By Philip Short, Time Magazine, 8/3/22

Adapted from Philip Short’s new biography, Putin. Published by Henry Holt. Short is the author of Putin. He also has written other biographies including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. He had a long career as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., for the BBC, the Economist, and the Times of London.

When Bill Clinton telephoned Vladimir Putin on New Year’s Day, 2000, to congratulate him on his appointment as acting President, Putin told him: “There are certain issues on which we do not agree. However, I believe that on the core themes we will always be together.” Clinton was equally upbeat. Putin, he said, was “off to a very good start.”

Later it would be said that the American President had been naïve and that Putin’s protestations of friendship with the West were a masquerade from the start. But Clinton was not alone in seeing the Russian President as a valuable partner in the post-Cold War world. Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, thought “Putin admired America and wanted a strong relationship with it. He wanted to pursue democratic and economic reform.” The Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, pronounced him ‘a Russian patriot’ and Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, found his support after 9/11 simply “amazing… He even ordered Russian generals to brief their American counterparts on their experiences during their Afghanistan invasion in the 1980s… I appreciated his willingness to move beyond the suspicions of the past.”

On both sides, however, those suspicions never entirely went away. The Warsaw Pact had been dissolved and the Soviet Union no longer existed. “But NATO still exists,” Putin complained. “What for?” From the Kremlin’s standpoint, it was a fair question. “We all say,” he went on, “that we don’t want Europe to be divided, we don’t want new borders and barriers, new ‘Berlin Walls’ dividing the continent. But when NATO expands, the border doesn’t go away. It simply moves closer to Russia.”

The bureaucracy on both sides had a lot to answer for. The Penta­gon, under Donald Rumsfeld, was allergic to anything which might constrain America’s freedom to act as it wished. The Russian General Staff was obsessed with the idea that NATO was planning to deploy troops along Russia’s borders. Putin himself acknowledged that “many things that seem fine in negotiations often end up bogged down in practice.” But even if the blame were shared, the West often gave the impression of deliberately dragging its feet. Francis Richards, who at that time headed GCHQ— the British equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency—remembered: “We were quite grateful for Putin’s support after 9/11, but we didn’t show it very much. I used to spend a great deal of time trying to persuade people that we needed to give as well as take . . . I think the Russians felt throughout that [on NATO issues] they were being fobbed off. And they were.”

The result was a growing sense among the Russian elite that Putin was being played. Vladimir Lukin, who had been Yeltsin’s first ambassador to the U.S., protested: “One sided steps cannot be taken forever . . . Decisions should go both ways. They should not end just in smiles and encouragement.” There was grumbling, not only in the army and navy but also within the Presiden­tial Administration, at what was termed a “policy of concessions” which brought Russia no tangible benefit.

Putin held firm. Russia had made “a strategic choice,” he said: “Russia today is cooperating with the West not because it wants to be liked or to get something in exchange. We are not standing there with an outstretched hand and we are not begging anyone for anything. The only reason that I pursue this policy is that I believe it fully meets [our] national interests . . . A rapprochement with the West is not Putin’s policy, it is the policy of Russia.”

By the end of his first presidential term, in 2004, that position became more difficult to defend. Russia had done everything Bush had asked for and more: it had shared intelligence, given the Americans overflight rights and encouraged its allies to provide base facilities. But what had it got in return? America had insisted on abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rather than modifying it as the Russians had proposed; it had gone ahead with plans for a national missile defence programme over Rus­sian objections; NATO enlargement was continuing apace and would soon reach Russia’s borders; and Russia’s concerns about America’s invasion of Iraq, which were shared by many of America’s own allies, had been summarily dismissed. The final straw had been U.S. support of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which to the Kremlin was tantamount to promoting regime change on Russia’s borders.

American officials saw things rather differently. They focused instead on Russian backsliding over human rights and democracy issues. But few Russians thought that that was any of America’s business. Even liberals who excoriated Putin’s regime jibbed at heavy-handed foreign criticism. Putin spoke for a wide segment of Russian society when, commenting on Ameri­can criticisms of the Russian elections, he said: “we are none too happy about everything that happens in the United States either. Do you think that the electoral system of the USA is perfect?”

