protests began when the government lifted price caps for liquefied petroleum gas, a low-carbon fuel that many Kazakhs use to power their cars. But the frustration among the people runs deep in regards to social and economic disparities.

What do the protesters want? The demands of the demonstrators have expanded in scope from lower fuel prices to a broader political liberalization by seeking to oust the autocratic forces that have ruled Kazakhstan without any substantial opposition since 1991.

Why does the unrest matter outside this region? Until now, the oil-rich country has been regarded as a pillar of political and economic stability in an unstable region. The protests are also significant for Vladimir Putin, who views Kazakhstan as part of Russia’s sphere of influence.

How has the government responded? President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called the protesters “a band of terrorists,” declared Kazakhstan under attack and asked the Russian-led military alliance to intervene. Officials have instituted a state of emergency and shut off internet access.

Mr. Putin sent a Russian-led force of 2,500 troops to Kazakhstan to help put down the turmoil, at a time when tensions with Ukraine and Belarus were already simmering. It has been an illustration of the perilous bargain holding Mr. Putin and his allies together, in which they are essentially obligated to guarantee one another’s rule by force.

Strongman leaders are also likelier to start conflicts and likelier to lose them, Erica Frantz, a Michigan State University scholar of authoritarianism, said she has found in her research.


“Personalists don’t have to bargain over policy, and lack of accountability leads to riskier behavior,” she said, using a formal term for such leaders.

While their fear of democracy makes them useful allies to Mr. Putin, the downsides of their rule increasingly bedevil his informal alliance.

“Provocations are what we would expect. We’d also expect some of his moves to be bad choices,” Dr. Frantz said.

Even with democracy’s global travails, it has nonetheless remained widely accepted since the Cold War’s end, beyond a handful of countries like China or Cuba, as the default, forcing even unabashed dictators to at least pretend at democracy.

The result is a circle of pro-Moscow strongmen who frequently struggle to persuade their citizens why it is necessary to accept fewer freedoms than those in neighboring countries.

Belarus exemplifies the dangers. Last year, as dissent rose over the government’s failures to address the pandemic, the president’s escalating crackdowns became a source of diplomatic conflict with the rest of Europe, which ensnared Mr. Putin.

Some Belarusian opposition activists, aware of Russia’s influence, signaled their openness to working with Moscow. But, in what may be a reflection of the Kremlin’s narrow insistence on familiar autocrats, for all their missteps, it has ignored their outreach.

Much as with Ukraine, Mr. Putin is left with a strategy in Belarus or Kazakhstan of ever-escalating coercion, albeit conducted through his allies in office.

These cycles, of shoring up a sphere of influence built on distrust and intimidation, can take on a logic of their own. So the strategy is pursued even when it appears likely to produce the opposite of Mr. Putin’s hoped-for results: both inviting the very threats he fears and eroding the alliance on which he has rested so much of his future.

“It will certainly produce more militarization of the alliance’s eastern flank,” Emma Ashford, a researcher at the Atlantic Council research group wrote of NATO’s likely response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine. “Just because we think it’s a stupid, self-defeating move on the part of Russia doesn’t mean they won’t do it.”

[Crafty_Dog]

Putin Is Waging War on Europe
His officials and media supporters have started talking openly about ‘military confrontation.’
By Bernard-Henri Lévy
Jan. 18, 2022 6:22 pm ET
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Russian guards on the street in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Jan. 12
PHOTO: RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY PRESS S/SHUTTERSTOCK

Paris

The West is obsessed by the pandemic. International politics has all but disappeared from the public conversation, so that few people seem concerned by the imperial ambitions of the new Russia.

I refer to the ferocious repression in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the images of Russian tanks there, eerily similar to those in Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968. And to the 150,000 Russian troops massed near the border with Ukraine, holding the Europeans of Kyiv’s Freedom Square at gunpoint. And to the draft “treaty” delivered to the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Dec. 17, a document that Françoise Thom, in an article in Desk Russie, reveals to be, in Moscow’s eyes, a veritable ultimatum.

Ms. Thom quotes Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko as saying that if the U.S. and NATO fail to meet Moscow’s demands, they will face “a military-technical alternative” and will see “the continent” become “the theater of a military confrontation.” Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, a former vice minister of defense, raises the possibility of “a pre-emptive strike.” Of Russia’s firing of Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles on Dec. 24, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he hoped they would make the Dec. 17 proposal “more convincing.”

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Never before have Russian officials expressed themselves publicly this way. Vladimir Mojegov, whom an article in French on the Russian website Sputnik calls a “political analyst and Americanist,” jokes that the same Zircon missiles are “more reliable allies” for Russia, that they can “crack a destroyer like a nut,” and that they are capable of “shooting at unwieldy aircraft carriers like a pistol at a can.” The pro-Putin Svobodnaya Pressa asserted that if NATO is enlarged, Russia “will bury Europe and two-thirds of the United States in half an hour.”

This rising extremism only half-surprises me.


I have feared its coming since August 2013, when President Obama, in Syria, gave the signal to retreat and ushered in a world without America.

I took its full measure in Amsterdam in 2019 during a public debate with Alexander Dugin, one of Mr. Putin’s ideologues and a proponent of neo-Eurasianism.

But it would be good if this extremism hit home with high-ranking European officials who continue to see Russia as a peaceful neighbor surrounded by ill-behaved Westerners, or Mr. Putin as a leader trying simply to defend his right to his personal space, his lebensraum, his cordon sanitaire.

It would be very good if the sleepwalkers in France, America and the rest of the world would wake and hear Russian military expert Konstantin Sivkov musing about Russia’s “nuclear potential” to “physically eliminate” Europe and explaining that, at the end of this hypothetical nuclear war, “there will be . . . almost no survivors.”

There remain, among supposedly enlightened Western thinkers, many fools who would accept the annexation of Crimea to avoid the annexation of Ukraine, and then the invasion of Ukraine to prevent an invasion of the Balkans, followed by the subjugation of the Balkans to ward off the Finlandization of the Baltic states, the neutralization of Poland, and even the placing under Russian tutelage of the great states of Western Europe. This is all reminiscent of the appeasement that produced the 1938 Munich Pact.

Mr. Putin has declared war on Europe, and the West. It is a cold war, a war deferred, with an Iron Curtain falling (for the moment) along the Ukrainian frontline. But it is a war all the same.

Its instigator now bears in history’s eyes the immense responsibility of having broken the taboo against war, which has preserved the safety of the European Continent twice devastated by world war. During the 80-odd days leading up to the presidential election in France, there should be no issue more pressing than this programmatic kidnapping, as Milan Kundera might put it, by one of our worst enemies.

Mr. Lévy is author of “The Will to See: Dispatches From a World of Misery and Hope.”

[Crafty_Dog]

February 21, 2022
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Russia Flexes, but Not in Ukraine
History suggests Moscow will soon perform a show of strength somewhere inconsequential.
By: Ekaterina Zolotova

Though the crisis in Ukraine is far from over, many are already asking whether Russia’s decision not to go to war is a geopolitical defeat or victory. If things stay the course, it’ll be hard to call it a success; so far, Russia has emboldened its enemies, breathed new life into NATO, and risked the imposition of more sanctions on an already shaky economy. Russia wants the world to think of it as it thinks of itself – as a great power – so rather than admit defeat, Moscow will almost certainly try something else to flex its muscles. It will play to its strengths: having a seasoned and well-equipped army and engaging with countries that, unlike Europe, don’t really care about Ukraine. Most important, it will want to do something cheaply and inconsequentially, and preferably somewhere far away where it has had more success than it has had in Ukraine.

Enter Syria

Enter Syria. Russia has fought in concert with government forces and pro-government militias since September 2015. Paired with combat operations, it was a diplomatic mission whose express purpose was to show that Moscow can influence events far from its borders. The plan largely worked. Despite stark differences with Western governments operating in theater, Russia was able to make itself indispensable to negotiations, cooperate with erstwhile enemies like Turkey, prop up allies like Syria, and mitigate Israeli action.

This is why on Feb. 15, the day before the supposed invasion of Ukraine would begin, Russia’s defense minister was in Syria, where he was to inspect a Russian naval exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean. That same day, Russian Tu-22M3 and MiG-31K long-range aviation aircraft were not preparing for an offensive in Ukraine; they were relocated to the Khmeimim airfield to participate in the same naval drills. (Indeed, Russian warships have been all over the Mediterranean for several weeks.) Russia also renewed its demand for the U.S. to withdraw its forces from Syria, and next week will host talks with the Syrian foreign minister about the prospects for a political settlement of the Syrian crisis.

Russian Bases in Syria
(click to enlarge)

To be clear, Russia isn’t about to undertake a serious military operation here. Any war-like scenario threatens Russia’s position in the region, which is fairly modest anyway, and there’s been no activity in Syria recently that would suggest the country is headed for the kinds of territorial changes, refugee outflows or large-scale destruction that has been typical of the civil war there in years past. Moreover, Russia’s presence in Syria is limited by others involved in the conflict. Iran is more invested and Turkey more militarily active in Syria, while the Gulf states, led by the United Arab Emirates, appear interested in rebuilding the country.

Then there is Israel, which continues to attack Syria despite Russian requests not to, and the U.S., which is in no hurry to heed Russian demands to withdraw, and in fact may be reviving Iran nuclear talks. At the same time, Russia understands that there are other players who have enough power and leverage not to take Russia's requests seriously.

Russian activity in Syria therefore looks like little more than another reminder to everyone else that it is still there and still powerful enough to influence conflicts far from its borders. (This also explains the test launches of ballistic and cruise missiles on Feb. 19 under the personal leadership of President Vladimir Putin. These exercises traditionally include the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile at the Kura test site in Kamchatka, but this time Russia launched Kinzhal hypersonic missiles at an unnamed location, as ships and submarines of the Northern and Black Sea fleets launched Kalibr cruise missiles and Zircon hypersonic missiles. These demonstrations, like the spasm of activity in Syria, are Russia flexing its muscles.)

The Economic Front

Similarly, Russia is loudly advertising interstate contracts and agreements to shore up its credentials as a powerful trade and economic partner, one that can get along fine without Europe. In February, Russia was particularly emphatic about Putin’s visit to China during the Olympic Games, where Putin received the support of Beijing, including in economic and energy matters, which would offset some of the losses from the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.

The Kremlin also welcomed a delegation from Latin America, including Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, at the height of the invasion hysteria. Moscow went out of its way to note that, unlike Putin's meetings with European leaders, negotiations took place without maintaining social distance. Putin and Bolsonaro even shook hands before the talks, and Putin said Argentina is one of Russia's key partners in South America.

But this, too, is artificial. There are notable limits to how much these countries can and will cooperate. Sino-Russian cooperation is tenuous as best. So long as there are divergent interests in the Russian Far East, competition in Central Asia, a refusal to share important technologies, and extremely selective investment, Russia and China will be at odds. Though relations between Russia and Latin America are much more dynamic, especially in the agricultural sector, neither one is the other’s most important trade partner. Trade relations with Europe aren’t going away.

Imports to Russia by Region
(click to enlarge)

Exports from Russia by Region
(click to enlarge)

It’s imperative for Russia to preserve and enhance its influence in its western borderlands, and part of that strategy is making itself seem stronger and more capable than it is. History suggests that Moscow will continue to demonstrate more military equipment in different parts of the world without actually using it, especially in Syria, and will discuss economic cooperation with other countries without actually having significant competitive advantages.

[Crafty_Dog]

Why Putin Is Outfoxing the West
Russia’s president is willing to take risks his opponents would never consider.

By Walter Russell Mead
Follow
Feb. 21, 2022 4:23 pm ET


As Western leaders struggle to respond to Vladimir Putin’s unexpectedly dramatic challenge to the post-Cold War order in Europe, the record so far is mixed. The West has assembled something approaching a united stance on the limits of the concessions it is prepared to make and on the nature of the sanctions it is willing to impose should Mr. Putin choose war. Neither hyperactive grandstanding in Paris nor phlegmatic passivity from Berlin has prevented the emergence of a common Western position. This is an accomplishment for which the Biden administration deserves credit.


Yet this is a defensive accomplishment, not a decisive one. As Mr. Putin demonstrated in his speech Monday, the Russian president is still in the driver’s seat, and it is his decisions, not ours, that will shape the next stage of the confrontation. Russia, a power that Western leaders mocked and derided for decades (“a gas station masquerading as a country,” as Sen. John McCain once put it), has seized the diplomatic and military initiative in Europe, and the West is, so far, powerless to do anything about it. We wring our hands, offer Mr. Putin off-ramps, and hope that our carefully hedged descriptions of the sanctions we are prepared to impose will change his mind.

At best, we’ve improvised a quick and dirty response to a strategic surprise, but we are very far from having a serious Russia policy and it is all too likely at this point that Mr. Putin will continue to outmaneuver his Western rivals and produce new surprises from his magician’s hat.

The West has two problems in countering Mr. Putin. The first is a problem of will. The West does not want a confrontation with Russia and in any crisis the goal remains to calm things down. That basic approach not only makes appeasement an attractive option whenever difficulties appear; it prevents us from thinking proactively. When Russia stops bothering us, we stop thinking about Russia.


The second is a problem of imagination. Western leaders still do not understand Mr. Putin. Most of them see that he is not just another colorless timeserver who thinks that appointing a record number of female economists to the board of his central bank constitutes a historic accomplishment. They are beginning to see that he is in quest of bigger game and that he means what he says about reassembling the Soviet Union and reviving Russian power. But they have not yet really fathomed the gulf between Mr. Putin’s world and their own—and until they do, he will continue to confound their expectations and disrupt their agendas.

Mr. Putin is, first and foremost, a gambler who is accustomed to taking large risks against long odds with a cool head. He is not infallible by any means, but he has years of experience in taking calculated risks, defying the odds, and imposing his will on stronger opponents. Like Napoleon Bonaparte, he can surprise and outmaneuver his opponents because he is willing to assume risks they would never consider, and so to attack in times and ways they can neither imagine nor plan for.

Beyond that, Mr. Putin is a Soviet nostalgist. He is the product of a system in which power produced truth and truth reinforced power. Soviet power rested on lies that state power imposed on society as unquestionable truths. If Comrade Stalin said that the sun was green and the sky was pink, his ability to impose such outrageous falsities on a captive society only demonstrated and reinforced the extent of his power. Exposing Mr. Putin as, by our standards, a liar does not weaken him at home or, in his view, in Ukraine.

In the same way, accusing Mr. Putin, even accurately, of planning or committing atrocities may weaken him among human-rights activists in the West, but it may strengthen him at home and in Ukraine. Stalin’s well-earned reputation for utter ruthlessness did not undercut his power. Letting the world know that Mr. Putin has a kill list for Ukraine is more likely, Mr. Putin may believe, to reduce resistance to his rule in Ukraine than to boost it.

Mr. Putin is an immensely skilled ruler, the most formidable Russian figure since Stalin, but he has his problems, too. Russian power remains limited by material and demographic constraints—and the rise of China is a geopolitical factor that no ruler in the Kremlin can permanently afford to ignore. If Western leaders can overcome their posthistorical parochialism and develop coherent strategies for the actual world as opposed to the world of their dreams, effectively countering Vladimir Putin is an eminently achievable goal, though in no way a simple or a trivial one.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.firstpost.com/world/why-does-russia-want-ukraine-so-badly-heres-what-a-geography-book-tells-us-10391451.html?fbclid=IwAR2sP2F53JzoJ1eWRXb-fHiaeBgUfRwzaSyZaEZVfHU5EONvvpDZZDVI8zM

[Crafty_Dog]

second

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/21/putin-ukraine-invasion-kremlin-support/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F361f92d%2F621518689d2fda34e7a28be3%2F61cdf026ae7e8a4ac205b2b3%2F18%2F70%2F621518689d2fda34e7a28be3

[Crafty_Dog]

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/what-if-its-a-coup-in-slow-motion/comments?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1ODg4MTI0MCwiXyI6IjlSZmZUIiwiaWF0IjoxNjQ2MTkzMTYxLCJleHAiOjE2NDYxOTY3NjEsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zNjMwODAiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.UFzTgavkpcPqV9xj8vpX8SqUWeod1Fw3Zgg81iDGALI&s=r

[G M]

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/what-if-its-a-coup-in-slow-motion/comments?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1ODg4MTI0MCwiXyI6IjlSZmZUIiwiaWF0IjoxNjQ2MTkzMTYxLCJleHAiOjE2NDYxOTY3NjEsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zNjMwODAiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.UFzTgavkpcPqV9xj8vpX8SqUWeod1Fw3Zgg81iDGALI&s=r

We all better pray he is incorrect. All this jabbering about Putin being unbalanced reminds me of the American coup where the ORANGE MAN BAD! was supposed to be crazy, AND a Putin-puppet.

