Artemy Sich has spent the past eight months trying to do his part to support the Russian war effort in Ukraine.
The Muscovite activist has organised several crowd-funding drives to buy clothing, equipment, and medicine for Russian troops. He also co-founded a social media project that provides original reporting and analysis about battlefield developments in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, he travelled to Russia’s Belgorod region to interview soldiers stationed near the border.
Sich says he supports the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine because he does not see any option left for protecting ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
Nevertheless, he readily admits that Russia’s military campaign is not going according to plan – in contradiction to President Vladimir Putin’s assessment.
According to Sich, Russia failed in several ways. Moscow did not deploy enough troops, failed to target Ukrainian critical infrastructure early in the conflict, and did not prepare echeloned defences in captured territories, he said.
“Russia probably acted on incorrect assumptions, most notably underestimating the enemy’s capabilities and willingness to offer resistance,” he said.
“There was no collapse of the Ukrainian government, and consequently the Ukrainian military also did not collapse.”
Patriotic critics
Sich is part of a burgeoning group of “patriotic” critics in Russia who support the war, but are concerned by Moscow’s handling of it.
They generally avoid criticising Putin directly and instead frequently take aim at Russia’s top military brass for perceived incompetence or indecision.
For now, they oppose peace negotiations with Ukraine, saying it is too early for a ceasefire, and call on the Kremlin to seek victory through mobilisation, large-scale air raids, and sweeping military reforms.
But these critics are difficult to box into a single group.
They include war correspondents and military bloggers, novelists and historians, longtime activists and political neophytes, and Russian soldiers and mercenaries fighting on the front lines.
Putin supporters, as well as nationalist and communist opposition members, have also been lashing out in recent weeks.
What unites this otherwise eclectic movement is the belief that Russia needs to make serious adjustments to its military strategy or risk losing the war in Ukraine.
Since the start of the conflict in February, these groups have been firing up social media channels, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers.
Among them is a team of open-source analysts named Rybar, Igor Strelkov, a retired Russian military officer who commanded Donbas rebel forces back in 2014 and Vladlen Tatarsky, who is currently serving as a fighter in the Donbas and whose real name is Maxim Fomin.
Grey Zone and Starshie Eddie are two other popular accounts that operate on Telegram, VK and YouTube.
With detailed reporting and analysis of the situation on the front, their feeds have become the preferred source of information for many Russians.
And their relative editorial independence is also attractive in the current climate.
While state media presents an upbeat picture of the battlefields, pro-war commentators online question whether Russia had enough manpower to hold a 1,000km (620-mile) front line and comment openly on the Russian military’s shortages – that it lacks, for instance, sufficient quantities of drones and other key equipment.
Their criticism grew after the Ukrainian counteroffensive began in Kharkiv in early September, a move which forced the Russian military to withdraw troops from the entire region.
The subsequent Ukrainian gains in the east and the south during the next several weeks raised further alarm among patriotic critics.
“Nearly all the members of the Russian patriotic civil society warned about a potential Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv, months before it happened,” Sich said.
“We couldn’t imagine that anyone could fail to see that this was about to happen, but it turned out that the Russian armed forces were completely unprepared for this breakthrough.”
So far, the Kremlin has shown a surprising level of tolerance.
There have been no visible efforts to silence criticism by pro-war commentators despite new legislation that threatens up to 15 years of prison for “discrediting” the Russian military.
On the contrary, state media has gradually begun to adopt some of the rhetoric pioneered by the patriotic critics.
During a recent fiery monologue, television host Vladimir Solovyov accused Russian military officials of hiding the true condition of the country’s armed forces.
“Too many scoundrels lied from top to bottom,” he said. “And not a single one of them was shot or even taken by the ear!”
Even more surprising, there are signs that the Kremlin is listening in for hints on military strategy.
In September, Putin announced the “partial mobilisation” of 300,000 military reservists in a bid to replenish Russia’s fighting force in Ukraine.
On October 10, Russia launched a mass air raid campaign against Ukrainian energy facilities.
The patriotic critics had been advocating for both of these moves for months.
