By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 10/1/23

Western Civilization exploited Slavic Civilization’s wayward Ukrainian component upon its post-Soviet independence as a sovereign state via the cultivation of extreme nationalism in order to divide-and-rule its Russian-centric Slavic opponent. By launching its special operation, Russia wasn’t engaging in an “imperial war of conquest”, but attempting to avert the West’s own such imperial war by neutralizing Ukraine’s “Trojan Horse” status to that end.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban described the Ukrainian Conflict as a “Slavic fraternal war” in comments that he made on Friday. He didn’t elaborate on why he chose that particular phraseology, but his point appears to have been to emphasize the need for others to stop fueling the flames. This aligns with Budapest’s stance towards the conflict, which contrasts with its Western allies’, who instead want to globalize it. That said, his description is still debatable for the reasons that will now be explained.

From the Russian perspective, Ukraine is merely NATO’s proxy for waging a Hybrid War against it. By reframing the conflict as a “Slavic fraternal war”, that bloc’s role in provoking and perpetuating it risks being overlooked in favor of focusing on Russia and Ukraine’s shared ethnic ties. The resultant impression is that Ukraine has been able to hold its own against Russia, which isn’t factually true since it’s only survived so far due to NATO’s assistance.

The Ukrainians’ objections will likely be that they consider themselves to be a distinct ethnic group from Russians so it’s therefore highly offensive to describe the conflict the way that Orban did. From their perspective, reframing it this way risks undermining Ukraine’s sovereign statehood by implying the possibility that more of the land that it claims as its own could – and possibly should – be incorporated into Russia. It also suggests that both parties share guilt for the conflict, which Kiev refuses to admit.

Nevertheless, although neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to acknowledge it, they each tacitly agree with some of the other’s points. President Putin’s magna opus from July 2021 “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” concludes by recognizing Ukraine’s distinct ethnic identity and sovereign statehood. Likewise, Kiev doesn’t want the world to think that it survived thus far largely on its own lest those in the West who are against supporting it have yet another argument for cutting off aid. 

Having constructively critiqued Orban’s debatable description of the Ukrainian Conflict as a “Slavic fraternal war”, it’s now time to draw attention to its merits. Apart from what was mentioned in the introduction, he might also have wanted to signal his belief in the emerging civilizational paradigm of International Relations. This school of thought posits that civilizations have a similar level of agency as states do in shaping the world order and was partially included in Russia’s latest Foreign Policy Concept.

With that paradigm in mind, the Hungarian leader’s reference to the “Slavic” and “fraternal” nature of the Ukrainian Conflict reconceptualizes its very nature. Instead of being the result of a Western-provoked international security dilemma like Russia regards it as or a so-called “imperial war of conquest” like Ukraine claims, it can now be thought of as an intra-civilizational conflict among fellow Slavs, albeit one provoked and perpetuated by Western Civilization.

To elaborate, there are grounds for reframing Ukraine as a “defector” of sorts from Slavic Civilization due to its efforts to comprehensively distance itself from Russia, to which end it informally allied with the West and conspired with NATO to clandestinely cross its neighbor’s national security red lines. Had Russia eschewed its special operation and instead let events naturally unfold, then Ukraine would have inevitably turned into Western Civilization’s “Slavic Trojan Horse” for Balkanizing Russia.

In that scenario, Slavic Civilization – or what can more accurately be described as Russia’s Eurasian Civilization in which Slavs have historically played the most important state-forming role – would cease to exist with time after its multidimensional conquest by Western Civilization. That outcome would represent the unprecedented expansion of Western Civilization over Northern Eurasia, which could set the stage for a clash with Chinese Civilization in the (then-former) Slavic/Russian lands.

To simplify this civilizational interpretation of the Ukrainian Conflict, Western Civilization exploited Slavic Civilization’s wayward Ukrainian component upon its post-Soviet independence as a sovereign state via the cultivation of extreme nationalism in order to divide-and-rule its Russian-centric Slavic opponent. By launching its special operation, Russia wasn’t engaging in an “imperial war of conquest”, but attempting to avert the West’s own such imperial war by neutralizing Ukraine’s “Trojan Horse” status to that end.