Most likely a CIA psyop dutifully parroted by the state media here.

[Crafty_Dog]

What are the prospects for a coup?

Is there convoy not moving because of high level military resistance to going in?

What happens to Russian nukes in the event thereof?
===========================================

Strategic Logic and Political Ideology: Rethinking Russia's Invasion of Ukraine
undefined and Senior VP of Strategic Analysis
Rodger Baker
Senior VP of Strategic Analysis, Stratfor
13 MIN READMar 2, 2022 | 17:31 GMT





A Russian soldier stands next to a poster showing a map of Russia during military drills in Siberia.
A Russian soldier stands next to a poster showing a map of Russia during military drills in Siberia.

(MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Author’s Note: I was wrong about Ukraine. I concluded that the Russians would constrain their activity to the east of the Dnieper River. I am proud to say that my colleagues at RANE challenged my assessment, as our team built a robust set of scenarios, and refused to rule out Moscow taking a maximalist position on Ukraine. The central reason for my miscalculation was that I emphasized strategic logic and failed to adequately consider political ideology. This often works, but individuals, not logic, are the ultimate decision-makers. Political ideology can at times grow so strong that it becomes a reality in itself — a factor just as significant as physical territory, balance of forces, economics or demographics. As an analyst, it is vital to not only accept a missed call, but to seek to understand and learn from it. Below is an initial review of my error, and some thoughts to improve future analysis.

Logic and Ideology
Russia’s three-front invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv’s unpreparedness despite weeks of Western warnings, highlight a key risk in strategic analysis — that is, failing to appreciate how political ideology can at times bypass strategic logic. There was no pressing need for Russia to take a maximalist position on Ukraine at this time. Ukraine's membership in NATO was at least a decade out. Arms sales and shipments to Ukraine were not sufficient to embolden Kyiv to try and retake the breakaway republics in the east. Russia’s perceived threat from Ukraine was a longstanding one, but one that had no compelling reason to need to be solved now, particularly through such a costly and risky method as Moscow chose. But strategic logic can be subsumed by political ideology, clouding the overall strategic assessment and skewing the risk vs. reward ratio. In Russia’s case, the repeated idea that an independent Ukraine is both a historical anomaly and a fundamental threat to Russian security can become so strong that it becomes a reality in itself.

Russia is not the only country susceptible to letting ideology cloud strategy. The U.S. decision to de-Baathify Iraq after the 2003 invasion is a glaring example of ideology shaping policy despite the strategic reality on the ground. While it may have been noble from an ideological point of view, it removed most experienced bureaucrats. U.S. planners failed to accept the structural reality of Iraq, and the risks of effectively isolating the Sunni population while assuming the previously marginalized Shiite and Kurdish populations would embrace them. The result was the rise of the Islamic State and ongoing political instability nearly two decades later. The United States similarly allowed political ideology to shape operations in Afghanistan, long after the initial strategic reason for the invasion had been neutralized. In the end, there was an ignominious exit, and the return of the Taliban to power.

It is not that political ideology is bad. It defines nations and cultures. But when a focus on ideology leads to a failure to understand and consider the underlying strategic reality, policies often fail spectacularly. This was the warning of British geographer Sir Halford J. Mackinder in his 1919 book Democratic Ideals and Reality, written at the close of World War I. Mackinder warned the victorious allies that if they allowed their ideological zeal to shape the post-war settlement, they risked setting the stage for a repeat of the war. He was, unfortunately, correct. But Mackinder, in his study of power and nations, didn’t decry democratic ideology; he accepted it as an important factor to consider in assessing future risk. And he applied a similar methodology in assessing the constraints and compulsions of the losing side. One of my colleagues at the Mackinder Forum, an international group of geopoliticians, noted to me that Mackinder both juxtaposed the concepts of ideology and reality in Democratic Ideals and Reality, and showed how ideology could become a geopolitical fact or, in other words, its own reality.

Framing Russia’s Ukraine Challenge
In assessing Moscow’s decision to launch a full invasion of Ukraine, ideology is the missing element — the one that explains Russia’s willingness to conduct a militarily, politically and economically risky operation without any pressing geopolitical need. From a strategic point of view, a Western-oriented Ukraine is a potential threat to Russia. Even if unlikely to occur for many years, the chance of Ukraine in NATO would further encircle European Russia to the west and south. From Moscow’s perspective, Ukraine is a potential dagger aimed at the soft underbelly of Russia. Moscow had similar concerns about Georgia, and in 2008 invaded the country to undermine any attempt by NATO to gain a foothold in the Caucasus. In Belarus, Moscow was much more successful in using political and economic connections to ultimately draw the country firmly into Russia’s orbit.


In Ukraine, Moscow also relied for years on political and economic tools to shape Ukrainian politics. Moscow felt that lever slipping away during the 2004 Orange Revolution, and lost with the 2014 Euromaidan revolution. Later that year in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and supported eastern Ukraine’s breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk republics. While these actions didn’t lead to a political revolution in Ukraine or the return of Russian influence, it did further undermine Kyiv’s applicability for NATO membership, effectively addressing a key Russian security concern.

This makes Russia’s current war unexpected — not due to a lack of intelligence declassified and shared by the United States, but from a strategic perspective. It is a Russian imperative to prevent NATO from expanding into Ukraine. This could be done through political manipulation in Kyiv, the “Finlandization” of Ukraine, or a further expansion of the buffer space in eastern Ukraine. It could also be accomplished through brute force, with Russia overthrowing the Ukrainian government and putting in place a puppet regime. But the other options are significantly less costly, less risky, and have a higher chance of success.

Lower and Higher Risk Options
Moscow may have felt it lost the ability to manipulate Ukrainian politics, but it could still have recognized the breakaway republics in the country’s eastern Donbas region and pushed the contested buffer space further west to include the whole of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts or other areas of eastern Ukraine with a relatively high proportion of ethnic Russians. Russia could have used recognition of the breakaway republics as justification to advance into eastern Ukraine, seizing territory as it pushed westward to gain more buffer territory without launching a full-scale invasion in the rest of the country. In this scenario, Russian troops in Belarus would serve as a looming threat to Kyiv, forcing Ukraine to keep forces north of the city and unable to assist in the fighting in the east. In the end, Moscow would allow Ukraine to sue for peace, and in a political settlement expand the independent republics and ensure a demilitarized buffer zone. Russia may have even been able to get a promise from Ukraine to give up its NATO dreams.

Constraining Russian activity to the east of the Dnieper would likely have kept Europe internally divided over the appropriate level of economic, military and diplomatic response. It would have also reduced the likelihood of significant NATO forces moving further east, along with the risk of Finland (and perhaps Sweden) discussing potential NATO membership. Without some pressing need to make a move at this time, the strategic logic for a limited invasion would appear to have been the preferable option. It would not have completely eliminated any future shift in Ukraine’s security relationships that could one day challenge Russia, but it’s unlikely NATO would seriously consider expansion into a divided country — particularly one where doing so would trigger an immediate Russian military response. Over the years, the United States and especially Western Europe have loudly voiced calls for democracy in Ukraine and the country’s future Western orientation. But on the ground, U.S. and European leaders have remained extremely cautious, limiting key weapons transfers to Kyiv and seeking to avoid risking direct conflict with Russia.


Russia instead chose the maximalist option of invading Ukraine in a bid to significantly degrade the Ukrainian military, and potentially sieging Kyiv to force a political realignment, all while engaging in significant fighting in eastern Ukraine to expand the breakaway republics. This has triggered a rapid maximalist response from Europe, the United States and beyond, at least in regards to geoeconomic and diplomatic tools. Western nations are also stepping up key arms transfers to Ukraine, though they continue to refrain from actively intervening militarily. Russia’s new deals with China and moves to build up additional foreign exchange reserves over at least the last six months indicate Moscow had to have expected the wide-ranging sanctions.

But for that mitigation strategy to work, Russia needs to quickly achieve its goals in Ukraine — namely, degrading Ukrainian military capacity, expanding the buffer space around the breakaway republics, and pressuring the government in Kyiv to abandon dreams of EU and NATO membership — with at least some veneer of political legitimacy.

Toward that end, Russia’s invasion has included the formal recognition of the self-determination of the two new republics, a formal agreement to allow Russian troops in their territory, and a formal Russian vote to allow the deployment of forces abroad. For Russia to have any hope of easing sanctions and its isolation after the conflict, it will need some sort of internationally recognized legitimate treaty or agreement with the Ukrainian government. At this point, however, it’s unclear whether even that would help Russia recover access to the international financial system.

Political Beliefs and Decision Making
There are two factors that may have contributed to Moscow's decision to take such a high-risk operation for only minimal additional strategic benefit over much lower-risk operations. First is that Russia saw a brief window of opportunity shaped by high oil prices, continued Western social and political divisions due to COVID-19 policies, Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, and the U.S. focus on China. That may have given Russia confidence that there was little chance of a military response by NATO. But even without those factors, it was highly unlikely the Western security alliance would have physically intervened in Ukraine. The second and more likely factor is that political ideology in Moscow has ossified and become something concrete, rather than a nationalistic rallying point that can be turned up and down at will. Russian leaders see not merely the need for Ukraine to be a buffer space between East and West, but that Ukraine (like Belarus) needs to be re-integrated into a broader Russian sphere of influence as the first step in pushing the NATO frontier back from the Russian borders.

In looking at leadership and ideology, this is where one could point to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has issued several papers and speeches on Ukraine, including his interpretation of Russia’s history with the country and the idea that Ukraine effectively has no right to independence from Russia. To some, this suggests that Putin is just a crazy megalomaniac bent on the restoration of the Soviet Union. But Putin’s line of reasoning is not his alone — it is longstanding in post-Soviet Russia and is often used as a political tool to shape perceptions. Further, in a country as large and complex as Russia, it is hard to believe that the mere whims of a single individual can dominate all decisions. Yes, Putin has more individual power and agency than a democratically elected official in the West may have, but the Russian government and military have plenty of structural constraints that limit a single individual’s ability to always get their way, particularly when the stakes are so high.

Assessing political leadership requires initially looking at them as rational, though rationality is situational. Putin’s ideology is not his alone. And that ideology has taken hold — enough to begin reshaping the perception of risk and reward from a full-on invasion of Ukraine. Russian political ideology has masked the underlying strategic reality that seizing Ukraine is unlikely to lead to the capitulation of NATO. Instead, it is likely to have the opposite effect, reigniting NATO’s sense of purpose by identifying a clear and present danger. From an ideological perspective, Moscow may “need” Ukraine back in the fold. But from a strategic perspective, a buffer space in eastern Ukraine provides Russia with security and leaves NATO divided. Eastern European nations and the Baltics may emphasize the Russian threat, but their further flung counterparts in Western Europe would see constrained Russian moves as a continuation of the status quo. Differing regional perspectives would prevail, and that would contribute to Russia’s strategic security.

Ideological Actions With Real-World Consequences
By allowing ideology to supersede strategic logic, Russia now finds itself in a dangerous position. If it cannot force a rapid political settlement with Ukraine, ensuring neutrality and perhaps the independence of eastern Ukraine, it risks getting bogged down in a much longer war — one where attrition may well favor the Ukrainians, particularly as weapons flow in from NATO. Russia would fail to gain its political ends from such a drawn-out conflict, and would also find itself increasingly economically and politically isolated. A prolonged war with Ukraine would strain Russia’s relations with China, which has important ties with Kyiv and relies on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as key components of its Belt and Road transportation corridor to Europe. In short, all of the risks that strategic logic highlighted, that led me and others to expect Moscow to pursue more modest goals, remain realities that Russia must face.

In assessing the likely paths countries may take, looking at constraints and compulsions, at capability and capacity, help shape the picture of strategic logic. What are the imperatives? How does time change the relative weight of each factor? What are the likely responses of others? What makes now the time to act or refrain from action? But this impersonal approach has its limitations because, in the end, it is not logic that shapes the future, but decisions made by people. And political ideology can and does color the less personal strategic logic people use to justify their choices.

Global leaders who fail to grasp the underlying realities of a situation and allow political ideology to exceed strategic logic often make decisions that yield unexpected and undesired outcomes. And for those of us analyzing these decisions, failing to appreciate the potential weight of political ideology will lead to incorrect forecasts.

Using impersonal logic cannot alone predict the behavior of geopolitical actors, but it can reveal the baseline reality within which actions are taken. It may not change the decision, but it can expose the chances of success. 

[G M]

What are the prospects for a coup?

Is there convoy not moving because of high level military resistance to going in?

What happens to Russian nukes in the event thereof?

I think at this point talk of a coup is very premature. It’s hard to be sure, especially with the fog of war, but fuel is always a constraint on military mobility.

Better tha devil you know. If Putin were removed, would it be better or worse? It’s one thing to remove Saddam, it’s another thing when we are talking about the world’s largest nuclear arsenal under an unknown subject’s control.

===========================================

Strategic Logic and Political Ideology: Rethinking Russia's Invasion of Ukraine
undefined and Senior VP of Strategic Analysis
Rodger Baker
Senior VP of Strategic Analysis, Stratfor
13 MIN READMar 2, 2022 | 17:31 GMT





A Russian soldier stands next to a poster showing a map of Russia during military drills in Siberia.
A Russian soldier stands next to a poster showing a map of Russia during military drills in Siberia.

(MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Author’s Note: I was wrong about Ukraine. I concluded that the Russians would constrain their activity to the east of the Dnieper River. I am proud to say that my colleagues at RANE challenged my assessment, as our team built a robust set of scenarios, and refused to rule out Moscow taking a maximalist position on Ukraine. The central reason for my miscalculation was that I emphasized strategic logic and failed to adequately consider political ideology. This often works, but individuals, not logic, are the ultimate decision-makers. Political ideology can at times grow so strong that it becomes a reality in itself — a factor just as significant as physical territory, balance of forces, economics or demographics. As an analyst, it is vital to not only accept a missed call, but to seek to understand and learn from it. Below is an initial review of my error, and some thoughts to improve future analysis.

Logic and Ideology
Russia’s three-front invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv’s unpreparedness despite weeks of Western warnings, highlight a key risk in strategic analysis — that is, failing to appreciate how political ideology can at times bypass strategic logic. There was no pressing need for Russia to take a maximalist position on Ukraine at this time. Ukraine's membership in NATO was at least a decade out. Arms sales and shipments to Ukraine were not sufficient to embolden Kyiv to try and retake the breakaway republics in the east. Russia’s perceived threat from Ukraine was a longstanding one, but one that had no compelling reason to need to be solved now, particularly through such a costly and risky method as Moscow chose. But strategic logic can be subsumed by political ideology, clouding the overall strategic assessment and skewing the risk vs. reward ratio. In Russia’s case, the repeated idea that an independent Ukraine is both a historical anomaly and a fundamental threat to Russian security can become so strong that it becomes a reality in itself.