Denis Volkov, head of the Levada Center, Russia’s leading independent polling agency, told Al Jazeera that data showed that committed hawks and opponents of the war each accounted for about 15 to 20 percent of the population.
The majority of Russians, he explained, were broadly supportive of the war, but tended to stay in line with government decisions.
So what explains this trend?
Volkov said that the Kremlin is aware that the public need an outlet to let off steam and hawks are regarded as politically loyal.
“The anger of patriots tends to be aimed at generals and mid-level bureaucrats, whereas those calling for immediate peace negotiations tend to blame the central political leadership and are opposed to Putin personally,” he said.
Sich had a different explanation.
He argued that the war and its bleak realities have forced Kremlin to recognise the value of feedback from observers that are outside the political system.
“Russia has a very adaptive regime and it became clear in September that we could no longer afford not to mobilise society,” he said.
“The government has been forced to welcome input from patriotic civil society because mass mobilisation requires you to accept the fact that there is no such thing as unnecessary help.”
Yet there are lingering questions about the sustainability of the partnership.
Volkov noted that the Russian government still has plenty of instruments to punish commentators who “step too far out of line”.
As an example, he pointed to the recent suspension of state media host Anton Krasovsky, who sparked mass controversy after he suggested drowning or burning Ukrainian children.
Sich warned that the Kremlin has long had a complicated relationship with Russian nationalists, and there was no guarantee the current detente would hold up in the long run.
“The Russian government has always been more wary of the patriotic opposition than the liberal opposition because the former group is better positioned to represent the will of the people instead of just copying Western political trends,” he said.
“For now, the Russian government is seeking to expand cooperation with the patriotic opposition, but it could very well reverse course once doing so is no longer expedient. Everyone on our side who goes for this collaboration needs to understand this.”
There is no scarcity of reasons to despair of hope for a push for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.
Thirty Democrats in the House were pilloried for suggesting only that the US open diplomatic channels parallel to full military and economic support for Ukraine.
When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to a Turkish offer to mediate talks by declaring Moscow’s willingness “to engage with the United States or with Turkey on ways to end the war,” the State Department dismissed him as “posturing” and responded that Washington has “very little confidence” that Lavrov’s offer is genuine.” When Lavrov said Russia could consider a meeting between Putin and Biden on the sidelines of the G20, Biden replied that “I have no intention of meeting him.”
When India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi told President Zelensky on the phone that India was prepared to mediate in peace efforts, the Ukrainian President turned him down, insisting he would not participate in negotiations with Putin.
But revelations in the past few days have also offered a sliver of hope: a very thin sliver of hope. The minimum necessary conditions for negotiations are a willingness to talk and an openness to compromise. The hardened Ukrainian position has negated both. Zelensky has gone so far as to sign a decree banning negotiating with Putin. He has also spurned compromise by reversing an earlier openness to discussing the status of Crimea and the Donbas with a hardened position on the full return of all the territory that has been absorbed by Russia since 2014.
If Zelensky has refused to negotiate, Biden has refused to nudge him. The Washington Post has reported that “US officials . . . have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table.”
But both the refusal to negotiate and the refusal to compromise have become more nuanced in the past few days.
Zelensky’s decree banning negotiating with Putin and putting talks on hold until there is “another president of Russia” has worried a weary and soon to be cold international community. There is a very low probability of regime change in Russia. So Zelensky’s decree becomes a prescription for endless war.
Recent reporting by The Washington Post reveals that, secretly, the US has been pushing Zelensky to “signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power.” Publicly, Ukraine at first rejected the request, with Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelensky, saying that Ukraine will only “talk with the next leader” of Russia. Kiev publicly pushed back, “saying talks could only resume once the Kremlin relinquishes all Ukrainian territory and that Kyiv would fight on even if it is “stabbed in the back” by its allies.” But the US push suggests a change, and the change provides a sliver of hope. The US maintains that the request is an attempt to massage international perception and not an attempt to push Ukraine to the negotiating table.