On the surface, the relationship remained correct. But there were worrying undercurrents. Bush’s administration, Putin felt, wanted to keep Russia down and was prepared to go to almost any lengths to do so. Whether, or to what extent, that was true was almost beside the point. What mattered was perception, and the leaders’ perceptions of each other’s goals were starting to diverge.

When Putin finally gave vent to his grievances in public in a vituperative speech at a security conference in Munich in February 2007, American officials were stunned. In fact, he said little that he had not said before. What had changed was the tone. What Putin liked to call the “false bottom” to U.S.-Russian relations—the pretence that all was well and that Russia and America were solid, strategic partners with just a few trifling tactical problems—had been discarded. In simple terms, as Bill Burns, then U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, put it in a cable to the White House, the message was: “We’re back, and you’d better get used to it!”

America, Putin had concluded, was not listening to Russia’s concerns and would not do so until given a salutary shock. “It doesn’t matter what we do,’ he told a group of Russian journalists a few days later. ‘Whether we speak out or keep silent – there’ll always be some pretext for attacking Russia. In this situation, it is better to be frank.” The West saw itself as “shining white, clean and pure” and Russia as “some kind of monster that has only just crawled out of the forest, with hooves and horns.”

Reflecting, a decade after these events, on the steady, seemingly ineluctable deterioration of relations between the U.S. and Russia after Putin came to power, Ambassador Burns concluded that both countries had been deluding themselves all along. “The Russian illusion,” he thought, “[was] that somehow they were going to be accepted, even though the power realities had changed enormously, as a peer, as a full partner.” The American illusion was that “we could always manoeuvre over or around Russia. There was bound to be a time when they were going to push back . . . A certain amount of friction and a certain num­ber of collisions were built into the equation.”

In retrospect, what is surprising is not that Russia’s relations with America finished up as a train wreck, but that it took so long to happen. Putin was not a natural liberal, but he was a realist and, contemplating the available alternatives after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he concluded that cooperation with the West was the only sensible policy. Culturally, spiritually and, in part, geographically, Russia belonged with Europe. It had nowhere else to go. The Russian elite did not send their children to study in Beijing or Shanghai. They sent them to Brit­ish or American schools and universities. Russian oligarchs did not park their ill-gotten gains in Seoul or Bangkok, they invested in Lon­don or New York and bought property in Knightsbridge or Chelsea, Manhattan or Miami.

There was another more personal reason for Putin’s reluctance to abandon the rapprochement with the West. In trying to promote cooperation with Russia’s former adversaries, he had overridden the reservations of many of his closest colleagues. The siloviki, the state bureaucracy and the military had been dubious from the outset about the wisdom of trusting Western governments to engage with Russia as genuine partners. Putin was in no hurry to admit that they had been right and he had been wrong.

The U.S. was equally disappointed. The belief that Mos­cow would become a partner, if not an ally, espousing Western values in an American-led world, which had animated U.S. policy towards Rus­sia since the early 1990s, had proved vain. American exceptionalism found to its surprise that it was facing a Russian exceptionalism which was no less tenacious.

Could it have been done differently? In theory, at least, the answer must be yes. Were there missed opportunities, which, had they been taken, might have set relations on a different road? No doubt. Would the outcome then have been different? Perhaps, but not necessarily; there is no way to be sure. In practice the ideological convictions of the Bush admin­istration, shared not just by Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz but also by Bush himself, made agreement all but impossible. By 2008, as Putin ended his second four-year term as Russia’s leader, the rift had become too deep to heal.

Over the next ten years, Putin’s disillusionment with the U.S. deepened. Most of his foreign policy initiatives during his third term, from 2012 to 2018, were payback for what the Kremlin regarded as anti-Russian moves by the West.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea was payback for Kosovo, which, with Western support, had seceded unilaterally from Russia’s ally, Serbia. To Putin, that was the first of the West’s three cardinal sins—the others being NATO enlargement and America’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty—that had destroyed both sides’ hopes of building a better, more peaceful world after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden in 2013 and the ban on Americans adopting Russian children were payback for the Magnitsky Act, which allowed America to impose sanctions on Russian officials suspected of corruption or human rights abuses.

Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015 on behalf of that country’s brutal President, Bashir al-Assad, was payback for U.S. intervention in Libya and Iraq.

Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election in 2016 was payback for America’s efforts to spread—or “impose,” as Putin preferred to say—its own system of values to other nations.

But payback was not an end in itself. It was part of a broader response to the economic and military pressures which the U.S. and its allies were exerting on Russia. Above all, it was an attempt to assert Russia’s place as an independent actor in an increasingly multipolar world in which, in Putin’s view, the United States was destined to lose its role as the dominant power.

Over the course of his third term, Putin’s thinking about Russia’s relationship with the West crystallised, forming, in his mind at least, a coherent picture of all that had happened in the 25 years—the “wasted years,” as he now put it—since the Soviet Union’s demise.

The relationship had started going wrong from the very beginning, Putin thought. Instead of establishing a new balance of power in Europe, the West had created new divisions. Its claim that NATO had no choice but to accept new members from Central and Eastern Europe was phoney, Putin argued. It was true that other countries had the right to apply, but that did not mean that the existing members were obliged to accept them if they thought it was contrary to their own interests. “They could have said: “we are pleased that you want to join us, but we are not going to expand our organisation because we see the future of Europe differently” . . . If they had wanted to, they could have [refused]. But they didn’t want to.”

Putin was not wrong. The NATO Charter says only that the member states “may invite any other European state in a position to . . . contribute to the security of the area.” There is no obligation to do so.

But for Washington, NATO enlargement was a means of consolidating America’s hold over its European allies, even though it implied obligations which, were war ever to break out, the U.S. might be reluctant to fulfill. For countries like France and Germany, the advantages were less obvious. It was hard to see how their security would be enhanced by a commitment to defend the Baltic States, let alone Georgia or Ukraine, from possible Russian aggression. But in the early days, amid the euphoria which marked the end of the Cold War, when the West assumed that Russia was destined to become part of the American-led world and Moscow was far too weak to resist, none of America’s partners thought it worthwhile to object. The result was that NATO’s military infrastructure arrived at Russia’s borders.

What would America have done, Putin wondered, if it had been the other way round—”If Russia had placed missile systems on the U.S.–Mexico border or the U.S.–Canadian border?” The answer was self-evident. When Khrushchev had attempted to install Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, the world had been brought to the brink of nuclear destruction and the issue remained so fraught that, 60 years later, the United States continued to subject the island to an economic blockade.

American officials reject such comparisons. The United States, they say, supported NATO enlargement not to threaten Russia but to reassure America’s European allies. The reality was more galling and more prosaic. The U.S. acted as it did because it could.

“Our biggest mistake,” Putin told a western scholar, “was to trust you too much. Your mistake was to take that trust as weakness and abuse it.” It was a lesson, he said. If a bear stops defending its territory, “someone will always try to chain him up. As soon as he is chained, they will tear out his teeth and claws . . . When that happens, . . . they will take over his territory . . . and then, perhaps, they will stuff him . . . We must decide whether we want to keep going and fight . . . Or do we want our skin to hang on the wall?” In Putin’s metaphor, the bear’s teeth and claws were Russia’s nuclear arsenal. But it was also intended in a wider sense. When he looked back over the previous two decades, he saw—or claimed to see—an America which, from the outset, had set out to dupe Russia.

As Russia’s relationship with the West became increasingly hostile, the backsliding on democracy at home, which American officials had been complaining about ever since Putin’s first term, became more pronounced. Pro-western liberals were excluded from decision-making. Those advocating democratic values were marginalised. The result was a vicious circle. The more the siloviki were in the ascendant, the more internal repression intensified and the worse relations with the West became. Starting in 2018, the regime transitioned from a relatively free authoritarian system to a closed dictatorship, not quite totalitarian but close.

Putin’s rhetoric changed, too. The West, he charged, had backed “an international terrorist invasion of Russia… This is an established fact and everybody knows it.” It was the language of Soviet propaganda from the 1960s and ’70s. Even though it was transparently untrue, it fitted the Kremlin’s narrative of a hostile western world, headed by a waning hegemonic power, which was trying by fair means or foul to tear Russia apart as it struggled to fight off its own inexorable decline.