It might be that Orban didn’t intend to reconceptualize the Ukrainian Conflict to that extent by describing it as a “Slavic fraternal war” and only wanted to add a creative rhetorical flourish to his efforts aimed at dissuading fellow Westerners from further fanning the flames. Even if that’s the case, however, his language still inadvertently inspired a novel way of interpreting everything. Experts would therefore to well to build upon this paradigm in order to discover what other insight it holds.

Craig Jardula, guest hosting for Jimmy Dore, interviews Moscow-based geopolitical analyst Mark Sleboda on the likely motive for Hamas’s massacre in Israel last weekend and the geopolitical implications of the escalating conflict. Link here, embed below.

Glenn Greenwald interviews realist scholar Stephen Walt for his analysis of the events of the past eight days regarding Hamas-Israel. Link here, embed below.

By Bruce Clark, 10/3/23

Bruce Clark is a Former London Times correspondent in Moscow

Exactly 30 years ago (on 3 October 1993), the world of hazardous news-gathering lost one of its finest practitioners. After many hours of gunfire around Moscow’s broadcasting centre known as Ostankino, bodies were strewn across the blood-stained concrete. Among them was the unmistakable figure of Rory Peck, whose cheeky grin and big bald pate framed by brown curls were familiar to every reporter roaming the post-communist war zones. Aged nearly 37, a supremely skilled cameraman of lofty and eccentric Anglo-Irish origin, with a feline ability to negotiate danger, had finally – so it seemed run out of luck. At least two other Westerners also perished: a Frenchman, Yvan Skopan, filming for his country’s first TV channel, and a brave young American lawyer, Mike Duncan, who had hauled several people to safety.

Yet so momentous was the wider drama then unfolding in Moscow that the world had little time to ponder the Ostankino massacre. Boris Yeltsin told the world that his young democracy had come under devastating attack from a fiendish mix of Stalinists and fascists, with whom his political adversaries in the legislature had cynically allied. Against such threats, he implied, only draconian force would work. He then drove his foes out of the White House – the Russian parliament – by lobbing shells at the upper floors until its pale front was streaked with black. Morally and militarily he seemed to have triumphed in the deep political deadlock which had become critical after he suspended parliament on September 21. The way was clear for him to push through a more presidentially-oriented constitution and to organize elections with his own authority unchallenged.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Moscow’s micro-civil war, and regardless of the foreign casualties, Western leaders fully accepted Yeltsin’s story. Bill Clinton insisted the Russian leader had “bent over backwards” to avoid violence. John Major said Yeltsin “deserves the support of all democrats inside and outside Russia.” Any casualties had been entirely the fault of “ugly attacks” by Yeltsin’s foes. But this was, to put it very mildly, an over-simplification. On both sides of Russia’s political crisis, there had been dark forces bent on drawing blood, as well as idealists who believed that they enjoyed constitutional legitimacy. The Yeltsin people were simply cleverer. 

As chaos subsided, Rory’s colleagues including myself were left trying to make sense of a great reporter’s life and death, and to honour his memory. On the latter front, extraordinary things have happened. The Rory Peck Trust, a London-based charity, has raised millions of pounds and assisted nearly 3,000 news-gatherers in practical ways. It showcases the work of freelancers with a star-studded annual awards ceremony. It has become of the world’s leading advocates for independent journalism.

In quieter ways, those of us who knew Rory well are still searching for the meaning – if there is one – of his passing. Was it the inevitable consequence of a reckless life? Having mulled that question, I find

my friend innocent. Not only did Rory add to the annals of history during his short, brilliant career – for example, by filming the besieged enclaves of Bosnia, and capturing the scenes in Moscow’s corridors of power in the August 1991 putsch. He also, in death, bore witness to a grave moral truth that the Western world chose to ignore. The Muscovite crisis of October 1993 was not, contrary to many claims, a very close-run thing. And the battle for Ostankino, in which Rory and other unarmed people died, was more like a turkey-shoot by the president’s forces than an almost-revolution. True, the anti-Yeltsin mob, led by dim-witted General Albert Makashov, which raced from the White House to Ostankino on October 3 imagined they might win. In fact they were in a trap.

