By Noah Robertson, Defense News, 5/21/24

The real story here is why the western expert class (exemplified by the numbskull Radakin quoted in the article) is so surprised at Russia’s resilience and resourcefulness.  There should be accountability for that kind of profound incompetence and solipsism in relation to the world’s other nuclear superpower. – Natylie

The Pentagon in March put a price tag on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking in the officer’s club at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin read a list of costs the Kremlin had tallied over two years: More than 315,000 troops killed or wounded. Over $211 billion spent. Some 20 medium or large ships damaged or sunk in the Black Sea.

“Russia has paid a staggering cost for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s imperial dreams,” Austin said, speaking before a meeting of countries that gather each month in support of Ukraine.

By April, though, Austin’s tone had changed.

At a news conference, Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, America’s top military officer, again detailed Russia’s losses. But they added another trend: Russia’s recovery.

“Russia has ramped up its production,” Austin said. “All of their defense industry really answers directly to the state, so it’s easier for them to do that a bit quicker.”

Brown put it more simply: “Russia has aggressively reconstituted its military force.”

Coming a month apart, the two sets of comments show a distinct change in how the U.S. views Russia’s military. While American officials have long detailed the costs of Moscow’s invasion for its armed forces and its economy, in the last two months they’ve started to acknowledge Russia is recovering faster than the U.S. expected.

The pace matters for Ukraine and those supporting it — in particular the U.S. government, which approved $48 billion more in Ukraine-related security aid this April. American officials say they expect that bill to sustain Kyiv for another year. But if Moscow’s recovery is a moving target, that could change.

Indeed, if the Kremlin keeps rebuilding its forces faster than expected, it could present a longer-term and perhaps costlier problem for the NATO alliance. The U.S. government’s National Defense Strategy calls Russia an “acute threat,” second to the “pacing challenge” of China.

But Moscow’s own capacity may change that.

“They are doing better than we would have thought,” a senior U.S. defense official told Defense News on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Three ways to rebuild

When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, things quickly fell apart. Enduring images of the first two months illustrated Russian frailty by showing rotting tires on armored vehicles and a convoy just outside of Kyiv that became a traffic jam.

This prompted self-reflection in the West: If Russia’s military wasn’t as powerful as defense planners had thought before the war, how quickly could it recover?

Even scientific methods to measure an opposing military are inexact, partly because those easiest to measure, such as personnel and equipment, might not be the most important given factors like corruption and morale. But estimates for how long Russia would take to reconstitute mostly fell into the five- to 10-year range, depending on how Western sanctions worked and the Kremlin’s own goals.

“There’s no question — and I think [there’s] unanimity in the intelligence community — it will take years for the Russians to build back up their ground forces,” Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said in March 2023.

Her comments came amid the annual churn of officials visiting Capitol Hill from winter to early spring. Around the same time this year, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, America’s top military officer in Europe, had a second opinion.

“The overall message I would give you is they’ve grown back to what they were before,” Cavoli said. “They’ve got some gaps that have been produced by this war, but their overall capacity is very significant still. And they intend to make it go higher.”

To some extent, the officials were discussing different elements of Russia’s force. When Haines testified last year, she was joined by the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, who said Russia was five to 10 years away from reconstituting. By that, Berrier meant it would take Russia up to a decade to rebuild the high-end equipment lost earlier in the war.

Cavoli, on the other hand, was discussing the overall size of Russia’s military.

Still, European and American defense officials, along with experts on the Russian military, told Defense News the Kremlin’s force is reconstituting faster than expected. They gave three main reasons why.

The first is the resilience of Moscow’s defense industry.

During the war, Russia has almost tripled its defense budget, according to Richard Connolly, an expert on the country’s economy at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. Russia is set to spend somewhere between $130 billion and $140 billion on defense in 2024, which is about 6% of gross domestic product and a third of the government’s overall budget, Connolly approximated.

But because costs and wages are lower in Russia than in high-income countries, like many in NATO, the Kremlin’s defense fund buys much more than it would in the United States. When that conversion is taken into account, Russia’s 2024 defense budget falls between $360 billion to $390 billion, Connolly estimated.

The spending trend itself has raised salaries. Working in the defense industry was once a middling career in Russia; it’s now lucrative and attracting more workers. Based on official Russian figures, which Connolly noted may be inflated, the number of people working in the defense industry rose 20% during the war, from 2.5 million to about 3 million now.

