By Alex Cosh, The Maple, 1/4/24

In the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Canada’s directorate of NATO policy said that Ukraine’s notorious Azov Regiment continued to be far-right “fanatics” despite their integration into the country’s national guard, emails obtained by The Maple through an access to information request show.

Recruits belonging to the same military unit were photographed last year holding what a leading arms monitoring researcher said were Canadian-made assault rifles fitted with Canadian-made scopes. It is unclear which foreign military supplied the weapons to Ukraine, however.

The NATO policy directorate’s assessment contradicts claims frequently made by Azov’s defenders, who insist that the controversial military unit was de-radicalized after it was formally integrated into the Ukrainian forces — a claim often repeated by Western media sources.

The claims about Azov’s de-radicalization have also been a key part of narratives that portray those who raise concerns about the unit as carrying water for Russia’s invasion.

Besides apparent material aid, Azov also continues to enjoy words of support from some prominent Western media outlets amid Ukraine’s lagging war effort.

Voice of America (VOA), a U.S. state broadcaster that is regarded by critics as a pro-Washington mouthpiece, ran approving coverage of a protest held in front of the White House last November in support of Azov soldiers imprisoned by Russia.

The VOA article did not acknowledge the group’s far-right ideology, which some commentators and news outlets claim no longer exists. That view contrasts sharply with assessments shared among Canadian military officials back in 2022.

‘They Are Fanatics’

In March 2022, the Department of National Defence (DND) was facing media questions over mounting allegations that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) had trained far-right groups in Ukraine, including Azov, prior to Russia’s invasion.

In an internal email sent to Lt. Col. Andre Salloum, DND’s then-director of communications, Elana Aptowitzer, quoted “information from the Directorate of NATO Policy.”

Copied text in the email read:

“It’s true that Azov was brought into the NGU [National Guard of Ukraine], but we don’t train them because they are fanatics, and we don’t share their values … It’s true that the Azov has dogged us as an issue for years, but we should definitely not hide from the fact that we train the NGU because of a small minority in their ranks.”

DND confirmed in an email to The Maple that the ministry still regards Azov Regiment as a far-right extremist group.

“Our position remains that we are not – nor will we – be providing support to Azov and affiliated entities,” the ministry said in an unsigned email. “We continue to vehemently oppose any and all racist, discriminatory and hateful views and any groups that promote them.”

The Maple first filed the ATIP request in August 2022, but DND did not release the documents until a year later, and only after The Maple filed a formal complaint with the federal Information Commissioner. The Commissioner found The Maple’s complaint to be “well founded,” and said DND’s delays “undermine[d] the credibility of the access system,” echoing similar comments made in its investigation into an earlier complaint made by The Maple against DND.

Repeated Denials

DND’s repeated denials that it trained or provided support to Azov come against evidence to the contrary that has emerged over the past several years.

In 2021, the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese found that Canadian officers who were reported to have met with and been briefed by Azov members in 2018 did not denounce the group, but instead feared that journalists would expose the meeting.

In April 2022, Radio Canada and CTV News reported on further evidence showing that the CAF had trained members of Ukraine’s military who were reported to be members of far-right groups, including Azov, as recently as 2020.

In September 2022, DND would not rule out the possibility that Canadian weapon transfers to Ukraine had ended up in Azov Regiment’s hands when asked directly by The Maple.

Photographic evidence highlighted by Project Ploughshares researcher Kelsey Gallagher last February appeared to show Azov recruits training with Colt Canada C7 rifles fitted with ELCAN Specter optics. However, it is not clear who supplied those weapons.

The DND website stated that the ministry transferred 700 carbine rifles from the CAF’s inventory to Ukraine in February 2022, but did not list assault weapons, like the C7, in that package.

DND said it sent a $59 million package of small arms and ammunition sourced from Colt Canada in April 2023, followed by another $60 million package last November. These packages included assault weapons using 5.56 millimetre cartridges, matching the caliber of C7s.

According to The Armourer’s Bench, a blog run by two British arms historians, DND said in November 2022 that it had not transferred C7 rifles to Ukraine at that time. The weapons used by Azov recruits pictured in February last year may have been transferred to Ukraine by other NATO militaries that also use the C7.

The ‘Azov Debate’

Azov Regiment has been a point of heated debate since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Critics of the unit point to its ongoing use of Nazi symbols, and evidence of continuing links to Andrey Biletsky, a white supremacist, Azov founder and leader of the far-right National Corps political party. Until Russia launched its invasion, extensive reporting from Western media outlets documented comments from Azov commanders and members who openly endorsed neo-Nazi ideas.

Those who defend Azov, including some Western news outlets and opinion writers, claim that since it was integrated into Ukraine’s national guard in 2014, the regiment has been gradually deradicalized and today functions as an ordinary military unit. Focusing on the group’s neo-Nazi origins, they argue, lends credence to Russia’s claim that its invasion of Ukraine was necessary because the country was overrun with fascists and needed to be “de-Nazified.”

Last year, The Maple found that major Canadian news outlets adopted this position during the spring of 2022, when Azov fighters were engaged in an intensive battle against Russian forces in Azovstal. At this time, news stories began suggesting that the group’s Nazi ideology was consigned to its past, or the publications glossed over the issue entirely.

This culminated in a profile published by The Globe and Mail in August 2022 that critics said whitewashed Azov’s ongoing neo-Nazism and functioned as a piece of far-right propaganda, regardless of the reporter’s intent. The Globe reporter wrote that Azov “has a history of far-right leanings but is now part of the Ukrainian army.”

Writing in The Nation last June, The Forward correspondent Lev Golinkin accused Western media of whitewashing the neo-Nazi unit.

“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,” he wrote.

“But the truth is that this is an easily debunked fantasy spun out by a handful of propagandists.”

Speaking to The Maple in 2022, Ottawa University Professor Ivan Katchanovski told The Maple that the changing news coverage of Azov Regiment reflected a political calculation driven by a desire to promote Ukraine’s war effort, irrespective of inconvenient facts about some of the country’s far-right soldiers.

“This is also going to have a dangerous effect on Ukraine and potentially other countries because now, basically, Nazis in Ukraine are made into national heroes,” said Katchanovski.

Social media giant Meta also embraced claims about Azov’s de-radicalization, as it removed the military unit from its list of dangerous individuals and organizations last year. Last June, Stanford University hosted an Azov delegation, during which Azov’s neo-Nazi Wolfsangel insignia was projected onto the wall, according to The Forward.

By John Helmer, Website, 1/15/24

John Helmer is a journalist who has been reporting from Moscow for decades.

Not since Moses held out his hand and got the Israelites’ god to blow an easterly wind to part the Red Sea, has there been such a prodigious feat on that stretch of water. In the hours following the US and UK bombing and missile attacks on Yemen on Friday morning, the Kremlin ordered that a fence be constructed in the middle of the Red Sea on which President Vladimir Putin (lead image) has told Russian officials to sit.

The Kremlin order required the Foreign Ministry to reserve its condemnation of the attacks for the US and UK; ignore the Arab-Iranian alliance against Israel; and drop mention of Russia’s earlier commitment to regional Arab-Iranian negotiations with Ansarallah in the Yemen.

The reason is that President Putin refuses [3] explicitly to attack Israel’s blockade of Gaza and genocide of the Palestinians, which are the declared targets of the Houthi operations and of its political strategy. Instead, Putin authorized his spokesman Dmitry Peskov to announce: “We have repeatedly called on the Houthis to abandon this practice because we believe it is extremely wrong”.