But on November 8, the message from Ukraine suddenly dramatically changed. Zelensky announced that he is open to peace talks with Putin. Zelensky urged the international community to “force Russia into real peace talks.” Zelensky insisted that his preconditions for talks are “restoration of (Ukraine’s) territorial integrity … compensation for all war damage, punishment for every war criminal and guarantees that it will not happen again.”
Some of those demands will be very hard to achieve. But it is an opening: negotiations usually start with both sides’ ideal demands. Importantly, Zelensky did not include NATO membership.
The US has also signaled a change in, at least, the perception of Zelensky’s willingness to compromise. Though Ukraine has insisted on a full Russian withdrawal as a precondition to talks, and Zelensky has promised to “return the Ukrainian flag to our entire territory,” Washington is quietly suggesting otherwise. The Post reports that “U.S. officials say they believe that Zelensky would probably endorse negotiations and eventually accept concessions, as he suggested he would early in the war. They believe that Kyiv is attempting to lock in as many military gains as it can before winter sets in, when there might be a window for diplomacy.”
Less reported is that the US may even be telling other countries what the line is that Ukraine must push to before it is willing to open that window for diplomacy. According to reporting in La Repubblica, “The US and NATO think that launching peace talks on Ukraine would be possible if Kiev takes back Kherson.” According to the Italian newspaper, the US has not only discussed this possibility with NATO and its allies, but is “instilling this idea into the mind of the Kiev regime.”
The US has long insisted that its goal is backing Ukraine militarily until “facts on the ground” put Ukraine “in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” The US may now have come closer than ever in identifying those facts on the ground, saying that retaking Kherson could be strategically and diplomatically significant enough “to hold negotiations from the position of force.”
A second sliver of hope, in addition to the willingness to talk and the willingness to compromise, comes from recent revelations that the US may have been talking to Russia more than has been reported. Though they have reportedly not discussed “a settlement of the war in Ukraine,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has reportedly “engaged in recent months in confidential conversations with top aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin in an effort to reduce the risk of a broader conflict over Ukraine and warn Moscow against using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, US and allied officials said.” The officials say “The aim has been to guard against the risk of escalation and keep communications channels open, and not to discuss a settlement of the war in Ukraine.”
And it is not only Sullivan who has been speaking to his Russian counterpart. In October, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on the phone. While the conversation may have focussed on measures to avoid accidental clashes between US and Russian planes and ships in the Baltic and on accusations of dirty bombs, the Pentagon says that “Secretary Austin emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication amid the ongoing war against Ukraine.” According to Russian reporting, the two discussed “current issues of international security, including the situation in Ukraine.”
Less reported is that Austin and Shoigu spoke again two days later. And, again, Austin “reaffirmed the value of continued communication amid Russia’s unlawful and unjustified war against Ukraine.”
The third sliver of hope comes from subtle cracks in European solidarity. On October 23, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace took his turn talking to Shoigu. On that call, he expressed a “desire to de-escalate this conflict.” Surprisingly, and perhaps for the first time for a British official, he added that “the UK stands ready to assist” if “Ukraine and Russia seek a resolution to the war.” That offer is a significant shift from Boris Johnson’s reprimand of Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, “even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has recently again broken from the war without talks consensus by calling on Putin to “come back to the discussion table.” Macron has been one of the few leaders to maintain a dialogue with Putin. In September, Macron insisted that “The job of a diplomat is to talk to everyone, especially to people with whom we do not agree. And so we will continue to do so, in coordination with our allies. . . . Preparing the peace means talking to all the parties including, as I did just a few days ago and will again, to Russia.”
Meanwhile, Germany fractured from the consensus in a novel way. On November 4, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, breaking from the US led consensus not to talk or trade with nations, especially China, who have not gone along with US sanctions and censures of Russia. XI asked Germany and Europe to “play an important part in calling for peace and facilitating negotiations.” Scholz urged XI”to deepen trade ties with Germany,’ seemingly pulling away from US policy.
None of these developments portend an imminent diplomatic opening or negotiated settlement to the war, but they may signify the first changes in tone and the first slivers of hope since the April talks in Istanbul.
Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.
