Church on Spilt Blood, Built at site of reformist Czar Alexandaer II’s 1881 assassination. St. Petersburg, Russia; Photo by Natylie S. Baldwin, 2015
By Fred Weir, Facebook, 12/23/23
I quite enjoyed this political travelogue, by an Italian journalist who spent a month or so last summer visiting places along Russia’s vast Volga River route, basically from St. Peterburg to Astrakhan. It’s not chronological, or the least bit touristy, but focuses on a variety of individuals who make up a pretty fair spectrum of Russians, both current and eternal. A lot can be gleaned about the state of life from his descriptions, which seem quite fair and matter-of-fact, even if they are sort of laser-focused. I haven’t been that far afield in awhile, basically since before Covid and the war, so read this with intense interest. Though it’s obviously impressionistic and selective, as these things necessarily are, I think it mostly rings true. The anti-Western moods he detects in even the most eccentric Russians, people who in the not-too-distant past might have been ardent Westernizers, is certainly what I’ve noticed and written quite a bit about, increasingly over the past decade or so. The spirit of resilience, of making do in the face of war and sanctions and turning crisis into opportunity, isn’t just Putin rhetoric, this observer finds it all around him. It’s just good on-the-ground reporting; I observe much the same in my corner. The only thing here that surprises me a bit is his impression that there is a burgeoning cult of Stalin. I don’t see that, and certainly don’t think Putin’s politics or historical forays are an effort to revive Stalinism. But I live in Moscow, and haven’t been to these kinds of places in awhile. It’s worth watching trends affecting more far-flung Russians, especially youth. Anyway, this is a fun, informative read [If you’re Canadian, and can’t click the link, go to the Harpers website, Harpers.org, where this story leads]:
Shelling in the center of the Russian border city of Belgorod Saturday killed 21 people, including three children, local officials reported.
A further 110 people were wounded in the strike, said regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, making it one of the deadliest attacks on Russian soil since the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine 22 months ago.
Russian authorities accused Kyiv of carrying out the attack, which took place the day after an 18-hour aerial bombardment across Ukraine killed at least 41 civilians.
Images of Belgorod on social media showed burning cars and plumes of black smoke rising among damaged buildings as air raid sirens sounded. One strike hit close to a public ice rink in the very heart of the city, which lies 25 miles north of the Ukrainian border and 415 miles south of Moscow. While previous attacks have hit the city, they have rarely taken place in daylight and have claimed fewer lives.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it identified the ammunition used in the strike as Czech-made Vampire rockets and Olkha missiles fitted with cluster-munition warheads. It provided no additional information, and The Associated Press was unable to verify its claims.
“This crime will not go unpunished,” the ministry said in a statement on social media.
The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the situation, and that the country’s health minister, Mikhail Murashko, was ordered to join a delegation of medical personnel and rescue workers traveling to Belgorod from Moscow.
Russian diplomats also called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in connection with the strike. Speaking to Russia’s state news agency, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Britain and the United States were guilty of encouraging Kyiv to carry out what she described as a “terrorist attack.” She also placed blame on EU countries who had supplied Ukraine with weapons.
“Silence in response to the unbridled barbarity of Ukraine’s Nazis and their puppeteers and accomplices from ‘civilized democracies’ will be akin to complicity in their bloody deeds,” the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier Saturday, Moscow officials reported shooting down 32 Ukrainian drones over the country’s Moscow, Bryansk, Oryol, and Kursk regions.
They also reported that cross-border shelling had killed two other people in Russia. A man died and four other people were wounded when a missile struck a private home in the Belgorod region late Friday evening and a 9-year-old was killed in a separate incident in the Bryansk region.
Cities across western Russia have come under regular attack from drones since May, with Russian officials blaming Kyiv. Ukrainian officials never acknowledge responsibility for attacks on Russian territory or the Crimean Peninsula. However, larger aerial strikes against Russia have previously followed heavy assaults on Ukrainian cities.