This was not a repeat. It is the first time since the start of the Palestine war on October 7 that a senior Russian official has characterized the Houthi operations in support of Hamas, or called on the Houthis to desist.

Putin’s fence-seat has also required the Russian Navy squadron to remain at its Syrian base at Tartous, and to limit its naval intelligence-gathering to the eastern Mediterranean, not the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, or the Arabian Sea moving east. The upgraded Kilo-class submarine Ufa, which had been expected to transit the Suez Canal and head east to a planned Pacific Fleet deployment, has been ordered to remain at berth at Tartous. No fresh Russian Navy reinforcements have entered the Mediterranean from Russia’s northern fleets, nor from the Pacific Fleet which were last seen in India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh in November [4]. 

Instead, the exit westward through the Gibraltar Strait of the fleet oiler Yelnya on December 29 [5], followed by the fleet repair vessel PM-82 [6] are signals the Kremlin has ordered the Navy to keep its distance from both war zones.

The General Staff and Defense Ministry are keeping public silence on the Anglo-American operations in the Red Sea as they were monitored in preparation; tracked on launch; and their results recorded on the ground.  Instead, the Russian military bloggers led by Boris Rozhin of Colonel Cassad, the Militarist, and Rybar run by Mikhail Zvinchuk were reporting the aircraft and missile raids from 0130 Moscow time, several hours before the Associated Press, Reuters, and other western news agencies began their coverage. The milbloggers then followed the operations through the pre-dawn hours while the Anglo-American media remained silent. Almost in real time, the Russian sources were reporting the collaboration of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar for airspace transit and US airbase attack launches; as well as the role of the Cyprus airbases for the British aircraft load and launch operations.

Within 90 minutes, Militarist [7] reported “Yemeni sources: there is nothing new in their attacks, the same facilities that were bombed on March 26, 2015 were hit.” That was at 03:13 Moscow time. Fourteen minutes later Militarist reported [7] that, according to an “official representative of the Houthis: ‘An American F-22 fighter jet was shot down over Sanaa.’” (Min 03:27). These aircraft are based [8] at the US Air Force base at Al-Dhafra in the UAE. 

No western media report [8] of the first-ever Houthi success against a US warplane has subsequently appeared until the US Central Command (CENTCOM) issued a press statement, almost a day late, that “two U.S. Navy Sailors [are] missing off the coast of Somalia…Out of respect for the families affected, we will not release further information on the missing personnel at this time. The sailors were forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet (C5F) area of operations supporting a wide variety of missions.” If the “sailors” are in fact US Navy pilots, then the aircraft which the Houthis hit, forcing it to ditch in the sea, was likely to have been an F/A-18 from the USS Eisenhower. [9] 

By the time Moscow was fully at work on Friday morning, Rozhin concluded the raids had been a failure. Iran and Ansarallah hold the operational initiative, he said, and they are calling the US bluff.

“Previously, Iran could only block the Persian Gulf, which threatened a direct clash with the United States, as it was, for example, in the late 80s. Now [Iran] can block the Red Sea with the hands of the Houthis without risk to itself, offering the United States a hopeless war with the Houthis, whose religious concept includes a direct war with the United States and Israel.” (Min 18:49 [10]).

“The United States understands the game that Iran is playing, so they want to limit themselves to a demonstrative and ineffective PR strike, which should at least save the hegemon’s face and prevent Iran from dragging [Washington] into an exchange of blows with the Houthis. Therefore, even during and after the strikes, the United States declared its limitations and unwillingness to continue. But now the Houthis have the initiative, and they can force further steps by the United States, which they [White House] would like to avoid. To do this, it will be enough for them to hit several ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the next couple of days. This is exactly what Iran’s response may be, followed by a reaction to the expected actions of the United States, while the reaction, as usual, will affect the actions of Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria.”

This was also the General Staff assessment reported to Putin.

Peskov’s attack which followed on the Houthis wasn’t so much a lie as “empty, nothing”. “I do not think he is lying,” a Moscow source commented. “Peskov is reaffirming what Putin told Keir Simmons [NBC interview, June 24, 2021 [11]] – we are not giving high-tech weapons to Iran and especially to a non-state player like Hezbollah or the Houthi. Yemen has been a fratricidal conflict – the Soviets and Russians have always steered clear of Shia-Sunni wars. But the Houthis have changed their status within a matter of weeks after October 7. The Kremlin too has been taken by surprise by the turn of events. [Since October 7] discussions would have taken place with Teheran and messages would have been sent through Iran with embassy-level contact [with Ansarallah] in Teheran.”

Rozhin has also reported [12] the Russian military situation assessment that the Anglo-American targeting intelligence had been outdated, leading to bomb and missile hits on targets of no military value to the Houthi campaign against Israel-connected shipping. “The images confirm the fact of strikes at several Houthi sites. But the choice of targets raises certain questions: in particular, both the airports and harbours that came under attack were so badly damaged during the bombing of the UAE from 2015 to 2021 and have not been used for obvious reasons for a long time.” 

A combination of the long Russian New Year holiday, which ended over the weekend, and active Kremlin dissuasion with media editors has largely silenced the state press organs. It is also too soon for the Russian oil companies and Sovcomflot, the state shipping company, to add their assessments of the impact on Russian oil shipments through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the coming days.

Houthi assurances of safe passage which Russian oilmen have been conveying to the Kremlin were reported here [4]on December 20. 

In the statement of the Russian representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya told the UN Security Council last Friday there is no legality in the UN Charter’s Article 51 [15] nor in the Law of the Sea convention [16]  for the Anglo-American claim to “self-defence” in relation to commercial shipping at sea.

In the official US-drafted rationale for the attacks on Yemen, this claim was described [17] as “the inherent right of individual and collective self-defence, consistent with the UN Charter, against a number of targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. These precision strikes were intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of international mariners in one of the world’s most critical waterways.” 

Moscow sources respond [10]that the identified alliance is “absurd. The Netherlands, Australia, Canada and Bahrain did far less to assist the actual attack than Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar in allowing their airspace to remain open for the preliminary overflights of drone and manned aircraft gathering intelligence, and then for the aircraft which attacked Yemen. Oman, it’s worth noting, refused and closed its airspace.” In the official Ansarallah response, the focus has been on “the American and British enemy [which] bears full responsibility for their criminal aggression against the Yemeni people, and it will not go unanswered. The armed forces of Yemen will strike at sources of threat and all hostile targets on land and at sea. The Yemeni Armed Forces confirm that they will continue to obstruct Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine through the Red Sea.” January 12, 11:49 Moscow time.

Click on source to enlarge [12] and read details of the map locations and the satellite photographs of the ground damage.  According to gCaptain [22], a leading US-based maritime publication, “USS Carney, the formidable Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer renowned for its role in safeguarding ships in the Red Sea last month, triumphantly returned to its base in the Persian Gulf. In a ceremony held in Bahrain, the entire crew was honored with navy combat medals for successfully neutralizing 14 unmanned drones launched by Houthi forces in the Red Sea… Operationally, the world is dazzled by the US Navy’s success…There is no doubt that the best combat ships of the US Navy are effective.” 

The private Russian assessment remains guarded because the Russian priority – equally the Indian and Chinese priority – is to ensure that the exchanges of fire between the Anglo-American fleets and the Houthis do not impede or stop their shipping moving — and that is exactly what Ansarallah has promised. The western alliance of force against Palestine, and now against Yemen, has precluded any possibility of negotiations, either with Teheran or with Sanaa. Negotiations with both remain Russian policy.