The funds have also gone toward procuring military hardware. Connolly estimates this share of the defense budget probably doubled during the war, helping Russia replace lost equipment.

Connolly said he doubts the state of Russia’s economy will factor into how the war ends. Moscow has a cadre of policy wonks guiding its country through sanctions, he noted, and they have lots of practice doing so. In fact, Putin recently replaced a general at the helm of the Defence Ministry with an economist.

The second reason is Russia’s ability to dodge financial penalties.

In 2022, the Biden administration and European partners passed a raft of sanctions meant to sink the Russian economy. These ranged from banning the sale of high-tech materials, such as microchips, to a price cap on Russian oil sales.

These haven’t worked, multiple analysts told Defense News. That’s in large part because Moscow has been able to reroute its supply lines through friendly countries.

Chief among those partners is China. From 2022 to 2023, trade between Russia and China grew more than 26%, hitting an all-time high of $240 billion, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Beijing largely avoided sending weapons directly. Instead, Chinese companies became a vital supplier of the items Russia needed to build weapons itself — such as microchips and small electronics.

This leads to the third point: Russia’s reconstitution has relied on surprising levels of support from other U.S. adversaries, who, unlike China, have directly provided military aid to Russia.

Since October, North Korea has sent Russia about 10,000 shipping containers, which could include up to 3 million artillery rounds, according to U.S. government figures. Russia has fired dozens of North Korean ballistic missiles since last fall, an American diplomat told the U.N. in March.

Iran has also provided materiel. Specifically, it’s sent a somewhat plodding attack drone known in Tehran as the Shahed-136 and in Moscow as the Geran-2. Russia has deployed swarms of these to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses, firing more than 3,700 Shahed drones, of which there are several variants, during the war as of December, according to the Ukrainian government.

When Cavoli visited Capitol Hill in April, he came with his own list of numbers: Russia’s GDP grew 3% in 2023, despite predictions it would shrink. It can add 1,200 tanks and build at least 3 million artillery rounds or rockets each year. And through a deal with Iran, Russia plans to locally build 6,000 drones by next summer.

A February report by the RUSI think tank, cited by the unnamed senior U.S. defense official, who declined to offer a full set of American figures, said Russia can produce 3,000 armored vehicles per year and had surged its inventory of precision missiles.

Its force inside Ukraine has also grown.

Last year, Russia increased the age limit for the draft from 27 to 30, which the U.S. estimates will add a pool of 2 million eligible conscripts.

And the Kremlin set a goal to recruit more than 400,000 troops — part of a larger target to grow the military to 1.5 million service members by 2026. To do so, Russia offered lavish signing bonuses and salaries, which in some areas are more than five times the average paycheck, according to an Estonian intelligence report.

It’s unclear whether Moscow already met this goal. But Cavoli said in April that Russia was recruiting about 30,000 new soldiers per month and had surged its front-line end strength to 470,000, larger than the Russian army before the war.

Is the military growth sustainable?

In early May, Adm. Tony Radakin, the professional head of the U.K. armed forces, sat down with reporters in the British Embassy in Washington. Speaking over cookies and tea, he discussed Russia’s recent advances.

The Russian military was making marginal progress, but still relying on Soviet-era inventories to restock and struggling to train its newest recruits, Radakin said. The force was on pace to suffer 500,000 casualties by the end of June, he estimated.

“That is an astonishing loss of life and Russian nationhood that has been wasted for such modest gains,” he said.

But a day after he spoke, Russia began a new offensive near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Such attacks raise another question: How long can Russia sustain its operations?

Aside from drones, much of its wartime output has relied on vast warehouses of Soviet-era weapons. To reconstitute materiel lost in battle, Russia is emptying these, repairing the equipment and then sending it all to the front lines — one reason the estimates of Russia’s industrial capacity vary so widely.

“A lot of people are reading some headline figures and then assuming that it’s all new production,” Connolly said.

As an example, he pointed to main battle tanks. Before the war, he said, Russia was delivering about 150 to 250 a year. But of those, he assessed, about 20 to 30 would have been new, while the rest were heavily refurbished.

So while Cavoli’s written testimony in April said Russia could make up to 1,200 tanks per year, Connolly estimated that, at a maximum, 400 of those are new or heavily refurbished. Everything else, he said, is pulled from storage, lightly repaired and then deployed.