Russian drone strikes against Ukraine continued Saturday, with the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reporting that 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones had been shot down across the Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, and Mykolaiv regions.
Local officials reported that three people had been killed by Russian missiles: a 55-year-old man in the Kherson region, a 43-year-old man in Stepnohirsk, a town in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, and a 32-year-old in the Chernihiv region.
On Friday, Moscow’s forces launched 122 missiles and dozens of drones across Ukraine, an onslaught described by one air force official as the biggest aerial barrage of the war.
As well as the 39 deaths, at least 160 people were wounded and an unknown number were buried under rubble in the assault, which damaged a maternity hospital, apartment blocks, and schools.
Western officials and analysts recently warned that Russia limited its cruise missile strikes for months in an apparent effort to build up stockpiles for massive strikes during the winter, hoping to break the Ukrainians’ spirit.
Fighting along the front line is largely bogged down by winter weather after Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive failed to make a significant breakthrough along the roughly 1,000-kilometer line of contact.
Poland’s defense forces said Friday that an unknown object had entered the country’s airspace before vanishing off radars, and that all indications pointed to it being a Russian missile.
Speaking to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, Russia’s charge d’affaires in Poland, Andrei Ordash, said Saturday that Moscow would not comment on the event until Warsaw had given the Kremlin evidence of an airspace violation.
“We will not give any explanations until we are presented with concrete evidence because these accusations are unsubstantiated,” he said.
This past week was quite dull for observers of Russian state television news and talk shows who are looking for dispatches bearing on international events. There was almost nothing about the Houthi (Yemen) attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, about Defense Secretary Austin’s ‘Operation Prosperity’ naval force to secure shipping in the region, about the latest developments of the Israel-Hamas war. The 14.00 and 20.00 Vesti news hours almost exclusively dealt with domestic issues and in particular with the step-by-step validation of Vladimir Putin’s candidacy for the presidential election of March 2024.
You would hardly suspect that there may be other candidates, although online Russian news tickers did mention that the Communist Party, the country’s largest after United Russia, seems to have selected a candidate of its own. Per news.ru, this is Nikolai Kharitonov, a member of the Party’s Central Committee and the chairman of the Committee on the Development of the Far East and Arctic in the State Duma. The seventy-five year old comes from the Novosibirsk region. He holds a doctorate in economics and for several years worked as an agronomist, but then moved to politics. He is one of the longest serving members of the State Duma, to which he was elected from several different constituencies over time, most recently from Krasnodar, center of Russian agriculture in the South. This will be Kharitonov’s second run for the presidency. The first time, in 2004, he garnered 14% of the electorate. It would be safe to say that Kharitonov has no chance whatsoever of being elected president, but he will be a creditable standard bearer who may increase the party’s share of Duma seats.
The second most important bit of local news after Putin’s electoral registration to have received extensive coverage on Russian state television this past week was the official opening of the M12 express highway connecting Moscow and Kazan, some 800 kilometers away. Kazan is the capital of the oil-rich and predominantly Muslim RF region of Tatarstan. It is a showcase for Russia’s outreach to the Arab world and will be the host city for the 2024 BRICS summit in the year of Russia’s presidency of the organization when five Middle Eastern nations take up full membership. Needless to say, the ribbon cutting ceremony, which Putin supervised on a video link, was yet another occasion for him to make a televised speech, one of too many speeches in the past seven days.
The new, ultra-modern highway cuts the travel time by car between the cities in half, from 12 hours down to 6. In the coming year the M12 will be extended to Yekaterinburg and then onward to Tyumen in 2025. The newly opened stretch of the M12 was completed nearly a year ahead of schedule and is another landmark in the infrastructure investment program of the Putin presidency. Given the scale and economic importance of the highways that have been completed in recent years or are under construction, Russia is experiencing something akin to the federal interstate highway project initiated in the United States by then President Eisenhower in 1956.