Under Russia’s Constitution, men have the right to seek alternative service if their health or personal beliefs preclude being drafted into the army. Though this right is still almost entirely theoretical, for years, the Movement of Conscientious Objectors has been providing advice and legal assistance to help those who seek to exercise it.
Lately, it’s been very busy.
The self-described “refusenik” movement has been overwhelmed by appeals from men of many ages desperate to avoid the mass mobilization announced by President Vladimir Putin in September, and since then carried out by many regional governments with an indiscriminate zeal that even Mr. Putin has denounced as “stupidity.”
“All the legal selection criteria have been ignored, and that’s a violation of federal law,” says Vadim, a spokesperson for the movement, who declined to give his family name. “We have reports of people being grabbed on the streets who have obvious health problems, of students being drafted even though they should be exempt, of manhunts in city transport with the help of police.”
Even supporters of the war in Ukraine, now in its ninth month, admit that the botched mobilization has radically altered social moods and aroused deep anxieties among a population that had previously been largely complacent about the conflict raging to the south.
But despite the well-documented reports about serious violations of law and procedure, the now-concluded wave of mobilization has probably achieved its main goals. Most of those drafted are men with past military experience who, officials insist, are being adequately equipped and given additional training. That will enable Russia to at least double its military forces in Ukraine by the end of the year.
“A lot of chaos”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced Friday that the campaign has ended for now, having met its goal of mobilizing 300,000 reservists. He said that 82,000 of the new recruits are already in the combat zone, and the rest are undergoing training.
Though hundreds of thousands of military-aged men fled the country in recent weeks to avoid being drafted, many others have voluntarily turned up at recruitment centers and – with little visible enthusiasm, even in state TV reportage – accepted what is officially being presented as a patriotic call to duty. Even Vadim agrees that some of the bureaucratic excesses have been corrected, and many of those improperly conscripted were later released.
Though public acceptance of the war has been tested, and attitudes toward it are visibly changing, an initial wave of protests quickly petered out and has been replaced by what looks like widespread social resignation to the idea of more military escalation.
“I had many friends who left the country, and I myself had a lot of anxiety even though I’m not supposed to be drafted. Our president said that those who haven’t done military service shouldn’t be drafted,” says Nikita Lyakhovetskiy, a Moscow-area liberal activist who obtained a legal exemption from service on health grounds when he turned 18. “I understand how they feel, but they are losing their places in this country, their jobs, their studies.
“All my documents are in order, so perhaps I feel calmer than some people of my age. But I don’t believe you should run away, take rash decisions, and I haven’t. … I have another friend who is doing his service voluntarily. He says he’s proud to defend his country and do his duty.”
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser and strong supporter of the war, agrees that there has been “a lot of chaos” in the course of the mobilization campaign. But, he argues, the hastily conceived call-up was based on a system that hadn’t been tested in over 40 years. It used often outdated and inaccurate lists of draftees, he says, and the sheer incoherence of the process led to a lot of unnecessary social turmoil.
“The government wasn’t prepared for this, and we knew there would be lots of mistakes,” he says. “Putin has ordered the creation of a digitized system, with accurate data, so these problems will not repeat in future mobilizations. Even the Russian media writes about all the people who were improperly served draft notices, but nobody mentions that most of the ineligible men were subsequently released after their cases were clarified. Complaints about training, and lack of the best equipment, are well grounded.
“On the other hand, a lot of old training centers were closed down after the end of the Soviet Union. They are derelict, and now they are being restored. I’ve been part of a group collecting equipment to donate to soldiers, because the army gives them only basic kit. If families want their men to have better things, they buy it for them. I am told that this is not uncommon in many armies,” Mr. Markov says.
“It’s true that at least 200,000 men left the country, including some relatives of mine,” he adds. “It seems that some people consider themselves to be citizens of the world, and not Russians first. But even Putin, when he was asked, refused to condemn them. We hope that some of them will return in time.”
Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, an American who has lived in Siberia for almost three decades, has described a late October send-off for local draftees in the remote Altai Republic, near Mongolia, where, by contrast, quite a few draft dodgers have taken refuge. She notes a grim mood, with distraught mothers, tears, and frightened faces, but also a sense of determination among the men boarding military buses.