By 2019, Putin was starting to think seriously about a political transition to a new generation of Russian leaders. He introduced constitutional changes giving himself the possibility of remaining in power almost indefinitely. But that was a feint to prevent a struggle for the succession. He had no desire to die in harness, but nor did he want to preside over the squabbles of his entourage vying for influence against the day when he might step down.

In the meantime, there was one last piece of unfinished business he wanted to resolve: the status of Ukraine.

Putin had had a fixation on Ukraine since long before he became President. In 1991, it had been Ukraine’s insistence on declaring independence that had triggered the break-up of the Soviet Union. Twelve years later, in 2003, Ukraine had dealt him the first serious political defeat of his presidency when the Orange Revolution prevented the election of the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine’s head of state. After the annexation of Crimea, in 2014, Putin had hoped that the Minsk accords would lead to the creation of a federal system effectively guarantee the country’s neutrality. But that had not happened. Instead Ukraine became a military outpost of the western alliance, not formally a member but in practice a close partner, hard up against Russia’s border.

That was the pretext, though not the fundamental reason, for the war that Putin launched on February 24. It was not just a matter of bringing Ukraine to heel. It was to show that the U.S. was powerless to prevent it

As the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, put it: “This is not actually, or at least, not primarily, about Ukraine at all. . . It reflects the battle over what the [future] world order will look like. Will it be a world in which the West will lead everyone with impunity and without question or will it be something different?”

This was partly spin. Portraying the conflict as a proxy war in which Russia was fighting on behalf of the non-aligned nations of the world to end American hegemony made it a much easier sell to Russian public opinion as well as to countries like China and India which favoured a multipolar global system. If Russia succeeded, Putin believed, it would fatally undermine the structures of European security which had been built up under American leadership since the end of the Cold War.

The Biden administration insisted that Ukraine was a special case because it was not a member of the alliance and that, were any NATO state attacked, America would rush to its defence. But how much reliance could countries like Poland and the Baltic States place on such assurances when NATO was so risk-averse that it refused to establish a no-fly zone to protect Ukrainian cities for fear of nuclear escalation? Putin’s charge that the West was happy to fight to the last Ukrainian was dismissed as propaganda in America but it gave pause to leaders in Eastern Europe. Would the United States really risk nuclear annihilation to defend Warsaw or Tallinn? The question was not new but the invasion of Ukraine put it in a harshly different light. To Putin, even if Russia had failed to prevent NATO enlargement, it might yet sow doubt about the alliance’s reliability, undermining faith in America’s support for other states on Russia’s borders, NATO members or not.

Putin plays a long game. Throughout his time in office, whenever he was faced with what he saw as an existential choice between antagonising the West and preserving his own power and Russia’s position in the world, the latter always prevailed. That was so when he clamped down on the oligarchs in 2003 and when he annexed Crimea a decade later. On each occasion, he accepted the economic damage to Russia as the price to be paid. In 2022, the invasion of Ukraine followed the same pattern.

At first sight, it appeared that he had grossly miscalculated. The West emerged with a new sense of purpose. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, proved an inspirational leader. Russia’s economy was battered by sanctions, though less severely than the West had hoped. More worrying for Washington, the global South hedged its bets. Of the world’s ten most populous countries, only one—the United States— unequivocally backed Ukraine.

The Biden administration recognised the danger. America’s goal, said the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, was ‘a free and independent Ukraine, a weakened and isolated Russia and a stronger, more unified West’. The deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman, put it more succinctly. America, she said, wanted to inflict on Putin a “strategic failure.”

It was déjà vu all over again. The West was returning to the old policies of containment that it had honed during the Cold War, but this time with a more radical objective: not merely to contain Russia but to leave it so diminished that it can never threaten its neighbours again.

If, in the process, a new Iron Curtain descends across the continent, its purpose will be different from that imposed by Stalin to subjugate Eastern Europe. This time the goal is to keep Europe free and the Russians out. Unlike Stalin’s Iron Curtain, it will be enforced by economic weapons rather than watchtowers and barbed wire—a memorial to a Europe that might have been but never came to fruition because leaders on all sides failed to grasp the opportunities offered by the Soviet Union’s demise.

By Uwe Parpart, Asia Times, 8/10/22

Overview

* The Ukrainian “offensive” in the south has been underway for 18 days as of today. As an American military intelligence officer observed, “I’m reminded of Lincoln’s comment about McClellan: ‘He has a case of the slows.’” More on this propaganda offensive below.