Otherwise, the biggest component in the daily news has been from the front lines in the Ukraine war. The extensive reporting on the news hours by Russia’s war correspondents details the daily ‘kill’ count of Ukrainian soldiers and destruction of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other heavy equipment at each major point along the 1200 km line of contact where they saw action on that day. Just in the past 24 hours more than 500 Ukrainians were said to be killed or incapacitated. We are told that Russian forces are advancing but that this is to improve their overall position, to even up the line, and should not be confused with some massive offensive which is yet ahead.
Then there were overviews of the fighting provided by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Minister of Defense Shoigu. Gerasimov spoke at his annual briefing to all accredited military attaches of embassies in the Russian capital, including all NATO countries. These attaches were shown on television furiously taking notes or photographing Gerasimov’s slide show. Shoigu spoke to Ministry personnel and made one point worthy of mention: that Russia expects to complete the objectives set out at the start of the Special Military Operation during 2024. Put in simple English, the Ministry officially predicts that the coming year will see the end of the war on Russian terms.
However, as host of the news analysis program Sixty Minutes Yevgeni Popov and as Vladimir Solovyov, presenter of the best known talk show both commented with respect to the optimism coming from the war correspondents and from the top Ministry officials, there is no reason to be cocky and there is still a long road ahead to victory.
Indeed, the Kremlin takes nothing for granted, given its low estimation of the rationality of behavior of the Biden administration. And this brings us to the man I cite in the title of this essay, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who made news yesterday when his interview with Interfax was published. The print version in Russian comes to seven pages and is well worth a close read.
Ryabkov is not a name likely to be familiar to readers of these pages. The last time we heard from him was back in December 2021 when he delivered the hard line on Russia’s demand that a new security architecture for Europe be negotiated which would foresee the withdrawal of NATO troops and installations from the countries brought into the alliance after 1996. He was the one who said that if NATO would not pull back then Russia would push it back. It was Ryabkov’s words, not the more diplomatically couched words of Lavrov that hinted at what was to come in February 2022.
Ryabkov has spent most of his 41 years in the Ministry at home in Moscow in various positions as coordinator of foreign relations. From 2002-2005, he was based in Washington, attached to the Russian embassy, where his calling card read ‘emissary counselor.’ His present responsibilities include issues of bilateral relations with the countries of North and South America, nonproliferation and arms control, regulating the Iran nuclear program and the participation of the Russian Federation in BRICS.
The interview covered a variety of subjects that fall within Ryabkov’s mandate, including arms control under present conditions when most of the fundamental treaties on the subject have been cancelled by American initiative and when the single most important document, START II, governing the strategic nuclear arsenals of the signatories, expires in 2026.
However, the single most striking exchange in the interview was picked out by the Interfax editors for use in their title – “Sergei Rybkov: Diplomatic relations with the USA are not a totem to which one has to bow down.”
Quote
Q: With respect to the 90th anniversary of restoration of diplomatic relations between Russia and the USA, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that relations between the countries ‘risk being severed at any moment.’ You said earlier that one of the possible red lines can be confiscation of frozen Russian assets. Is this now a line beyond which it will be impossible to maintain the relationship? Are there still other triggers which would be incompatible from our standpoint with continuing the development of relations between the RF and the USA?
A: Essentially Russian-American relations have really fallen into a comatose state, and for this the responsibility lies with Washington, which not only formulated but even doctrinally and conceptually enshrined the erroneous and dangerous attitude of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. I cannot exclude the possibility that at some future date, if there is no enlightenment in terms of assessments of what is happening in the world and specifically in Russia and Ukraine, I cannot rule out that in this case Washington will not go beyond the “near-zero” level at which relations are now. That is to say, there can really be an official reduction in the level of diplomatic presence, in Washington and Moscow respectively, or even a complete rupture of relations. This would not be something unexpected for us.
So far, the Americans are wary of destroying everything to the foundation, but they are not ready to negotiate in a fair manner on the basis of mutual respect and consideration of each other’s interests, even in theory. The existing precarious balance in the Russian-American dialog and the fragmentary work on certain extremely narrow subjects, this balance can be broken at any moment due to the recklessness of Washington and specifically of the administration that is currently in power there.