Russia is not the only country susceptible to letting ideology cloud strategy. The U.S. decision to de-Baathify Iraq after the 2003 invasion is a glaring example of ideology shaping policy despite the strategic reality on the ground. While it may have been noble from an ideological point of view, it removed most experienced bureaucrats. U.S. planners failed to accept the structural reality of Iraq, and the risks of effectively isolating the Sunni population while assuming the previously marginalized Shiite and Kurdish populations would embrace them. The result was the rise of the Islamic State and ongoing political instability nearly two decades later. The United States similarly allowed political ideology to shape operations in Afghanistan, long after the initial strategic reason for the invasion had been neutralized. In the end, there was an ignominious exit, and the return of the Taliban to power.

It is not that political ideology is bad. It defines nations and cultures. But when a focus on ideology leads to a failure to understand and consider the underlying strategic reality, policies often fail spectacularly. This was the warning of British geographer Sir Halford J. Mackinder in his 1919 book Democratic Ideals and Reality, written at the close of World War I. Mackinder warned the victorious allies that if they allowed their ideological zeal to shape the post-war settlement, they risked setting the stage for a repeat of the war. He was, unfortunately, correct. But Mackinder, in his study of power and nations, didn’t decry democratic ideology; he accepted it as an important factor to consider in assessing future risk. And he applied a similar methodology in assessing the constraints and compulsions of the losing side. One of my colleagues at the Mackinder Forum, an international group of geopoliticians, noted to me that Mackinder both juxtaposed the concepts of ideology and reality in Democratic Ideals and Reality, and showed how ideology could become a geopolitical fact or, in other words, its own reality.

Framing Russia’s Ukraine Challenge
In assessing Moscow’s decision to launch a full invasion of Ukraine, ideology is the missing element — the one that explains Russia’s willingness to conduct a militarily, politically and economically risky operation without any pressing geopolitical need. From a strategic point of view, a Western-oriented Ukraine is a potential threat to Russia. Even if unlikely to occur for many years, the chance of Ukraine in NATO would further encircle European Russia to the west and south. From Moscow’s perspective, Ukraine is a potential dagger aimed at the soft underbelly of Russia. Moscow had similar concerns about Georgia, and in 2008 invaded the country to undermine any attempt by NATO to gain a foothold in the Caucasus. In Belarus, Moscow was much more successful in using political and economic connections to ultimately draw the country firmly into Russia’s orbit.


In Ukraine, Moscow also relied for years on political and economic tools to shape Ukrainian politics. Moscow felt that lever slipping away during the 2004 Orange Revolution, and lost with the 2014 Euromaidan revolution. Later that year in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and supported eastern Ukraine’s breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk republics. While these actions didn’t lead to a political revolution in Ukraine or the return of Russian influence, it did further undermine Kyiv’s applicability for NATO membership, effectively addressing a key Russian security concern.

This makes Russia’s current war unexpected — not due to a lack of intelligence declassified and shared by the United States, but from a strategic perspective. It is a Russian imperative to prevent NATO from expanding into Ukraine. This could be done through political manipulation in Kyiv, the “Finlandization” of Ukraine, or a further expansion of the buffer space in eastern Ukraine. It could also be accomplished through brute force, with Russia overthrowing the Ukrainian government and putting in place a puppet regime. But the other options are significantly less costly, less risky, and have a higher chance of success.

Lower and Higher Risk Options
Moscow may have felt it lost the ability to manipulate Ukrainian politics, but it could still have recognized the breakaway republics in the country’s eastern Donbas region and pushed the contested buffer space further west to include the whole of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts or other areas of eastern Ukraine with a relatively high proportion of ethnic Russians. Russia could have used recognition of the breakaway republics as justification to advance into eastern Ukraine, seizing territory as it pushed westward to gain more buffer territory without launching a full-scale invasion in the rest of the country. In this scenario, Russian troops in Belarus would serve as a looming threat to Kyiv, forcing Ukraine to keep forces north of the city and unable to assist in the fighting in the east. In the end, Moscow would allow Ukraine to sue for peace, and in a political settlement expand the independent republics and ensure a demilitarized buffer zone. Russia may have even been able to get a promise from Ukraine to give up its NATO dreams.

Constraining Russian activity to the east of the Dnieper would likely have kept Europe internally divided over the appropriate level of economic, military and diplomatic response. It would have also reduced the likelihood of significant NATO forces moving further east, along with the risk of Finland (and perhaps Sweden) discussing potential NATO membership. Without some pressing need to make a move at this time, the strategic logic for a limited invasion would appear to have been the preferable option. It would not have completely eliminated any future shift in Ukraine’s security relationships that could one day challenge Russia, but it’s unlikely NATO would seriously consider expansion into a divided country — particularly one where doing so would trigger an immediate Russian military response. Over the years, the United States and especially Western Europe have loudly voiced calls for democracy in Ukraine and the country’s future Western orientation. But on the ground, U.S. and European leaders have remained extremely cautious, limiting key weapons transfers to Kyiv and seeking to avoid risking direct conflict with Russia.


Russia instead chose the maximalist option of invading Ukraine in a bid to significantly degrade the Ukrainian military, and potentially sieging Kyiv to force a political realignment, all while engaging in significant fighting in eastern Ukraine to expand the breakaway republics. This has triggered a rapid maximalist response from Europe, the United States and beyond, at least in regards to geoeconomic and diplomatic tools. Western nations are also stepping up key arms transfers to Ukraine, though they continue to refrain from actively intervening militarily. Russia’s new deals with China and moves to build up additional foreign exchange reserves over at least the last six months indicate Moscow had to have expected the wide-ranging sanctions.

But for that mitigation strategy to work, Russia needs to quickly achieve its goals in Ukraine — namely, degrading Ukrainian military capacity, expanding the buffer space around the breakaway republics, and pressuring the government in Kyiv to abandon dreams of EU and NATO membership — with at least some veneer of political legitimacy.

Toward that end, Russia’s invasion has included the formal recognition of the self-determination of the two new republics, a formal agreement to allow Russian troops in their territory, and a formal Russian vote to allow the deployment of forces abroad. For Russia to have any hope of easing sanctions and its isolation after the conflict, it will need some sort of internationally recognized legitimate treaty or agreement with the Ukrainian government. At this point, however, it’s unclear whether even that would help Russia recover access to the international financial system.

Political Beliefs and Decision Making
There are two factors that may have contributed to Moscow's decision to take such a high-risk operation for only minimal additional strategic benefit over much lower-risk operations. First is that Russia saw a brief window of opportunity shaped by high oil prices, continued Western social and political divisions due to COVID-19 policies, Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, and the U.S. focus on China. That may have given Russia confidence that there was little chance of a military response by NATO. But even without those factors, it was highly unlikely the Western security alliance would have physically intervened in Ukraine. The second and more likely factor is that political ideology in Moscow has ossified and become something concrete, rather than a nationalistic rallying point that can be turned up and down at will. Russian leaders see not merely the need for Ukraine to be a buffer space between East and West, but that Ukraine (like Belarus) needs to be re-integrated into a broader Russian sphere of influence as the first step in pushing the NATO frontier back from the Russian borders.

In looking at leadership and ideology, this is where one could point to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has issued several papers and speeches on Ukraine, including his interpretation of Russia’s history with the country and the idea that Ukraine effectively has no right to independence from Russia. To some, this suggests that Putin is just a crazy megalomaniac bent on the restoration of the Soviet Union. But Putin’s line of reasoning is not his alone — it is longstanding in post-Soviet Russia and is often used as a political tool to shape perceptions. Further, in a country as large and complex as Russia, it is hard to believe that the mere whims of a single individual can dominate all decisions. Yes, Putin has more individual power and agency than a democratically elected official in the West may have, but the Russian government and military have plenty of structural constraints that limit a single individual’s ability to always get their way, particularly when the stakes are so high.

Assessing political leadership requires initially looking at them as rational, though rationality is situational. Putin’s ideology is not his alone. And that ideology has taken hold — enough to begin reshaping the perception of risk and reward from a full-on invasion of Ukraine. Russian political ideology has masked the underlying strategic reality that seizing Ukraine is unlikely to lead to the capitulation of NATO. Instead, it is likely to have the opposite effect, reigniting NATO’s sense of purpose by identifying a clear and present danger. From an ideological perspective, Moscow may “need” Ukraine back in the fold. But from a strategic perspective, a buffer space in eastern Ukraine provides Russia with security and leaves NATO divided. Eastern European nations and the Baltics may emphasize the Russian threat, but their further flung counterparts in Western Europe would see constrained Russian moves as a continuation of the status quo. Differing regional perspectives would prevail, and that would contribute to Russia’s strategic security.

Ideological Actions With Real-World Consequences
By allowing ideology to supersede strategic logic, Russia now finds itself in a dangerous position. If it cannot force a rapid political settlement with Ukraine, ensuring neutrality and perhaps the independence of eastern Ukraine, it risks getting bogged down in a much longer war — one where attrition may well favor the Ukrainians, particularly as weapons flow in from NATO. Russia would fail to gain its political ends from such a drawn-out conflict, and would also find itself increasingly economically and politically isolated. A prolonged war with Ukraine would strain Russia’s relations with China, which has important ties with Kyiv and relies on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as key components of its Belt and Road transportation corridor to Europe. In short, all of the risks that strategic logic highlighted, that led me and others to expect Moscow to pursue more modest goals, remain realities that Russia must face.

In assessing the likely paths countries may take, looking at constraints and compulsions, at capability and capacity, help shape the picture of strategic logic. What are the imperatives? How does time change the relative weight of each factor? What are the likely responses of others? What makes now the time to act or refrain from action? But this impersonal approach has its limitations because, in the end, it is not logic that shapes the future, but decisions made by people. And political ideology can and does color the less personal strategic logic people use to justify their choices.

Global leaders who fail to grasp the underlying realities of a situation and allow political ideology to exceed strategic logic often make decisions that yield unexpected and undesired outcomes. And for those of us analyzing these decisions, failing to appreciate the potential weight of political ideology will lead to incorrect forecasts.

Using impersonal logic cannot alone predict the behavior of geopolitical actors, but it can reveal the baseline reality within which actions are taken. It may not change the decision, but it can expose the chances of success.

[Crafty_Dog]

Premature?  Maybe and maybe not.

Things are not going to plan, the backlash is very strong, with heavy domestic Russian consequences, and then there is this:

===============

Doctrine raises risk of nuke use against U.S.

BY BILL GERTZ THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s veiled threats to use his nuclear arsenal if the West comes to Ukraine’s aid in the current fighting highlight a new military doctrine called “escalate to deescalate,” which calls on the military to resort to nuclear weapons more rapidly in conflicts. U.S. officials have expressed concern that the doctrine opens a pathway for using “low-yield” nuclear strikes in conflicts when a nation’s conventional forces are stymied, as appears to be happening for Russia just over one week into its military operation in Ukraine.

Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said he is concerned about the Russian nuclear escalate-to-deescalate policy.

“Actually, it may be thought of more as ‘escalate to win,’” Adm. Richard said during a Senate hearing in April.

The doctrine, combined with Russia’s large arsenal of nonstrategic warheads, prompted the Trump administration to convert some U.S. missiles into low-yield nuclear strike weapons, including the W76-2 warhead deployed on submarinelaunched ballistic missiles, in 2020.

The Biden administration is conducting a nuclear posture review, and anti-nuclear advocates are said to be arguing in favor of giving up the smaller nuclear arms. Still, analysts say, Mr. Putin’s threats announced Sunday could alter the debate as the U.S. and NATO allies rush to supply Kyiv.

Russia has stockpiled an estimated 2,000 or more tactical nuclear weapons that are not covered by arms treaties. By contrast, the United States has several hundred low-yield arms.

Russia’s tactical nuclear warheads can be fired from short-range Iskander ballistic missiles and from the SSC-8, a ground-launched cruise missile built and deployed in violation of the Intermediate- Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that led President Trump to scuttle the pact.

The road-mobile SSC-8 has a range of more than 1,500 miles and can strike targets throughout Europe from bases in Russia. The Iskander, also road-mobile with a range of 310 miles, has been deployed in Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave between Lithuania and Poland.

It is not clear how Russia would conduct tactical nuclear strikes. Tactical nuclear attacks most likely would involve strikes on targets in regions of Ukraine that are most resistant to the Russian military advance.

Any nuclear strike on a NATO country would trigger massive commensurate retaliatory nuclear attacks on Russia and a major nuclear conflagration, but Ukraine is not a member of the alliance and Mr. Biden has repeatedly said U.S. and NATO troops won’t join the fight.

The Russian leader made the saberrattling nuclear threat during a speech announcing military operations against Ukraine last week. Any nation interfering with or threatening Russia and its people during the fighting will face a response with “consequences you have never seen,” he said.

“We are ready for any turn of events. All necessary decisions in this regard have been made. I hope that I will be heard,” Mr. Putin said Feb. 24 in remarks widely interpreted as a veiled threat of nuclear retaliation.

Three days later, Mr. Putin publicly ordered Russian nuclear forces on a higher “special” state of alert. The Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that nuclear missile forces and fleets in the north and Pacific had been placed on enhanced combat readiness, Interfax reported. Russian nuclear missile submarines also conducted exercises in the Barents Sea, and mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles conducted maneuvers in Siberia, The Associated Press reported.

A senior Pentagon official said Tuesday that intelligence agencies were closely monitoring Moscow’s nuclear forces for signs of increased alert but added, “We’ve seen nothing at this time that would give us any less comfort or confidence in our own strategic deterrence posture.”

The White House and NATO officials have said they are not raising their nuclear alert status in response to Mr. Putin’s order, a sign that they think Mr. Putin may not be committed to acting on his words.

Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said Mr. Putin’s threat appears mainly rhetorical.

“At this stage, it doesn’t seem to be more than words,” he said. “As far as I’ve heard, U.S. hasn’t seen any significant changes on the ground.”

Other analysts disagree. Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon nuclear policy official, said nuclear attacks in Ukraine are unlikely because Russia has overwhelming conventional military power. The Ukrainian military and reserve, militia and paramilitary forces “do not present lucrative nuclear targets as massed forces military formations,” he said.

However, nuclear attacks on Europe and ultimately the United States are risks if the conflict spins out of control and Russia finds itself in direct battle with NATO forces.

Russia announced the nuclear escalation policy in 2003 and demonstrated the use of tactical nuclear arms in exercises last month. In the exercises, the Russian military practiced using several advanced nonstrategic nuclear missile systems, including two types of hypersonic weapons that conducted practice strikes on Europe, Mr. Schneider said.

Unlike overall strategic doctrine, Russia’s plans for limited nuclear strikes are contained in secret policy documents, but U.S. military commanders have openly discussed the dangerous implications of the shift for years.

Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in 2017 that Russia is not only “the only country that I know of that has this concept of ‘escalate to terminate’ or ‘escalate to deescalate,’ but they do have that built into their operational concept.

“We’ve seen them exercise that idea, and it’s really kind of a dangerous idea,” Gen. Stewart said.

Mr. Schneider said Mr. Putin issued a decree to the Russian navy to embrace “escalate to deescalate” in naval warfare.

“While I doubt Putin will employ nuclear weapons this time, the Biden administration’s weak response to Russian aggression is increasing the chance it will happen,” Mr. Schneider said.

With the United States and other Western nuclear powers refraining from raising their alert levels in response to his threats, Mr. Putin could calculate that he is operating from a position of strength, increasing the likelihood that the crisis will escalate and allow him to make greater demands for Western concessions, Mr. Schneider said.

Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who served in the Trump White House, said Mr. Putin’s threat and raising of the nuclear forces alert status made “very clear that [the nuclear option] is on the table.”

“The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t?” Ms. Hill told Politico. “So if anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again. Every time you think, ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.”

A report by the National Institute for Public Policy said the escalation policy reflects Mr. Putin’s view that nuclear arms are essential to restoring Russian power after the breakup of the Soviet Union. To that end, Moscow has built several types of new strategic weapons, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile, hypersonic strike vehicles and an underwater drone with a massive nuclear warhead.

