By Lev Golinkin, The Nation, 6/12/23

Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has already resulted in millions of losers—chief among them the civilians who’ve been tortured, murdered, forced to become refugees, or forced to spend their days worrying about loved ones fighting Russia.

But there are also winners: the neofascists whom Putin’s war has turned into heroes.

For seven years, Western institutions have warned about Ukraine’s Azov Movement, which began as a neo-Nazi paramilitary group in 2014 and became notorious for its worldwide recruitment of extremists.

Then came Russia’s invasion. Within months, Azov fighters were being feted in Congress and at Stanford University. MSNBC swooned over a Ukrainian soldier whose Twitter account overflowed with neo-Nazi images. Facebook made the stunning decision to allow posts praising the Azov Battalion, even though the company admitted that it was a hate group.

This overnight normalization of white supremacy was possible because Western institutions, driven by a zeal to ignore anything negative about our Ukrainian allies, decided that a neo-Nazi military formation in a war-torn nation had suddenly and miraculously stopped being neo-Nazi.

But the truth is that this is an easily debunked fantasy spun out by a handful of propagandists. Yet Western media has repeated their falsehoods with a neglect for the basic tenets of journalism that stretches beyond the fog of war into the realm of intentional blindness.

Our whitewashing of Azov takes place amid a deadly surge of white supremacy that stretches from New Zealand to Buffalo, N.Y. That makes this a story about more than Ukraine. It’s about the deepest, nothing-matters cynicism that screams about 300 neo-Nazis in polo shirts yet embraces a brigade of battle-hardened extremists. It’s about warning that white supremacy—especially after being mainstreamed by Donald Trump and Fox News—is an existential threat to our society, while making it clear that some exclusions apply.

It’s about “good people on both sides.”

Azov was born shortly after the 2014 uprising that ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Those events triggered a counter-revolt by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern regions who supported Yanukovych.

It quickly became apparent that the Ukrainian Army had been severely degraded by decades of corruption, leaving the new government struggling to combat the rebels. Into that void stepped far-right groups that formed volunteer battalions to fight for Kyiv. One of these groups, created out of the Patriot of Ukraine neo-Nazi gang, gained fame by helping restore Ukrainian government control over the city of Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov. It became known as the Azov Battalion.

Azov’s tactics and ideology were exactly what you’d expect from a paramilitary element formed by neo-Nazis. Its insignia features popular neo-Nazi symbols: the Wolfsangel (a runic double hook) and the Sonnenrad (sun wheel). Since then, the unit has become infamous for torture and for its aggressive recruitment of white supremacists from around the globe.

In November 2014, Kyiv sought to gain control of the Azov Battalion by absorbing it into the government. Azov became a regiment in Ukraine’s National Guard, which made it a potential direct recipient of American aid. The prospect of organized white fanatics being aided by the US quickly came to the attention of Congress, where lawmakers attempted to ban the Pentagon from working with Azov, though they were ultimately unsuccessful. Later, in 2018, a ban on providing US military aid to the Azov Regiment did pass.

The media also ramped up scrutiny. “Volunteer Ukrainian Unit Includes Nazis,” USA Today reported in March 2015. The Daily Beast followed with a piece titled “How Many Neo-Nazis Is the U.S. Backing in Ukraine?”

Patriot of Ukraine—the gang whose members formed the original core of the Azov Battalion—always had geopolitical ambitions. Its leader, Andriy Biletsky, who was Azov’s first commander, capitalized on its notoriety to develop political and street-muscle wings for the Azov brand. The regiment soon became just one part of a far larger entity: the Azov Movement.

In 2016, Biletsky, who by then had left the regiment, established the far-right National Corps Party, headed by Azov veterans. Ukraine, despite Putin’s lies, is not teeming with fascists, which is why the National Corps has performed abysmally in elections. Where it did find success was in global networking with extremists.