“I think there is both pride and duty that is there,” she says. “No one likes this war, but they believe in duty.”
A souring of the public mood
There seems little doubt that Mr. Putin’s Sept. 21 announcement of the sudden and almost unprecedented mobilization of reserves triggered a tsunami of public angst. An early October poll reported in the business daily Vedomosti found that 64% of Russians supported the mobilization, while 31% opposed it. But among young people ages 18-26, over half opposed it.
Other sociological data suggests spiking levels of public fear, apprehension, and depression. A mid-October survey by the independent Levada Center found that the percentage of people who report being in a “good mood” fell from 15% in July to 7% after the mobilization announcement, while those whose main feelings are “tension and irritation” leaped from 17% to 32% in the same period. “There has never been such a sharp deterioration in public sentiment in the entire period of [our] observations,” the agency noted.
The state-funded Public Opinion Foundation reported an all-time peak of 70% in the share of Russians who say they feel “anxious,” in the weeks following the announcement. And Tass reported that in the first nine months of 2022, spending on antidepressants increased by 70% and sedatives by 56%.
A little-noticed aspect of this mobilization is the enormous increase in national security spending, by around half, in the upcoming Russian government budget. It’s not clear how all the new funds will be spent, but experts say they will probably be used to create new jobs to offset unemployment in other areas. Most of the men being called up in the current mobilization are to be paid at the significantly higher rate of contract soldiers, not that of regular conscripts. That will mean an average of around $3,000 monthly, or several times Russia’s median income.
Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko argued in a commentary for Al Jazeera that Mr. Putin could be building a permanent war economy, one that redistributes wealth on a large scale – particularly as many of the mobilized men come from poorer regions – and creates its own constituency for more war.
“Looking at all these developments, we see something like military Keynesianism taking shape in Russia. Millions of Russians who are either mobilized to fight in Ukraine, employed in reconstruction or in the military industry, or participating in the suppression of unrest in the occupied territories and at home, or are family members, have turned into direct beneficiaries of the war,” he writes.
Mr. Lyakhovetskiy says the mobilization came as a shock, but people will probably get used to it.
“My generation was born after all the major crises, and we grew up feeling more European, more progressive,” he says. “No one expected this to happen. But in Russian history it seems that every generation has to go through something. So maybe this is our trial.”
By Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein, The Intercept, 10/31/22
THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.
The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.
Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.
“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.
In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”
“We do not coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with the Twitter Rules,” a spokesperson for Twitter wrote in a statement to The Intercept.
There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
DHS’s mission to fight disinformation, stemming from concerns around Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, began taking shape during the 2020 election and over efforts to shape discussions around vaccine policy during the coronavirus pandemic. Documents collected by The Intercept from a variety of sources, including current officials and publicly available reports, reveal the evolution of more active measures by DHS.
According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”
“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,” the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color.”
The inclusion of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is particularly noteworthy, given that House Republicans, should they take the majority in the midterms, have vowed to investigate. “This makes Benghazi look like a much smaller issue,” said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a member of the Armed Services Committee, adding that finding answers “will be a top priority.”
How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech.
This monthly update on the situation in Ukraine for October 2022, by Dmitriy Kovalevich, our special correspondent in Ukraine, marks the end of the eighth month of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.
October 2022 marks the end of the eighth month of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. This month was marked by a series of attacks on important infrastructure facilities and escalation of threats by Kyiv to use so-called dirty bombs–artillery shells, bombs or missiles loaded with radioactive debris.
Kyiv organized a terrorist, truck bomb attack on the Crimean bridge on October 8 (although some Russian experts see this as the work of British intelligence, giving no advance warning to Volodomyr Zelensky, leader of the governing regime in Kyiv). In response, Russian troops began delivering systemic strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure, with thermal power plants, railway junctions and electricity transmission being targeted. No nuclear power or hydroelectric power producing plants have been touched by such strikes.
Strikes against thermal power plants are likely aimed at damaging Ukraine’s economic situation. The main consumers of electricity are industries. When these are not operating, the loss of tax revenue and salaries make it more difficult for the government to pay all debts it is accumulating from the U.S., European Union and IMF.