“Should deterrence fail, Russia envisions the potential first use of nuclear weapons to demonstrate resolve and escalate a conflict much higher than an adversary would be willing to accept, thereby terminating the conflict,” the report said.

In 2016, Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, then NATO commander, told Congress: “Russian doctrine states that tactical nuclear weapons may be used in a conventional response scenario. This is alarming, and it underscores why our country’s nuclear forces and NATO’s continue to be a vital component of our deterrence.”

Three years later, the general told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Russian nonstrategic warhead stockpile bolstered Moscow’s mistaken belief in the use of limited nuclear strikes. The strikes would “provide Russia a coercive advantage in crises and at lower levels of conflict,” Gen. Scaparrotti said.

The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review called for bolstering U.S. nuclear forces with low-yield weapons as a means of closing what the military calls a gap on the escalation “ladder” of conflict. Low-yield arms are aimed at reinforcing deterrence against Russia’s tactical nuclear doctrine, Gen. Scaparrotti said.

Adm. Richard, the Strategic Command leader, said Russia’s pursuit of nonstrategic nuclear missiles and warheads is evidence that Moscow plans to use those weapons in a conflict it is losing.

The deployment of the low-yield U.S. missile “successfully improved deterrence against that very strategy,” he said.

Under the Biden administration, the discussion of the escalate-to-deescalate debate has been muted.

Arms control advocates within the administration have argued that Russia’s destabilizing escalation policy is not part of its formal military doctrine. Russia issued a vague nuclear deterrence statement in 2020 saying nuclear arms have two roles: to prevent the escalation of hostilities and to allow for the termination of the conflict on conditions acceptable to Russia and its allies.

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the statement does not fully clarify whether escalateto- deescalate is official doctrine. As for specific conditions on the use of nuclear weapons, the Russian statement includes language that says nuclear arms could be used against conventional forces if the existence of the state is in danger, Mr. Trenin said.

In April, Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, commander of the European Command, repeated Gen. Scaparrotti’s concern that Russia’s use of nonstrategic weapons in a crisis remains a concern.

Gen. Wolters made no mention of the new doctrine and instead referred to Mr. Biden’s June agreement with Mr. Putin to hold strategic stability talks where U.S. concerns could be raised. The talks were to set the stage for renewed arms control negotiations but ended up as a forum for Russian complaints about NATO. The U.S. administration called off the talks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last week, Foreign Policy reported.

In the weeks before the Ukraine invasion, the Biden administration sought to head off Moscow by offering to negotiate limits on missile deployments and other measures. The proposal for arms talks was outlined in a leaked NATO document revealing that the United States refrained from deploying nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe under the NATO-Russia Founding Act but could deploy them there in response to military aggression.

“Further Russian increases to force posture or further aggression against Ukraine will force the United States and our allies to strengthen our defensive posture,” said the document, dated Dec. 17 and first published in Spain’s El Pais newspaper.

U.S. intelligence officials revealed Russia’s construction of large numbers of underground nuclear command bunkers starting in 2016, suggesting a strategy of trying to survive a nuclear exchange. Dozens of bunkers detected in Moscow and across the country appeared similar to command and control complexes built during the Cold War under the Soviet Union.

Moscow also built an underground subway in the late 1990s from the residence of then-President Boris Yeltsin outside Moscow to a leadership command center

[Crafty_Dog]

March 18, 2022
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Will Russia Return to Its Old Strategy?
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman

After Russia invaded Ukraine, I explained why I didn’t think it would and laid out my reasoning in a subsequent column. I have been writing for years about how Russia would try to take control of Ukraine, something Moscow is wont to do in areas it sees as its sphere of influence, especially those that give it strategic depth against its adversaries in the West. I just didn’t think this invasion, in this moment, would be the way it would. You can read my mea culpa here.

I was certainly wrong in the prediction, but if I can claim a morsel of credit, I was to some degree right in that it shouldn’t invade, certainly not according to the war plan that seemed to be in place at the time. The invasion consisted of tanks that ran out of fuel, infantry that got bogged down in firefights with Ukrainian infantry, pointless attacks on non-combatants, and so on.

This is not to excuse my mistake; it’s my job to understand a nation’s intentions, and I didn’t. I assumed that Moscow would pursue a soft coup strategy in Ukraine as it had in Belarus and, to a lesser extent, in the South Caucasus, rather than engage in direct warfare there. It seems as though Russian leaders were blind to the obvious.

However, there is evidence to suggest Russia may be trying to change its strategy. There are reports, for example, of Syrian reinforcements in Ukraine sent to support Russia as Russia had supported the Syrian government. Indeed, stories of Russian efforts to recruit mercenaries abound, even if there is little evidence that they have arrived, or will arrive, to bolster Russia’s offenses. So either Russia is very short on troops, or troops are being held back to provide security in Russia. A good friend of mine in Poland told me that by his estimates, Moscow has already committed 80 percent of its effective combat forces. Ordinarily, I would find this claim absurd, except it’s in Russia’s best interests now to put the conflict to rest as quickly as possible, and it doesn’t seem to have the manpower to do so.

Meanwhile, there are peace negotiations underway involving Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has indicated that progress has been made. The deal on the table is that Ukraine will agree to be neutral – that is, stay out of NATO. But since Ukraine was not about to join NATO anyway, this might mean that Ukraine would not buy arms from the West. Either the demands are more extreme than Lavrov wants to publicly say, or the Russians are extremely eager to end the war. Given open dissent in Russia, and President Vladimir Putin’s open raging at critics, this may well be the case.

But this takes us back to my original point about Russia controlling Ukraine. Russia must have Ukraine as a buffer, and it can’t simply accept its full sovereignty. Using direct military force, particularly the way Russia has so far, can’t achieve that. What can achieve that, as has been the case elsewhere, is a soft coup strategy. Of course, that strategy assumes the target nation isn’t filled with fear of and loathing for Russia. Belarus, for example, was extremely friendly with Russia already. But feelings between nations change, sometimes quickly, and Ukraine is as divided politically as all countries are, and is therefore subject to external manipulation.

In the meantime, Russia may be able to pacify Ukraine, but it will take more force and more time, even as the economic sanctions against Russia take their toll and the Russian public openly denounces the war. China won’t bail Russia out – it doesn’t really want to, and it has its own troubles besides – and mercenaries won’t be up to the task.

But Ukraine is too important to Russian national security to let it succumb entirely to the West, so Russia’s strategy must be to bring the war to a close, allow time to pass, and try to create conditions for a soft coup. In other words, Moscow will try what has succeeded elsewhere.

That is the logic, but Russia, having underestimated Ukrainian resistance and overestimated its own power, may be seeing a different reality. And with Putin claiming that a fifth column is operating in Russia, a different game may be afoot.

[Crafty_Dog]

If Putin died tomorrow — or he became incapacitated — the current prime minister would become acting president. The current prime minster is Mikhail Mishustin, a man likely selected for that job because he has no ambition to replace Putin or a willingness to disagree with him. He spent a decade as the head of the Russian equivalent of the IRS: “As a career bureaucrat who has been in charge of Russia’s taxes for the past 10 years, Mishustin has always kept a low profile and stayed away from politics. He doesn’t belong to a political party and in rare interviews prefers to talk about innovations in tax administration.” During Putin’s cabinet meeting right before the invasion of Ukraine, Mishustin seemed uncomfortable, but did not object to anything Putin said. You almost have to feel sorry for the guy; one moment he’s running the tax-collection system, and two years later, he’s riding shotgun to a madman launching the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.

According to the Russian constitution, after the president dies, an election to replace him should be called within 90 days. Mishustin would be eligible to run, but he doesn’t seem like a man with a burning hunger to run a nuclear-armed state that is now a global pariah and on its way to becoming an economic basket case.

Putin has no natural successor; in Russian politics, having a natural heir apparent is apparently akin to inviting betrayal and a coup. But whoever replaced Putin isn’t likely to have a dramatically different geopolitical worldview from his predecessor.

John Deni is a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. He observed in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago that, “If Mr. Putin were removed in a coup, whoever replaces him would face the same domestic political incentives and disincentives, which would likely lead to a continuation of Russia’s confrontational approach to the West.”

Deni blames it on geography:

Sitting as Russia does at the crossroads of Eurasia, its borders have for centuries been the object of rivalry and conflict with neighbors to the west, east and south. By one estimate, since 1800 Russia has experienced an invasion from its west about once every 33 years on average.

The result has been a nearly permanent sense of weakness and insecurity within Russia. That has fueled a domestic political environment in which those who pursue confrontation and opposition in foreign policy — whether czars, Politburo chairmen or presidents — tend to realize greater political success than those who favor cooperation and integration.

Russia feels vulnerable and threatened, and so it seek to avert those threats by taking a bellicose stance toward its neighbors. The great irony is that no one in Eastern Europe has any interest in invading and conquering Russia. Germany was happy buying Russia’s oil and natural gas. Ukraine was happy trading with Russia. War is always a tragedy, but this one was particularly unneeded.

The only person on Earth who really wanted this war was the man who had the authority to start it

[Crafty_Dog]

On the War in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova Tread Carefully
Both countries must be careful not to bend too far toward the Russian or Western camp.
By: Antonia Colibasanu

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine spreads westward toward the strategic port city of Odessa, concerns are growing that Moscow will soon turn its sights to Ukraine’s western neighbor, Moldova. These fears intensified after a rally – meant to mark eight years since Russia’s annexation of Crimea – in a Moscow stadium last Friday where attendees sang patriotic songs including “Made in the USSR,” which opens with the line: “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country.”

The event likely also raised eyebrows in Georgia. As the only EU and NATO aspiring country in the Caucasus – a region that’s also mentioned in “Made in the USSR” – Georgia shares the same concerns as Moldova, but for different reasons. It doesn’t share a border with Ukraine, but Georgia has very real memories of Russia’s invasion and de facto takeover of two separatist regions in 2008.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Georgia and Moldova intensified their efforts to build closer ties to Brussels, especially given that both countries have Russian-backed breakaway regions – Trans-Dniester in Moldova and South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. Last May, the two countries together with Ukraine formed the Association Trio, aimed at developing closer economic relations with the European Union, a priority for all three countries considering their long-standing dependence on the Russian economy as former Soviet states. Within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they also applied for fast-track EU membership. They were previously seen as unlikely candidates because of Russia’s occupation of part of their territories, but given recent events, Brussels is now more willing to consider their accession. Moldova and Georgia, knowing that membership is a long way off, are hoping the bloc will help them manage the influx of refugees from Ukraine.

They’re also worried that they will be Moscow’s next target and are thus trying to strike a balance between Russia and the West. For example, they’ve refused to apply the same sanctions that Western countries imposed after the war began in an effort to not seem too embedded in the Western camp. But Georgia and Moldova have different reasons for following this path – and different positions on the war in Ukraine.

Georgia

As a country sandwiched in between much larger powers, Georgia’s fate is very much tied to what happens in the rest of Eurasia. When a regional power on either side of this vast region pushes for more influence, as Russia is doing now, Georgia feels threatened and will seek to ally with the regional power’s competitors. This is why Georgia’s only possible way to escape Russia’s advances is to push the U.S., EU and NATO for economic, military and political support. But considering that their priorities lie elsewhere, they have been hesitant to help, which has pushed Georgia to engage with the Russians to keep them at bay.

The Russo-Georgian war of 2008 signaled Russia’s intent on reclaiming its buffer zones. It also underlined Russia’s resurgence as a regional power, ending in a frozen conflict with both South Ossetia and Abkhazia essentially under Russian control. According to reports, there are about 8,000 Russian troops currently stationed in the two provinces. Both territories claimed independence in 2008, and Tbilisi responded by imposing an isolation policy against them.
Disputed Regions in Georgia
(click to enlarge)
People in both breakaway regions can apply for Russian passports at consulates opened after Moscow recognized their independence – though these passports are not recognized by either Tbilisi or the international community, making travel outside Russia impossible for people living here. In 2011-12, Tbilisi offered “status-neutral” travel documents to residents of the two regions, but the take-up was minimal given that the people’s loyalties were already firmly established.

Though Georgia hasn’t given up on its EU and NATO aspirations, it has slowly started to reengage with Russia over the past decade. In 2012, it launched a normalization process with Moscow, in part to encourage tourism and trade. Their relationship has since grown. Russia is currently Georgia’s most important export market, and Russian wheat and foodstuffs account for more than 75 percent of Georgian imports. Revenue from tourism, remittances and trade with Russia accounts for about 9 percent of Georgia’s gross domestic product.

Still, hostilities deriving from Russia’s invasion haven’t faded completely. In fact, some factions in Georgia argued that the normalization process should have been suspended in 2021 when tensions along the breakaway regions’ borders with Georgia escalated before elections. Anti-Russian sentiments increased after Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine when many Russians (reportedly in the 30,000 range so far) fled to Georgia because of increasing repression and economic problems at home. Most Georgians draw a distinction between Russia’s government and the Russian people, but reportedly, there were calls on social media not to welcome the Russian migrants.

The Georgian government, meanwhile, is in a tough position. Considering the strong economic ties between the two countries, Georgia can’t join the West in imposing severe sanctions on Russia. Some in Georgia even called for the country to join Russia’s equivalent to the SWIFT banking system to help the Russian economy survive its exclusion from SWIFT. But Georgians have also held rallies in support of Ukraine outside the Georgian parliament and collected humanitarian aid to be sent to Ukraine.

Moscow, however, doesn’t appear interested in invading Georgia again. In fact, it’s in Russia’s interest to maintain good relations with Georgia to block Western influence there and quash the notion that the South Caucasian country is part of the Euro-Atlantic community. Thus, Tbilisi needs to be careful not to cozy up to the West too much in order not to upset Moscow. As recently as March 1, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said his country would not apply for EU membership until 2024, noting that a hasty move toward joining the bloc could be counterproductive. The Georgian parliament also denied an opposition proposal to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to address parliament.

The best thing Georgia can do right now is to not attract Russian attention. To do so, however, it needs to maintain its own internal stability, which will be harder to do the longer the war in Ukraine drags on. And this eventually may create friction in its relationship with Moscow.

Moldova

Moldova, meanwhile, has been somewhat keener on attracting Western support. The small, landlocked country wedged between Romania and Ukraine in the lowlands of southeastern Europe has long held conflicting loyalties. Numerous powers throughout history have sought to control this territory, which was repeatedly used as an invasion route between the Balkans and Russia. It was caught in the 19th century between the Russian and Ottoman empires, and after the end of the Cold War between the Russians and the West. In the early 1990s, it fought a war with Russian-backed separatists in Trans-Dniester, which resulted in Moscow’s de facto control over the region.
Moldova and Its Borderlands
(click to enlarge)
Russia also holds substantial economic influence over the country, in part because of Moldova’s dependence on Russian energy. Though Romania has built some infrastructure that can deliver European gas to Moldova, the country’s distribution network is still controlled by Gazprom, meaning European gas can move only as far as Russia allows it. Moldova’s electrical grid was synchronized with the Continental European Grid only on March 16, the same day as the Ukrainian electrical grid.

In addition, Moldova’s poor finances and the prevalence of the gray economy make it easy for Russian businesses to maintain a strong foothold in the Moldovan market. Both European and Russian banks operate there, and the country’s access to steel and other industrial materials coming from and through Trans-Dniester offers Russian companies cheaper and more covert access to EU markets. All these factors make it difficult for Moldova to cut ties with Russia.

Much like in Ukraine and Georgia, then, politics in Moldova are highly polarized, split between pro-Russian and pro-European factions. Strong pro-Russian camps concentrated in the capital of Chisinau, the city of Balti and the autonomous region of Gagauzian dominated politics until 2021 when a pro-European government took power.