* In the principal theaters of action, the mouth of the Donbas salient, the line of Ukrainian fortifications near Avdivka, west of the city of Donetsk, and the areas west and north-west of Kherson, there is heavy and stepped-up Russian artillery shelling accompanied by multiple missile attacks throughout Ukraine.

* Russian forces are within 2-3 kilometers of the city of Bakhmut, the transport hub that anchors the south end of the Donbas salient.

* Amnesty International acknowledged the “distress and anger” caused by its report that accused the Ukrainian army of criminal behavior by using civilian facilities as ambush sites and shields but said that it “fully” stands by the report.

* Reports of Russians mining and threatening to blow up the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have been shown to be false, according to US military sources.

East/Center

Russian forces are engaged in ground and tacair operations with strong artillery support along all points and lines of contact from north and northwest of Sloviansk to Bakhmut and further south to the area west of Donetsk with activity focused on Avdivka, the scene of heavy fighting back in 2017.

Sloviansk itself and at least 11 small towns near Bohorodychne northwest of Sloviansk were struck by sustained artillery fire. Further east, there was small unit ground activity near Siversk.

But principal Russian attention continues to be on Bakhmut as ground forces are pushing toward the transport hub from the Luhan River Reservoir as well as from the east.

Reports that Russian forces have entered Bakhmut from the south-east were contradicted by the Ukrainian General Staff. But even the slowest Russian grind will bring the south-end anchor of the Donbas salient under Russian control in a matter of days to a week.

The most intense current fighting in the East/Center sector is taking place further south along an extended line of contact from Krasnohorivka in the north to Avdivka and Pisky around Donetsk City all the way down to Marinka. The Avdivka to Pisky segment is being contended the hardest.

After taking the fortified Butivka mine halfway between the center of Donetsk City and the center of Avdivka, Russian forces now appear intent on pushing through the fortifications of Avdivka established by Ukraine in 2015-17.

The Ukrainian General Staff still reports that the Russians have not taken Pisky but bloggers and videos show Russians in the town center. A breakthrough at Avdivka looks possible in the near term and would open the western areas of the Donetsk Oblast to Russian attack along the major M-04 highway.

South

The vaunted Ukrainian southern offensive “to liberate Kherson Oblast by September”, as asserted by President Volodymyr Zelensky, to date has been desultory at best.

Aside from establishing a bridgehead across the Inhulets River between Bilohirka and Andrivka some 100 kilometers north of Kherson City prior to the announced start of the offensive on July 23 and off-and-on company-size engagements with Russian forces in the area, there has been no Ukrainian ground forces activity.

The main tactic appears to be to use some of the 16 HIMARS delivered by the US to strike Russian ammo depots and attack bridges across the Dnepr River upstream from Kherson. Perhaps the Ukrainians are still massing forces and the plan was to sever the Russian supply lines and let them “whither on the vine.” But that is not playing out.

Another Ukrainian plan might be to conduct a grand deception, tie some Russian forces down near the bridgehead and build a large strike force near the City of Kryvyi Rih to drive down the west bank of the Dnepr River and catch the Russians from the rear. But there’s no evidence of that yet.

Meanwhile, the Russians are moving more men and material to the region, reportedly at a rate of three to four major convoys a day, and are directing near incessant artillery fire into the bridgehead toward the cities of Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, and Nikopol and into Ukrainian defensive positions along the LoCs.

That has the feel of a Russian “counteroffensive” in the direction of Mykolaiv and some Russian forces have probed in that direction. US military intelligence is now picking up talk by Ukrainians of “postponement” of the offensive.

Assessment

If the Ukrainian offensive that never was is indeed being postponed, then the delay would merely acknowledge military realities. To conduct a significant military offensive without sizeable air support or decisive air superiority is difficult if not impossible.

Even the best of long-range artillery cannot substitute adequately for tacair operations. Moreover, of course, the classic three-to-one manpower advantage or close to that has to be in place. How would the Ukrainian armed forces have come up with that?

Manpower losses on both sides in the months-long slow grind in the Donbas salient were large, probably larger on the Ukrainian side while they had been larger on the Russian side in the early ill-fated attack on Kiev.