Kremlin policy has also been to mask this; that’s to say, run camouflage while Putin reviews and reassesses what is to be done, and what is to be said.

In the late morning of Friday, Moscow time, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, began her briefing with an extended response [23] to the Anglo-American attacks. The Kremlin did not respond until Peskov briefed the press while Zakharova was still talking. The difference between the two did not become obvious until later, when the instructions were being discussed with Nebenzya at the Russian office at the UN in New York. Nebenzya did not start to speak at the Security Council until after midnight Moscow time on Saturday morning. His papers appeared to have included last-minute, handwritten changes to the typescript.  Min 2:39:00 to 2:48:36. [24]

 [25]

Left: Spokesman Maria Zakharova in Moscow [23].   Right: UN Representative Vasily Nebenzya in New York [24] — min 2:39:00 to 2:48:36. About Nebenzya’s 9 minute-30 second statement, there appear to have been last-minute changes in the text. He appears to have been ordered from Moscow not to mention Ansarallah, the recognized Yemeni government in Sanaa, nor Yemen’s right to regulate its territorial waters, especially at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, including its right to exclude, defend against or attack hostile military vessels in the Red Sea. Nabenzya mentioned the US attack on Libya in 2011; he failed to mention the Reagan Administration’s bombing and missile raid on Tripoli on 1986. Nebenzya was also under orders not to link the Houthi operations with Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which Nebenzya had discussed separately earlier in the same Security Council session.

There was no criticism of the Houthis in the Foreign Ministry briefing – and also no mention of the Gaza war. “The international coalition,” Zakharova said [26], “which should be referred to as the illegal coalition led by the United States and the United Kingdom, conducted missile and bombing strikes on multiple sites in sovereign Yemen under the control of the Houthi movement, Ansar Allah. Reports indicate that the areas of Sanaa, Hodeidah, and Taiz, as well as the port of Midi in the Governorate of Hajjah, were targeted. In response to these attacks, the Houthis have declared their intention to retaliate against US facilities in the region. These events further affirm our concerns that the US position in the UN Security Council regarding the Red Sea is merely a pretext for further escalating tensions in the region.” 

This was the consensus of the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and General Staff, the Security Council, and the Kremlin. But Zakharova then stumbled, revealing the extent of the disagreement which has developed in Moscow over Putin’s fence-sitting between Hamas and Israel, Ansarallah and Israel, and between what Putin has been calling terrorism and national liberation [27]. 

Zakharova was asked [28]: “The UN Charter gives the right to any people who are under occupation to resist by any means available. Does Russia recognize the right of the Palestinian people to wage, among other things, an armed struggle against occupation?” 

She answered: “Our support for a two-state approach to settlement speaks for itself. It has never been questioned and has a solid foundation. We recognize this right and reinforce our recognition with concrete diplomatic, international legal and international actions. I don’t understand why we should revisit this topic. This is not just a matter of our vision of this situation from the point of view of justice, law, and jurisprudence. This approach of ours, in addition to all of the above, is formed precisely from the point of view of the future of the region. No one has ever proposed another solution that could lead the region out of the terrible, terrible, long, protracted phase of the conflict. We really see that this two-state path is without alternative. Everything was tried. International players tried strength, as well as economic bonuses. What else?…Let’s not be led by the United States again, which imagines itself to have the right to single-handedly create the fate of peoples, millions of people at its own discretion. I don’t see any topic for an answer here, based on our basic position.”

The answer evaded the question. But just as significantly, there was no criticism of Ansarallah or the Houthi operations against Israel-connected shipping. For more details of how accurately the Houthis have identified these connections before launching their drone, missile, and boat attacks, read this [29]. 

Within minutes, Peskov reacted [30]. 

Moscow sources were asked if they have ever seen a statement from Putin or from the Foreign Ministry to substantiate Peskov’s claim. There has been none, they say.

The published record confirms this. A search of the Kremlin website indicates there has been no direct contact between Yemeni officials and Putin since 2013. In October 2019, in an interview with Arab pressmen, Putin gave his most comprehensive public discussion of his Arab policy. Then too he did not refer to or attack the Houthis or Yemen.

Instead, in focusing on Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Iran, he said [32]: “First, if anyone thinks that seizing tankers and attacking oil infrastructure can in any way affect cooperation between Russia and our Arab friends, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, that they can undermine or break down our cooperation with OPEC+, then they are profoundly wrong. On the contrary, we will forge ever closer ties because our main goal is to stabilise global energy markets. Technically, we need to cut global reserves to some sensible level, so that these reserves do not affect prices. We have made some good strides and whatever we have managed to achieve has served not only oil producers, but also consumers. Neither producers nor consumers want high prices, rather we all want stability in the global market. Let me be straight with you, all that has been done under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Overall, those were his initiatives, and we just backed them. Now we see that we did the right thing. We need to respond to any attempt to destabilise the market. Russia will certainly continue working with Saudi Arabia and other partners and friends in the Arab world to counter any attempts to wreak havoc in the market.” 

The date of the interview, October 13, 2019, followed the Houthi drone barrage which struck and damaged Saudi oil processing and storage facilities at Abqaiq and Kurais on September 14, 2019 [34]. The day after Putin’s interview he flew to Saudi Arabia and UAE. 

Two years later, on June 24, 2021, Putin was asked [11] by an NBC interviewer: “Keir Simmons: So, presumably you’d agree that giving Iran satellite technology that might enable it to target US servicemen and women in places like Iraq or to share that information with Hezbollah or the Houthis in Yemen so they could target Israel and Saudi Arabia, that giving Iran that kind of satellite technology would be dangerous? Vladimir Putin: Look, why are we talking about problems that don’t exist? There is no subject for discussion. Somebody has invented something, has made something up. Maybe this is just a bogus story so as to limit any kind of military and technical cooperation with Iran. I will say once again this is just some fake information that I have no knowledge about. For the first time I’m hearing about this information from you. We don’t have this kind of intentions. And I’m not even sure that Iran is even able to accommodate this kind of technology. This is a separate subject, a very high-tech subject.” 

No record of a reference by Putin to the Houthis can be found since October 7. For evidence of Putin’s preference for the Saudi and UAE leadership, compared to the Iranians, read this [35] and this [3]. 

The Foreign Ministry file is also empty of references to the Houthis, except that in 2017 the ministry issued a statement [36] conceding that the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen, and Houthi missile retaliation, were “fraught with the escalation of hostilities, additional civilian casualties and the further aggravation of the critical humanitarian situation in the Republic of Yemen. It is clear that this scenario runs counter to what is needed to reach an early and long-lasting resolution of the Yemeni conflict, and delays any effort to restore stability and national accord in the country.” 

This indicates the Russian view that the Houthi resort to force to defend Yemen against blockade was accepted during the Saudi war against the Houthis. The implication is that Arab force against the Israeli blockade of Gaza is equally acceptable in Russian policy. In 2017 the Russian policy advocated [36] negotiations between the parties – “UN-mediated talks based on a broad consensus between the main Yemen political forces.”