The country never seriously considered NATO membership, but it is serious about joining the EU, partly because of its demographics: Its population has decreased by a third in 15 years, in part because of declining birth rates and in part because many are leaving for a better life in the European Union. Joining the bloc could persuade some to stay.

The war in Ukraine has brought new challenges, however. The country of roughly 2.6 million people has so far taken in 360,000 refugees, at least 120,000 of whom are still in Moldova. The EU has promised 15 million euros “to help manage the immediate crisis,” and Romania and others have also offered aid, but the Moldovan economy may not be able to cope with the crisis.

Meanwhile, Russian influence in the country doesn’t seem to be dissipating. In a recent poll conducted by BS-AXA-Center, half of respondents refused to say whether Russia or the West was responsible for the war, while about 39 percent said it was. These internal divisions will only grow as the socio-economic pain of the war intensifies.

The government therefore needs to take the opposite approach of the one adopted in Georgia. Chisinau needs all the help the West will offer to manage its internal challenges and limit the reach of the pro-Russian camp. It has no intentions of joining Western sanctions against Russia or moving closer to NATO. But in the coming months, its stability will be tested, and the only way it can manage the problem is by pressing the West for more funding.

Western countries have thus far complied. Earlier this week, Romania, Germany and France announced the creation of the “Moldova Support Platform” with the EU’s support. The initiative aims to attract international funding to help Moldova cope with its many challenges: the refugee influx, energy, finances, border management and corruption. Chisinau is also currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund for financial support. Partnerships like these will help create the impression that Moldova is to some extent shielded from Russian aggression.

But Moldova, like Georgia, will be careful not to bend too far in either direction. In both countries, stability is dependent on the way the war in Ukraine advances​
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[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwPMtmuuVNw

[Crafty_Dog]

Russian President Vladimir Putin described the Soviet Union’s collapse
in 1991 as “the greatest political
catastrophe” of the 20th century.

To those
outside of Russia it may sound like hyperbole, but to those who lived there it’s a different story. In short order, they witnessed their
government in Moscow, a power on par with
the United States for nearly five decades,
lose its footing and never fully recover. Russia became destitute, even aimless.

So traumatic was the union’s collapse that it
continues to define Russia’s identity today.
And though the country remained formidable in its near abroad, it is less capable than
it once was of securing its national interests
farther afield. To understand why this is so,
we need to begin by looking at a map.
The Geopolitics of Russia
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA

4
Indeed, Russia’s most fundamental and strategic challenge – which has both international and domestic dimensions – stems from
the country’s geography. The vast majority
of Russian territory sits between 50 degrees
and 70 degrees latitude. For perspective,
London’s latitude is about 51 degrees, Berlin’s is 52 and Ottawa’s is 45. Russia’s climate
is generally cool, and vegetation and human
life tend to inhabit areas that are below 60 degrees latitude. The heartland of Russian agriculture is in the southwest, along its borders
with Ukraine, the Caucasus and Kazakhstan.
Climate and agriculture go a long way to explain why three-quarters of the population
lives in the area between Russia’s border
with Europe and the Ural Mountains. The
country’s most critical cities, including the
seat of its government, moreover, are all
close to Europe. Russia has few rivers, and
those it does have flow mostly west, making
it difficult to transport goods domestically.
Russia offsets these natural disadvantages
by relying on railways, which further highlight the importance of the western and
southern regions. And so it is that Russia is
Geography, or the Dangers of the West
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA
5
disproportionately preoccupied – and imperiled – by its western reaches.
As a land power, Russia is inherently vulnerable. Its border with Europe is extremely susceptible to invasion, situated as it is on the
North European Plain. This flat expanse of
land begins in Germany and, just east of the
Carpathian Mountains, pivots southward,
opening up right on Russia’s doorstep. Historically, it has been a major thoroughfare of
western military encroachment.
Because Russia’s enemies have so often
used this invasion route, Moscow has tried
to make it more difficult for invaders to
reach its territory by pushing Russia’s borders as far west as possible. When national borders could not be extended, Moscow
established buffer zones between Russia’s
core and Europe. At the height of the Soviet
Union, Moscow enjoyed an extensive buffer
zone that stretched well into Central Europe.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, Russia lost most of these territories
and has been on the defensive ever since.
Consider that in 1989, St. Petersburg was
about 1,000 miles from NATO troops. Today, that distance is about 200 miles.
RUSSIA
SWEDEN
NORWAY
FINLAND
GERMANY
CZECH
REPUBLIC
DENMARK
UNITED
KINGDOM NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
FRANCE SWITZERLAND
ITALY
SPAIN
AUSTRIA
LUXEMBOURG
GREECE
SLOVENIA
CROATIA SERBIA ALBANIA
MONTENEGRO KOSOVO
Moscow
POLAND
TURKEY
ROMANIA
BULGARIA
MOLDOVA
NORTH MACEDONIA
BOSNIA- HERZEGOVINA
ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
BELARUS
UKRAINE
CRIMEA
HUNGARY
SLOVAKIA
PORTUGAL
IRELAND
Founders (1949)
1950-2000
2000-present
NATO
Membership in Europe
100 miles
500miles
0
≈100
miles
≈1,000 miles
1949
2020
≈500 miles
2020
≈1,300 miles
1949
Source: NATO © 2021 Geopolitical Futures
A Shrinking Buffer
Black Sea
Baltic
Sea
Sea of
Azov
Mediterranean Sea
North
Sea
Caspian
Sea
St. Petersburg
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA
6
Russian geography presents an obvious
challenge: Whoever governs the country
must manage the largest country in the
world, comprising vastly different peoples,
climates, natural resources and infrastructure networks. The Russian Federation
consists of 85 federal subjects that range
in structure from autonomous regions and
republics to individual cities. As a result,
Russia is home to highly regionalized economies in which wealth and prosperity are
unevenly distributed.
Wealth is concentrated in the west, particularly in Moscow and the Central Federal District. In times of prosperity, economic disparities can be papered over, and the pressure
on high-earning districts is fairly easily relieved. But in times of economic duress, as
was the case when oil prices dropped in late
2014, the central government faces added
social pressure from the poorer districts in
the interior.
It’s little wonder, then, that Russia’s economic
development since the end of the Cold War has
been similarly uneven. The 1990s were meant
for survival, not economic growth. The reforms
of the decade were aimed at one thing: preventing Russia from reverting to communist rule.
Most Russians lived in or near poverty while
most state enterprises were privatized – at a
discount. The 1998 Russian financial crisis and
the associated protests brought about a major
A Concentration of Wealth
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7
change. The people were ready for stronger
government and so welcomed a stronger ruler. Enter Vladimir Putin, who endeavored to fix
the economy and then rebuild the government.
Since then, Russia’s development has been
predicated on energy exports, which in turn
have fueled budget spending and consumption.
This worked well enough when energy prices
were high. But when they fall, so too do Russian revenues. This inevitably leads to periodic
economic downturns. From 2015 to 2017, for
example, citizens protested unemployment,
wage arrears, cuts in government programs,
lower real wages, bankruptcy and general frustration with reduced standards of living. The
protests were small, but they could threaten
Putin in the long term. Now it is western sanctions that threaten Russia’s economy and, once
again, Putin must not only maintain control but
also show the people that he is responding to
their needs.
One way he has done so is to erect a two-tier economic system. He controls one tier
through his “inner circle,” which runs stateowned companies, while the other tier is
subject to free market laws. These state-run
companies constitute about one-fifth of the
Russian economy. The Russian people still
support Putin – and they may even trust
him – but they regard oligarchs and regional administrators as corrupt. The president
must weigh the needs of his people against
the needs of the companies that sustain his
economy. In 2001, he sided with the people,
leading a campaign against the oligarchs
and then taking control of media and energy
companies.
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He has also reorganized some of the state
security agencies that help maintain order.
He established the National Guard, which
unifies several domestic security forces under the direct control of the president. The
troops’ stated purpose is to protect the public order, combat extremism, guard government cargo and facilities, help protect the
border and control the arms trade. He also
installed officials loyal to his government
in important places. For instance, between
2017 and 2018, he removed 16 generals
from their posts in the Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of National Disasters, a body
responsible for responding to civil defense,
public unrest and protests, and in the Interior Ministry, replacing them with officials he
personally selected. The dismissals primarily affected the Caucasus, the Far East and
cities within Moscow’s reach – cities where,
as recently as the end of 2017, there had
been reports of increased unrest.
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Politically, the Russian government under
Putin consolidated its power fairly early on.
Under his administration, Russian political
parties are relatively unimportant; the system favors pro-Kremlin parties. Parties that
do not support the government have little
chance of gaining seats in the Duma, the
lower house of parliament. In 2000, shortly
after assuming his first presidency, Putin actually reduced the number of parties represented in the Duma. In 2012, then-President
Dmitri Medvedev appeared to backpedal
on this move by passing a law that simplified the registration procedures for political
parties. On paper, the new legislation was
meant to open the party system to alternative interest groups. In practice, the system
remained closed.
Five political parties, all of them pro-government to a degree, currently dominate the
Duma. United Russia, Putin’s party, holds
323 of 450 seats, doing whatever Putin tells
it to do. The Communist Party (57), the Liberal Democratic Party (23), A Just Russia
(27) and New People Party (14) hold the
remaining seats. The latter four parties are
not seen as official pro-government parties
and therefore at least partly represent the
opposition. Notably, the term “opposition” is
All Politics Is Local
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used loosely; the representatives rarely defy
Putin-led initiatives. Votes cast by officials
of these parties reflect a disagreement with
United Russia and bureaucracy while simultaneously staying loyal to the president and
system. They have some mild distance from
the regime but do not outright oppose it.
Putin also consolidated political power by
purging Russian governors – an important
move, considering the relationship between
governors and members of the national government. They often work together, depend
on each other and look out for one another’s
interests. Gubernatorial elections were reintroduced in 2012, but while the law to reintroduce them was making its way through
the system, more than 20 governors were
reappointed by the Kremlin, delaying elections in these locations until 2017. Then, in
2013, Putin signed a law that permitted regional legislatures to decide between directly electing governors or having the regional
legislature select and appoint a governor
from a short list drawn up by Putin.
Regional governors, in turn, play a role in
appointing members to Russia’s Federation
Council, the upper chamber of parliament.
The council consists of two representatives
from each of Russia’s 83 federal entities. One
representative is chosen by the regional legislature and one is selected by the region’s
governor. The length of the representative’s
term varies with the federal entity. Built into
this system is a level of reciprocity between
governor and president, further enabling Putin to wield influence. He is able to ensure
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA
11
that a candidate gains a gubernatorial office, and in return, the governor can appoint
a pro-Kremlin member to the council. This
relationship becomes even more important
considering that the council approves presidential decrees for martial law, declares a
state of emergency, deploys troops abroad,
oversees the presidential appointment for
attorney general and decides impeachment
verdicts.
Putin has dedicated much of his political
capital and resources to consolidating his
power through reforms in various government security bodies. By rebuilding his inner
circle and revamping the power structure,
Putin has demonstrated that he needs to
extend his power network to ensure that his
decrees and policies are implemented properly and that dissenters remain silenced.
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA
12
Much of Putin’s political machinations,
though, are meant to perpetuate a myth
abroad. The myth: that Russia is as strong as
it appears. Without the ability to act as decisively as it could during the Cold War, Russia
is relegated to focusing on its own backyard.
The vulnerabilities along its western border
compel Russia to maintain a strong foothold in Ukraine and Belarus. Russia needs
these two countries to insulate it from outside threats. Though Belarus has remained
firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence in
the post-Soviet era, Ukraine has not. After
pro-Western supporters overthrew the Russia-friendly government in Kiev, Moscow
had no choice but to respond with force. In
early 2014 it seized the Crimean Peninsula
and sent troops and supplies to pro-Russia
rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Crimea was annexed partly to ensure a foothold in Ukraine and partly to secure the port
of Sevastopol, home to the Black Sea Fleet.
Russia’s navy consists primarily of four main
The Focus of Its Foreign Policy
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA
13
fleets – the Northern, Baltic, Black Sea and
Pacific. The first three are all based on the
European side of Russia and are constrained
by major chokepoints that limit their access
to global waters. Since much of Russia is
landlocked, the loss or compromising of
the headquarter ports for any one of these
fleets would severely reduce Russia’s naval
power and negatively affect maritime trade.
From the Black Sea, through the Bosporus,
Russia gains access to the Mediterranean
and from there the Atlantic.
Through it all, though, Ukraine has remained
Russia’s top priority and the focus of its foreign policy. Post-Soviet Russia had neither
the resources nor the wherewithal to retake
Ukraine. Russia’s diminished power forced
Moscow to adopt a strategy of global disruption that targeted primarily at the United
States. (Their rivalry is one element of the
Cold War era that remains intact.) Moscow
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA
14
did so most visibly in Syria – where it worked
to parlay its influence in the conflict’s resolution to a more beneficial outcome with the
United States over Ukraine – though it has
also been active in Venezuela and North Korea.
For example, in mid-2013, Russia inserted
itself into the international crisis by negotiating a deal to destroy Syria’s chemical
weapons program. Later that year, the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine ousted the
Russia-friendly government in Kiev and replaced it with one that favored the West. In a
much weaker position than it was just a few
months earlier, Russia once more turned to
the conflict in Syria. After reshaping perceptions of Russian power, strengthening the
position of Assad’s forces and prompting
negotiations with the U.S., the limited Syrian
intervention largely fulfilled its strategic purpose for Russia.
Recently Russia deviated from the global
disruption strategy and invaded Ukraine.
The move revitalized NATO and the broader
US-European relationship. While the West
has not directly engaged in military action
with Russia in Ukraine, it provided significant
logistical and military support to Ukraine.
Additionally, the West applied severe sanctions against Russia, isolating the country
from much of the global economy. NATO
has also increased its troop rotations, boost
defense and deploy weapons systems
along NATO’s eastern flank. For Russia, increased NATO presence – and in particular
U.S. presence – in its backyard constitutes
a major threat.
It is a threat it cannot fully manage. More
than 30 years after the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia is still trying to find its way. In
the lives of nations, 30 years is not so long a
time, and the fall of empires tends to reverberate for years thereafter. Moreover, Russia
pandemic economic recovery now faces the
added constraints of far-reaching sanctions
This is particularly problematic in a region
as complex and dangerous as Russia’s, a
region where appearing weak can be as big
a threat as being weak. Russia must simultaneously try to appear more powerful than
it is and meticulously manage what power it
has. But real power is durable. Illusions are
ephemeral. Actions taken by weak nations
designed to make them appear stronger
nearly always fail in the long run.
Mission Statement of GPF
The mission of Geopolitical Futures is contained it its name. Geopolitical Futures understands
the world through the rigorous application of geopolitics: the political, economic, military and
geographic dimensions that are the foundation of a nation. The imperatives and constraints
contained in these define the nation. We study first the past and thereby understand the future. At its core geopolitics assumes, as does economics, that events are governed by these
impersonal forces and not by individual whim or ideology. Geopolitical Futures is rigorously
non-ideological.  Our staff may have their personal beliefs, but they must check them at the
door.
We therefore strive to be objective, not merely neutral, but indifferent to the opinions swirling
around the world.   We have one underlying belief, which is that liberal democracy can survive
only if there is a segment of society, which we call the learned public, who is not caught up in
the passions of the moment, but is eager to look at the world as it is, and influence the polity
toward the prudence that flows from understanding.  It is this learned public we serve with the
methods we have developed. Above all, Geopolitical Futures is an intellectual undertaking, an
ongoing experiment in finding order in the apparent chaos of the world. We are a business that
lives the life of the mind.
Subscri

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKDX3E7SvWw

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-threatens-action-against-ex-soviet-states-if-they-defy-russia/ar-AAYD60d?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1dcc8344565c4a469d024b0899a3efe6

[Crafty_Dog]

August 8, 2022
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Russia's New Maritime Strategy
Implementing it is easier said than done.
By: Ekaterina Zolotova

On July 31, just before the start of a naval parade, President Vladimir Putin approved Russia’s new maritime doctrine, replacing one that had been in place since 2001 and amended in 2015. The new document states outright that America’s dominance of the world’s oceans is a primary threat to the Russian mainland, and more clearly outlines Russia’s economic and strategic interests with regard to the seas.