Of course, diplomatic relations in themselves are not a totem to be worshipped or a sacred cow to be cherished by everyone. But we will not take the initiative to break them, to tear them up. It is not in our rules to act in such a way, including based on our understanding that Russia and the United States have a central role in maintaining international security and strategic stability. As for the trigger for a possible round of confrontation with the potential for breaking off relations, the trigger could be asset confiscation, further military escalation, and many other things. I would not go into negative forecasts here. I am just saying all this to make it clear that we are prepared for any scenario, and the United States should not have the illusion, if they have one, that Russia, as they say, is holding on to diplomatic relations with this country for dear life.
Unquote
Severing diplomatic relations is not yet a declaration of war, but in the circumstances in which such a rupture might occur, as sketched by Ryabkov, it could well be the antechamber to a direct, kinetic war between Russia and the USA.
Discussion of the possible confiscation of the frozen Russian assets was a taboo in Washington and Brussels until very recently, not for fear of Russian reaction but for fear of the damage it might do to the dollar as a reliable international store of value. But greater concerns have now arisen that outweigh the taboo, namely the inability of Washington and Brussels to deliver further financial aid to Kiev due to opposition in the U.S. Congress and within the European Institutions. The frozen assets are valued at more than 300 billion dollars and could be made available to Ukraine without legislative approval. From the Russian perspective, Washington is playing with fire.
As the sun sets here at the Winter Solstice of 2023, I would like to draw attention yet again to what, in my estimation, is one of the most strategically significant battlefield humiliations inflicted upon NATO over the course of the Ukraine War: the progressively comprehensive defeat of their precision-guided strike missile inventory — ATACMS, HARMS, JDAMS, GMLRS fired from HIMARS, cruise missiles (Storm Shadow and SCALP).
The Russians have demonstrated that they can routinely shoot down ANY species of strike missile the US/NATO can field against them — not all of them all of the time, but most of them most of the time.
And they get better and better at it as time goes on.
Indeed, over the past few months it is increasingly becoming “all of them most of the time”.
As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported earlier this week:
“We are using air defence systems in a comprehensive manner during the special military operation. This significantly improved their responsiveness and strike range. Over the last six months, we have shot down 1,062 of NATO’s HIMARS rockets, short-range and cruise missiles, and guided bombs.”
No other military on the planet has previously attested this level of capability. The US does not have it, and is at least a decade away from developing it.
And, it is important to bear in mind that the precision-guided systems the US and its NATO allies have provided for Ukraine are representative of the best their own militaries could deploy in a conflict with Russia.
The current front-line inventory of US tactical ballistic missiles and sea- and air-launched cruise missiles would present no greater technical challenge for Russian air defenses than what they have already seen and defeated in the Ukraine War.
The significance of this battlefield development defies exaggeration. It alters the war-fighting calculus that has been assumed for many decades.
Against Russia at least, the Pentagon must know that the success of a large conventional strike missile package is far from assured. There is no doubt some damaging hits would be inflicted, but Russian retaliatory capacity would not be appreciably affected, and the subsequent Russian counterstrike against NATO targets would be devastating — for the simple reason that US/NATO air defenses are not even remotely as effective as their Russian counterparts. In fact, they are rookie league in comparison. They would be as utterly befuddled as was the Patriot system in Kiev the night the Russians launched a very modest attack against it.
It would also be logical to assume that China, if not as fully proficient as Russia in every respect, is very likely not far behind.
It is also increasingly apparent that Iran has made great strides in the same direction.
As I have noted repeatedly in recent months: for the declining empire and its decrepit vassals, there are no easy wars left to fight.
Stephen Bryen, who served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, currently is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.
The British are about to sign a Naval Security Pact with Ukraine, doubling down on their support for the sinking Volodymyr Zelensky-led country.
Meanwhile, Germany is upping its arms commitment to Ukraine, even though its arms stockpile is practically empty. Both the UK and Germany are emptying their wallets and their arsenals while the US is trying to do the same thing.