New Ukrainian recruits plus forces withdrawn from the East and Center sections of the war theater would have had to make up a Kherson offensive strike force. But there are major constraints on both of these resources.

Russian forces pushing west out of Donetsk into Pisky and threatening Avdivka – even if they were not to continue to drive west – represent a severe threat to more central regions of Ukraine.

Moreover, a Russian victory at Avdivka would have serious morale consequences as it would mean a loss of positions held by Ukrainian forces for seven years. A similar threat is posed by the likely fall of Bakhmut, which might be followed by the fall of Sloviansk.

There may have been the vague and rather desperate hope by the Ukrainians to be able to trap substantial numbers of Russian forces in exposed positions west of the Dnepr River and deliver a quick and demoralizing blow. There may also have been the hope that allegedly exhausted Russia would fail to marshal forces to counter the slow-motion Ukrainian moves.

But it was always a high-risk gamble, a push they will have known could not succeed but undertook nonetheless to convince the US and NATO to deliver massive additional offensive weapons or even eventually intervene more directly.

By Nadezhda Azhgikhina, The Nation, 8/3/22

Like many Muscovites, I am spending this summer at the dacha. In 2022, there are many more people than in years past vacationing in our village, located close to the former Obiralovka Junction, where Lev Tolstoy tossed Anna Karenina under a train (women leave bouquets at the memorial plaque at the station, thinking that Anna was a real victim of unhappy love and not a fictional character). One reason there are more people is the development of the Internet; many continue working remotely, which they began doing during the pandemic. Besides, almost everyone who usually vacations abroad is spending the summer of 2022 in Russia because of the international sanctions.

The “special operation” in Ukraine that began on February 24 has radically changed many Russians’ lives, particularly members of the middle class, intellectuals, and people who were active civically.

As Western sanctions were levied against Russia, almost all the major international businesses and their affiliates left the country, leaving thousands of specialists without work. Russian scholars, doctors, musicians, and athletes are being expelled from international associations and universities and barred from concerts and competitions, while at the same time Russian colleges and educational institutions have ended programs of international cooperation and student exchanges. An iron curtain has dropped precipitously from both sides. New laws and rules have made political discussion almost impossible in public, and almost all independent media outlets have been shut down or have decided to close.

The list of “foreign agents” is regularly updated with new names of journalists and human rights activists—this process is aided by denunciations from “vigilant citizens,” a long-forgotten Soviet practice. According to data from human rights organizations, by midsummer close to 200 online and off-line mass media sources were blocked and more than 150 criminal cases and more than 200 administrative cases have been started under the new laws on fake news and discrediting the army. Dozens of rights activists, journalists, and information technology specialists have left the country, finding themselves in a difficult, even untenable, situation: Russian banks are under sanctions, and they cannot use their credit cards or transfer money from Russia. At the same time, people in small towns or poor regions, or who work for the state, or who have never been abroad or cared about politics have not seen serious changes. Grocery prices have gone up, but not a lot. Poor families and pensioners received small (but noticeable to them) state subsidies and other benefits. It must be said that throughout Russia the most varied sources of information are available, including blocked foreign resources, through the simple acquisition of a virtual private network (VPN ownership is free and not criminal—what is punishable is disseminating critical information). But far from everyone is interested in alternative opinions.

This spring, analysts Natalya Zabarevich and Yevgeny Gonmakher predicted that the “special operation” and sanctions would most affect the middle class, educated, and pro-West. The poor would remain poor, and the rich and officials would continue in their privileged positions. Founder of the Yabloko Party Grigory Yavlinsky has warned of the dangers of the growing wealth gap. It is clear today that class differences are highly significant. Three strata of society live in different worlds, experiencing events in their own way.

Our dacha community has representatives of all three classes. My businessman neighbor is building a second “cottage” on his lot. Before 2014, he was in oil products, but after the introduction of anti-Russian sanctions, he switched to import replacement and the production of “Russian Parmesan.” His wife continues to buy the real Italian cheese in Europe. His children live in Spain, and he recently visited them. He thinks that Russia had no choice but to start the “operation” in Ukraine.

He is the only one building in the community. Prices for construction materials, many of which are imported, have tripled. Prices for cars, gadgets, and appliances have soared.

