Russia Matters, 10/25/24

Russia in Review, Oct. 18-25, 2024

5 Things to Know

1. Russia hosted the first BRICS summit since the group’s expansion to nine members with leaders from 32 countries, including China and India, as well as the U.N. General Secretary, participating in the event that took place in Kazan this week. The Oct. 22–24 summit, which has become the largest geopolitical event hosted by Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, symbolized Kremlin’s efforts to promote a multipolar world order as an alternative to U.S. dominance. One key item on the summit’s agenda was discussion of Russia’s “BRICS Bridge” proposal, aiming to create a blockchain-based payment system to bypass the U.S. dollar. However, practical progress on implementing Russia’s financial proposals was reportedly limited, as countries face U.S. pressure not to collaborate with Russia’s financial system. Putin, Xi and some other leaders of the BRICS countries’ would like this group to become a competitor to Western-led international organizations, while others, such as Modi, are careful to avoid turning the group into an alternative to global organizations. Lack of consensus on the issue is reflected in the Kazan summit’s declaration. It contains 20 references to multipolarity and multilateralism, calling for a more just world order. The declaration’s signatories also offer some implicit criticism of the West by asserting that “we are deeply concerned about the disruptive effect of unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions, on the world economy, international trade and the achievement of the sustainable development goals.” However, while shaming, the declaration doesn’t name any particular group of countries.* 
2. Some 1,500 servicemen of North Korea’s Eleventh Army, an elite unit known as the “Storm Corps,” are undergoing training in Russia as part of a 10,000–12,000-strong unit that will be tasked with helping Russia to re-take parts of its Kursk region held by Ukrainian armed forces, according to South Korean intelligence as cited by Bloomberg and FT. The balance of forces in this region, where the Ukrainian army has already had to cede up to half of its gains, is already reportedly tilting slowly in Russia’s favor. U.S. officials have earlier this week acknowledged the presence of North Korean servicemen in Russia, but have not given any hints on whether and how Ukraine’s allies may respond if the DPRK personnel are employed to fight on Russia’s side. Meanwhile, Putin has appeared to acknowledge that North Korean troops had been deployed to his country, according to NYT. Alluding to the DPRK-RF treaty, which has a mutual assistance clause, Putin said on Oct. 24 that he “never doubted at all that the North Korean leadership takes our agreements seriously.”¹
3. A U.S. official told Fox News that America’s Intelligence Committee (IC) and Department of Defense (DOD) have recommended against modifying a U.S. policy that would allow Ukraine to strike targets deep within Russia using U.S.-made long-range missiles. According to the IC and DOD analysis, a change in policy would not have a strategic impact nor would it change the course of the war. In addition, “[i]t would be irresponsible if we didn’t take into account what Russia would do,” the official said. Russia is a “nuclear power capable of doing very bad things both to Ukraine and to the U.S.,” Fox News quoted the U.S. official as saying shortly after the Biden administration had announced a new $400 million shipment of arms to Ukraine. The new package includes ammunition for missile and artillery systems, armored personnel carriers, and satellite communication equipment, according to ISW.
4. Russia is open to a “reasonable compromise” but won’t make any concessions to end its war in Ukraine, Putin said in a TV interview that aired after he completed hosting the BRICS summit in Kazan. “We are ready to make reasonable compromises, but I don’t want to go into details right now because there are no substantive negotiations,” Putin was quoted by Bloomberg as saying in this TV interview broadcast Oct. 25. One day prior to the broadcast, Putin had told a BRICS summit press conference that “We are ready to consider any options for peace agreements, based on the realities that are developing on the ground,” repeating his earlier demands that Ukraine accept Russia’s land grabs. Last week, Putin said Russia is ready to hold a dialogue on a peaceful settlement, but only based on draft agreements Russian and Ukrainian negotiations discussed in Istanbul in spring 2022.
5. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that if Russia and Ukraine can agree to refrain from attacking each others’ energy infrastructure, it could lead to the cessation of hostilities and peace talks, FT reported. “We saw during the first [peace] summit that there could be a decision on energy security. In other words: we do not attack their energy infrastructures, they don’t attack ours. Could this lead to the end of the war’s hot phase? I think so,” the Ukrainian leader was quoted by this U.K. newspaper as saying.

By Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism, 8/8/24

Poison pill noun

a financial tactic or provision used by a company to make an unwanted takeover prohibitively expensive or less desirable

-Merriam Webster

Yours truly must confess to having overlooked a critical component of Putin’s proposed peace terms, which he articulated on June 14, and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov just reiterated in an exclusive interview to Newsweek, which was his position on sanctions. Admittedly, Putin included it almost as an afterthought.

First, let’s look at Lavrov’s recap, since it’s more compact than Putin’s formulation (which Putin set forth in two places in his speech, so it was not a tidy, self-contained list). From Newsweek:

“On 14 June, President Vladimir Putin listed prerequisites for the settlement as follows: complete AFU withdrawal from the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic], LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic], Zaporozhye and Kherson Oblasts; recognition of territorial realities as enshrined in the Russian Constitution; neutral, non-bloc, non-nuclear status for Ukraine; its demilitarization and denazification; securing the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens; and removal of all sanctions against Russia.”

Aside from Putin setting forth all these issues, including recognition of the four oblasts plus Crimea as being part of Russia, in his June 14 speech, important media outlets also stated the key points (see for instance the Anadolu Agency writeup).

We will skip over the fact that Putin warned, not long after the Istanbul talks collapses, that the longer the war went on, the harder it would become to negotiate with Russia. By implication, just by virtue of Putin’s last offer being made in June and it now being October, with Russia having made considerable breakthroughs on the ground, that Russia would insist on even tougher terms now. That is confirmed by Russia’s position that it would not negotiate with Ukraine at all as long as it has forces in Russia. And many commentators have said opinion in Russia hardened even more against Ukraine after the Kursk invasion, and more citizens wanting Russia to fully subdue Ukraine and dictate terms that before.

Currently, Western commentators are focusing on what is sure to continue to an area of no bargaining overlap: that of Ukraine neutrality and foreswearing membership in NATO. That was tentatively agreed in Istanbul in March-April 2022 because the US and NATO were allowing Ukraine the appearance of autonomy. That is no longer very much the case. NATO and other Western officials now regularly yammer that Russia has no business deciding whether any country joins NATO. Of course, a Ukraine under different management (including most Banderites dead or run out of the country) could but the US and NATO would not give any security guarantees. Some Western pundits and officials are engaging in new versions of cope, such as advocating Ukraine cede the Russian-occupied land (temporarily!) for NATO membership. Amusingly, Zelensky and the Azov types are incandescent.

The part of Putin’s proposal that I saw as particularly cheeky but got comparatively little attention in the Western press was the condition that Ukraine withdraw from all of the four contested oblasts, which goes beyond what Russia occupies and that that be recognized as Russian territory. For those who have not been paying careful attention, the Banderites have threatened Zelensky if he gives up any part of Ukraine.

From the Kremlin translation of the Meeting with Foreign Ministry senior officials:

“Certainly, the rights, freedoms, and interests of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine must be fully protected. The new territorial realities, including the status of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions as parts of the Russian Federation, should be acknowledged. These foundational principles need to be formalised through fundamental international agreements in the future. Naturally, this entails the removal of all Western sanctions against Russia as well.”

You will see that Putin goes from agreement terms that can be granted by Ukraine alone, to ones to be granted by other countries, admittedly down the road. Even if a future Ukraine agrees to recognize the four oblasts and Crimea as part of Russia, it seems well-nigh impossible that the US and EU would ever concede that. However, most BRICS members probably would, so that would confer considerable legitimacy

It’s thus odd to see Putin, who obviously know what he is doing, toss in the idea of reversing all Collective West sanctions almost as an afterthought. These were formally imposed on a state by state basis. The US, UK, EU, Australia, Japan and South Korea all implemented sanctions packages. That included the seizure of Russian central bank assets by the EU, US, and UK, with the EU holding the bulk of the frozen lucre.