At the same time, the Washington Times, in an article by Bill Gertz, reports that Representative Mike Gallagher (R-Wi), who is the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has come up with some novel ideas to help Taiwan make use of otherwise obsolete weapons in the US arsenal, mostly because getting new weapons right now is nearly impossible.
Gallagher says “Recent war games simulating conflict with China over Taiwan revealed that the US would run out of long-range precision-guided bombs and missiles less than a week into the conflict.”
Bill Gertz reports that the Pentagon has a backlog of more than US$2 billion worth of weapons that Taipei purchased, held up by defense industry delays.
Taiwan is currently waiting on 400 Harpoon missiles and 100 Harpoon launchers that the Pentagon announced in a sale over three years ago and which may not reach the island until 2029.
The key point is that it will take five more years (eight years total) to deliver Harpoon missiles to Taiwan. It is even worse for other war stocks such as 155mm and 120mm ammunition.
The weakness and problems of the American defense industrial base pale in insignificance to the manpower shortages affecting most NATO members as well as the US.
Germany’s small army is lacking new recruits. Like the US, Germany has a volunteer force, but things are getting so bad the German government is thinking about some kind of conscription system.
With the current German government already rapidly losing political support, trying to get the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, to vote in any conscription system would be political suicide. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, understands the problem but has no solution likely to gain popular support.
Politics in Germany is sliding to the right, with the AfD, Germany’s right-wing party, securing growing voter support. The AfD has not yet taken any position on conscription, but it is a nationalist party that would like to see the sanctions on Russia lifted and does not support any European-wide defense initiative.
The total number of armed forces personnel in Germany had dropped to 181,383 as of the end of October, with thousands of vacancies unfilled.
The German tabloid Bild says that the German army has neither the strength nor the equipment required to effectively defend the nation. Yet, at the same time Bild was pointing out the military crisis, Germany announced it is sending a 5,000-strong brigade to Lithuania.
It will be stationed less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the border with Belarus. The brigade relocation will start in the second quarter of 2024, with it scheduled to reach full combat readiness by 2027, according to the German Defense Ministry.
But, says German Defense Minister Pistorius, “We do not have an army which is capable of defending the country against a military offensive, a brutal war of aggression.” The contradiction is self-evident.
Britain’s army is also a big problem. Defense and Security Monitor reports that “Long considered a world-class military, the British armed forces are now stuck in a recruitment rut, with planned personnel cuts still to be implemented under the Defense Command Paper unveiled in 2021. There are significant and persistent issues involving dilapidated military housing, depleted ammunition and poorly executed procurement programs.”
Sky News, as reported by The Defense Post, “outlined the scale of the problem being faced by the UK armed forces. It said that the military would run out of ammunition just after a few days in case of an armed conflict. The country also reportedly lacks the ability to defend its airspace given the increasing power and capabilities of today’s missiles and drones.
Additionally, full replacements for aging British tanks and armored vehicles are not due for years, thereby affecting its modernization drive. Sources claim it would take five to ten years for the British Army to be able to field a warfighting division with more than 30,000 troops and backed by high-powered tanks, artillery systems, and helicopters.”
Today, the British Army is smaller than it was at the time of the American Revolution in April 1775. The entire British military is made up of 142,560 members. The British army currently has 77,540 soldiers in all its ranks. This means that the fighting force itself is much smaller, likely around 30,000.
Britain has been Europe’s biggest booster of Ukraine in its war with Russia, emptying its high-tech arsenal to support the Ukrainian army. Britain also is providing field support to Ukraine and battlefield intelligence, along with planning special secret operations such as trying to destroy the $3 billion Kerch Strait bridge connecting Russia to Crimea.
Not much is written about the French army. We do know that French equipment has not fared well against the Russians in the Ukraine war. Its CAESAR (Camion Équipé d’un Système d’Artillerie ) has been a big disappointment on the battlefield, is subject to breakdowns and has been targeted by Russian Lancet drones.