The Ukrainian Minister of Energy said on October 22 that 30 to 40 per cent of Ukrainian electricity generation had been disrupted. Rolling blackouts have begun in all regions of Ukraine, and a regime of total energy saving has been introduced. Ukrainian nationalist military units and police forces are now enforcing compliance with nighttime energy savings, including blackouts. There are disruptions to bus and subway services and to railway services (all of which are electrified in Ukraine).
Russian strikes against infrastructure
Russian experts have said the main purpose of Russian strikes against infrastructure in Ukraine is not retaliation for the attack against the Crimean bridge but, rather, an attempt to complicate the delivery of Western weapons to the front in the east of the country. The main part of those weapons is being transported by railways. Following the latest Russian strikes, Kyiv has been forced to turn to diesel locomotives, but there are few of them in Ukraine and the fuel they require is already in short supply. As well, Ukraine’s railway gauging, as in Russia, is wider than the standard in western Europe.
Nuclear power plants are the main source of electricity production in Ukraine, providing some 60 per cent of power. Until today, Russian strikes against electricity infrastructure have been directed against installations that are relatively easy to repair, such as thermal power plants and electricity distribution stations.
Yury Korolchuk, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine, was cited in a lengthy analysis of energy supply in media outlet Strana.ua on October 19: “Attacks on nuclear power plants or power lines may produce a generation deficit. If, for example, four out of nine nuclear power units stop or the infrastructure is damaged, then a ‘hole’ of four gigawatts will immediately appear, and it is not clear how it can be closed. Import of electricity from Europe is problematic due to the limited capacity of cross-border power lines and the shortage of free supply.”
It is still difficult to judge the real effectiveness of the tactic of disrupting electricity transmission, since the Ukrainian authorities traditionally send conflicting messages to the West and their domestic audience. For Western audiences, Ukrainian assessments worsen the real situation in order to amplify demands for more funds and weapons. For domestic audiences, bad news is downplayed it in order to calm the population.
Oleksiy Arestovich, adviser to the office of the Ukrainian president, is playing the bluff card of late, saying that Ukraine may find itself in a situation where there will be no water, light and heating for weeks, or even months. Strana cited him on October 20 stating, “We may well face a situation where we will sit for weeks, or even months, without water, without light and heat, or with great restrictions. This is a problem. But it’s not so bad. We will just learn to sit without water, without light and without heat; we can cope and survive,” he said.
The adviser says President Zelensky is “very lucky” to avoid such troubles because weather forecasts are favorable. “I think that this winter will be mostly plus five to plus seven degrees [Celsius], according to forecasts. In our country, most people still remember the 1990s and they know how to survive without battery power. We will fill buckets with water from pump rooms and we will install indoor tents with candles to say warm. We will take refuge from missiles in shelters. As for Putin, what will he do when his war strategy does not work?”
In the last days of October in some regions of Ukraine, rolling blackouts for four hours are being observed, notably during the daytime, when consumption is high. Street lighting is turned off overnight and in place of electric transport, diesel-powered buses are appearing in the streets of cities. Some cities have lost electricity for several days, while others have not lost service at all.
In general, the supply of electricity has been stabilized in most regions, albeit due to the shutdown of large consumers such as manufacturing enterprises. This is already a tangible blow to the Ukrainian economy and its ability to pay off international loans.
In Ukraine as a whole, some 35 per cent of electricity producing capacity has been lost, but much of the losses are due to the loss of territories, not Russian military strikes. The remaining capacity of 35 GW is more than double what is needed to cover Ukraine’s domestic demand. There also remains a significant reserve to cover demand during the peak periods of winter. The problem for Ukraine is in the delivery (transmission) of electricity producers to consumers. The real energy shortage for Ukraine is not coal, gas or fuel oil but electricity transmission equipment. The stability of the system will depend on the ability to replace the losses of such equipment.