Let’s engage in some thought experiments. The EU has been desperately trying to “Trump-proof” various Ukraine arrangements. If Trump were to become President and be willing to meet Russia way more than halfway and give some sanctions relief, you can be sure that the EU would do everything in its power to undermine Trump, particularly where it has more degrees of freedom, as with the sanctions. Remember also that Ursula von der Leyen is about as hysterically anti-Russian as the Baltic states, and has filled the top ranks of the Commission with female uber-hawks. EU experts please pipe up. I assume modifying or ending the sanctions would require a unanimous EU vote, and not just a qualified majority, which amounts to na ga happen.

Mind you, I expect this implacable rejection to continue even when it became more self-destructive than now. What if things get so ugly in the Middle East that oil goes over $120 a barrel and stays there? Yes, China will be hurt, but so too would be the recessionary EU. But it seems vanishingly unlikely that they’d roll back the Russian oil sanctions, or that Germany would accept gas from the still-working one of four original Nordstream 2 pipelines.

Given all that, one has to think that Putin clearly understood that his Western potential interlocutors would reject not just some but all of his deal points with prejudice. So why make an offer that the other side is set to reject? First, Putin (as we and others have stressed) finds it important to make clear to his Global South economic partners that he’s not being the difficult party, that Russia is not the impediment to ending the war. Most of these countries are still viscerally uncomfortable with Russia invading and occupying a neighbor even if they understand why intellectually.

To put it another way, setting out terms, even if they are objectively reasonable, or at least a not-crazy opening position for talks, that the other side looks set to reject, looks like an exercise in papering the record, rather than negotiating. Lavrov underscored the idea with Newsweek: “At present, as far as we can see, restoring peace is not part of our adversary’s plan.”

So one can argue that Putin had concluded before June 14 that the only way to resolve the conflict was through a battlefield victory. His provisions were a way to make that official without saying so.

But second, this may have been Putin doing his own early Trump-proofing. Remember, he made this speech before the Biden-second-term-killing debate with Trump. Trump then looked to have good odds against Biden due among other things lack of enthusiasm for Biden dampening Democratic party fundraising. And Trump has told anyone who would listen that he can secure a peace in Ukraine in 24 hours.

So was this outline of terms a bit of Russian Trump-proofing? Recall how Putin over time found dealing with Macron’s various peace schemes to be tiresome. So he might want to short-circuit similarly pointless talks with Trump by pointing to his position and playing broken record.

Moon of Alabama, 10/23/24

The actor who has been playing the President of Ukraine for a while is getting cold feet. Winter is coming and the energy networks of Ukraine are near to the point of total breakdown.

There could have been agreements in place to prevent that. But the Ukrainian side had botched those deals. Now Zelenski is begging to renew them.

In late 2022 the Russian military launched a bombing campaign against electricity switching stations in Ukraine. A lot of transformers got blown up. The Ukrainian military responded by concentrating its air defenses near electricity stations. That was exactly the effect the Russian’s had asked for. The air defense installations, not the electricity stations, had been their real target.

After splitting from the Soviet Union, Ukraine had had the best air defenses money could buy. During the fall and winter of 2022 most of it had been destroyed. The Russian campaign against electricity stations came to a halt.

In 2023/24 the Ukrainian military started its own campaign against infrastructure in Russia. Several refineries were hit by drones and went up into flames. Gasoline production in Russia was falling significantly and export of gasoline had to be stopped for a while.

The Russians retaliated by renewing their campaign against Ukraine’s electricity network. But this time the targets were not just switching stations but the generation facility themselves. The non-nuclear electricity production in Ukraine got decimated.