Azov began sponsoring neo-Nazi concerts and sporting tournaments that attracted radicals: In 2018, the FBI arrested California white supremacists who had met with a member of the Azov Movement.

By 2021, the Azov Movement’s position as a premier hub of transnational white supremacy was firmly established. It was tracked by researchers; its fighters were banned from receiving military aid by Congress; and it was kicked off Facebook. The State Department declared its political wing a “nationalist hate group.” Journalists exposed its enlistment of fighters from Sweden to Australia.

Then came Russia’s invasion. Within months, many of these same institutions had plunged into an Orwellian stampede to persuade the West that Ukraine’s neo-Nazi regiment was suddenly not a problem.

It wasn’t pretty. In 2018, The Guardian had published an article titled “Neo-Nazi Groups Recruit Britons to Fight in Ukraine,” in which the Azov Regiment was called “a notorious Ukrainian fascist militia.” Indeed, as late as November 2020, The Guardian was calling Azov a “neo-Nazi extremist movement.”

But by February 2023, The Guardian was assuring readers that Azov’s fighters “are now leading the defence of Mariupol, insisting they have shed their previous dubious politics and rapidly becoming Ukrainian heroes.” The campaign believed to have recruited British far-right activists was now a thing of the past.

The BBC had been among the first to warn of Azov, criticizing Kyiv in 2014 for ignoring a group that “sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.” A 2018 report noted Azov’s “well-established links to the far right.”

Shortly after Putin’s invasion, though, the BBC began to assert that although “to Russia, they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group,” the Azov Regiment was being “falsely portrayed as Nazi” by Moscow.

Meanwhile, Germany’s state-owned Deutsche Welle required only three months after the invasion to pivot from calling Azov “a neo-Nazi volunteer regiment” to saying it was “accused of having [a] neo-Nazi past” by Russia. By this logic, the BBC’s and Deutsche Welle’s previous Azov coverage had been lies concocted by the Kremlin.

There is a kernel of truth in the allegations that Azov is just a Russian bogeyman. The Kremlin and Ukraine’s neo-Nazis have a symbiotic relationship that reaches to the very heart of this war: Putin needed a pretext to justify his illegal invasion; for that, he turned to Azov. Moscow seized on Azov’s existence to paint all of Ukraine as a cesspool of fascism in need of “denazification.” Azov is the linchpin in Putin’s narrative—without it, his excuse for the war is gone.

In turn, Azov’s defenders have capitalized on Russia’s obsession by implying that anyone who criticizes the group is a Putin apologist. Moscow and Azov use each other to defend the indefensible: For Russia, it’s acceptable to invade a sovereign country to fight neo-Nazis; for the West, it’s appropriate to lionize neo-Nazis because they’re fighting Russia.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE OLD

The problem with insisting that Azov’s neo-Nazism is just a Russian lie is the abundance of evidence to the contrary. Seven years’ worth of Western articles chronicling the group’s nature was too much to ignore. This left Azov’s whitewashers with the unenviable task of cobbling together a come-to-Jesus story in which Azov began as a neo-Nazi paramilitary group but somehow saw the error of its ways before 2022.

The narrative that emerged goes like this: (a) Azov’s deradicalization started after it joined Ukraine’s National Guard—over time, Biletsky and other veterans of the 2014 battalion were filtered out, implying that the new leadership is neo-Nazi free; (b) yes, there are a few leftover neo-Nazis in the National Corps, Azov’s political party; but (c) that doesn’t matter, because the Azov Regiment—later a brigade—has long since separated from the National Corps, which is little more than a fringe political sideshow.

These talking points were propagated by Kyiv, Azov, and a handful of experts furnishing quotes from one journalist to the next; the press, in turn, dashed out articles reporting these claims as fact. In reading these pieces, one quickly notes the absence of evidence. The “Azov has been denazified” story is presented as verified truth, often using quotes from the same few experts who also state it without offering proof.

There’s a reason for that: The whole thing is composed of easily disprovable falsehoods.