An investigation for Russia’s chief prosecutor (suppressed in 1994 but leaked a few years later) found that Makashov’s ragtag followers amounted to no more than 20 lightly armed men, while about 900 police and soldiers loyal to Yeltsin, including special forces, were progressively deployed to defend the TV buildings and make a massive counter-attack. David Satter, an American writer who has watched Russia closely since Soviet times, argues that by bringing the constitutional crisis to a violent head, Yeltsin committed the “original sin” of the post-Soviet order. It was the first step, Satter says, in building a new authoritarian state which would carpet-bomb Chechnya, harass critics and ultimately invade Ukraine.

That argument is difficult to prove – but the sight of brave reporters’ bodies, along with at least 40 other unarmed folk, lying outside the Ostankino building, makes it impossible to dismiss. In death as well as life, Rory told a story to the world.

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of Western leaders back then was their certainty that by unconditionally “picking winners” in Russia’s internal fights, they could gain moral leverage over those winners and influence Russia’s future. In fact, by unconditionally accepting Yeltsin’s claim that all blame for the October 1993 crisis lay with the opposition, the West diminished itself in the eyes of many Russian citizens.  As they progressively turned against Yeltsin and blamed him for the bloodbath, as well as for much else, they concluded that the West had collaborated with a near-treacherous president to

harm their nation. The anti-Western sentiment which Vladimir Putin so relentlessly cultivates today had started to build up.   

There were no perfect options for Western leaders faced with a chaotically re-emerging Russia. But turning a blind eye to the shootout that claimed the lives of Rory, of Yvan Skopan, of Mike Duncan, and other decent people wasn’t among the better ones. Rory’s death pointed to a story, one which Western leaders would not hear. They paid a price for that, and perhaps we are still paying a price.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 10/2/23

When Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video on his Telegram channel last week that showed his teenage son brutally beating up a Russian prisoner, Mr. Kadyrov said he was “proud” of his son’s actions.

But many Russians were shocked, and the Kremlin was visibly irritated.

The episode is just the latest of many in recent years to highlight the basic conundrum at the heart of the arrangement ending a decade-long cycle of wars between Russia and the formerly separatist Caucasus republic.

Russia’s military devastated and pacified Chechnya, and the Russian government expended vast subsidies to reconstruct Chechnya’s war-ravaged cities. But Moscow did little to reintegrate the republic with Russia’s constitutional order, and instead left Chechnya in the hands of a leader who swore fealty to Russia but otherwise had a free hand to run the republic as he wished.

The result is a maze of contradictions, a statelet where Russian law is openly flouted and the official ideology is at odds with the Russian constitution. Yet it is one of the most Kremlin-loyal regions in Russia, and has sent thousands of volunteers to fight alongside Russian troops in the war against Ukraine.

“The regime installed in Chechnya was intended to establish peace and insure Moscow’s control,” says Andrei Kolesnikov, a Carnegie expert who continues to live and work in Russia.

But very quickly it became more of a feudal system in which Mr. Kadyrov enjoys absolute personal power, Chechen clans are his vassals, and his rule is enforced by brutal methods, Mr. Kolesnikov adds. Mr. Kadyrov repays Russian President Vladimir Putin for Moscow’s lavish subsidies with total loyalty. “The tasks set by Putin were solved by such methods, and he was satisfied. Kadyrov demonstrates absolute loyalty, and that is why he is permitted more than the heads of other regions.”

Oleg Orlov, chairman of the now-banned Memorial human rights center, says the odd relationship of Chechnya to Russia is not an accident, but part of Mr. Putin’s design for governing his huge, fractious country.

“At some point I thought Chechnya was a tiger that had escaped from the Kremlin’s control,” he says. “But then I realized that it’s part of Putin’s system of balances and counter-balances. Even if the situation with Chechnya is bad for Russia, it’s good for Putin.”