The timing is hardly coincidental. Sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have negatively affected value chains and have hindered Russian trade with traditional Western partners. (Cargo turnover in Russian seaports is expected to fall by as much as 50 percent, curbing the export of coal, grain, oil products, fertilizers and liquefied natural gas in a country whose budget depends heavily on exports.) The war, and in particular the destruction of its third largest warship in April, convinced Russia that it needs to decommission its older ships in favor of more modernized ones.

The increased presence of hostile forces would worry any country, of course, but Russia is particularly sensitive to these kinds of naval matters. In fact, it’s helpful to think of Russia as a landlocked country. Despite its long maritime border and proximity to the seas, Russia does not actually have direct access to the open oceans – hence why it is so active in the Black Sea. It lost a lot of its port infrastructure, and thus a lot of its entree to trade routes, when it lost its Soviet satellite states. Put simply, Russia requires a strong naval strategy to compensate for what it lacks in maritime access, which it correctly sees as a strategic vulnerability. For Russia, being able to unlock the ocean is a way to forestall the strangulation of its economy and the isolation of its people.

Russia Seaports
(click to enlarge)

Curiously, Russia’s neighbors with a presence in the Baltic, Black and Caspian seas, as well as those oriented toward the Arctic and Pacific oceans, don’t see Russia’s new naval doctrine as a newfound threat. They understand better than most that Russia’s capacities at sea are limited, often due to internal reasons.

Purpose

The new strategy has two main purposes. The first is to clearly define Russia's zones of interest. Vital seas are those that directly influence state and socio-economic development – Russia’s territorial waters, its exclusive economic zone and its continental shelf, the Arctic basin, including the Northern Sea Route. These are the very areas that bring Russia into collision with other powers – Norway and the United States from the Arctic basin, Japan from the Sea of Okhotsk, and Turkey, Iran, some of Central Asia and much of Europe in the Caspian Sea. Areas that “significantly affect economic development” include the Sea of ​​Azov and the Black Sea, the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Kuril Straits. Russia’s largest ports are located in the Black and Baltic seas, which are also home to the TurkStream and Nord Stream pipelines. In essence, Russia has said that the presence of other countries in these areas is a threat to which the Russian fleet will be ready to respond.

The second purpose is to define Russia’s priorities. Whereas the previous doctrine could be considered Atlantic-focused, the new one places a heavier emphasis on the Arctic and Pacific oceans. This shows that Moscow is attempting to transform Russia into a link between the two oceans, thereby avoiding isolation and, optimistically, strengthening its role as a maritime power. The Arctic Sea is particularly important to Russia because of the Northern Sea Route, which Moscow considers an opportunity to ensure competitiveness in the world market. There, the doctrine calls on Russia to intensify maritime activities in the archipelagos of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya and Wrangel Island, increasing its combat potential and developing the basing system for the Northern Fleet and the Pacific Fleet. It also includes the development of a shipbuilding complex and the construction of aircraft carriers in the Far East, as well as a liquefied natural gas plant there, and provides for more active development of the natural resources in the continental shelf, including an increase in the level of geological knowledge of the Sea of ​​Japan, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Bering Sea.

For any of this to be possible, Russia will have to build more military and commercial ships and be able to send them where it needs to send them. The creation of modern large maritime transport and logistics centers on the basis of domestic seaports, according to the Kremlin’s plan, will ensure the processing of all maritime imports and exports and create conditions to compete with the port complexes of other states. The doctrine also stresses the need to create logistics networks that can facilitate the transition of vessels from one theater to another, and it beefs up the existing infrastructure in Crimea and on the coast of Krasnodar.

Constraints

Of course, it’s much easier to draw up a strategic plan than to implement it. The tacit admission of the new doctrine is that the Russian navy is in disrepair. What was a powerful fleet in the 1970s has since been relegated to the minor leagues. Moscow has not been able to regain its potential in things like transportation fishing and research despite efforts to modernize its vessels. This means that to ensure the implementation of this strategy, Russia will need to make up a lot of ground, which will take years, a lot of money and a lot of new and independent technologies.

Soviet Navy Bases in 1984
(click to enlarge)

First, Russia needs a fleet, military and civil. Its fleet is significantly inferior to that of the Soviet fleet. For comparison, in the 1980s, the navy included more than 1,300 ships, including 64 nuclear- and 15 diesel-powered ballistic missile submarines, 79 cruise missile submarines (including 63 nuclear submarines), 80 multi-purpose torpedo nuclear submarines, four aircraft carriers, 96 cruisers, and destroyers and missile frigates. Today, the navy has about 70 submarines (13 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, 27 nuclear-powered missile and torpedo submarines, 19 diesel submarines, eight special-purpose nuclear submarines and 1 diesel submarine) and more than 200 surface warships and boats (including one Soviet heavy aircraft carrier). The majority of its surface ships, although powerful, are outdated, and many need to be decommissioned.

The civil fleet is no more impressive. The Soviet research fleet consisted of more than 200 ships, including freshwater vessels. Today, there are no more than 80. The merchant fleet consists of only about 1,400 vessels (including those sailing under the Russian flag and those of Russian shipping companies registered under foreign flags) with a total tonnage of 22.3 million tons, of which 65.7 percent is operated under foreign flags. The average age of the ships is between 13 and 20 years. Unsurprisingly, the Russian fleet has an extremely low share of world cargo transportation, at roughly 0.1 percent.

Second, Russia needs independent technologies to build the fleet out. Currently, Russian shipbuilding is highly dependent on imports. Foreign components account for anywhere from 40 to 85 percent of the entire civil sector.

Finally, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, inadequate basing options and poor maintenance inflicted heavy losses on the Russian navy. This reflects two problems: a lack of funding and insufficient planning for the restructuring and reduction of the force. Limited funds and outdated shipyards make it difficult to repair large Soviet ships and construct new ones. The most optimistic scenario in the Shipbuilding Development Strategy, which runs through 2035, foresees construction of 250 sea transport vessels and more than 1,500 river-sea transport vessels. However, because of their dire financial situations, shipbuilders can meet just a fraction of their targets, including just 18 percent of demand for sea transport vessels, 6 percent for river-sea transport vessels, 8 percent for fishing fleet vessels, 11 percent for research vessels, 63 percent for icebreakers and no more than 40 percent for ships and marine equipment to develop offshore energy fields. These difficulties are gradually eroding Russia’s share of global maritime transport.

Ultimately, one of the main threats to Russia’s maritime activities is the lack of sufficient foreign bases to support operations in distant and remote areas. Russia will need time, money and technology to expand its naval presence.

Conclusion

The Russian navy is still strong regionally. And Russia continues to spend on infrastructure projects. For example, it’s committed almost 1.8 trillion rubles ($30 billion) for the development of the Northern Sea Route through 2035. Nonetheless, Russia needs greater maritime capabilities to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. It thus needs better basing and logistics, port infrastructure, and significant investment in both the military and merchant fleets. The new doctrine is intended to do this over the long term, not to be a temporary solution to sanctions. The bigger issue is funding, and it is unclear where Russia will find the money. This will require Moscow to get creative. For instance, the doctrine mentions that Russia could prepare civilian ships and crews to convert to military purposes during wartime.

Russia needs to be a great maritime power to accomplish other important goals, like ensuring the safe operation of its offshore pipelines and environmental safety as well as developing the Northern Sea Route. This will take decades of effective management and billions of rubles in spending. In the short term, this isn’t a threat to other regional powers, but it could be over the long term. And the notion that Russia will be able to overcome extreme competition from regional powers in the near future seems unrealistic

[Crafty_Dog]

August 24, 2022
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Russia’s Buffer Zone May Have to Wait
Mounting challenges are forcing Moscow to moderate its war aims in Ukraine.
By: Ridvan Bari Urcosta
As the military adage goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy. No one is more cognizant of this fact right now than Russia, which has faced multiple setbacks in its offensive against Ukraine. Six months in, the situation on the ground is constantly changing, often in ways that the Kremlin didn’t expect or intend. Russia invaded Ukraine with the goal of reestablishing much-needed strategic depth on its western borders. However, as the fighting wears on, new challenges are forcing Moscow to limit its focus to securing sufficient defensive depth around core regions and chokepoints rather than seizing all of Ukraine.

Russia’s objectives in Ukraine are intertwined with its security and military concerns, which are themselves part of a broader grand strategy. Russia’s grand strategy entails achieving strategic depth along vulnerable borders. In this case, Ukraine helps fulfill the Russian need to create a larger buffer zone between itself and the West, particularly NATO states. In 2014, Moscow made a first attempt at gaining Ukrainian territory and succeeded in holding Crimea as well as establishing a strong presence in Donbas. This time around, Moscow believed that those Ukrainians who for decades voted for pro-Russian political parties would lend their support to the Russian initiative. This did not happen.

Since late February, the battleground and its realities have been forcing Russia to rethink its immediate strategic goals. The fighting has gone on longer than anticipated, and Ukraine has demonstrated it plans to continue fighting and is not yet interested in a peace agreement. With time, Ukraine will complete its training on Western-donated weapons and equipment. Russia’s most significant concern in this regard is the versatile short- and medium-range rockets that Ukraine possesses or will possess in the near future. Over the past few weeks, Ukraine has demonstrated the capability to use these rockets to strike deep into the rear of Russian forces on the offensive, including hitting weapons depots and air defense systems. This, then, compels the Russians to drive deeper into Ukrainian territory to build even more strategic depth and provide the distance for its air defense systems to react.

Additionally, Russia's challenges will only multiply and intensify with time. First, there's the West's economic and military support for Ukraine, which helps Kyiv to prolong the fighting and do so with increasingly advanced weaponry. Ukraine's asymmetric attacks with weapons like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, better known as HIMARS, have proved particularly problematic for Russia. On the economic front, Western sanctions against Russia led Moscow to start restricting trade and economic relationships. They also overburdened the Russian economy and resulted in the political decision to repress domestic unrest. Lastly, Russia does not appear to have overcome its logistical challenges and continues to struggle to deliver military supplies and defend its rear. All of these factors together make taking the whole of Ukraine a less feasible, more costly move.

Russia's Buffer Zones
(click to enlarge)

Russia, therefore, recalculated its military strategy toward Ukraine. First, the new strategy needed to account for Ukraine’s Western allies. Russia knew the West would side with Ukraine but miscalculated the degree to which the West would provide military and financial support and its ability to collectively engage in economic warfare. In particular, Moscow remains vigilant of U.S. and British contributions to the Ukraine war effort, particularly with the delivery of cutting-edge military hardware. At the same time, the West’s collective response made Moscow more cautious about bringing its forces right up to NATO lines. Russia does not want to engage directly with NATO, and efforts to occupy all of Ukraine would bring it dangerously close to NATO’s border, leaving little room for error. Lastly, Moscow seeks to use lessons from the war in Donbas between 2014 and 2015 to account for Ukraine’s military capability (particularly with regard to missiles) to target Russian military assets by establishing greater depth around chokepoints of strategic importance.

Russia’s new strategy entails a new list of military objectives in Ukraine. First, Russia must secure the separatist Donbas republics from the reach of Ukrainian artillery and rockets, up to 150 to 200 kilometers (roughly 90 to 125 miles). This requires establishing total control of the area from Donetsk to the city of Pavlograd near the Dnieper River. Farther south, Russia must secure the northern Crimean water canal system in the Kherson region from Ukrainian artillery and prevent the reclamation of these areas by the Ukrainian army. Russia's distance calculations here are premised on the missile range of Ukrainian and Western-provided weapons, and will thus adjust with Ukrainian capabilities.

To achieve these goals, Russia again must conduct an offensive operation and reach the line of Kryvyi Rih and Nova Odesa, and take Mykolayiv city. It is an almost impossible task for Russia currently. Relatedly, Russian forces need to control the Crimean Bridge given its essential role as an economic and military supply route to the peninsula and the Russian forces in southern Ukraine. This also means guaranteeing security over all of Crimea and keeping it free from military incidents. Currently, the closest Russian bases in Crimea are no less than 200 kilometers from areas under Ukrainian control. And finally, Russia will set its sights on the longer-term goal of securing a greater buffer zone along Ukraine’s northern regions of Sumy and Chernihiv, which are just 450 kilometers from Moscow. These regions are close to many cities that are part of the Russian ethnic heartland – like Kursk, Belgorod, Oryol and Voronezh – where Moscow does not want to lose any influence. The problem with this particular objective is that, in order to gain more than a 100-kilometer buffer zone, Moscow has to go almost to the outskirts of Kyiv, on the left bank of the Dnieper, which as the early phase of the war proved would come at a high cost.

Russia is trapped in a classic geopolitical dilemma, where mounting constraints prevent it from effectively pursuing its ultimate goal of gaining strategic depth along its western border. Moscow’s current solution is to go marginally deeper into Ukrainian territory to secure depth against missiles in strategic occupied territory, without making a play for all of Ukraine. Such an approach will leave the question of its buffer zone open-ended. But it may also provide Russia with the opportunity to consolidate the progress it has made during this round, free up resources to focus on mounting economic problems and live to fight another day. It’s only a matter of time before Russia steps up overtures for a negotiated settlement in the conflict.

[Crafty_Dog]

August 31, 2022
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Making Sense of Russia’s Pause in Ukraine
The Kremlin knows better than to throw too many resources at one area for long.
By: Ekaterina Zolotova

Its Ukraine offensive having ground to a halt, Russia’s military on Sept. 1 will start drills in an unlikely location: the Far East. Taking place at the Russian Eastern Military District’s training grounds, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan, Vostok 2022 will involve more than 50,000 personnel and more than 5,000 weapons and pieces of equipment, including 140 aircraft and 60 vessels. With the Ukraine war dragging on longer than anticipated, the apparent slowdown in Russian operations – beginning a few weeks ago around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – may be deliberate. The Kremlin may be pausing for a strategic rethink.

A state of Russia’s size, with Russia’s diverse set of neighbors, is bound to be pulled in multiple directions from time to time. Starting east and moving clockwise, Moscow faces China’s rise, terrorism and general instability in Central Asia and the Middle East, chronic war in the Caucasus, Turkey’s rise, the war in Ukraine, instability in the Balkans, and NATO’s reawakening and likely enlargement. Russia’s war in Ukraine presents opportunities for the Kremlin’s enemies as well as dissatisfied regional actors to upset the status quo in other parts of Russia’s periphery.

Russia
(click to enlarge)

Caucasus

The first region bordering Russia to destabilize since the start of the war was the Caucasus, a critical intersection between the Black and Caspian seas, and between Russia and the Middle East. Soon after the war began, Armenian and Azerbaijani representatives started making more frequent trips to Brussels, which saw an opportunity to seize the initiative from a distracted Moscow and mediate in a long-standing territorial dispute. Ultimately, though, Western activity in the region remains a distraction, and Russia still has peacekeepers there and plenty of other leverage. The other day Moscow ensured a three-way agreement among itself, Armenia and Azerbaijan was fulfilled. The deal saw Azerbaijani forces assume control from Russian peacekeepers of the city of Lachin in Nagorno-Karabakh as well as two villages in the Lachin region.

Lachin Corridor
(click to enlarge)

Middle East

In the Middle East, all eyes are on Iran, where attempts are underway to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Many senior U.S. and European officials say a deal is close and could be weeks away. This is bad news for Russian officials, for whom energy scarcity is a key piece of leverage. It would be bad news if Iranian oil and natural gas were to flood the market at the same time the West is trying to choke off Russian energy exports.