Take the notion that Azov was deradicalized after joining the National Guard in November 2014. This ignores the fact that Western outlets routinely documented Azov’s neo-Nazism over the next seven years, through 2021.

Whatever reformative influence Kyiv had to offer clearly didn’t work: Azov continued to recruit white supremacists, and in 2016, it was accused by human rights groups of committing war crimes—the only difference being that after 2014, it did so as part of a NATO-trained force.

Next is the lie that Azov denazified itself by jettisoning veterans of the original 2014 neo-Nazi battalion—a claim echoed by Reuters, The Financial Times, the AP, The Jerusalem Post, and others around the spring of 2022, when the regiment was commanded by Denys Prokopenko and his deputy, Svyatoslav Palamar.

The problem is that both Prokopenko and Palamar were Azov members going back to 2014. Supposedly led by new blood, the unit was actually commanded by veterans of its far-right beginning.

Palamar’s neo-Nazi roots reach back even further—he belonged to the Patriot of Ukraine gang that formed Azov. Yet the AP and Haaretz both cited Palamar downplaying Azov’s extremism while reporting nothing about his past with Patriot of Ukraine.

Prokopenko, for his part, came out of the White Boys Club, superfans of the Dynamo Kyiv soccer team (far-right groups organized around soccer teams are common across Europe), who celebrated him when he was given an award in October 2022. The group’s Facebook posts have typically included phrases like “100% White” and “88” (code for “Heil Hitler”), praise for Holocaust perpetrators, and Waffen-SS insignia.

During his time in Azov, Prokopenko’s platoon was unofficially called the Borodach Division. Its insignia was the Totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones design used by the SS, which has become a popular neo-Nazi symbol. (Azov’s version added some fascist whimsy by giving the skull a beard and hipster mustache.)

Azov’s current acting commander—who took over in June 2022, after Prokopenko surrendered to Russian forces—is also an original Azov veteran.

But that’s just the first Azov Brigade. Over the past year, the movement has spawned new formations led by extremists.

MORE HEADS FOR THE HYDRA

In February 2022, as Russian tanks tore across the land, Ukraine began activating territorial defense forces (TDFs), militia units based in cities. Prominent ones included Azov offshoots in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Sumy, which were eventually merged. Today, the Azov Movement counts two brigades: the initial one in the National Guard and the recently created one in the army.

Maksym Zhorin, an Azov TDF commander in Kyiv who’s a veteran of the 2014 battalion and a leader in the National Corps (Azov’s far-right party, which the Western media assures us has been severed from the military units) worked closely with Biletsky.

Rodion Kudryashev, the deputy commander of Azov’s army brigade, is also a 2014 veteran and a National Corps leader; he says Biletsky is the first person he turns to for guidance. An Azov SSO Regiment commander, Denys Sokur, previously headed the National Corps’ Sumy branch.

Dmytro Kukharchuk, one of the main commanders of Azov’s army brigade (he commands the unit’s Second Battalion), is another 2014 veteran who worships Biletsky and has been photographed with a T-shirt of the Reconquista Club, a thinly veiled reference to the white supremacist movement to “reconquer” Europe.

Azov runs its own military school, an example of the enormous autonomy that Kyiv grants the movement. Its commander, Kyrylo Berkal, is another 2014 veteran whose social media featured Nazi symbols.

These are only some examples of Azov military units commanded by veterans of the original neo-Nazi battalion and/or leaders of the National Corps. So much for denazification.

NEO-NAZI BRIGADE CHECKS ITS WHITE PRIVILEGE

A few years ago, the ex–Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke embarked on a rebranding campaign by telling journalists that he was not a white supremacist but a “human rights activist.” His claim was covered by Esquire, ABC, Politico, and The New York Times.

Whether Duke sincerely meant what he said depends on one’s definition of “human.” Yet none of the outlets that reported on his rebranding were naive enough—or, given the recent rise of white terrorism, oblivious enough—to start referring to the former Grand Wizard of the KKK as “human rights activist David Duke.”