In May 2021 Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in talks with his Yemeni counterpart, was explicit that Russia was opposed [37] to blockades like the one imposed by the Saudis on Yemen: “Russia continues to advocate the full lifting of the sea, ground and air blockade of Yemen and cancellation of all restrictions on the supplies of food, medications and other basic necessities to all districts in the country without exception. We urge all parties to the conflict to strictly observe the provisions of international humanitarian law and renounce combat operations that lead to the destruction of the civilian infrastructure and civilian victims.” About the problem of salvaging the oil storage vessel Safer, and preventing a massive Red Sea oil spill, Lavrov said: “We urged the parties involved to settle the conflict over the oil storage vessel Safer that is moored near Hodeidah through cooperation between the Ansar Allah Houthi movement and the authorised UN agencies.”

The last statement on Yemen by a Russian diplomat was in January 2022 [41]; it was even-handed towards all parties, including the Houthis. In the 74 references to the Houthis in the Foreign Ministry archive, there has not been a single word of criticism since October 7 — and no reference at all until Zakharova’s briefing last Friday [42]. 

Moscow sources believe that when Peskov intervened after Zakharova’s briefing to attack the Houthi blockade-busting operations, he was misrepresenting what the Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry think, and what the Security Council has discussed. But Peskov, the sources think, was not exactly lying – he was revealing what Putin thinks in private but has not said in public.

The question Russian sources discuss, also in secret, is why Putin thinks this. The effectiveness of the Russian oil lobby, led by Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin, to assure bilateral security arrangements for Russian oil movements towards India and China, has subordinated Putin’s claim to be defending “energy security” in the Red Sea.

The extent of Russian military collaboration with Iran is top secret, and Putin will not interfere with it, not least of all because it directly affects Russian operations in the Ukraine war. The General Staff position can be inferred from the milbloggers, this time led by Rozhin who worked all through the Moscow night to report what was happening; cautioned against fake photographs and unsubstantiated strike reports; and concluded with this Russian military appreciation: “Now the initiative is with the Houthis. The next move of the United States depends on where and how they strike. The United States will not be able not to respond, because if they do not respond, it will look like weakness. Therefore, the United States will be forced to continue. Therefore, the following moves are actually a forced option.” 

Moscow military observers agree – this is a defeat for the US at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels.

“Iran will not enter into any war,” according to Rozhin. “This is the basis of its strategy. Iran’s goal, avoiding direct war with the United States and Israel, is to support their wars with their proxies as much as possible – in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. This is [Iran General Qassem] Suleimani’s strategy. It does not provide for quick victories and blitzkriegs – the task of Iranian proxies in the region is to draw Iran’s enemies into endless multi-year wars and exchanges of blows, in which the enemy gets stuck in the sand, without achieving any operational or strategic goals. This is the concept of strategic exhaustion, which fully corresponds to the basic provisions of the indirect action strategy described by [British strategist B.H.] Liddell Hart [43].  By implementing this strategy, Iran has achieved a lot — despite all the opposition, it has strong positions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine. While the enemies have been trying chaotic tactics with strikes against Iranian proxies, Teheran has consistently expanded its influence over the entire region.”

“Iran’s main action program now [is] support for the resistance in the Gaza Strip.

Support for Hezbollah strikes in Northern Israel. Rocket attacks on Israel from Iraq and Yemen. The shelling of American military bases in Iraq and Syria. Support for the withdrawal of American and NATO troops from Iraq. Support for the Houthi naval campaign in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. But do not expect drastic steps from Iran – it is playing for the long term, and is quite ready to convert its human and materiel costs into a strategic result.” — January 12 at Min 18:49 [10].

By Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko, The Conversation, 1/4/24

After the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, Kyiv finds itself at a major crossroads and with no easy options.

The demand late last year by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for the mobilisation of an additional 500,000 troops over the next few months signals both resolve and desperation. It will likely make Ukrainian domestic politics more fractious but it could also buy Zelensky time to reconsider his own endgame and how to get there.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s armed forces have had a strength of around a million soldiers, with continuous regular mobilisation compensating for losses on the battlefield. Against this background, the target of an additional half a million troops constitutes a significant increase of 50% above the current baseline. There are several possible reasons for this.

First, it could be an indication of the real scale of losses at the front over the past year. Ukraine suffered high rates of attrition as a result of relentless Russian counterattacks, including along the long stretch of frontline in Donbas.

There is also increasing concern over the sustainability of western support. Kyiv may be anticipating a need to compensate for an expected decrease in western supplies of arms and ammunition by increasing human resources on the ground.

Russia’s recent mobilisation of 170,000 new troops brings the total strength of its armed forces to around 1.3 million. So Zelensky’s announcement may simply be an attempt to level the playing field in terms of troop numbers.

Taken together, all three of these possible explanations also indicate a concern about the likelihood of a new Russian offensive in 2024. Whatever the ultimate Russian war aims might be, Moscow’s territorial claim to the whole of the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia is one of the more concrete – and hitherto unachieved – objectives.

With the Kremlin’s relative military strength growing, denying Putin this success – which he is likely to want to achieve before his all-but-certain re-election in March and likely inauguration in May – will require a serious Ukrainian defence effort.

In turn, this implies that the Ukrainian leadership is currently less concerned about strategic prospects, but is motivated by the need to mobilise all available resources for this effort.

The two complementary bills regarding on mobilisation which were submitted by the government to parliament on December 30 2023, indicate that Zelensky and his inner circle are serious about this. At the same time, if adopted and implemented, the new approach to mobilisation will also add significant strain for already stretched the Ukrainian state institutions and society.

Running out of men to mobilise?

As publicly confirmed by senior Ukrainian officials, large numbers of volunteers for frontline service simply no longer exist. So the government proposes coercive measures to ensure continuing enlistment. These range from high fines for draft dodging, to seizure of real estate and the freezing of private bank accounts, to the cancellation of passports of Ukrainian refugees abroad.

The latter group in particular, including an estimated 600,000 fighting-age men living in the EU, will become a key target of Kyiv’s mobilisation efforts. Addressing them directly in his new year’s speech, Zelensky didn’t mince his words: “You need to decide whether you are a refugee or a citizen.”

In parallel, there will be further efforts to put Ukraine’s economy on a war footing, as announced by Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. The planned mobilisation will be accompanied by a new economic strategy to increase the tax burden on individual citizens and small and medium-sized businesses, while social spending will be radically reduced.

Deepening social divisions

These measures are undoubtedly necessary from a strategic perspective – especially if Ukraine wants to regain the initiative on the battlefield. But taken together, these actions by the government have revived potentially divisive discussions in Ukrainian society about social justice, corruption and the social contract between elites and society. The level of public trust in elites is already low, and decreasing further, and the war is increasingly seen as a “war fought by the poor”.

What is more, the demographic trends in Ukraine’s society further exacerbate the unfavourable long-term prospects of the ever-increasing number of people living in poverty. Life expectancy of men has reduced from an already low 65 years in 2021 to 57 years in 2023.

Birth rates remain very low, with some demographers estimating a fall to 0.55 babies per family in 2023. Meanwhile, emigration of the most skilled and economically active population has accelerated since the war began. This leaves predominantly the poor to do the fighting while seeing their living standards further decline.

Forced mobilisation, the reduction of the rights and freedoms of the population, further economic disruption and social hardship contrast sharply with what is widely perceived as the corruption-fuelled lifestyle of an entrenched and unaccountable elite. Zelensky himself may not (yet) be directly associated with this – and his relative lack of success in rooting out corruption has yet to significantly harm his own popularity.

But several people in his inner circle have been associated with corrupt practices. If nothing else, more fractious domestic politics, including between military and political elites, will undermine Ukraine’s resilience and combat effectiveness from the inside, further playing into Russian hands.