France sent 18 of them to Ukraine, 25% of the entire fleet of these mobile 155mm gun systems. According to reports, producing new ones takes years.
Likewise, France’s AMX-10C RC Infantry fighting vehicle has proven to be a death trap for Ukrainian operators who regard its “thin armor” as inadequate for front-line use. Billed as a “tank destroyer”, it is often the one that is destroyed. In respect to tanks, after the bad experience with the AMX and the German Leopard tanks, France decided against sending its Leclerc Main Battle tanks to Ukraine.
In fairness, the US Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle and the German Marder tracked combat vehicle, not to mention the ill-fated Leopard tank, have all been destroyed in Ukraine. A US study by Rand Corporation, an important Pentagon contractor, says that France’s army is a fragile ally against Russia.
The US Army is also facing a recruitment crisis. Not only are there problems filling the ranks, but the Army is having trouble graduating capable non-commissioned officers (NCOs). NCOs are the heart and soul of the American army, they are what makes the army function.
Less than half the slots are being filled. Military.com says “The eight-week Army Recruiter Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, can train a maximum of 2,866 students across a total of 53 classes. However, data shows that it graduated only 1,336 in fiscal 2023, which concluded at the end of September.”
The Army itself is facing problems recruiting soldiers, this year and last. The Army was 10,000 soldiers short of its goal of 65,000 new troops over the past fiscal year. Last year, it missed a goal of 60,000 soldiers by 15,000.
The Army is trying to fix the problem but a lot of it is based on the strange WOKE approach of the Army’s leadership and myriad complicating issues, particularly since the Covid epidemic when the Pentagon ordered troops to get vaccinations or get booted out of the military. Now there are plenty of lawsuits over the Pentagon’s failed policy.
Beyond deficits in manpower and supplies, NATO armies lack combat experience, although plenty of “advisors” are in Ukraine supporting the Ukrainian military. Advisors never replicate what front-line troops experience so the learning curve may be worthwhile in boosting tactical and operational knowledge but not in warfighting itself.
Ukraine is also facing a huge shortfall in manpower and its use of draconian recruitment efforts is unpopular and could force Zelensky to resign. Impressed and dragooned soldiers don’t fight effectively and are only canon fodder at best.
Worse still, many of those who resisted the Ukrainian draft (some of them paid off draft administrators in amounts typically of $1,000) come from the Ukrainian nomenklatura, namely the upper classes or those with high-level skills or those from politically connected and privileged families.
The Biden administration argues that defeating Russia in Ukraine will protect Europe from a future Russian attack.
The counter-argument is that continuing to support Ukraine could lead to an expansion of the war into Europe. For a long time, the US and its allies have been playing chicken with European security by gorging Ukraine with weapons, advisors, military and intelligence support and lots of cash.
So far at least the Russians have not responded by attacking supply lines outside of Ukraine, nor have they stopped the flow of gas or other commodities (including uranium) to Europe and the United States as a response to Western support for Ukraine.
Most reports show that Russia has gained the upper hand in Ukraine and has started what appears to be a limited offensive that seems to be aimed, so far at least, in securing Donbas. However, armies often collapse quickly once military leaders and soldiers alike think they are about to be rolled over.
In Vietnam in 1975, US military leaders thought the Army of South Vietnam would be able to hold I-Corps, the northern part of South Vietnam, against attacks launched by the regular North Vietnamese army (NVA). It was a pipe dream. I-Corps folded in a few days and the NVA moved quickly southwards, heading for Saigon. The rout was on.
Fixing NATO is a very difficult problem because it has been pretending to be an offensive alliance and not a defense system. With its mission corrupted and its border with Russia vastly expanded (almost all of Eastern Europe and Finland), NATO’s ambition to add Ukraine is a country too-far because this time the Russians did not accept NATO’s expansionism goal.
If Ukraine capitulates, which is now what Russia says it wants, NATO will suffer a major defeat, the first defeat since the alliance was set up in April 1949.