Syria is another problem spot. Following recent rocket attacks on American bases in the country, the U.S. launched airstrikes on pro-Iranian paramilitary positions in Deir el-Zour province. Israel also occasionally conducts airstrikes in Syria. And NATO member Turkey has for months threatened another military operation in northern Syria. For Russia, Syria is an important gateway to the Mediterranean and the extension of Russian influence to Africa and more remote parts of the Middle East, but there’s only so much it can do while simultaneously at war in Ukraine.

Balkans

In the Balkans, Russia, a close ally of Serbia, has watched anxiously as the West tries to sideline it. At the end of July, relations deteriorated again between Kosovo and Serbia after Pristina said it would issue entry and exit documents to Serbs at the border. The U.S. and EU stepped in to temporarily defuse the situation. The West has also scaled up weapons deliveries to Kosovo, with the U.K. sending more than 50 Javelin and NLAW anti-tank systems and announcing plans to train Kosovo soldiers on the weapons. Moreover, Western sanctions on Russian oil tanker deliveries will prevent Serbia from receiving Russian oil beginning on Nov. 1.

Central Asia

Central Asia is not as important to the U.S. and Europe as other areas, but the U.S. can still cause problems in the region for Russia. For example, Kyrgyzstan has warned that Afghan terrorist groups could in the next few months launch attacks in the region, particularly in Tajikistan. The Taliban regime is a tool for the U.S. to destabilize Central Asia, it said. Meanwhile, the Tajik government reported a tripling of drug trafficking through its territory over the past year and said terrorist groups gathering in Badakhshan, northeast Afghanistan, are a threat to itself and the region.

Russia’s concern is that the U.S. may try to step in and present itself as an alternative leader and mediator in the region. It’s a particular sore spot for the Kremlin, which has seen China and Turkey erode its economic and social influence, leaving it with only its military influence – Moscow operates bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – to comfortably fall back on. And already there are early signs of Western encroachment. The U.S. has significantly stepped up its cooperation with Central Asia since February. Especially concerning for Moscow was August’s Regional Cooperation 2022 exercises, which involved the U.S., Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Separately, Uzbekistan’s National Guard announced expanded military cooperation with the U.S., including the training of Uzbek military specialists.

Therefore, we should expect the Kremlin to prioritize Central Asia ties via diplomacy, joint exercises and joint initiatives. Central Asia is a large market for Russian goods and a transit hub to bypass Western sanctions, but Russia needs significant influence in the region to benefit. This is why Russian authorities spent last week at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting drawing attention to the problem. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow is increasing its combat readiness at bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan due to the state of affairs in Afghanistan. He also announced an SCO counterterrorism exercise, Peace Mission 2023, to be held next year in Russia, and reaffirmed plans for Collective Security Treaty Organization drills in the fall in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Conclusion

Moscow didn’t expect to be tied down for so long in Ukraine, so it is natural that it might pause its operations to deal with peripheral threats. The war is seriously exhausting Russia, draining ammunition and wearing down weapons it would need to react to, for example, terrorism in Central Asia. But having learned the lessons of history, the Kremlin is making sure not to throw all its forces and attention in one direction. Russia will need to save some of its strength for the long struggle that seems to lie ahead.

[Crafty_Dog]

Can you guys see this?

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/SR_RussianHistory_2022.pdf?utm_source=GPF+Customers&utm_campaign=f5b7133fab-20220901_PL-RussiaSR&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa39571b29-f5b7133fab-264975290&mc_cid=f5b7133fab&mc_eid=415e14f76b

PS:  Hat tip to GM for this interesting read:

"https://www.imetatronink.com/2022/08/the-us-is-making-russia-incredibly.html"

[DougMacG]

"Can you guys see this?"

Yes, came right up as a 16p. PDF.
-------
Also,. Welcome Valerick!

[Crafty_Dog]

September 7, 2022
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Russia’s Objectives in Iran
Their short-term economic interests coincide despite their mutual lack of trust.
By: Ekaterina Zolotova

Roughly six months in, the Russian economy has thus far managed to withstand the pressure of Western sanctions imposed as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. This is due largely to earnings from energy exports, which contribute substantially to Russia’s federal budget and national wealth fund. But Moscow also needs to consider how it can weather the storm in the long term, especially because it could face more severe sanctions in the future. It’s dependent on a number of imported goods, most notably high-tech products, to which its access is now limited, and it’s aware that even tougher sanctions could threaten its economic and political well-being. There are several ways to mitigate the effects: introducing import substitution initiatives, finding ways to skirt the sanctions, finding alternative suppliers of key imports, keeping energy exports flowing as leverage against the West, and participating in regional cooperation initiatives.

Iran can play an important role in each of these options. This explains why Moscow has been in recent months edging closer to Iran. From January to June, trade turnover between Moscow and Tehran was approximately $2.7 billion, 42.5 percent higher than in the same period a year ago. In his last meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said relations with Iran were “reaching a new qualitative level,” which could culminate in a major bilateral agreement already in the final stages of completion. Tehran is facing tough Western sanctions of its own, and it sees an opportunity to gain access to a number of technologies and the fairly large Russian market. With their short-term economic interests seemingly compatible, Russia sees a chance to pursue its broader objectives in the region, however difficult it may be.

Bilateral Trade Between Russia and Iran | 2016-2021

(click to enlarge)

Russia’s Goals

Russia has long maintained a cautious policy toward Iran, but sanctions have incentivized broader cooperation. To an extent, Moscow can learn from how Tehran has dealt with the sanctions imposed on it by the West. The restrictions on its banking and industrial sectors are similar to those applied to Russia, so Moscow may look to the Iranian example as it charts a path forward.

Moscow is searching for a partner that can provide otherwise inaccessible goods and buy some of the Russian-made products that now lack markets. Iran has been able to help fill both these gaps. For example, in mid-March, when the European Union banned steel imports from Russia and capped imports of a number of other metals, Iran immediately expressed a desire to import zinc and aluminum and to buy steel in exchange for Russia’s purchase of auto parts and gas turbines. Iran also suggested it might import more grain from Russia after becoming its second-largest grain buyer in the 2021/2022 agricultural year. In July, Iran agreed to supply aircraft components to Moscow and to provide maintenance and repairs for Russian airliners. Russia is likely interested in Iranian-made electronic control units and airbags. With Iran’s participation in the Russian MIR payment system expected soon, such transactions will only increase.

There are also benefits in the energy sector. In July, Russia’s Gazprom and Iran’s NIOC signed a memorandum of understanding on oil and gas projects worth $40 billion. Russian firms have also agreed to offer investment and technology for Iranian oil and gas projects or to participate as contractors. The Kremlin believes this might offset Russian losses if tougher sanctions are imposed or if European countries purchase energy from other suppliers. Even if Western sanctions on Iran are lifted and European investors reenter the Iranian market, Russia will have already established itself as a key partner for the Iranian energy industry, making Russian companies highly competitive with European ones.

Another target for Russia is the Iranian IT sector. Russia has a fairly developed IT sector of its own but needs more expertise on tech security, especially as cyberattacks on critical infrastructure increase. Iran has experience in this field considering it has been the target of a number of cyberattacks since 2010, making it an important player in cybersecurity technologies that help protect nuclear, military and economic facilities. The country has invested heavily in this area since the 2010 Stuxnet attack that disabled its nuclear power program. This presents an interesting opportunity for Russia because its military campaign in Ukraine is increasingly turning into a tech war. In the past six months, the number of cyberattacks on critical Russian infrastructure has grown by 50 percent and on energy and financial industries by 70 percent compared to the same period last year. The number of data leaks has increased by almost 50 percent.

In Iran, Russia also sees an opportunity to access new markets. In fact, the International North-South Transport Corridor – which connects Russia to India through Iran but bypasses the Suez Canal and seas in which NATO has a presence – is already in operation. The corridor is becoming one of the main routes for the delivery of goods from Mumbai to St. Petersburg. It comprises sea, river and rail transport, making it possible to halve the time required to deliver goods between India and Russia. (The transit time along the traditional route through the Suez Canal is between 30 and 45 days, while it takes just 15 to 24 days using the new corridor.)

North-South International Transport Corridor

(click to enlarge)

Challenges

Despite these potential opportunities, the relationship between Russia and Iran is not as close as it may seem. There are several factors that will complicate attempts to strengthen relations between them. The two countries have conflicting interests in strategically important nearby regions – namely the South Caucasus, Central Asia, the Caspian and the Middle East – which have long been a springboard for confrontation between regional powers. For instance, they have competing claims to resources in the Caspian Sea, and though the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea was meant to resolve the dispute, Iran is the only country of the five states that initially signed the deal that has yet to ratify it.

In addition, Iran is in the process of trying to restore the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Russia is wary of allying with a country that could be a competitor for energy buyers at a time when its energy exports are the target of sanctions. If Iran’s relationship with the West improves, Moscow risks losing leverage in the energy market because Iran could become an alternative for European countries that want to avoid buying Russian fuel. This would limit Russian leverage over Europe as the Ukraine war continues and, in the long term, threatens to reduce Russian influence if Iran can develop a more stable economy that no longer requires Russian cooperation or support.

Negotiations on reviving the Iran nuclear deal have resumed at an inconvenient time for Moscow. Russia, which is a signatory of the JCPOA, now finds itself in a precarious spot: On the one hand, it can’t abandon the JCPOA and risk damaging its carefully cultivated relations with Iran, and on the other hand, it can’t allow Iran to be opened for Western investment, especially in the energy industry. If a deal is reached, it's likely that Iran will resume oil exports to the West, which will bring an additional 1 million barrels of oil per day to the global market and help reduce the price of energy. The Kremlin is looking to convince Iran that a deal will eventually be reached so Iranian negotiators don’t rush to sign a less-than-favorable agreement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the deal must be restored to its original terms, hoping the Iranians will propose amendments to the text that would again stall the talks.

It’s certainly true that the economic interests of Russia and Iran overlap more now than before the Ukraine war. Iran sees Russia as a promising market for its manufactured goods, and Russia sees Iran as a source of much-needed equipment and semi-finished products for its industries that have been cut off from their traditional suppliers. For Moscow, cooperation with Iran and participation in joint projects can also have political benefits, possibly leading to an expansion of its influence in the region. Under the current circumstances, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. But the level of trust between the two remains low; in the long run, their interests are bound to collide.

[Crafty_Dog]

As I commented a few minutes ago:
===========================

Eastern partners. During the Eastern Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Myanmar Prime Minister Min Aung Hlaing to discuss bilateral trade, noting that in the first half of 2022, trade between their countries had more than doubled, while Min Aung Hlaing said that Myanmar had begun to buy Russian oil products. At the same event, India and Vietnam expressed a desire to expand energy cooperation with Russia. All this makes sense: In the face of Western sanctions, the east is a good place to look for new economic partners.

Also at the forum. Relatedly, as part of an event focusing on new enterprises at the forum, Putin announced the opening of the Zabaikalsky Grain Terminal, the most powerful specialized grain railway terminal in Russia, with a throughput capacity of up to 8 million tons per year. It is expected to open new doors for Russia in Central Asia, the Middle East and China. Indeed, Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development calculated that trade turnover for the past seven months has reached an unprecedented growth of 25 percent, or roughly $93 billion. Last, Putin said that all the details had been sorted out for an agreement to move gas supplies to China through Mongolia.

Meanwhile in Ukraine. Moscow has put restrictions on the export of grain from Ukrainian ports because most shipments have gone to Europe rather than to developing countries. Only two of 87 ships, for example, were destined for Africa, which relies heavily on grain and especially wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine.

[Crafty_Dog]

The Danger from a Wounded Putin

On the menu today: Vladimir Putin and Russia deserve to be humiliated on an epic scale, and right now, that’s just what they’re getting, with Ukrainian forces advancing and reclaiming vast swaths of previously conquered territory. But there’s a catch to this good news for Kyiv, NATO, and the U.S., and it’s that every Russian defeat makes Putin and his cronies more desperate to salvage something out of this wide-ranging military debacle.

What Will Russia Learn?

A few weeks ago, I noted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine tended to disappear from the U.S. news cycle for weeks at a time. Some readers responded that the war had been in a stalemate, and thus had little “real news.” But the past days have brought real news, as the Ukrainian counter-offensive is picking up real momentum and regaining significant chunks of lost territory. Reuters summarizes:

Ukrainian forces kept pushing north in the Kharkiv region and advancing to its south and east, Ukraine’s army chief said on Sunday, a day after their rapid surge forward drove Russia to abandon its main bastion in the area. . . .

In the worst defeat for Moscow’s forces since they were repelled from the outskirts of the capital Kyiv in March, thousands of Russian soldiers left behind ammunition and equipment as they fled the city of Izium, which they had used as a logistics hub.

Ukraine’s chief commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said the armed forces had regained control of more than 3,000 square km (1,158 square miles) since the start of this month.

Moscow’s almost total silence on the defeat — or any explanation for what had taken place in northeastern Ukraine — provoked significant anger among some pro-war commentators and Russian nationalists on social media. Some called on Sunday for President Vladimir Putin to make immediate changes to ensure ultimate victory in the war.

It’s not the Ukrainian boasts by themselves that are convincing; it is the Ukrainian boasts coupled with images from the front and the lack of a Russian counterargument.

In many ways, this is terrific news; the war is turning into just about the largest-scale humiliation of Vladimir Putin and Russia imaginable. Putin and the Kremlin no doubt deserve to be humiliated; the world will be a safer place if regimes from Beijing to Tehran see that an act of territorial aggression can rapidly turn into a disaster, costing fortunes in blood and treasure. (Estimates of Russian military casualties — the combined number of dead and wounded — range from 60,000 to 80,000; for perspective, the U.S. suffered 58,220 casualties during the entirety of the Vietnam War.)

Past editions of this newsletter have laid out the religious dimension of this conflict: “Putin sees himself as a saintly, heroic, messiah-like figure, smiting evil enemies and preserving all that is good and holy.” Mounting, worsening defeats might just get Putin to doubt that God is on his side.

But way back at the end of February, I asked “just how much economic devastation we want to inflict upon a country with roughly 4,500 nuclear warheads” — and a similar question can be asked about the scale of a Russian military defeat. We’re left with the same questions as at the beginning of the war. The U.S. doesn’t want Russia to win, but we would prefer the war wasn’t being fought at all. A Russia that is utterly defeated in Ukraine is a wounded dog — desperate, angry, irrational, and capable of lashing out in unpredictable ways that could turn out badly for everyone.

No less a figure than CIA director William Burns said in a speech this past April at Georgia Tech — ahem, excuse me, some folks write in and complain when I don’t call it “the Georgia Institute of Technology” — that, “given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons.” At the time, he said that the CIA had seen no serious moves in that direction, and that the agency would be watching closely for any signals that this sort of devastating attack was in the works.

And as this newsletter discussed back in mid March, if Putin decides to use low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, he will have the option of leaving portions of Ukraine devastated but minimally irradiated, or using the effects of an electromagnetic-pulse attack over a wide area of Ukraine to effectively destroy all kinds of electronic equipment.

Putin expected a quick and easy war that would ensure he would be remembered as “Vladimir the Great.” What does he do in the face of the prospect of being remembered as “Vladimir the Defeated”?

Contemplating some sort of nuclear action on Putin’s part, the Wall Street Journal editorial board says today that, “We hope Western leaders have been mulling how to respond, rather than thinking it can’t happen.” Dare we hope for some sort of coherent deterrence plan? Because the plan to deter the invasion didn’t amount to much.

Putin likely thinks that his forces are losing because of the aid Ukraine is receiving from NATO, and that his best shot of neutralizing NATO is to freeze central Europe this winter. Even if the Germans, Italians, French, and Poles aren’t freezing in their apartments as 2022 turns into 2023, their factories will grind to a halt under skyrocketing energy prices. Putin may well believe that by spring 2023, the largest European NATO powers will be ready to force territorial concessions upon Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine.