Thus, Ukraine needs a new social contract between elites and society as much as it needs a re-assessment of its military strategy. Yet, neither are likely. Zelensky and his foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, insist that there is a path to victory and that they “do not have a plan B”. This uncompromising position is reflected in the current mobilisation plans.

More men, however, do not constitute a strategy. At best, they can be part of a strategy. To justify the undoubted sacrifice that Zelensky is asking of Ukrainian society, he needs to articulate a clearer purpose and direction. Simply reiterating the desirable – Ukraine’s complete liberation – will sooner or later come to be seen in Ukraine and in western partner capitals as a fantasy dangerously detached from realities on the ground.

Soviet Era Exhibition of Economic Achievements, Moscow; photo by Natylie S. Baldwin, October 2015

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 1/4/24

With the onset of the holiday week between New Year’s Day and Orthodox Christmas, Russians have been thronging the halls of the new Russia Expo, a collection of 130 colorful, innovative, and surprisingly upbeat exhibits spread over nearly 600 acres of exhibition grounds.

More than 4 million visitors have passed through the exhibits representing every Russian region, plus four occupied Ukrainian territories and Crimea, that make up the new Russia Expo, which runs from November to April.

That timetable also happens to coincide with the upcoming Russian presidential election campaign – with voting to be held on March 17 – in which incumbent Vladimir Putin is considered the top contender. After his first visit to the exhibition in early December, Mr. Putin seemed so pleased that he told a group of foreign ambassadors that they should also visit so that “you can see with clear examples how Russia is developing, how it lives.”

Some analysts suggest that the show is the very embodiment of Mr. Putin’s electoral program, aiming to knit Russia’s past and present into a single continuum of great achievements, with the emphasis on building a bright, unified, and prosperous future.

“The central image on display at the exhibition is the success of Putin-era Russia. You see it reflected in every exhibit, in a multiplicity of ways,” says Alexei Mukhin, director of the Center for Political Information, an independent think tank. “The unspoken message of holding this big show at such a time is to demonstrate that Russia can wage war and deliver domestic prosperity at the same time. Outwardly, this exhibition is a clear projection of Putin’s vision for Russia’s future, and he is positioned as the person who changed Russia and makes that future possible.”

A distorting mirror

The expo is being held on the sprawling grounds of the former Soviet Exhibition of Economic Achievements (known by its Russian acronym, VDNKh), which features vast green spaces and about 400 buildings, including many ornate Josef Stalin-era constructions that were built to highlight the former USSR’s achievements, including space, atomic energy, industry, and arts.

The original Soviet exhibition was established in the 1930s to convince the population that the hard times of revolution, civil war, and famine were over and a bright communist future beckoned. After World War II, it was repurposed and expanded to showcase Soviet achievements in science, industry, and technology. It was modeled on the concept of a world’s fair, but one that would encapsulate the globally isolated Soviet Union, with its 15 diverse republics supposedly united by socialist ideology and scientific dynamism. Following the collapse of the USSR, the vast grounds fell into disrepair, and many of the pavilions were used by commercial companies to warehouse and market a bewildering array of goods.

At every point, the VDNKh exhibitions served as an invitation to the population to come and embrace the state’s vision of itself, says Pavel Nefedov, curator of the museum.

“This place has always been supported by the state, and it owes its continued existence to that,” he says. “In its original conception, it represented Utopia built on a limited territory. For the visitors, visiting the exhibition was a kind of symbolic reward. It was always a mirror held up to the country, but not one that reflected things as they were, but as the state thought they should be.”

Even in the 1990s, when a veritable bazaar sprang up on VDNKh’s ruins, “it reflected the dominant idea of the time, a commercial marketplace. The communist symbols became vending platforms,” Mr. Nefedov says.

In recent years, the Russian government has spent considerable sums renovating the territory and kept it open for people to roam the grounds. But until the Russia Expo was announced, the place seemed without purpose.

Broadening the outlook?

The present exhibition looks very much like a Putin-era reincarnation of its Soviet predecessor, with entries from 84 regions of Russia, plus five annexed Ukrainian regions, and pavilions for several major state corporations. It exudes a more festive atmosphere than the old Soviet fair did, with updated presentations that include holograms, robots, interactive displays, and a parade of associated events such as daily lectures, seminars, and forums on a wide variety of (mostly nonpolitical) topics.

It’s not clear how much the Kremlin has spent to stage this show, but figures mentioned in the Russian media suggest it’s at least $60 million.

It has attracted huge crowds in its first several weeks, including large organized tours of schoolchildren. Nadya Titova, a journalist’s field assistant, says the fair appeals as a travel substitute.

“Now that our borders are closed, people have less opportunity to travel abroad, so they are turning inward, wanting to see more of Russia,” she says. “An exhibition like this broadens the outlook, and maybe gives an idea of how many interesting Russian tourist destinations are still accessible.”

The regional displays include attractions such as watching a simulated volcanic eruption in the Pacific territory of Kamchatka, taking tea in a Buryatian yurt, virtual river rafting in Krasnoyarsk, and listening to a robot explain the history of Birobidzhan, a Jewish autonomous region near the Chinese border where Yiddish is an official language.

The Crimea pavilion features a giant replica of the 12-mile-long Kerch Bridge – which has been the target of Ukrainian attacks – and an array of special effects designed to create the audiovisual, tactile, and even olfactory atmosphere of that annexed Ukrainian region, which hopes to become Russia’s premier tourist destination once the war ends.

The continuing war is a mostly silent subtext at the exhibits of the four Ukrainian regions that Mr. Putin declared officially annexed by Russia just over a year ago. The Donetsk pavilion features a “coal mountain” with a “time tunnel” that shows the region’s progression from czarist times, through Soviet-era industrialization, to its “trial by fire” as a separatist region at war with Ukraine and its projected bright future as a province of Russia. The half-occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson features its agricultural potential and nature reserves, which – left unmentioned – are not presently safe to visit.

“Not a coincidence”

Andrei Kolesnikov, a Carnegie fellow who continues to live and work in Russia, says the exhibition is an old Soviet form that’s been reinvented, modernized, and put to work to project Mr. Putin’s current vision of where Russia is headed.

“It’s not a coincidence that VDNKh was chosen for this purpose,” he says. “The grounds are filled with traditional symbols of Russian empire and achievement. The current message is that ‘everything is OK; these are peaceful times. Putin can wage war in Ukraine, and develop Russia as well. We don’t need the West; we can do it ourselves.’”

The Putin-era social contract, in which people pursue their private lives but stay out of politics, has been slightly amended, he says. “Now you don’t need to go to the trenches, but in return you must demonstrate your patriotism. Vote for Putin. Pay for a quiet life. Accept the new balance between war and normality.”

Yaroslav Listov, a Communist Party deputy of the Duma, offers a more prosaic complaint.

“To what extent do these displays correspond to real achievements?” he says. “It’s apparently costing a lot. Wouldn’t it be better to spend this money actually improving peoples’ lives than on expensive demonstrations of how life is supposedly being improved?”

By Gordon Hahn, Russian and Eurasian Politics, 12/17/23

Few seem to recall that the infamous, supposed Russian massacre of Ukrainian civilians at Bucha in the the second month of President Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military operation (SVO) occurred on the background of the promising March 2022 Russo-Ukrainian peace talks held in Gomel, Belarus and then Istanbul Turkey. Until recently, even fewer would recall because of Western media coverup that the talks were purposefully scuttled by Washington, Brussels (NATO), and London. These two events – the subversion of the Russo-Ukrainian talks and the purported Bucha massacre – may be inextricably interconnected (https://gordonhahn.com/2022/05/23/tentative-conclusions-on-bucha-a-small-my-lai-update/).