Groceries, pharmaceuticals, and the most essential staples have not increased in price greatly. Store shelves are as stocked as they were before. The shortages predicted in the spring have not occurred. Some brands closed their boutiques, but rather quickly fashionable cosmetics and clothing have appeared in other stores—at a much higher price. However, the demand remains high, and people are still spending. Restaurants in and around Moscow are full and you can’t get in without reservations. McDonald’s and Starbucks may have left Russia, but they have been replaced by Russian-owned cafes with other names and similar products. Russians have become avid consumers in recent years, and the authorities understand that. Delivery services in our community work smoothly.

The businessman’s wife has cosmetics and other mystery packages delivered, while his handyman, a former electrician from a neighboring village, gets beer and nationalist publications. He strongly supports the “special operation” in Ukraine and sometimes calls on fellow drinkers at the local bar to go “fight the Nazis.” His wife, a veterinarian, leader of the local animal rights movement, and regular participant in protests of recent years, was recently fined for an anti-war picket. Husband and wife do not discuss politics. They spend all their money on training for their teenage son—he is the Russian champion in karate and hopes that soon the sanctions will be lifted and he will be able to participate in the next Olympic Games. Their older son, a computer specialist, moved to Georgia at the start of the military operation.

My longtime friends at the dacha—writers, doctors, teachers, engineers—and our long evening conversations this summer remind me of those held by the Soviet intelligentsia, our parents, during the Brezhnev “stagnation” years. We discuss the latest news and statements on the Internet, and every evening we talk about what happened to our country, how we lost what we had fought for in August 1991 and the following 30 years, and how to live now. About how we must complete the conversations from 30 years ago which did not clearly assess the Soviet past. About how it is still not too late to do it. What each of us—at university, business, school—can do to resist the return of totalitarianism. After all, history does not depend only on global trends but also on real people. Perestroika was not made only by Gorbachev and Reagan but by the millions of Soviet people who believed in change and inspired Gorbachev. Just like the Americans who believed that the Cold War had to end. That experience of inner resistance to nascent totalitarianism is extremely important today. As are the 300 years of resistance by Russian intellectuals, journalists, and writers to censorship and arbitrary rule. It lends strength. The experience of resistance to bans, censorship, and state pressure is returning to Russian practice, and it will certainly lead to the victory of common sense. This is what my dacha friends, and many other people in Moscow and other Russian cities, are saying. This gives us hope.

Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

By M.K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, 7/27/22

Bhadrakumar is a retired Indian diplomat.

The announcement by Russian Defence Ministry on Tuesday on Vostok-22 strategic command post exercises during August 30-September 5 gives a big message to the West in political and military terms.

The announcement said, “In addition to the troops (forces) of the Eastern Military District, units of the Airborne Troops, Long Range Aviation and Military Transport Aviation, as well as military contingents from other states, will be involved in these manoeuvres.”

If there is going to be participation by China, it will be highly significant in the present context of global politics, especially in the Far East.

Vostok 2018, held exactly four years ago, was the first time such a massive military exercise was held after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. (At the height of the Cold War in 1981 under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union held its last Vostok exercise). In the event, Vostok 2018 turned into a Russia-China gun show.

The Russian Federation put more than 300,000 troops in the field—alongside tens of thousands of tanks, helicopters, and weapons of every sort—for a huge war game in Russia’s far-eastern reaches, and invited the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to play along, which it did.

And a whole new groove in international affairs began appearing, signifying that the interests of Russia and China have once again begun to align — this time around, in response to US military power under a pugnacious president, Donald Trump. 

On the sidelines of the exercise, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had a breakfast of blinis together in Vladivostok. It was a powerful signal that Russia no longer saw China as an adversary but as a potential military ally. It was widely noted internationally as heralding a major shift in the co-relation of forces in world politics.

To be sure, any Chinese participation in Vostok 2022 will be similarly subjected to close analysis by Washington and its allies at a time of heightened tension in US-China relations, with Beijing warning last week to take “resolute and strong measures” should the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi proceed with reported plans to visit Taiwan.