In their rush to lionize Azov, however, Western institutions have been far more reckless. The Times of London celebrated Azov’s supposed conversion by referring to it as “an elite battalion challenging its far-right reputation.” The purported evidence for this included a Ukrainian soldier’s claim that “We are patriots but we are not Nazis,” and a statement by “an expert on the European right” that “Azov has evolved so far from its origins as to make its far-right roots meaningless.”

The photos The Times ran with the article show an Azov soldier wearing a T-shirt for M8L8TH, a vicious neo-Nazi band with songs praising Hitler and featuring unabashed anti-Semitism. M8L8TH is linked to Azov; the California neo-Nazis arrested by the FBI had met with its lead singer in Kyiv. It’s hard to find a more fitting illustration of the media blithely whitewashing neo-Nazis.

Forbes similarly cheered Azov’s alleged denazification by running the demonstrably false claim that it had stopped using the Wolfsangel symbol. The Wolfsangel is one of the first things you see on Azov’s website, just as it was on the day the Forbes story ran; in fact, it’s the profile photo for all Azov’s social media accounts.

The whitewashing of neo-Nazi history extends even to Biletsky, who had been so toxic that even Azov’s defenders refused to normalize him. That didn’t stop the Financial Times from running Biletsky’s quotes about Azov being “patriotic” and “nationalist.” The FT then quoted him praising Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator whose men massacred Jews, as a hero.

A far more dangerous platforming came from Facebook, which had banned Azov in 2019. In February 2022, Facebook loosened the ban in surreal, Dril-esque fashion: The company acknowledged that Azov remained a hate group but decided to allow posts praising it, as long as the praise was about defending Ukraine. It was a “both-sides-ing” of white supremacy, a chilling message that, sometimes, neo-Nazis are heroes.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, later simplified matters by removing the Azov Regiment from its list of dangerous organizations.

Others, too, said the quiet part out loud. “Finally, it is worth noting that the ‘neo-Nazi Azov regiment’ has never been implicated in any actual extremist acts—with the sole exception of credible reports of human rights violations, including torture of detainees, by Azov fighters in the Donbas in 2015–2016,” wrote The Bulwark.

They may have tortured people, but nobody’s perfect.

By September 2022, as the campaign to transform Azov into paladins of democracy purred along, America rolled out the red carpet.

Azov’s US tour was initially reported by researcher Moss Robeson. The group made stops in Washington, D.C., and in New Jersey, where its soldiers—including a founder of the original battalion—met with Senators Rick Scott and Todd Young and Representatives Pete Sessions, Dan Crenshaw, Adam Schiff, and Michael Waltz, among others.

Then came Stanford University, which welcomed Azov even though seven months earlier its own program for tracking extremism had published an exhaustive study detailing Azov’s Nazi ties. The event was attended by Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia and an adherent of the “Azov has been denazified” myth, who stood in front of a projection of its Wolfsangel insignia.

It sometimes seems that we’re witnessing an experiment in America’s willingness to ignore what’s in front of our own eyes. In February, an employee of the federal government’s US Helsinki Commission giddily tweeted out photos of himself posing with the Azov Wolfsangel and wearing a patch with a picture of a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator; the employee continued defending the tweets, even as he eventually deleted them. It’s hard to imagine this being tolerated with other Holocaust perpetrators (see the media storms surrounding similar collaborators).

Or take Azov’s press officer, Dmytro Kozatsky, who was paraded around Congress, MSNBC, Vogue, and a Manhattan film festival. As Robeson reported, Kozatsky’s Twitter account was a Whitman’s Sampler of white supremacy, including the “1488” neo-Nazi code, Waffen-SS insignia, a swastika, and myriad “likes” for images such as a Totenkopf, Adolf Hitler, Nazi murderer Amon Goeth, the KKK, and graffiti reading “Death to Kikes.”