The details of the West’s likely scuttling of the 2022 peace talks have been revealed by numerous persons over the last year: then Israel PМ Naftali Bennet, then former Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, and former chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder. Bennet, for example, and then others stated over the last year that a truce had been all but secured, but the US stepped in to block it (https://contra.substack.com/p/us-led-west-opposed-peace-deal-in). Ukrainian and alternative Western reporting had long indicated this, including at the time of events.

In a new German report, the scale and seriousness of the efforts and the strong likelihood of a peace agreement being concluded has been reviewed; a likelihood of which, the same report demonstrates, was strangled by NATO, President Biden, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The report was written by a a formerly highest-ranking German and NATO general, a former UN assistant secretary-general official, and a German academic, who provide “a step-by-step reconstruction of the events that led to the peace negotiations in March and their collapse in early April 2022.” The report concludes: “In March 2022, direct peace negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations and mediation efforts by Israel’s Bennet created a genuine chance for ending the war peacefully only four to five weeks after Russia had invaded Ukraine. However, instead of ending the war through negotiations as Ukrainian President Zelensky and his government appeared to have wanted, he ultimately bowed to pressures from some Western powers to abandon a negotiated solution. Western powers wanted this war to continue in the hope to break Russia” (https://braveneweurope.com/michael-von-der-schulenburg-hajo-funke-harald-kujat-peace-for-ukraine).

More recently, a high-ranking Ukrainian official and negotiator at the talks confirmed the version offered by Bennet, Schroeder, and the German report. David Arakhamiya, head of the parliamentary majority group of deputies in the Rada from Zelenskiy’s party ‘Servants of the People’ and head of the Ukrainian delegation of negotiators in Gomel and Istanbul, stated in a November 25^th interview that Russia had nearly concluded a peace agreement based on the preliminary agreement on treaty framework initialed by Putin and Zelenskiy, when the West intervened. Washington and NATO countries refused to sign any agreement with Putin on security guarantees that were part of the Russo-Ukrainian agreement as Zelenskiy was informed during UK PM Johnson’s surprise April 9, 2022 visit to Kiev. David Arakhamiya also gave away the store regarding Putin’s war decision by noting that the Russians’ main demand was Ukrainian neutrality (https://1plus1.ua/mosejcuk/videos/1-sezon/mosejcuk-david-arahamia-podrobici-peremovini-iz-rosianami-u-bilorusi-u-2022-roci and www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2023/11/24/7430282/)—that is, no Ukrainian membership in NATO—which is point made for years and warned about for decades on these pages. This is why I refer to this war as the war for and against NATO expansion or the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. Arakhamiya’s interview conclusively shows once and for all that NATO expansion was the war’s cause. Arakhamiya can be seen in a video from the talks stating much of what he says in the recent interview (https://1plus1.ua/mosejcuk/videos/1-sezon/mosejcuk-david-arahamia-podrobici-peremovini-iz-rosianami-u-bilorusi-u-2022-roci; www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ughfLpMfQ&ab_channel=%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A0 and https://twitter.com/perni16812/status/1730233662107500981?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ). 

The Russo-Ukrainian Negotiations

The initial inspiration, putting aside Putin’s coercive diplomacy by SVO, came from none other than Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy, who asked Israel’s Bennet if he might contact Putin and request talks. Bennet did so, and Putin immediately invited him to Moscow, leading to the first rounds of talks in Gomel. Bennet noted: “In the conversation in the Kremlin, Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. …. In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO – a position he also repeated publicly a short time later. This removed one of the decisive obstacles to a ceasefire ….” (https://braveneweurope.com/michael-von-der-schulenburg-hajo-funke-harald-kujat-peace-for-ukraine). Thus, by the third week of March, less than a month after Russian forces had invaded, Russia and Ukraine had “’agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea’ (Cf. Michael von der Schulenburg: UN Charter: Negotiations! In: Emma of March 6, 2023)” (https://braveneweurope.com/michael-von-der-schulenburg-hajo-funke-harald-kujat-peace-for-ukraine).

A March 24, 2022 NATO summit, contrary to the aforementioned German report, did offer casual or cursory support for the negotiations but this paled in comparison with the one-sided, aggressive tone and policy changes (40,000 troops deployed on NATO’s “eastern flank“) in the overall statement, especially given NATO’s provocations of Russia in some three decades of an expansion threatening Moscow’s national security. According to Michael von der Schulenburg, former UN Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) in UN peace missions (Cf. Michael von der Schulenburg: UN Charter: Negotiations! In: Emma, March 6, 2023), the NATO summit decided not to support the talks. To be sure, NATO Sec Gen Jans Stoltenberg’s opening remarks and concuding press conference at the summit were devoid of any mention of the Russo-Ukrainian peace talks (www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_193612.htm?selectedLocale=en and www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_193613.htm?selectedLocale=en). Although there was no explicit NATO endorsement of the talks, there was an implicit one in the G7 and NATO statement following the summit, which noted: “Russia needs to show it is serious about negotiations by immediately implementing a ceasefire. We call on Russia to engage constructively in credible negotiations with Ukraine to achieve concrete results, starting with a sustainable ceasefire and moving towards a complete withdrawal of its troops from Ukrainian territory.  Russia’s continuing aggression while discussions are taking place is deplorable.  We support Ukraine’s efforts to achieve peace, and those undertaken diplomatically by Allies to weigh in on Russia to end the war and relieve human suffering” (www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_193719.htm?selectedLocale=en). 

By 29 March, 2022, during the negotiations in Istanbul mediated by Turkish President Erdogan, the Ukrainian delegation led by Arakhamiya presented a position paper, the proposals of which were transformed into a draft treaty by the Russian side and issued as the Istanbul Communiqué that included ten proposals.*

But by mid-April the Istanbul negotiating process was dead. Ukrainian papers, including pro-Maidan Ukrainskaya pravda, reported that during the UK PM Boris Johnson’s now infamous trip to Kiev on April 9, 2022, he communicated to Zelenskiy that Putin was a war criminal and needed to be pressured not negotiated with and that the West would not sign any agreement with Putin on security guarantees. Without them, Kiev would be left badly exposed. However, the Ukrainian paper also noted that Johnson said the West would sign an agreement with Zelenskiy, presumably on the same guarantees (Ukrainskaya pravda, 5 May 2022 cited in https://braveneweurope.com/michael-von-der-schulenburg-hajo-funke-harald-kujat-peace-for-ukraine). This suggests that some diplomatic ingenuity might have got around the impasse. Kiev could sign a ceasefire agreement and then treaty with Moscow and NATO signed a security guarantee agreement with Ukraine in which Kiev’s treaty was incorporated, bypassing any direct NATO-Russian agreement. At any rate, subsequent revelations, in particular Arakhamiya’s regarding the Johnson trip’s and thus the West’s role in scuttling the Russo-Ukrainian talks, demonstrate the viability of the German report’s account, despite some lack of sourcing.