China has vowed to annex Taiwan by force if necessary, and has advertised that threat by flying warplanes near Taiwanese airspace and holding military exercises based on invasion scenarios. At a meeting in Singapore early July with Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of the Joint Staff Department of China’s Central Military Commission Gen. Li Zuocheng had warned that Chinese military would “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity. If anyone creates a wanton provocation, they will be met with the firm counterattack from the Chinese people.”

However, at the end of the day, Chinese participation in Vostok 2022 will be seen as an expression of solidarity with Russia in the best spirit of the February 4 joint statement by the two leaderships, which states that “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

No matter the usual mantra that the Vostok 2022 is not directed against any third party, its optics will be as a counter to the US pressure on Russia and China. Both Russia and China face new security challenges in the Far East in the recent period — especially, the revival of “militarism” in Japan, NATO’s growing Asia-Pacific posturing, and the belligerence in the US’ provocations over Taiwan.

Tass news agency has reported that Russian Defence Ministry has proposed certain amendments to Russia’s Federal Law “On territorial waters, territorial sea and the contiguous zone of the Russian Federation”, putting restrictions on the passage of foreign military ships through the Northern Sea Route connecting Europe and East Asia.

The proposed amendment will require foreign military and state ships to sail through the Northern Sea Route without entering ports or naval bases, and, furthermore, seek permission from the Russian authorities at least 90 days in advance. The amendment will be effectively restricting the use of the shortest sea route to Asia for the western navies operating in the Asia-Pacific region.

Significantly, this Russian move comes in the wake of the NATO’s plans to forge stronger security links between the North Atlantic area and Asia-Pacific countries (Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) in a coordinated strategy to counter China’s rise. 

Equally, the staging of Vostok 2022 comes at a juncture when Russia’s military operations in Ukraine are entering a crucial phase. In a major speech in Moscow on July 7 at a meeting with leaders of the parliament, Putin warned that everyone should understand that Russia “by and large hasn’t started anything seriously yet” in Ukraine.

To be sure, Vostok 2022 flies in the face of western propaganda that Russian military capabilities are steadily weakening due to the conflict in Ukraine. The MOD announcement on Vostok 2022 made it a point to touch on it indirectly.

The MOD statement said, “A number of foreign media are spreading inaccurate information about alleged mobilisation activities. Please note that only a part of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is involved in the special military operation, the number of which is sufficient to fulfil all the tasks set by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

“Moreover, none of the planned operational and combat training and military-technical and international cooperation activities of the Russian Ministry of Defence have been cancelled and will be provided with the necessary personnel, weapons, military equipment and materials.”

This is only logical, since, following the massive haemorrhage suffered by the Ukrainian military in the past 5-month period, the military balance is now working favourably for the Russian forces. Equally, the Russian military strategy to grind the Ukrainian forces with heavy artillery and missile strikes and the slow pace of the conflict also meant that the operations are sustainable over a prolonged period.

At any rate, given the hostile posturing of the NATO forces all along Russia’s western borders, it is inconceivable that Moscow would have risked by heavily committing its forces to the Ukraine operations. Interestingly, Germany’s army chief Lieutenant General Alfons Mais told Handelsblatt newspaper recently in an interview that Russia has “almost inexhaustible” resources. 

In the general’s estimation, “With its artillery superiority, the Russian army is apparently working its way forward kilometre by kilometre. This is a war of attrition that will raise the question of how long Ukraine can hold out… The Russian army is getting stronger, and Russia has resources that are almost inexhaustible.”

The focus of Vostok 2022 will be “on the use of groupings of troops (forces) to ensure military security.” It will be staged in 12 different locations spread across the Eastern Military District, one of Russia’s five military districts, with a vast geographical spread of 7 million sq. kilometres, headquartered in Khabarovsk on the Amur river in the Russian Far East near the Russia-China border, and comprises the regions up to Sakhalin Oblast, which includes Kuril Islands.

Link here.

This was an excellent conversation among Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, and Ted Postol, mediated by Gonzalo Lira. It’s nearly 3 hours long and I had to divide it up into a couple of sittings. I especially recommend watching the first hour or so. The experts here discuss the context of the current conflict between US/NATO and Russia, the nuclear treaties that were abrogated by the US, as well as the utter lack of competence and character of people like Condoleezza Rice and Michael McFaul who have passed themselves off as experts on Russia and have served as advisors to presidential administrations.