THE CHOICE

As Azov’s defenders in Washington love to point out, the brigade and its offshoots are merely a tiny fraction of Ukraine’s armed forces. Why focus on them? they intone. That’s what Putin does!

The saddest thing about this logic—aside from stating that a battle-hardened neo-Nazi formation in an unstable, war-torn country isn’t a big deal—is that it’s true.

Azov is a small fraction of those fighting to save Ukraine. For every feat attributed to Azov units, there were many more accomplished by others. Even the legendary siege of Mariupol last year that made Azov famous involved Ukrainian marines who suffered and held out just as bravely. We could have honored them. Instead, we went out of our way to glorify Azov.

Nobody forced us to. It’s been a choice, and considering that Googling Azov’s name yields hit after hit about white supremacy, it’s a conscious, informed one.

Putin isn’t the only one obsessed with Azov. We can’t get enough of them. They’re our neo-Nazis.

RT, 6/24/23

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced on Saturday that he had arranged a deal whereby Wagner Group leader Evgeny Prigozhin will abandon his mutiny in exchange for “security guarantees” for his fighters.

“Evgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of President Alexander Lukashenko to stop the movement of armed men of Wagner in Russia and take further steps to de-escalate tension,” read a statement from Lukashenko’s office.

According to the statement, Lukashenko and Prigozhin held talks for the “whole day,” and “came to an agreement on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloodbath on the territory of Russia.”

Lukashenko’s office said that the talks were held in coordination with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that Prigozhin was offered “an advantageous and acceptable option of resolving the situation, with security guarantees for the Wagner PMC fighters.”

The news came as a Wagner convoy drew closer to Moscow, several hours after members of the private military outfit passed through the southern city of Rostov-on-Don. In a series of video statements released since Friday, Prigozhin declared that he was advancing on Moscow to confront Russian military officials he deemed corrupt.

Prigozhin garnered no support from the Russian establishment. Instead, Putin accused the Wagner chief of “backstabbing our country and our people,” while Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) opened a criminal investigation into Prigozhin for “calling for an armed rebellion.”

Senior Russian political and military figures denounced Prigozhin’s mutiny, and called on Wagner fighters to lay down their arms.

Shortly after Lukashenko’s announcement, Prigozhin confirmed that his troops were abandoning their push to Moscow and returning to their field camps.

There have been reports on social media that Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner private military group, had taken control of the military quarters in Rostov-on-Don and at least some of his forces have advanced on to Vorozneh. He has reportedly said that he will blockade Rostov until Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov (both of whom he has accused of mismanagement of the SMO) are removed or he will advance to Moscow for them. I can’t verify that all of the above details are true at this time.

(A good analysis of the crisis and what led up to it by Moscow-based analyst Andrew Korybko can be read here.)

Around 10:00 am Moscow time Russian President Vladmir Putin gave a public televised address.

He called Prigozhin’s actions mutiny and a “criminal act.” He also used the term “treason” and referred to Prigozhin’s acts as “a stab in the back” being used by Russia’s enemies.

He said Russia would not allow a repeat of 1917 by “opportunists”. Putin said that measures will be taken that are very hard and those responsible will be brought to justice. The armed forces and other agencies have been given orders. Furthermore, restrictions have been taken in Moscow. He said that the situation in Rostov is “complicated.” He stated that those participating in the mutiny have betrayed Russia and he urged Russians to cease any participation in it.

Here is the full transcript from Slavyangrad Telegram channel:

There are a lot of unverified claims on social media right now and it’s hard to know for sure what’s really going on. I will do my best to keep readers updated as soon as I get meaningful and credible information. The timeline from RT below is from earliest events to most recent – Natylie

RT, 6/23/23

There is some turmoil in Russia after Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner Group private military company, was accused by the government of staging an armed insurrection.

The charges were brought late Friday night [Moscow time] after Prigozhin accused Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, the chair of the Russian general staff, of serious crimes.