The RUSI report from February estimated about 80% of Russia’s wartime production was actually refurbished, aging materiel.

“Of course inventory becomes very important: What was that number to begin with, and what was the state of it?” Connolly said. “Truth is, nobody knows.”

European and American defense officials made the same point. Russia has vast stocks, but they’re not unlimited, which could be why it relies on partners like Iran, Belarus and North Korea.

“When you are doing the reform and you are trying to enlarge your military, you are probably losing the quality,” a defense official from a NATO member state told Defense News, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.

That said, the war in Ukraine has been more about attrition than precision, the official said. In other words, it may not matter much whether Russian soldiers are using a 50-year-old T-72 tank or a new one.

The same questions of sustainability also apply to Ukraine, which has a smaller defense industry, an unreliable source of support in America, and less eligible soldiers. Earlier this year, Kyiv lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 to regenerate its armed forces.

Sitting in the British Embassy, Radakin said it would probably take about a decade for Russia to seriously threaten NATO again. Despite Russia’s refreshed troop levels, its invasion of Ukraine will eventually collapse, though he would not guess at that timeline.

“I don’t think it is sustainable,” he said. “But I don’t know at which point it becomes unsustainable.”

YouTube link here.

By Helen Andrews, The American Conservative, 5/16/24

One of the most serious allegations of war crimes against Russia is that it kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children during its invasion and sent them to “re-education” camps in Russia and, in some cases, gave the children to Russian families to adopt. Because the children are allegedly being Russianized with the intention of eradicating their Ukrainian cultural identity, this conduct qualifies as genocide under international law.

The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over these child deportations. In March, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the “illegal kidnapping” of Ukrainian children by Russia, and the nine Republican congressmen who voted against the resolution were excoriated.

But is the charge true? Lvova-Belova says the children were evacuated from the war zone due to concerns for their safety and that children can be claimed by their Ukrainian parents or guardians in person with the proper documentation. The Kremlin also disputes the number of children removed from Ukrainian territory: Kiev says more than 19,000; Moscow says it has 600 children from Ukraine in state care.

So which side is right? A story in the Wall Street Journal this week paints a picture of a tragic situation brought about not by the wickedness of Russian authorities, but by the inherent difficulties of wartime. According to the WSJ, people who have brought money and influence to bear on this issue with the goal of rescuing Ukrainian children have discovered, upon closer examination, that the situation is more complicated than they initially thought.

In July 2023, Qatar pledged millions of dollars and diplomatic assistance to help reunite Ukrainian children with their parents and guardians. “But the wealthy Gulf state downsized initial ambitions to return thousands at once after confronting myriad logistical and political challenges,” the WSJ writes. “To date, Qatar has returned approximately 70 children in several batches, most recently when a group of 16 were reunited with their families last month. Around 29 more children are expected to be sent home soon.”

“When we started engaging with the details, it turned out that getting each child is a long process,” a Qatari official said. One challenge is paperwork. Russian authorities will not hand over a child simply on a Ukrainian claimant’s say-so. An 18-year-old girl trying to bring home her 11-year-old brother was told by his Russian foster family, “I can’t give him to you like he’s a kitten.” The two siblings were orphans; the brother’s foster parents in Ukraine did not want him back, making the question of legal guardianship tricky.

Many of these children were living in orphanages on Ukrainian territory that was seized by Russian forces, who then evacuated them. Americans trying to understand this issue need to know two things about orphanages in Ukraine. The first is that, unlike in America, children in Ukrainian orphanages often have a living parent. It is common in Ukraine for single mothers or impoverished families to send their children to orphanages hoping one day to reclaim them when their circumstances improve. This makes it difficult for Russian authorities who want to place war orphans in new homes; they don’t know which ones still have parents in Ukraine who might want them back.

The second thing is that child trafficking in Ukraine is a real problem. The U.S. State Department, the European Union, and UNICEF have all named Ukraine as a hotspot for “institution-related trafficking.” Children in orphanages have been sold to American parents by unscrupulous adoption agents or taken away on false pretenses by criminal gangs, who then use the children in any one of their various money-making enterprises. (For a fictional treatment of this issue, based on real stories, see the 2014 novel Orphanage 41 by Canadian investigative journalist Victor Malarek, an expert in human trafficking and author of the non-fiction expose The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade.)