Bucha

Despite the German report’s shortcomings, it poses one very important issue. The issue regards a possible connection between Bucha and the Istanbul talks is the timing. The German report notes: “As late as March 27, 2022, Zelensky had shown the courage to defend the results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public before Russian journalists.” While it might have been more appropriate to use instead of the word ‘results of’ the words ‘framework around an imminent agreement as a result of’ the talks, Zelenskiy in fact did support the now revealed Ukrainian agreement to neutral status (no Ukrainian membership in NATO) in a press conference on March 27, 2022. He said:

“Guarantees of security and neutrality, the nuclear-free status of our state. We are ready to for it. This is the most important point. This was the first point of principle for the Russian Federation, as far as I remember. And as far as I remember, they started the war because of it. It is now that they have begun to add points to ultimatums — but [at first] they talked about NATO expanding. And so [they said] that there is no bloc alliances — that, strictly speaking, there is no right to join alliances in the Constitution of Ukraine. And then we decided to go somewhere…

“’We do not agree with where you are going, and this goes beyond our agreements with the West, which have been in place for so many years. Therefore, this is the main issue, and because of this we are protecting our security,’ the Russian Federation said. Therefore, there is a point [in the draft agreement -GH] of security guarantees for Ukraine. And since they say that [security guarantees] also are for them, I understand this, and [the negotiators – GH] are discussing it. It is being worked out thoroughly, but I am interested that it is not another piece of paper a la Budapest Memorandum and so on.

“Therefore, we are interested in turning this paper into a serious treaty that will be signed…

“I’m going to move on now to the referendum, which will be signed where the points of security guarantees are, by all the guarantors of this security. It must be ratified by the parliaments of the guarantor countries, this is second. And there must be a referendum in Ukraine. Why? Because we have a law on referendums. We adopted it. Changes of this or that status… But security guarantees imply constitutional changes. You understand, right? Constitutional changes. These are two sessions. Therefore, it is faster to hold a referendum than to amend the Constitution” (https://strana.news/news/383576-zelenskij-prezident-zajavil-chto-sohlasen-na-nejtralnyj-status-ukrainy.html).

Thus, we have here a confirmation by Zelenskiy himself that the talks had led to an agreement on an exchange of Ukrainian neutrality for Russia and international security guarantees for Ukraine. At the same time, Zelenskiy insisted at the time that first a treaty agreement would be signed, and Russian troops would withdraw to Russia immediately as was their deployment as of February 21, 2022. Subsequent to the Russian withdrawal, a Ukrainian referendum on neutrality would be held, and then the constitution would be amended (https://strana.news/news/383576-zelenskij-prezident-zajavil-chto-sohlasen-na-nejtralnyj-status-ukrainy.html). Incidentally, Zelenskiy himself states here that the main reason for Putin’s special military operation was the movement of Ukraine towards NATO membership; this was, in Zelenskiy’s words “the first point of principle for the Russian Federation.” This is real-time corroboration, if one had forgotten or never known of Zelenskiy’s position back in March 2022, of the reminders and additional details – not ‘claims’ – offered by Arakhamiya, Bennet, Schroeder, et al. Thus, it seems more than coincidental that the talks disappeared upon Johnson’s visit to Kiev in the wake of the supposed ‘Bucha massacre’ (https://gordonhahn.com/2022/05/23/tentative-conclusions-on-bucha-a-small-my-lai-update/).

In summarizing their conclusions, the German authors note: “Ukraine’s decision to abandon negotiations may have been taken before the discovery of a massacre of civilians in the town of Bucha near Kiev” (https://braveneweurope.com/michael-von-der-schulenburg-hajo-funke-harald-kujat-peace-for-ukraine). Whether before or after, the question arises whether Bucha was a fake or an exponentially inflated atrocity orchestrated by elements in Ukraine perhaps in league with Western intelligence to justify or prompt abandonment of peace talks with Moscow. I noted in two article posts that it is highly likely that there was no Bucha massacre committed by Russian forces and that if any war crimes were committed they were few and may very well have been committed by Ukraine and/or Ukrainian-allied forces and then refashioned into hundreds of Russian war crimes for purposes of war disinformation (https://gordonhahn.com/2022/05/23/tentative-conclusions-on-bucha-a-small-my-lai-update/).

What I failed to note was that this likely Ukrainian fake may have been intended to help in or justify after the fact the scuttling of the onging Russo-Ukrainian Istanbul negotiating process as agreement appeared likely. From Zelenskiy’s March 27th comments, it seems the decision to abandon the talks could not have come before March 27th, and the clear abandonment of the talks after the Johnson visit to Kiev suggests the decision came on or around April 10th. Fighting raged in and around Bucha in March and involved both Russian and Ukrainian bombardment of the city, depending on which side was occupying at any particular time. Russian forces had full or nearly full control of Bucha for 9-10 days, from March 22^nd-31^st. On March 26th a phone number was provided on the Bucha city council (Rada) Facebook page for residents to report “humanitarian disasters”, “shootings,” rocket attacks, and the like (www.facebook.com/bucharada.gov.ua/posts/1836972983175764). According to Ukrainian sources, Russian forces remained dug in the Bucha and Nemishyev areas as of March 29th (www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-29). On March 30-31 Ukrainian sources reported that fighting continued throughout Bucha, Makariv, and Hostomel (www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-31). Then, as part of a goodwill gesture as part of the Istanbul talks, Russian forces withdrew from areas around Kiev, including from Bucha, on March 31-April 1. Ukrainian forces controled Bucha by April 1st.

The world did not hear a word about Russian atrocities or corpses lying on Bucha’s streets until after Ukrainian ‘clean up’ squads entered the city to clean out traitors and quislings on April 2nd. On 31 March 2022, Bucha’s mayor made a video to celebrate the liberation of the city. He called it a “happy day” and made no mention of civilians having been massacred by Russian troops or bodies lying in the streets (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1510789934827053056.html and https://web.archive.org/web/20220404062459im_/https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1510789777888804865/pu/vid/640×362/GuxBWwP7U-5tDrfa.mp4?tag=12). At the same time, a member of the Bucha city council, Katerina Ukraintseva, ignored the bodies on the streets in her first comments immediately after the Russian withdrawal but three days suddenly mentioned them in accordance with the new pro-NATO narrative  (https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses/1337). In an interview given to the media outlet Meduza (classified as a foreign agent in Russia) at the same time, a female resident of Bucha and member of its territorial defense unit (hastily formed volunteer units formed on the war’s eve and responsible for vigilante justice and human rights violations since the war began**), said that “the people lying on Yablonskaya died because of chaotic shooting.” Curiously, she did not report that Russian soldiers shot civilians during their occupation of the city (www.donbass-insider.com/2022/04/04/ukraine-the-massacre-of-bucha-a-ukrainian-timisoara/).

Then it was reported on 2 April 2022 that Ukrainian police had entered Bucha to flush out possible “saboteurs or accomplices” of the Russian troops (https://vesti.ua/kiev/politsejskij-spetsnaz-nachal-zachistku-goroda-bucha). They were accompanied by fighters under the command of Azov neo-fascist ‘Botsman Korotkikh. A Ukrainian police video of the bodies on Yablonskaya Street released on April 2^nd (when it was made is unknown) shows thin corpses with fresh, clean clothing not bloated with filthy clothing that would be the case for corpses on the streets for three weeks (https://archive.ph/HRtqx; www.sott.net/image/s32/642783/full/Bucha_man.jpg; and https://web.archive.org/web/20220404073351/https:/threadreaderapp.com/thread/1510590248140800003.html). This indicates that these are wounded and that they were shot very recently, not two days prior when Russian troops were in town. The video is taken from a military vehicle in the column, not the first vehicle in the column. An alternative possibility is that some or all of these bodies were placed on the streets by Ukrainian operatives, photographed by satellites (Maxar has ties to US intelligence), and then removed. When Korotkikh and his fighters videoed their entry into Bucha and drive down Yablonskaya Street, there were no corpses. Korotkikh’s fighters seemed to receive permission to shoot at males not wearing the Ukrainian forces’ light blue armband in another video, when they were moving on foot. Russian and its allied breakaway republics DNR and LNR wear white armbands. Korotkikh posted a video titled “The Boatsman’s Boys in Bucha”, which at the 6 second mark has the following dialogue: “There are guys without blue armbands, can I shoot them?” “Fuck yeah” (https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1510712264726396944). This would explain the white armbands on some 4-5 of the corpses shown in the above-mentioned videos, which are nevertheless being attributed in the West and Ukraine to a ‘Russian massacre’. Moreover, more of the corpses may be wearing the white bands than is obvious from the photos; the bands are not visible in the photographs because the corpses are lined up closely together and photographed from the side. The Ukrainian troops and militants, therefore, might have captured and killed white-armbanded civilians, regarding them to be collaborators of the Russians.