But it comes at the price of constant embarrassment, as inner-Chechen reality and Mr. Kadyrov’s wayward behavior repeatedly underlines the difficult and disconnected nature of Chechnya’s place within the Russian Federation.

“Chechnya is a separate state”

After Mr. Kadyrov posted the video of his son beating an incarcerated man, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov opened his daily briefing with a shrug: “I will say from the start, I will not comment on the story about Kadyrov’s son,” he said. “I don’t want to.”

Mr. Orlov says the Kremlin faces a dilemma. “It’s not the first time Kadyrov has put the Kremlin in a stupid situation. They can neither support nor condemn him. Peskov’s reaction shows they are at a loss for what to do.”

Many other Russian politicians and thought leaders offered what was, for many, unusual expressions of outrage. “This is a challenge to Russia’s whole legal system. They have shown that they can commit crimes and nothing will happen to them,” said Eva Merkacheva, a member of Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council.

The abused prisoner was a Russian man, Nikita Zhuravel, from Volgograd, a city far from Chechnya. Last May, Mr. Zhuravel was charged with “insulting the feelings of religious believers” by allegedly burning a Koran outside of a mosque at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence services, it was claimed.

The alleged crime was local, but Russia’s Investigative Committee used strained reasoning to transfer the incarcerated man to Chechnya for “further investigation.” How Mr. Kadyrov’s son happened to gain access to the prisoner, and given the opportunity to beat him, has not been explained.

“For Russian intellectuals it emphasizes that Chechnya is a separate state, outside the laws of Russia,” says Grigory Shvedov, editor of Caucasian Knot, an independent online news site that covers the Caucasian region. “Ordinary Russians usually don’t think about Chechnya, or care whether it recognizes Russian law. But this case draws attention, because it shows that any regular Russian person could be sent to Chechnya and end up a similar situation. … This person, Zhuravel, might be innocent, just a victim, but he was just taken to Grozny and treated in such a way.”

Even many Chechens appear to have been shocked by the arbitrary violence depicted in the video, Mr. Kadyrov’s declared pride in his son’s actions, and the absolute impunity it suggests. Chechnya’s state TV channel posted a survey on its Telegram channel last week asking viewers how they react to the younger Kadyrov’s actions. The first wave of responses showed 84% took it negatively, and even after the results began to shift, 55% were still condemning it a full day later.

Despite such embarrassments, some analysts say the Chechnya model has been a success for the Kremlin, one that perhaps holds implications for the final outcome of the ongoing war in Ukraine. It took a long time to subdue Chechnya, the human costs were horrific, and the expense of rebuilding it exorbitant. Yet the long-term result is a territory under reliable control, with a pacified population and a loyal leader.

“The Chechnya model not only looks like a success from Moscow’s point of view,” says Mr. Shvedov. “It comes down to the question of price: Was it worth it? And it looks like the answer is yes, that’s a price [the Kremlin is] willing to pay.”

The Bell, 10/2/23

Russia’s top domestic political story last month was the mystery swirling around Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov after it emerged that the 46-year-old feudal warlord, a key figure in the Putin system, has serious health problems. In mid-September, Chechen opposition Telegram channels even reported his death. In a bid to show those reports had been greatly exaggerated, Kadyrov hit the airwaves and set about stoking some political intrigue concerning his potential successor.