Is the Biden administration prepared for all-out energy war in Europe in the coming months? Its track record is not encouraging.

Many in the West would like to see Putin deposed; a key question would be what, if anything, Putin’s successor learned from the colossal waste of human lives in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is the man who takes over if Putin dies, but he is in that job precisely because he has no ambitions of ever occupying the top spot.)

In Western eyes, the lessons are clear: The countries of eastern Europe must set their own destiny, remaining politically independent and choosing their own economic, geopolitical, and security alliances. Wars of conquest will never work; the combination of economic sanctions and expedited arms exports will turn any territorial occupation into a bloody quagmire. Oh, and considering the effectiveness of American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, if you’re a foreign country’s defense ministry who happens to have a hostile neighbor, “I recommend you buy American.”

But Russia may not be willing to accept those lessons and may choose to believe some alternate narrative. Nations are made up of human beings, and human beings love to hunt for scapegoats. The Russian invasion was indeed poorly planned, with far too many over-optimistic assumptions of Ukrainian surrender. The much-hyped modernization of the Russian military may have been a giant scam with the usual Russian corruption. After Putin dies, it will be safe for Russians to openly discuss his flaws — his arrogance, his dismissal of alternate views and reliance on yes-men, his unrealistic expectations.

It is likely that in the aftermath of a Russian defeat, a lot of Russian citizens will choose to believe that they could have won, if it hadn’t been for NATO, or incompetent generals, or grifting defense contractors, or those meddling kids.

Finally, if Ukraine is on the verge of achieving a decisive victory before winter, if not winning the entire war, we can count on President Joe “minor incursion” Biden to take a victory lap. Almost everyone will forget that in early August, some unnamed Biden administration official leaked to the New York Times’ Tom Friedman that there is “deep mistrust” between Zelensky and the White House.

This administration wants to stand at arm’s length from Zelensky when the war is going badly or stuck in a stalemate, but hugs him the moment the Ukrainians start winning again.

[Crafty_Dog]

Russia's Mobilization Will Haunt Its Demographic and Economic Outlook
12 MIN READOct 11, 2022 | 20:44 GMT


(STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia's mobilization will create near-term economic strains while worsening its long-term economic outlook, adding to demographic challenges and brain drain, and leading to major workforce reductions and internal migration. On Oct. 4, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said 200,000 people had already been drafted into the armed forces as part of Russia's ''partial mobilization'' to call up 300,000 reservists with previous military experience to deploy to Ukraine. The same day, however, reports citing officials in the Russian presidential administration stated that approximately 700,000 Russians had left the country in the two weeks since the Sept. 21 announcement of the mobilization. The exodus, which has caused long lines at nearly all of Russia's land borders, has persisted amid reports that some of the freshly mobilized troops have received minimal training and poor equipment before being sent to the frontlines, and that the 300,000 figure is merely the initial target for the ''first stage'' and to be expanded in the coming months as Russia's military difficulties in Ukraine persist.

On Sept. 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time publicly acknowledged that the mobilization had not gone smoothly, claiming that widespread ''mistakes'' had been made and should be corrected. On Oct. 3, the governor of Russia's far eastern Khabarovsk region admitted that up to 50% of those who had received draft summons in the region had received them incorrectly, suggesting Russian authorities in some regions are very concerned about meeting targets and for that reason are mobilizing people who are either too confused or intimidated to resist.

Reports citing Kremlin sources have claimed that Moscow may seek to mobilize between 700,000 and one million people in the coming months, as additional manpower is likely necessary to stop further Ukrainian advances; if that succeeds, more troops will likely be needed thereafter as President Putin's ambitions will likely rise and he will seek to return to offensive operations in the Donbas or other areas of southeastern Ukraine.

Russia's mobilization will likely focus on ethnic minorities in rural areas in Russia's economically depressed regions to try to reduce public backlash. Reports in the Russian press suggest that Moscow and St. Petersburg will be disproportionately untouched by the mobilization. Authorities reportedly are aiming to mobilize as few as 20,000 soldiers in the first wave of mobilization, well below 1% of the reservists between the two cities. By contrast, rural areas — in particular, regions populated by ethnic minorities in the Caucasus, Urals and Siberia — are seeing comparatively larger mobilizations of 4% or even 5% of their reservists. Moscow likely hopes that concentrating mobilization in these more rural, far-flung regions will confine popular backlash — and combat losses — to areas outside of Russia's Northern European core and ethnic Russian populations, among whom high losses would be more likely to critically undermine support for the war. Furthermore, on Oct. 6, independent Russian investigative journalists calculated that 23 of the 26 regions with the highest proportion of recruits are those with incomes below the national average, suggesting a deliberate effort to concentrate mobilization in economic backwaters and thereby lessen the overall impact on the Russian economy.

Despite the Kremlin's efforts, the mobilization has sparked some public protests. In the southern Dagestan region, for example, demonstrations against the region's reported 13,000-man quota lasted for several days in late September and resulted in violent clashes with security forces. Smaller-scale incidents of protest and attacks on security forces have also been reported in other cities across the country. The unrest, however, has so far not resulted in any meaningful policy change and remains unlikely to do so.

Despite the Kremlin's attempts to contain blowback, mobilization will fuel near-term economic challenges. Already, the Russian government is taking on large new fiscal responsibilities and trying to reduce the economic consequences of mobilization for individuals in order to incentivize compliance with the draft. On Sept. 28, Russian legislators in the Duma passed a law freezing loan repayments, including mortgages and consumer loans, for draftees and all others serving in the war, as well as their immediate family members. As many of those currently mobilized are likely to be forced to stay in the army for many months or years, this will effectively leave those creditors (i.e. major Russian banks) with significant nonperforming loans — destabilizing banks' balance sheets, which the government may have to remedy by providing them federal assistance. This risk is accentuated by laws saying that, in the event of the death of a participant in the ''special operation'' in Ukraine, his loan obligations and those of his dependents will be terminated, making banks responsible for even more debts, fueling a private debt bubble in the country that has been growing since Russia's initial invasion of Crimea in 2014. Meanwhile, reports indicate that the mobilization is disproportionately harming Russia's transportation sector and thereby fueling inflation; delivery costs up are as much as 50% in some regions in recent days — and up to 80% since the start of the war — as truck drivers (who cannot secure exemptions from mobilization) are in short supply and increasingly needed by the Russian military because drivers of logistical vehicles have experienced significant losses.

Russia's central bank raised its interest rate to 20% at the start of the war but has since cut it to 7.5%. But between Sept. 21 (when the mobilization started) and Oct. 6, some 754.1 billion rubles (approximately $11.8 billion) were withdrawn from ATMs across Russia. This outflow of ruble deposits, combined with rising inflation, could force the central bank to stop further rate cuts and potentially even raise rates to prevent a renewed growth in inflation, further hampering Russia's economy.

In an updated forecast published on Sept. 26, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said it now expects Russia's economy to shrink by 5.5% in 2022, marking an improvement from the 9% contraction it forecast in June. But the OECD also now expects Russia's slowdown to last longer and now projects a 4.5% contraction in 2023 compared with the 4% contraction it previously forecasted.

In August, Russia ran a current account deficit for the first time since the invasion began due to falling oil and gas prices. Russia's finance ministry forecasts that the deficit will amount to 1.7 trillion rubles in 2022 and will further increase to 3 trillion rubles (at least 2% of GDP) in 2023.

Based on statistics from Russia's central bank, independent analysts calculated on Aug. 31 that, for the first time in the history of the Russian banking system, the total overdue debt on retail loans (excluding mortgages) exceeded 1 trillion rubles (roughly $15.6 billion). Between January-July 2022, the growth rate of delinquent debt doubled in Russia — with the overall amount growing by 8% — compared with data from July 2021 to Jan. 2022. Overdue mortgage debt by the beginning of Aug. 2022 amounted to 4.8 billion rubles. On Oct. 2, a national bankruptcy moratorium that had been in place since April 1 expired, and Russian creditors have again been able to initiate insolvency proceedings against their debtors. Households' debt as a share of net disposable income in Russia has also been rising steadily in Russia since the early 2010s.

Looking farther ahead, Russia's mobilization will also worsen its demographic outlook and intensify the country's ''brain drain.'' Compared with the COVID-19 pandemic, which mostly affected older Russians, the war in Ukraine will have a much more painful and prolonged impact on Russia's population (and, in turn, its economy), as those who are being called into military service in Ukraine are disproportionately younger males in their most economically productive years. Many of these young men will likely be subsequently killed in battle, or severely wounded to the point where they're unable to have families or hold certain jobs upon returning home. The growing loss of men who may have otherwise had children and paid into the country's pension system will not only further strain Russia's labor force, but contribute to the country's declining birth rates. This will be exacerbated by the fact that hundreds of thousands of Russians who have fled the country in response to the mobilization are also disproportionately younger, better educated and wealthier.

The recruitment of 300,000 males initially targeted by the government's ''partial mobilization'' would have been manageable for the Russian labor market on its own. But in the coming weeks, at least 300,000 more Russians are estimated to either emigrate or be drafted into military service, which — combined with the roughly 700,000 Russians who have already fled the country — would represent the loss of about 1.3 million people (or at least 2% of Russia's entire workforce). If adding in those killed and wounded in the war, the irreplaceable loss to the labor force will grow even higher this year.

Since 2020, Russia's population has undergone its largest peacetime decline in recorded history, a trend that has only accelerated in the months since the start of the war. On July 29, Russia's statistics agency reported a decline of 430,000 people between January and May of this year — an average of 86,000 people a month, the fastest monthly rate ever recorded. This rate has almost doubled since 2021 and nearly tripled since 2020, according to The Moscow Times.

Russia's relations with neighboring states, meanwhile, will also become strained as those countries harbor Kremlin opponents and run out of resources to handle large immigrant populations. The mobilization is prompting a growing number of Russians to flee their home country. But for many, legally exiting Russia remains difficult, as the list of countries where Russians can enter without visas is short — and the list of countries where Russians legally stay without receiving a residence permit or other status is even shorter. Obtaining visas to Western countries can be challenging as well. Meanwhile, rents in places more accessible to Russians, such as in Kazakhstan and Georgia, are skyrocketing as spare housing runs out, which is already generating grievances from some locals. Even in places where fleeing Russians are being warmly received, locals are likely to be hesitant to support their governments — which are already stretched economically — expending large economic resources to cope with the influx of Russians, especially as winter begins. Finally, tensions may only grow as Moscow is likely to cast neighboring countries harboring large numbers of anti-Putin Russians and draft dodgers as anti-Russian, harming bilateral relations.

Kazakhstan and Georgia, in particular, have seen protests against Russian citizens entering their countries after President Putin announced the mobilization. Growing grassroots anti-Russian sentiment and public demonstrations against Russians could eventually lead to harassment of Russians, which Russian state propaganda will likely use to cast the countries as anti-Russian — further damaging bilateral relations and possibly prompting Russia to retaliate against those neighboring states.

The mobilization has led to speculation that the Kremlin is considering various further restrictions on movement within or out of the country. Such measures would be unpopular and represent a shift in Moscow's strategy, thereby making them relatively unlikely. However, if border closures were enacted, it would mark the first time Moscow has restricted emigration since the Soviet Union's strict exit visa system was scrapped.

In combination, these trends will lead to competing incentives between Russian state officials and Russian business leaders by pitting successful mobilization and economic stability against one another — resulting in a long-term reduction in the workforce and significant internal migration as people seek to avoid getting drafted. On Sept. 23, Russia's defense ministry announced that draft exemptions would be granted to citizens working in some financial organizations, as well as those working in the IT, communications and media industries. Meanwhile, Russia's energy ministry sent a letter to leaders of the country's most powerful energy, mining and ore processing companies just hours after President Putin announced the mobilization, requesting compliance with the president's order and that 100% of their employees voluntarily stop by military recruitment offices by Oct. 5. The energy ministry's order indicates how some Russian ministries are acting preemptively to demonstrate loyalty to the government by prioritizing the mobilization, while bureaucrats in other ministries are more focused on securing draft exemptions for workers in the industries they oversee and thereby preserving business continuity. Private companies face a similar choice, and many will likely protect their employees to preserve their productivity amid a labor shortage by arguing that they fall under the exempt criteria, for example by designating them as essential IT specialists. Furthermore, individual Russians will likely go to great lengths to transition into the named sectors and jobs where such exemptions are believed to exist, including by moving cities to secure such work. Meanwhile, jobs where such exemptions are rarer — for example, construction, transportation and manufacturing — will have to offer high pay and other benefits to attract or maintain employees, harming companies' profitability. Such a large shakeup to internal labor market dynamics will be further exacerbated by the overall reduction in the labor force, reducing growth prospects for decades to come. This is a major problem given that Russia's labor force has progressively declined each year since 2007, according to the World Bank. Businesses and ministries are thus caught between a rock and a hard place, wanting to show complete loyalty and support without risking their own operations.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMPTqoI3BQA

[G M]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMPTqoI3BQA

What are the Uke numbers looking like?

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMPTqoI3BQA

[Crafty_Dog]

November 1, 2022
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The Valdai Club
By: George Friedman
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at the Valdai Club, a Moscow-based think tank where serious matters are discussed, and where Russian policy is frequently shaped. I was invited to speak there in December 2014, after the Maidan uprising in Ukraine. The Russians believed it was engineered by American intelligence. I argued that that’s a hard thing to pull off without widespread dissatisfaction, and that while the CIA can do many things, fueling a revolution, including feeding, watering and supplying tens of thousands of people in a small space without end, isn’t one of them. The U.S. could hand out cookies, as the assistant secretary of state for European affairs did for her own strange reason, but the Maidan uprising was mostly an organically grown rebuke of a staunchly pro-Russia president and the massive corruption that surrounded him. I said that if the uprising was the result of a coup, then it had to be the most blatant coup in history. What I meant, in a wryly sarcastic way, was that the United States did absolutely nothing to hide its enthusiastic support. Russian media took it to mean that it was, in fact, the most blatant coup in history. There’s a reason I’m not a diplomat.

The Russians believed it was a Western coup, while the Americans saw it as an expression of political independence. I think both sides were sincere. From the U.S. point of view, a democratic uprising was an appropriate outcome. From the Russian point of view, it was a first step toward destabilizing Russia. The Americans dismissed Russian concerns, of course, but the Russians could not dismiss the idea that this was all but an act of aggression. It was at this point in 2014 that the current war was set in motion.

Moscow concluded that Ukraine, under American “control,” was a threat. Eight years later, Russia launched a war intended to impose its will on Ukraine, to make clear to the region that Russia was again a great power and to demonstrate American weakness. It is increasingly unlikely that any of this will be achieved.

Nothing is impossible, but it’s far-fetched enough for Putin to redefine the terms of war, which is precisely what he tried to do during his speech at the Valdai Club. Importantly, he did not identify the United States as the key enemy; the enemy, to him, is the West writ large, which had succumbed to a corruption – new secular mores, gender fluidity and other cultural bugaboos – that it is now trying to impose on Russia. That corruption is undermining the West, and Russia is merely standing up to it, according to Putin. (There was also an explicitly religious angle to the speech.) The Russian efforts in Ukraine are therefore not the whole of the war but merely one dimension of a much broader geopolitical and cultural conflict. Being defeated in Ukraine, then, is not the same as being defeated in this larger struggle. Which makes sense if you define the war in Ukraine as a crusade against the arrogance of the West rather than a place you mean to control.

Putin has since released a statement through his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, offering to negotiate. This follows the logic of his Valdai speech.

Peskov is Putin’s spokesman, and he holds that position because he is careful about what he says. The offer is real, but it still seems as though Putin is setting up a tough negotiation, as evidenced by efforts to block shipments of Ukrainian grain. Having completely reframed the war in Ukraine as a campaign against Western imperialism, he isn’t going to be easy to negotiate with, but that doesn’t mean he won’t negotiate at all.