In other words, there are good reasons why Russian authorities will not release a child simply because someone in Ukraine claims to be his rightful guardian. The desire to reunite children with their relatives must be balanced against the need to protect children from bad actors. Those concerned with the welfare of these children should put their effort into meeting the criteria the Russian authorities have set for reunification in order to bring them home as soon as possible—and leave charges of “genocide” out of it.

By Riley Waggaman, Substack, 6/14/24

On June 3, US Customs and Border Protection officers seized Scott Ritter’s passport as he was boarding a flight to Istanbul en route to Russia. The former UN weapons inspector was booked to speak at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum before embarking on a 40-day tour of Russia organized by Alexander Zyryanov, the head of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation.

Zyryanov was also prevented from traveling to St. Petersburg: The Novosibirsk FSB arrested him just a few hours before Ritter was supposed to fly out of JFK International Airport.

While the confiscation of Ritter’s passport has received extensive coverage in alternative media (and rightfully so), there is a conspicuous lack of discussion in independent media about Zyryanov’s curiously timed detention.

I hope that this blog post will help remedy this odd information blackout.

— Riley

“We want to have you as our guest”

How did a businessman from Novosibirsk come to be Ritter’s point man in Russia?

In a July 5, 2023 interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Zyryanov said he had been following Ritter for the “last 2-3 years” and decided to contact him upon learning of Ritter’s “dream” of visiting Russia:

I wrote him a letter saying, “Scott, I invite you, I will show you Russia without embellishment, as it really is. We want to have you as our guest.”

And he replied that he really wanted to come, but it would be difficult. He wrote: “It will be very difficult for me to live in America if I just fly. But if my book about the history of relations between America and the USSR during the disarmament of the 80s was published in Russia, then it would be easier for me, there would be fewer complaints from the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI and everyone else.”

He sent his book in English. Our professional translators translated it, and then I spent six months looking for where to publish it. And so I went to the Komsomolskaya Pravda Publishing House. They successfully released the book, met Scott and took him to 12 cities and regions of Russia.

Zyryanov paid for everything himself. He claims he sold his “empty apartment” to finance the book’s publication and Ritter’s 12-city tour.

Ritter’s March 2023 trip was followed by even more ambitious plans: Zyryanov told Komsomolskaya Pravda that he was working with Ritter to bring influential Americans to Russia, including Tucker Carlson (who later traveled to Moscow to interview Putin in February of this year).

Ritter returned to Russia at the end of December. During his 24-day trip, he gave numerous interviews to Russian media, and recounted his visits to Chechnya, Crimea, Zaporozhe, Kherson, Lugansk, and Donetsk in a series of articles published by RT.

While Ritter was making splashes in Russian media, Zyryanov was reaching English-language audiences. With the help of an interpreter, he appeared alongside Ritter on Andrew Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom” program on January 11. A week later, he participated in a special edition of Ritter’s “Ask the Inspector” livestream.

“He’s like Tom Cruise in Hollywood,” Zyryanov said of Ritter while answering questions on “Ask the Inspector” about their time together in Russia.

Within four months of Ritter’s return to the US, Zyryanov had already organized another—and even more ambitious—tour of Russia for his American friend. On May 23, Ritter revealed that he would soon embark on an “epic journey” across the Russian Federation:

The announcement included a slideshow highlighting Ritter’s close friendship with Zyryanov.

“Friendship is the glue that holds relationships together, whether it be among nations or between individuals. […] I will be returning to Russia in June and July to continue the project of friendship that Alexander and I embarked on last year.”

A week later, Ritter began marketing a “challenge coin” with proceeds “going to help fund the costs associated with the making of a three-part documentary film, Waging Peace, which covers the three journey’s undertaken by Scott Ritter in his search for the Russian soul and the ‘real’ Russia.” The coin featured Ritter, his podcast co-host Jeff Norman, and Zyryanov.

If you visit ScottRitter.com you can still purchase the coin for $50—but you will not find any mention of the arrest of his “dear friend” who is prominently featured on the collectable. You will have to look elsewhere for that information.

“What kind of bribe are we talking about here?”

Zyryanov was arrested on June 3 and charged with taking a bribe in the form of “various services”.

Prosecutors claim he asked two businessmen to pay 9.5 million rubles to promote a film festival hosted by the Development Corporation. In return, they purportedly received “priority” contracts worth over 60 million rubles. Zyryanov is accused of using the arrangement to receive “personal PR” in the media.