• Rumours about Kadyrov’s poor health have been around for a while — sources first told Novaya Gazeta about the Chechen leader’s ailing condition a few years ago. In summer 2022, according to reports, his unspecified condition grew worse. By December, the rumors had grown so persistent that Kadyrov, seeking to dispel any concerns, decided to perform 35 push-ups on live TV. But the intrigue remained. In spring 2023, Kadyrov did not attend President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly, an event that the Russian elite is expected to show up for. At the time, German newspaper Bild cited opposition reports that he had serious kidney problems.
• Nobody knows the truth about Kadyrov’s condition. Sources of Novaya Gazeta’s Elena Milashina (one of the most credible reporters on Chechnya) described the disease as an one that is difficult to treat and, in 30% of cases, results in death. Without naming the actual condition, they said it can lead to kidney and lung failure (which would explain Kadyrov’s evident breathing difficulties). “The disease is accompanied by attacks of excruciating pain, which keep sufferers awake. Not even strong painkillers, typically given to late-stage cancer patients, can help,” Novaya Gazeta reported.
• In mid-September, Chechen Telegram channels (and then Ukrainian media) began reporting that Kadyrov’s health had deteriorated further yet again. Some reports suggested that he was at death’s door, others said he was in a coma or had in fact already died. The well-known anonymous Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU published photos of several expensive cars with Chechen number plates gathered outside the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital, the Kremlin’s trusted medical institution for the country’s elite. However, Kadyrov soon popped up alive on his Telegram channel, posting photos that suggested he was visiting a relative in the hospital. Nobody believed him. Alexei Venediktov, former editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, reported that Kadyrov is suffering from kidney failure and was at the hospital for a round of dialysis.
• Periodic reports of a deterioration in Kadyrov’s condition are routinely accompanied by his own media machine starting to boost the public profile of his sons as potential successors. Since summer 2022, when Kadyrov’s condition allegedly began to decline, Chechen TV has regularly broadcast reports featuring his three sons – Akhmat (17), Zelimkhan (16) and Adam (15). In the fall, the Chechen leader released a video of them firing a machine gun, which he said was on the frontlines in Ukraine. The video also showed prisoners they had allegedly captured. During another alleged deterioration in Kadyrov’s illness in spring 2023, Putin publicly met his oldest son, Akhmat, for the first time.
• This time, Kadyrov’s youngest son Adam got the starring role. And even by Chechen standards, it took a pretty extreme form. A week after the first unsubstantiated reports of his death, Kadyrov published a clip of 15-year-old Adam beating a prisoner in a pre-trial detention center in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny. The prisoner, Nikita Zhuravel, was a young man who investigators said burned a copy of the Koran outside a local mosque in Volgograd and later told the FSB that he did so on orders from the Ukrainian security forces. The criminal case against Zhuravel was pointedly transferred to Chechnya for investigation.
• No Russian officials commented on or reacted to the video, which blatantly showed criminal behaviour. The reason soon became clear when a couple of days later, Putin welcomed Ramzan Kadyrov himself to the Kremlin in a televised meeting, indicating such actions are not a concern for the president.

What does it mean?

After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s uprising, Ramzan Kadyrov found himself in an unusually vulnerable position. Throughout 2022, Kadyrov had positioned himself as the owner of a private army comparable to the Wagner Group (although Wagner, unlike Kadyrov’s men, had an identifiable track record of military achievements). Along with Prigozhin, Kadyrov too had spoken out and complained about Russia’s military leadership and the performance of the country’s regular army in Ukraine.

In Feb. 2023, when the Wagner leadership irrevocably fell out with the defense ministry, Kadyrov understood that continuing to support Prigozhin could be dangerous. He started to unwind his alliance with the mercenary boss and turned into a critic of his former ally. Since the June uprising and Prigozhin’s death two months later, Kadyrov has remained in an awkward position – he is now the only high-profile figure leading a large paramilitary group, something that the Kremlin may feel differently about following the Prigozhin saga.

For now, having secured a public meeting with the president even against the background of the scandalous video featuring his son, Kadyrov has reinforced his status. As for his successors, Kadyrov does not seriously believe that any of his sons – none of whom have yet turned 18 – are ready to take over his role immediately upon his likely demise. Novaya Gazeta’s Milashina suggested that the PR campaign for Kadyrov’s kids is instead an attempt to protect them after their father’s death, showing that the Kremlin will guarantee their safety.

Why the world should care

This wave of events and reports leaves no doubt that Ramzan Kadyrov is seriously ill. And that should seriously worry the Kremlin. Chechnya is a hugely important region for Vladimir Putin: in the 1990s it was a symbol of violent separatism, and successfully quelling the separatist movement was a key foundation of Putin’s rise to power. Since then, his entire policy in Chechnya has been built on Kadyrov’s leadership. A change of power in the region could pose a challenge for Moscow.