Prigozhin claimed to have ordered troops loyal to him to move towards Rostov-on-Don, a major city in southern Russia. Security measures were also reportedly beefed up in Moscow.

• On Friday, Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian private military company Wagner Group, claimed that senior Russian commanders were traitors and demanded the prosecution of Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, the chair of the general staff.
• Later in the day Prigozhin claimed that the Russian military had attacked Wagner reserve positions. Prigozhin announced that forces loyal to him were moving towards the city of Rostov-on-Don.
• The Defense Ministry denied the claim. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Prigozhin of staging an armed coup and called on Wagner fighters to apprehend him.
• Moscow’s police have increased their presence in the city, taking additional measures to protect the Russian capital’s ‘most important buildings, public authorities and transport infrastructure’, the news agency TASS has reported. Several pictures and videos of military hardware moving through the city’s streets have appeared on the web.
• Putin is being informed on all the latest developments regarding the ‘armed coup attempt’ by Wagner PMC and its boss Evgeniy Prigozhin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stated, according to TASS news agency. Peskov said Russia’s Ministry of Defense, FSB and National Guard are feeding information after ‘receiving orders from the president’.
• Senior Russian military commanders, including Deputy commander of the Russian Joint Forces, Army General Sergey Surovikin and Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev have recorded public video addresses to Wagner troops. They denounced Prigozhin’s actions and called on the fighters to stand down.“This is a stab in the back to the nation and the president,” Alekseev said, warning that there was a risk of a civil war in Russia. Surovikin urged the soldiers to return to their positions and seek a peaceful resolution of the situation.
• The White House has said it is “monitoring the situation” in Russia. President Joe Biden has been informed about the developments, National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge told the media. US officials indicated that they consider the situation ‘serious’ and beyond Prigozhin’s previous statements launched against the Russian military leadership in the past, according to CNN.
• Despite claims by Evgeny Prigozhin, there appears to be no video or photo evidence of any PMC forces moving through Russia. There are also no reports of any battles or skirmishes.
• The situation in Rostov-on-Don appears to be relatively calm, according to media reports from the city. Troops are deployed at the headquarters of the Russian Southern military district, but there are no signs that they are preparing to fight off an attack, according to Kommersant daily.
• TASS has reported increased security on the highway connecting Rostov-on-Don with central Russia, including Moscow. Police presence has been increased, and inbound traffic is kettled and subject to inspections. Vehicles are not allowed to travel from the city towards the capital at all, according to the news agency.
• The Russian Defense Ministry has warned on its Telegram channel that Ukrainian forces were preparing to use “Prigozhin’s provocation” to launch an assault in the vicinity of Artyomovsk. The Donbass city, which Ukraine calls Bakhmut, was the focal point of an intensive months-long battle, in which PMC Wagner played a significant role. The city was taken by Russian forces last month.
• Traffic camera video feed from Rostov-on-Don, which could have shown the alleged columns of Wagner military hardware moving through the streets, is presently unavailable. When trying to access the feed, users are greeted with a message saying ‘Access to the broadcast is temporarily limited’.
• No unusual activity has been noted near the Wagner PMC headquarters in St. Petersburg, according to a TASS correspondent at the location. The news agency added that security guards have also denied reports that a search was underway in the building.
• Rostov Region Governor Vasily Golubev has urged residents via his Telegram channel to “keep calm and not leave home without need.” He added that law enforcement was doing everything necessary to ensure the safety of civilians.
• A video purportedly showing an armed confrontation between Wagner PMC forces and the Russian Army has been making the rounds on social media. However it has not been independently verified. (Go to RT link above to view the video – NB)
• The Russian social network VK has blocked one of the statements released by Prigozhin’s press service on the platform. The post now states that the message is not available in Russia, based on a decision by the Prosecutor General’s office.
• There are also claims that some news about Prigozhin’s latest steps are being blocked by Yandex, the Russian tech giant that runs an eponymous web search engine.
• The Rostov Region branch of the Emergencies Ministry has warned about a fake post issued in its name on social media. The message falsely claims that a curfew has been imposed in the region, adding that those spreading the message are apparently seeking to cause panic.
• Igor Artamonov, the governor of Lipetsk Region, has announced increased security measures, with particular focus on protecting critical infrastructure. He called on residents to avoid traveling to southern parts of Russia, including the neighboring Voronezh Region.
• “The latest events have disturbed all of us. But I ask you all to keep calm,” he said on his Telegram account.
• Lipetsk is located some 370 km south of Moscow and 590 km north of Rostov-on-Don.
• The road connecting the city of Rostov-on-Don with the Azov Sea port of Taganrog, some 60 km to the west, has been fully shut down for traffic, a TASS correspondent has reported. Similar restrictions have also been reported relating to north-bound traffic on the M4 highway, which leads to Moscow. Other exits from Rostov-on-Don remain available, according to the report.
• A video purportedly filmed in Rostov-on-Don shows a tank and an armored personnel carrier (APC) driving past a group of police officers who are guarding a fuel station. More military hardware, including another tank, another APC, two armored cars and a truck, follow shortly afterwards.
• The footage circulating online could not be immediately verified.
• A military column is on the move on the M-4 highway connecting Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don, local authorities have announced on Telegram, asking local residents to temporarily refrain from using the road. The statement adds that law enforcement agencies in the region are “taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety.”