Zyryanov expressed bafflement at the charges brought against him, noting that the film festival in question was intended as a Putin reelection campaign event that had been approved by both the Kremlin and the Central Election Commission. He told reporters who came to his court hearing:

How can it be a bribe to hold an event, namely the Family Film Festival, agreed upon by the presidential administration, approved by the election headquarters of a candidate for head of state and held under an agreement with the Central Election Commission? The media coverage did not contain information about my identity. As part of the festival, we showed 53 films to city residents, more than 3,000 spectators attended the event. What kind of bribe are we talking about here? I’ve held dozens of events, including sports and culture. Four times I organized the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Northern Military District, which was financed by businessmen. Can this also be considered a bribe?

Zyryanov isn’t the only VIP who has been targeted by the Novosibirsk FSB in recent weeks. His arrest coincided with the detention of several other high-profile businessmen and politicians in Novosibirsk, prompting media speculation that Zyryanov had fallen victim to an “intra-elite” feud ahead of next year’s regional elections.

At his arraignment hearing, Zyryanov denied his guilt and claimed that his arrest by the FSB Directorate for the Novosibirsk Region had been “ordered” by “one of the regional leaders”.

“Since November, they have been hinting to me that it would be a good idea to leave my position, because one of the leaders of the region is interested in promoting his protégé,” the head of the Development Corporation told reporters.

As one local media outlet explained:

In March, immediately after the end of the presidential campaign, the security forces revived the temporarily subdued machine of arrests of Novosibirsk officials , deputies, representatives of government and para-government structures. The number of arrests went into dozens when on the morning of June 3, law enforcement officers came for those involved in new criminal cases, among whom was the head of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation, Alexander Zyryanov.

The interests of several influential alliances converge and collide in the region. […] The claim that we are witnessing a conflict among elites is clearly supported by the words of Alexander Zyryanov himself at his court hearing, although he did not utter the name of the Chairman of the Legislative Assembly Andrei Shimkiv or Governor Andrei Travnikov. The head of the Corporation simply said: “since November they hinted that it would be a good idea to leave my position, because one of the leaders of the region wanted his protégé to take it.”

[…]

The development corporation works with commercial structures and is focused on attracting investment to the region. On March 15 and 16—that is, on the days of voting for the President of Russia—the organization hosted a film festival, Family Traditions, at the Pobeda cinema. What is the connection between investments, elections and this event? The connection is that the re-elected Vladimir Putin declared 2024 the Year of the Family, and the Development Corporation organized a film festival in support of the presidential nomination and presented it in advance at a meeting of the election headquarters.

Overcoming the demographic crisis is one of the government’s priorities. The business and political community in the region is asking the question: what did the Development Corporation do wrong by attracting private “partners” in support of the “Year of the Family”? By opening a domain with the self-explanatory name “family-filmfestival.rf”, you can read: “2024 has been declared the Year of the Family and the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation supports this initiative, therefore, together with its partners, it is organizing a festival where all family members will find something to their liking.”

Local media also collected reactions from regional politicians who expressed support for Zyryanov and puzzlement over the allegations against him.

Russian news reports about Zyryanov’s arrest pointed to the fact that the businessman had personally traveled to East Ukraine to deliver supplies to Russian troops.

Zyryanov will remain in pre-trial detention until August 2. The court denied his request for house arrest so that he could take care of his 78-year-old mother, who is recovering from two strokes. His alleged co-conspirators in the case were released.

“This is an internal Russian thing, none of my business”

Ritter has remained tight-lipped about his “dear friend’s” arrest, choosing either to ignore his detention altogether or employ ambiguous language while mentioning it in passing.

In his first media appearance after having his passport seized, Ritter had the following exchange with Andrew Napolitano:

Napolitano: Was I with you?

Ritter: No, you weren’t. Actually, you weren’t with me because I made a phone call to you earlier in the morning recommending that you not travel to Russia. And it had nothing to do with what happened to me and everything to do with what happened to our sponsor, Alexander Zyryanov, who from my standpoint tragically was placed under arrest in Novosibirsk on his way to St. Petersburg.

Here’s the clip: [Clip available at original article]

Ritter suggested returning to this topic later. They never did.

Hours later, Ritter participated in a livestream with his podcast co-host Jeff Norman.