On April 3^rd, with Ukrainian forces, such as Botsman’s unit and an equally violent Georgian battalion cleaning up in Bucha, the aforementioned Ukraintseva suddenly changed tone, asserting the bodies had been lying on Yablonskaya since the “beginning of March” (https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses/1337). Had she suddenly gotten the ‘memo’ being delivered by Botsman’s men or did she just forget about the rotting corpses of some 20 fellow Buchanians shot by the hated Russian forces for three weeks? On April 4^th the New York Times published an article accusing Russian forces with having carried out a massacre without reference to any of the above. Satellite surveillance firm Maxar photographs, the NYT reported, purportedly showed that some 8-20 bodies of Ukrainian civilians shot by Russian troops were lying on Bucha’s Yablonskaya Street from March 9-11 to the March 30^th completion of the Russian withdrawal. Somehow, not one resident of Bucha reported to any authority that Russians had killed hundreds of civilians or photographed the bodies and sent them to an authority through the entire period from 9-11 March to the 30 March completion of the Russian withdrawal, including reporting the some 20 bodies were said by the New York Times and Maxar to have been lying on the street (www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html).

On April 11^th NYT published a more detailed and comprehensive report that attributed numerous deaths in Bucha to Russian forces, sometimes with evidence sometimes not. The deaths for which evidence of some sort was presented for perhaps 10-20 victims (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/11/world/europe/bucha-terror.html).

A French aide worker and former French marine, Adrien Boucquet, who was in Bucha in March for some three weeks and has been assiduously ignored by NYT and all Western media, given an interview in May 2022 to French media. He states that he saw only Ukrainians, seemingly Azov militants, committing war crimes in Bucha, including executions of Russian officers and shooting Russian non-officer prisoners in the knees. Although he suspects the Russians did commit war crimes in Bucha, he personally saw only Ukrainians committing war crimes (https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses/3705). The NYT continued to report on the Bucha events in December 2022, but nothing in it is said of Mr. Boucquet or demonstrates massive Russian atrocities, certainly nothing amounting to even a hundred deaths.

CONCLUSION

Ukrainian activity in Bucha has never been investigated by any agency with resources and access sufficient to clarify the role of its units entering Bucha on April 1, 2022. Moreover, neither Ukrainian, Western, or international actors have published a detailed list of hundreds of killed in Bucha with names attached to time, place, and cause of death and other evidence as to any perpetrator.

I remain inclined to conclude that there likely was a cycle of some isolated Russian and some isolated Ukrainian war crimes, amounting to a total of less than one hundred intentionally caused deaths: i.e., murders. The Ukrainians’ victims then were added to Putin’s account by Kiev and Washington in an attempt to justify rejection of a Ukrainian treaty with Moscow and security guarantees for Kiev under the Russo-Ukrainian then treaty being negotiated. It needs to be noted that internal divisions in Kiev also might have helped undermine the process, and one faction might have produced the Bucha distortions. Recall that Zelenskiy’s advisor Mikhail Podolyak was already promoting the Western fiction that soon ‘Putin’ would attack Poland, the Baltic states, and Kazakhstan (https://strana.news/news/383380-mikhail-podoljak-v-ofise-prezidenta-prohnozirujut-ahressiju-rossii-k-druhim-stranam.html). Recall further that one of Ukraine’s negotiators was killed while in the hands of Ukraine’s secret police, the SBU, during the initial talks in Gomel, which were soon moved to Turkey. Most likely, Zelenskiy eagerly consumed if not ordered a local Ukrainian hardliners’ production because to one or extent he was open or already inclined to abandon negotiations with Moscow perhaps again caving in to pressure from Ukraine’s influential ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists. Certainly, the Zelenskiy Maidan regime’s long record of falsifications and fakes supports at least the latter take (https://gordonhahn.com/2022/04/15/kvartal-22-zelenskiys-simulacra/; https://gordonhahn.com/2022/01/02/zelenskiys-theater-of-simulacra-update-2/; https://gordonhahn.com/2023/01/20/developments-in-the-nato-russian-ukrainian-war/; and https://gordonhahn.com/2021/12/03/zelenskiys-theater-of-simulacra-as-coup-hoax-and-the-activation-of-bad-actors-in-and-around-ukraine/).

Whether Zelenskiy was duped into buying a simulacra production at Bucha concocted by Ukrainian and Western intelligence to convince him to continue with war may never be known. US CIA-tied media such as The New York Times were certainly curiously prompt in providing a narrative, in particular satellite ‘evidence’, just two days after the first reports of atrocities. Perhaps time will yield new revelations helping us to clarify the truth about which side wanted war more and about what precisely was happening in Bucha in March and early April 2022 and who was responsible for the tragic, senseless, and vicious killing there.

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*The Istanbul Communique’s ten proposals: (1) Ukraine would declare itself a neutral, non-aligned, and non-nuclear state in exchange for international legal guarantees; (2) security guarantees for Ukraine would not extend to Crimea, Sevastopol, or areas in the Donbas to be negotiated; (3) Ukrainian commitments not to join any military alliance or to host any foreign military bases or troops, with any international military exercises possible only with the consent of the security guarantor-states, which would declare their intent to support Ukrainian membership in the European Union; (4) as an internationally recognized neutral state, in the event of a military attack on Ukraine the guarantor-state are to implement immediately necessary individual or joint measures, such as establishment of a no-fly zone, weapons provision, of necessary weapons, or the use of armed force in order to restore and maintain Ukraine’s security and neutral status; (5) any attack on Ukraine and response to it will be reported to the UN Security Council, with response action ceasing once the UN Security Council has taken measures to restore and maintain international peace and security; (6) in order to exclude provocations, mechanisms for fulfilling Ukraine’s security guarantees would be developed on the basis of consultations between Ukraine and the guarantor-states; (7) the treaty would enter into force after (1) a national referendum approving Ukraine’s permanent neutral status, the incorporation of relevant amendments into Ukraine’s constitution, and the treaty’s ratification by the parliaments of Ukraine and the guarantor-states; (8) a 15-year period for Ukrainian-Russian talks on issues related to Crimea and Sevastopol; (9) continuing consultations involving other guarantor states to prepare and agree on provisions in a treaty on security guarantees for Ukraine, ceasefire mechanisms, withdrawal of troops and paramilitary formations, the creation and protection of safe humanitarian corridors, and the exchange of bodies and release of prisoners of war and interned civilians; and (10) agreement by the parties on the possibility of a meeting between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia for signing the treaty and/or taking political decisions on unresolved issues.”