By Matthew Bunn, The National Interest, 6/10/23

Sixty years ago, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy gave probably the greatest speech on nuclear arms ever given by an American President. Speaking only months after the crisis, Kennedy could have lashed out at the Soviet Union’s reckless behavior in putting missiles in Cuba. Or he could have taken a triumphal tone, highlighting his success in forcing the Soviets to pull the missiles out (with the public then in the dark on his secret promise to pull similar U.S. missiles out of Turkey).

Instead, in a June 10 commencement address at American University, Kennedy made the case that the horrors of a potential nuclear holocaust made it urgent to find a path to peace and that doing so required both sides of the Cold War to change. He announced that the United States would unilaterally stop testing its nuclear weapons until a treaty banning such tests could be reached. “Some say that it is useless to speak of peace,” Kennedy noted, “until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it.”

World response was immediate. The NATO allies hailed the speech. The Manchester Guardian ranked it “among the great state papers of American history.” The Soviets turned off their giant radio jammers so that Soviet citizens could hear the speech on Voice of America, and they printed the full text in both Pravda and Izvestia. (The Soviets had some warning: Kennedy’s team had consulted with them informally before he gave his speech.)

Although the Soviets made no formal announcement of a testing halt, they, too, paused nuclear testing. Less than ten days after Kennedy’s speech, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to the creation of a “hotline” between the two governments. In a month and a half, the Limited Test Ban Treaty had been completed, putting an end to the constant explosions that were spewing radiation across the world, contaminating even mothers’ milk. Kennedy called the treaty “a victory for mankind,” and said that even if the journey to peace was a thousand miles, “let history record that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step.” Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev hailed the treaty in similar terms.

In the months that followed, the two sides each announced unilateral cutbacks in the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons; reductions in their military spending; and modest pullbacks of troops from the front lines in Central Europe. None of these initiatives were negotiated in detail ahead of time, or verified, though there were informal consultations on each one before they were announced. Khrushchev called it “a policy of reciprocal example in the matter of reducing the armaments race.”

At the UN, the sides also managed to reach an agreement on the Outer Space Treaty, banning nuclear weapons in orbit. The atmosphere of heated Cold War confrontation changed markedly, paving the way for the start of negotiations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then strategic arms talks.