Russian military expert Andrey Medvedev believes that the Ukrainian authorities responsible for responding to the energy crisis are thinking mostly about producing images of victims for the Western media. “Photos with a dark Kyiv without electricity should not mislead anyone. There is no such damage to the electricity infrastructure in Ukraine such that they need to save electricity, certainly not to turn off lighting altogether. There is no damage to the electricity supply to cities. This is all just part of the information war. ‘Evil Russians are plunging free Ukraine into darkness,’ we are told. Don’t pay attention to these performances,” wrote Medvedev on his Telegram outlet.
Dambusting on the Dnieper River?
After the recent series of attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (during which Ukraine accused Russia of shelling the facilities it controls and its own personnel working there), the Ukrainian and Russian media have shifted their focus to the possibility of another large-scale catastrophe – the blowing up of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper River (controlled by the Russian Federation). This could cause a rush of water that would inundate towns and cities, including the downstream city of Kherson (population 250,000).
Zelensky stated on October 21 that Russian troops have mined the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power facilities, saying that “Russia is deliberately creating the ground for a large-scale catastrophe in southern Ukraine.” He continued, “If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, then more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, will be in the zone of rapid flooding. Hundreds of thousands of people could suffer. Water supply to a significant part of southern Ukraine would be destroyed,” he said.
Among other consequences, according to Zelensky, would be the very safety of the ZNPP should it be left without power to operate its water cooling systems. Russia is refuting the claim that the Kakhovka dam has been mined. It says it is Ukrainian troops who threaten the dam.
The earlier situation with Ukraine’s shelling of the ZNPP is being repeated, and Western media is once again taking the Kyiv regime for its word, discarding all logic and common sense. For this media, it seems quite logical that the Russian Federation would try to arrange a catastrophe in the territory that it controls and whose shelling would very much be to its own detriment.
According to the commander of Russian troops in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, the Kakhovka hydroelectric facilities and dam have already been damaged as a result of strikes by U.S.-supplied ‘HIMARS’ artillery systems. “We have information about the possibility of the Kyiv regime using prohibited methods of war in the area of the city of Kherson, that it is preparing a massive missile attack on the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power dam as well as indiscriminate missile and artillery strikes on Kherson city,” the Russian general said.
To guard against such danger, the Russian military began a mass evacuation at the end of October of the civilian population of the Kherson region. It recently voted overwhelmingly to join their region of one million people to the Russian Federation. To offset the likely consequences of a dam rupture, the Russians have begun a controlled discharge of water from the huge Kakhovka reservoir of the Dnieper River, significantly lowering its water level.
Most of the population of Kherson city region is located on the ‘right bank’ (western bank) of the Dnieper River, the fourth largest river in Europe. Bridges across the river have been damaged or destroyed. So the population is very vulnerable to Ukrainian attack and hence the Russian decision to evacuate it out of harm’s way. (Similar considerations to avoid bloody and ultimately unnecessary combat led Russia to withdraw from much of Kharkov region during September. More on that below.)
Nuclear weapons provocations
In October, the possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine has once again been raised in political and media discourse. Western media and Ukrainian politicians have accused the Russian Federation of having such plans. In a recent address, Zelensky urged Western countries to strike the Kremlin, Russia’s seat of political power, if his office were attacked. In effect, he is taking the entire world hostage over his personal safety and the survival of the regime he leads.
The Russian Federation, meanwhile, is warning of a plan by Kyiv to use ‘dirty’ bombs (which spread radioactive fallout but do not detonate a nuclear explosion). Kyiv has the means to do through its research institutes, mining of uranium, and nuclear fuel produced for the country’s nuclear power plants. At the request of Russia, the UN Security Council held a closed meeting on October 25 to discuss the Russian accusations against Ukraine. Ukraine has invited experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit two sites that Moscow claims are involved in the plan, but Moscow charges that all traces of work on bombs can be hidden by the time of inspections.
The Ukrainian Telegram channel Kartel explained on October 24 that the Ukrainian ploy may unfold something like the following. “The shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine begins against objects inside the territories controlled by the Russian Federation, for example, at warehouses or the industrial zone of one of the cities. Among all the rockets fired, one can be loaded with a dirty nuclear charge. Such an explosion occurs over the territory of the Russian Federation and Ukraine immediately claims to have hit a Russian ammunition depot where the ‘Russian terrorists’ were storing a nuclear warhead intended to strike at Ukraine.”
