Russia Matters, 7/26/24

1. Since last autumn, Ukraine’s armed forces have been going steadily backward and things have become “very difficult” for the ZSU. This follows from Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi’s interview with the Guardian. In the interview, Syrskyi acknowledged that the Ukrainian forces are outgunned and outmanned, warning that Moscow plans to boost its fighting force in Ukraine to 690,000 by the end of 2024. Syrskyi insisted, however, that Russia’s recent creeping advances were “tactical” ones—local gains. The latter included this week the capture of Pishchane in the Kharkiv region and Prohres in the Donetsk region. The Russian military claimed control of these settlements on July 21, and Ukraine’s DeepState OSINT project’s map then appeared to show Russian forces in control of them as of July 25. The Russian Defense Ministry also claimed this week that its forces had captured the villages of Andriivka in the eastern Luhansk region and Ivano-Dariivka in the Donetsk region, but the DeepState OSINT project’s map showed Russian forces not in full control of either Andriivka or Ivano-Dariivka as of July 25.
2. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top adviser Mykhailo Podolyak asserted this week that signing an agreement with Russia to stop the war with Ukraine would amount to signing a deal with the devil. It remains unclear how Podolyak’s July 25 comments can be reconciled with Zelenskyy’s recent announcement that a second Ukraine peace summit should include officials from Russia. In addition to Podolyak’s comments, expectations of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks have also been dimmed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s statement to his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Beijing on July 24 that the time was “not yet ripe” for peace talks to end the war. Meanwhile, former president Donald Trump told Fox News that he had told Zelenskyy the following: “This is a war machine you’re facing. That’s what they (the Russians) do they fight wars. They beat Hitler. They beat Napoleon.” “We got to get this war over with,” Trump told Zelenskyy, according to Reuters.
3. Russia and China have flown a joint strategic bomber patrol near Alaska for the first time, according to FT. U.S. and Canadian fighter jets detected, tracked and intercepted two Russian Tu-95 and two Chinese H-6 aircraft on July 24. The interception occurred three days after Russia said it scrambled its own fighter jets as two U.S. strategic bombers approached Russia’s border at the Barents Sea in the Arctic, according to RFE/RL. It’s “not a surprise to us,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said of the Russian-Chinese patrol, according to Bloomberg. Austin’s comments came less than a week after the Pentagon had unveiled a new Arctic Strategy that commits the U.S. to expanding its military readiness and surveillance in the region because of heightened Chinese and Russian interest coupled with new risks brought on by accelerating climate change, Bloomberg reported.
4. Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the U.S. presidential race and support his VP Kamala Harris has Russian influentials divided on whether a Democrat can defeat the GOP’s DonaldTrump in November, according to RM’s review of commentary by Russian influentials on this development. Boris Mezhuev, a Moscow-based political scientist, told pro-Kremlin portal Vzglyad in reference to Harris: “I think her prospects can be described as positive. The gap in ratings with Donald Trump is only a few percent.” According to Russian foreign policy veteran Sen. Alexey Pushkov, however, “in the battle for the presidency, Trump defeated Biden ahead of schedule.” Pushkov’s colleague, and deputy chairman of the Russian Senate, Konstantin Kosachev, also believes Trump is more likely to win. In contrast, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “nothing good can be expected” when asked what the Kremlin expects from the U.S. presidential elections.
5. Real wages have grown by almost 14% in Russia, and the consumption of goods and services by around 25%, FT reported, citing the Russian state statistics agency. A further bump in real wages of up to 3.5% is expected this year, alongside an expected 3% jump in real disposable income, according to Russia’s Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting, again as cited by FT’s article, “Russia’s surprising consumer boom.”