Kennedy’s initiative—sometimes called “the Kennedy Experiment”—drew on the ideas of psychologist Charles E. Osgood, who had published a paper on a strategy he called “Graduated Reciprocation in Tension-Reduction,” or GRIT. The concept was that with two sides in a high state of tension, one side could unilaterally take a tension-reducing step—large enough to be noticed, but small enough not to endanger its security—and challenge the other side to take a step of its own. Osgood argued that the challenge should not be a specific demand, because, in such a state of high tension, the other side would likely see a specific demand as asking too much. Osgood proposed that the first step be accompanied by an unambiguous statement of a new, peaceful policy—exactly what Kennedy did in his American University address.

Osgood went further and argued that even if the other side did not reciprocate—perhaps not fully accepting that its adversary was genuinely trying to reduce the temperature—the side trying to reduce tension should continue with additional small steps, to make the changed approach impossible to deny. It is that idea of continuing even without any positive response that most justifies the GRIT acronym. If the other side did reciprocate, then the initiating side could take a somewhat larger step and see if that was also reciprocated. Osgood hoped to “run the arms race in reverse.”

Osgood suggested that if the opponent makes a warlike move, there should be a “measured response”: enough to show the opponent that the new strategy did not indicate weakness, but not so much as to close the door to further progress.

Decades after Kennedy’s initiative, this approach worked again. In 1991, as the Soviet Union hurtled toward collapse, President George H.W. Bush announced a dramatic set of unilateral initiatives, pulling back U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from around the world (except for a small force that remained in Europe) and destroying most of them; eliminating nuclear weapons from surface ships; and taking strategic bombers off alert. The Soviet Union, and then Russia, reciprocated with similarly sweeping (though not identical) reductions. These “Presidential Nuclear Initiatives” resulted in the fastest nuclear arms reductions that have ever taken place.

Today, tensions between Washington and Moscow are higher than they have been since Kennedy spoke, after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and repeated nuclear threats. Hostility between the United States and China is growing—and North Korea’s dictator keeps up a relentless pace of missile testing and reckless nuclear rhetoric. These tensions between nuclear-armed states matter: the more hostile two states are, the more likely it is that a crisis will occur, that the crisis will escalate to conflict, and that conflict will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. Hence, in each of these cases, it is time for new action to bring down the temperature.

President Joe Biden has taken a few small initial steps. The Biden team announced that the United States would unilaterally pledge not to conduct direct-ascent antisatellite (ASAT) weapon tests that would create showers of space debris, endangering other satellites. And they put forward a set of political commitments on “responsible” military use of artificial intelligence—including a commitment that the decision to use nuclear weapons would always be made by a human, not a machine. Scores of other countries have signed on to the ASAT initiative—though not, so far, Russia or China.

Unfortunately, Biden faces obstacles to doing more that President Kennedy did not. In particular, Kennedy spoke when the Cuban Missile Crisis was over: the Soviets had withdrawn their missiles. Today, Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, with new violations of the laws of war almost every day.

Nevertheless, the need for reducing tensions is urgent, and there is more Biden could do. He could announce that a portion of U.S. nuclear missiles would be taken off alert: surely not all of them need to be ready for immediate launch. He could commit that the United States would never use nuclear weapons first unless the very survival of our country or one of our treaty allies was at stake. He could commit that the United States would never deploy its missiles where they could reach Moscow or Beijing in just a few minutes. He could offer to let Chinese or Russian experts monitor U.S. weapons-maintenance experiments to confirm American compliance with the nuclear test ban. He could commit that all U.S. nuclear enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities would be available for international inspection to confirm they were not being used to make new material for nuclear weapons.

None of those steps would endanger U.S. security. If reciprocated, each of them would improve security significantly. They might be a first step toward new arms restraints that could take the place of New START—the last remaining treaty limiting U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear force numbers—when it expires in early 2026.

The world today is very different from the world of six decades ago. But the need to manage hostility among nuclear-armed states is no less. Biden should draw on Kennedy’s example and pursue new steps to reduce nuclear dangers.

Matthew Bunn is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Principal Investigator for the Project on Managing the Atom at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Image: Courtesy of the JFK Library.