About 25 minutes into their discussion, Ritter decided to promote a “challenge coin” (featuring Zyryanov’s portrait) that he was selling to raise funds for his trip to Russia:

This coin is not a symbol of a failed trip. This coin is now the symbol of resistance. This is the resistance coin … We need a war chest. We need to raise money so that we can do this trip. […] The Russian government is 100% behind us. They want this project to succeed. They believe in this project. They have affirmed that.

But Ritter made no mention of Zyryanov’s arrest.

Here’s the clip: [Clip available at original article]

Fifteen minutes later into the livestream, Ritter confirmed that he had advised Andrew Napolitano against flying to Russia—but said he wasn’t in a position to explain why:

This morning I called the judge and recommended that the judge not get on the airplane. There’s reasons for that and I’ll address those later when I’m able to address those. It has nothing to do with me or the judge or this trip.

The clip: [Clip available at original article]

Ritter’s most forthright comments about Zyryanov were made in a discussion with Jimmy Dore published on June 5:

The tour that I was going to take with the documentary film crew is sponsored by a Russian who I consider to be a very close friend, Alexander Zyryanov, and he’s the director of what’s known as the investment development agency of Novosibirsk. Yesterday morning I got a notification that he was arrested and charged with corruption. He denies the charges. This is an internal Russian thing, none of my business.

Here’s the clip: [Clip available at original article]

On June 11, RT.com published an article by Ritter that mentioned his Russia adventures with Zyryanov. An uninformed reader might deduce from the article that Zyryanov was a free man walking around Novosibirsk as happy as a clam.

If RT is your #1 place for Questioning More, you would never know that Zyryanov was arrested because RT’s coverage of Ritter being prevented from traveling to Russia makes no mention of the fact that Ritter’s Russian sponsor was arrested by the FSB.

My scientific research (“watching Scott Ritter livestreams”) ended on June 9 so if there have been relevant updates since then please let me know in the comments section and provide a link and the timestamp and I will update this blog post accordingly.

I have also searched in vain for an official statement from Ritter about Zyryanov’s arrest, but have turned up absolutely nothing. But again, I vow to promptly update this blog post if someone can point me to such a statement.

A few closing thoughts.

What the heck is going on here?

I have a few questions.

1. If Zyryanov’s arrest has “nothing to do” with Ritter, why is it that the Novosibirsk businessman was arrested just hours before Ritter and Napolitano were scheduled to board a flight to Russia, causing Ritter to panic and urge Napolitano to cancel his trip to St. Petersburg? The timing is mere coincidence?
2. Ritter uses his friendship with Zyryanov to promote his “message of peace” and encourage US-Russia rapprochement. You could even say that Zyryanov is a key part of the “Ritter brand”. Their relationship is supposed to serve as an example for Washington and Moscow. So how exactly is Zyryanov’s arrest “none of Ritter’s business”? That makes zero sense.
3. If Ritter doesn’t want to involve himself in an “internal Russia thing”—even if this “thing” involves his “dear friend” being arrested for highly dubious reasons—maybe he shouldn’t be selling coins featuring Zyryanov’s portrait? By doing so he is making Zyryanov his “business” in the most literal sense of the word. Or no? What am I missing here?
4. If Ritter still has the “full support” of the Russian government, is he doing everything in his power behind the scenes to secure the release of his friend, and will he use his considerable social media presence to shine a light on Zyryanov’s case, which is already facing questions in Russian media?

There are about 10,000 other questions that need to be asked. For example, how is it possible that a key player Ritter’s “waging peace” campaign was tossed into prison by the FSB just hours before Ritter was slated to begin a very expensive 40-day tour of Russia?

What does this mean?

I 100% condemn the seizure of Scott Ritter’s passport. As readers of the blog know, your correspondent is not keen on passports or other forms of cattle tags.

It’s true that I very strongly disagree with Scott Ritter’s assessment of the Not-War in Ukraine, but that is totally irrelevant. He should be allowed to travel freely and say whatever he wants. Is the State Department really so frightened by Ritter’s weekly prediction that the Russian military is about to liberate Odessa? If so, that is sad.

And it is sad that two friends are being kept apart by rival spook states. Or maybe something else is going on here?

But if Ritter’s friendship with Zyryanov really is supposed to “serve as the foundation for a similar relationship between [the US and Russia]”, we are in big huge trouble.

That’s just my personal opinion, though.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YpmVw_kdyXY?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

YouTube link here.