In its daily briefings the Russian Ministry of Defense called the attacks on Ukrainian electricity stations a direct retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian proper. For example:

This morning, in response to the Kiev regime’s attempts to damage objects of Russian power infrastructure and economy, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation delivered a group strike by long-range precision weaponry at objects of the Ukrainian military-industrial infrastructure and AFU aviation bases.

With their generation capacity in danger and under the threat of blackouts the Ukrainian government got to its senses – at least for a while. Secret negotiations were arranged in Doha, Qatar, to stop the infrastructure attacks on both sides.

In August 2024, shortly after the Ukrainian army had launched an incursion into the Kursk oblast of Russia, the Washington Post reported:

Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Doha this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides, diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions said, in what would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and offered a reprieve for both countries.

But the indirect talks, with the Qataris serving as mediators and meeting separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week, according to the officials.

…

For more than a year, Russia has pounded Ukraine’s power grid with a barrage of cruise missiles and drone strikes, causing irreparable damage to power stations and rolling blackouts across the country. Meanwhile, Ukraine has struck Russia’s oil facilities with long-range drone attacks that have set ablaze refineries, depots and reservoirs, reducing Moscow’s oil refining by an estimated 15 percent and raising gas prices around the world.

…

A diplomat briefed on the talks said Russian officials postponed their meeting with Qatari officials after Ukraine’s incursion into western Russia. Moscow’s delegation described it as “an escalation,” the diplomat said, adding that Kyiv did not warn Doha about its cross-border offensive.

Ukraine had to pay a heavy price for the Kursk incursion. The elite troops it had sent failed to reach their target, a nuclear power station near Kursk, and soon got decimated. The attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure continued with full force.

Three month later, with the Kursk incursion as well as its electricity network near to total failure, the Ukrainian government is again changing course. It is begging to renew the deals it had botched.

As the Financial Times reports (archived):

Russia putting an end to aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy targets and cargo ships could pave the way for negotiations to end the war, the Ukrainian president has said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists in Kyiv on Monday that “when it comes to energy and freedom of navigation, getting a result on these points would be a signal that Russia may be ready to end the war”.

…

If Moscow and Kyiv agreed to end strikes on their respective energy infrastructures, it would be a significant step towards de-escalating the conflict, Zelenskyy said in reference to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries.

Well – he could have had that deal three month ago. Now it will be more difficult to achieve it. A total retreat of Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region will be the minimum prerequisite Russia will ask for to renew the talks.

Zelenski also wants to renew the Black Sea agreement.

The August Washington Post report reminded of that:

Ukrainian and Russian officials haven’t met face to face for talks since the first months of the war, when delegations from both sides convened for secret talks in Istanbul. Those negotiations eventually fell apart. Later, the two sides agreed to a grain deal that led to Russia temporarily lifting a naval blockade, allowing Ukraine to transfer grain through the Black Sea. That, too, collapsed months later when Russia pulled out of the deal.

The Black Sea deal included a western promise to not hinder Russian exports through the Black Sea. That hindrance however continued as insurance for freighters continued to be denied. Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s Black Sea fleet also continued. Russia pulled out of the deal and reestablished its rather leaky blockade of Ukrainian ports.

During the last half year Ukraine had started to rebuild its supply line through the Black Sea. Dozens of ships with dry cargo arrived in Odessa and other Ukrainian Black Sea ports. The Russians soon assumed, correctly, that those ships were transporting weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainian military. Iskander missiles were sent to destroy the loads as soon as the ships arrived. Over the last months some 20+ dry good freighters were hit, damaged or sunk. Secondary explosions after the strikes confirmed that explosive freight had been involved.

The Russian naval blockade has been renewed – not by intercepting ships on their way to Ukraine but by hitting them while they unload.

During the war Russia had offered Zelenski at least two small deals which were largely in favor of Ukraine. The Black Sea grain deal failed because Ukraine and its ‘partners’ failed to do fulfill their part of the arrangement. The infrastructure peace deal failed because Ukraine decided to attack towards Kursk.

Now Zelenski is begging to renew both deals.

That may well be possible. But Russia will surely ask for a very steep price.

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