“The Soviet Union created a large nuclear industry in Ukraine, not only with uranium mines and nuclear power plants but also with research institutes and engineering capacities for creating nuclear toys”, Kartel continued. “The West would believe the version of the Office of the President. That is why the Russians are so concerned and why they have decided to take preparatory steps, including warning the world, just in case Ukraine were to go ahead with its plan.”
Russian media has reported a different scenario, according to a report in Strana.ua on October 26. It reports that technical preparations for use of a dirty bomb have been completed and are planned to be used over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone (located on a tributary of the Dnieper River, some 100 km north of Kiev). According to the Russian media sources, specialists of the state aerospace enterprise ‘Pivendash’ (formerly ‘Yuzhmash’) in Dnipro city have prepared a fake rocket of Iskander design which would be filled with radioactive debris and then shot down over the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by Ukrainian air defense forces. Following that, Ukrainian authorities would announce that Russia armed forces had detonated a nuclear weapon.
“After the fake rocket is downed, the Kyiv authorities intend to show the Western and Ukrainian media fragments of the body and electronics of the alleged Iskander in order to convince the Western public that Russia is guilty,” Russian publications are reporting.
Ukraine mines and processes about 30 per cent of the uranium for its power plants. It hopes to boost domestic production in the years ahead. All of its reactors are of Soviet-era design. The Kyiv regime and the giant U.S. multinational Westinghouse have agreed to begin replacing old reactors with Westinghouse’s AP1000 design. Further down the road, small reactors designed by the U.S. startup NuScale Power are envisioned. (source)
Ukraine as a nuclear-armed state?
Recall that on the eve of the beginning of the Russian military operation in February 2022, Volodomyr Zelensky spoke before the Munich Security Conference of the possibility of Ukraine revisiting its 1994 decision (together with Belarus and Kazakhstan) to renounce the possible development and use of nuclear weapons.
In particular, Zelensky demanded in Munich that Western countries provide Kyiv with security guarantees according to his interpretation of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. That agreement committed Russia, the U.S. and Britain from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (though the memorandum specified, “except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations”). Zelensky said failure to provide such a security guarantee could see Ukraine seek to once again become a nuclear-armed power.
According to most Russian analysts, Zelensky’s address at Munich was, for Russian authorities, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. It was a final piece in the decision of the Russian leadership to launch its military operation.
Thus, after eight months, conditions are returning to an exceptionally dangerous point for the Ukrainian, Russian and neighbouring peoples. This as Ukraine has lost much of its productive economy and is losing yet more territory to those of its citizens who do not wish to live in a country hostile to neighbouring Russia and are voting to secede.
Situation in Kharkov
In Kharkov city and region, Ukrainian forces increased their occupation over the course of September. Russian forces were lightly positioned and decided to withdraw to stronger defensive lines to the east.
Kharkov is the second largest city in Ukraine, located only some 30 kilometers from the Russian border. Immediately after recapturing areas to the south and east of the city, the Ukrainian military began searching for ‘collaborators’ who cooperated with the Russians, and not only police or administrators but also medics, schoolteachers and nurses. Many such unfortunates have been summarily executed by the rightists.
In 2014, the protests in Kharkov against the Maidan coup were violently suppressed. Ukrainian paramilitaries and police have maintained a tight grip over the population ever since. As in Odessa, tens of thousands of city residents left for Russia following the violent suppression of anti-coup protests in 2014.
Since the beginning of Russia’s military operation eight months ago, some 30 per cent of residents have left Kharkov. Some 1900 residential buildings have been damaged, many due to the practice of Ukraine military to take up firing positions inside or around them. As well, much damage was caused by Ukraine’s anti-aircraft systems, also stationed among residential buildings. These often fail, with explosives falling on neighbouring houses.
The most damaged part of Kharkov is ‘Northern Saltovka,’ on the north-eastern outskirts. There is no electricity or gas service there. Elsewhere in the city, electricity, internet, hot water and gas have been available without interruption.
