TASS, 12/16/24

MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. This year has been “a pivotal year” in terms of achieving the goals of the special military operation, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a Defense Ministry Board meeting.

He also pointed out that the country will continue to develop its nuclear potential.

TASS has compiled the Russian leader’s key statements.

On special military operation

The outgoing year “was pivotal in achieving the special military operation goals.”

The Russian Armed Forces hold “a strong strategic initiative across the entire line of engagement in the special military operation zone.”

Russian servicemen have liberated 189 settlements in the special military operation zone over the year.

It is necessary to keep pushing the pace in the special military operation zone.

The situation on the battlefield will not change even if Ukraine lowers the call-up age to 14.

On Ukrainian authorities

Russia is not at war with the Ukrainian people, but with “the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev that seized power back in 2014.”

The problem between Russia and Ukraine stems from “the bloody anti-constitutional coup” in Kiev in 2014.

The Kiev regime commits crimes against the Ukrainian and Russian people on a daily basis.

The regime of Vladimir Zelensky does not protect the interests of the Russian people.

“It seems that this regime is losing all the characteristics of statehood.”

On unstable situation in world

The military and political situation in the world remains “uneasy and unstable.”

The incumbent Washington administration and the West continue to try to rule the world, and continue “imposing on the world their so-called rules, which they change time and again in their interests.”

“The US continues to send weapons and money to the actually illegitimate ruling regime in Kiev, sends mercenaries and military advisors, thus encouraging further escalation of the conflict.”

The essence of what the US is trying to do with regard to Russia is to push it to its red line and then scare the American people with claims of a Russian threat.

On US, NATO aspirations

“NATO’s aspirations long ago went beyond the so-called zone of historical responsibility.”

“In addition to the so-called eastern front, the alliance is expanding its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Encouraged by the United States, new military and political alliances are being formed, undermining the security architecture that has existed for decades.”

NATO countries are increasing defense spending and are forming strike groups with servicemen from the alliance’s countries.

The US plans to deploy intermediate range high-accuracy weapons are worrisome.

Russia will drop its voluntary restrictions on the deployment of intermediate-and shorter-range missiles if the United States begins deploying such weapons.

Russia is forced to take additional measures to ensure its security, but it will not get involved in a full-fledged arms race: “Our approach here is careful and prudent.”

On development of Russian Armed Forces

Russia now has up to 1.5 million servicemen in the Russian Armed Forces.

This year, about 1,000 people are signing up to join the military every day. “People are going to the front voluntarily.”

On nuclear deterrence

The proportion of state-of-the-art weaponry in Russia’s strategic nuclear forces has reached 95%.

Russia adheres to its policy of nuclear deterrence in its updated nuclear and by no means indulges in saber rattling.

Moscow will continue to support the potential and balanced development of its nuclear forces.

“It is important to keep non-strategic nuclear forces on constant alert and to continue the practice of holding exercises.”

***

Transcript of Putin’s Meeting with Defense Ministry

Kremlin website, 12/16/24 (AI generated translation)

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Comrades,

Today, as part of an expanded meeting of the Defence Ministry Board, we will discuss the main results of work for 2024 and identify tasks to strengthen the defence capability and further develop the Armed Forces.

I note right away that the outgoing year has become a landmark in achieving the goals of the special military operation. Thanks to the professionalism and courage of our soldiers, the heroic work of employees of defense enterprises and the truly nationwide support of the army and navy, the Russian troops firmly have the strategic initiative along the entire line of contact.

This year alone, 189 settlements have been liberated. I would like to sincerely thank our heroes: the soldiers and officers who are fighting selflessly and steadfastly on the front line, the personnel of the Defence Ministry, the National Guard, our special services and other law enforcement agencies who are clearly carrying out all the tasks set, no matter how difficult they may be, who do not spare themselves, do not spare their lives for the sake of victory, for the sake of the Fatherland.

Our duty is to always remember our comrades who died defending the Motherland and our people, to surround their families and children with constant care. I have said it many times and I will repeat it again: their children are our children. We must never forget this.

I ask you to observe a minute of silence in memory of our fallen comrades.

(A minute of silence is announced.)

Thank you.

Dear members of the board!

Today, the military-political situation in the world remains difficult and unstable. Thus, the bloodshed in the Middle East does not stop, and the high conflict potential remains in a number of other regions of the world.

We see that the current US administration and almost the entire collective West are trying to maintain their global dominance and continue to impose their so-called rules on the international community, which they change over and over again, twisting them as it suits them. As a matter of fact, there is only one stable rule: there are no rules for those who do this, for those who consider themselves to be the head of the whole world, for those who consider themselves to be the Lord’s representatives on earth, although they themselves do not believe in the Lord.

And against undesirable states, [they] are waging hybrid wars, implementing a policy of deterrence, including against Russia. In an effort to weaken our country and inflict a strategic defeat on us, the United States continues to pump weapons and money into the de facto illegitimate ruling regime in Kiev, sending mercenaries and military advisers, and thereby encouraging further escalation of the conflict.

At the same time, under the pretext of a mythical Russian threat… They simply frighten their own population by saying that we are going to attack someone, because the tactics are very simple: they bring us to the red line, through which we can no longer retreat, we begin to respond, and immediately frighten their population – then, in ancient times, with the Soviet – now Russian threat. Meanwhile, NATO countries themselves are increasing military spending. Near the Russian borders, strike groups of alliance troops are being formed and cobbled together. Thus, the number of American military personnel in Europe has already exceeded 100 thousand people.

NATO’s aspirations have long gone beyond the so-called zone of its historical responsibility. In addition to the so-called eastern flank, the alliance is increasing its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. At the instigation of the United States, new military-political alliances are being formed, which undermine the security architecture that has developed over decades.

No less concerned are the activities of the United States to create and prepare for deployment in the forward zones of high-precision ground-based strike weapons with a range of up to 5,500 kilometers. At the same time, the transfer and deployment of these missile systems in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region are already being practiced.

Let me remind you that such measures were previously prohibited by the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, which was terminated at the initiative of the United States. We have repeatedly stated that the termination of this treaty will lead to negative consequences for the entire global security, but at the same time we stressed that we will not deploy intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles until American weapons of this kind appear in some region of the world. In fact, Russia took these obligations unilaterally. But, as I have already said, if the United States starts deploying such systems, then we will lift all our voluntary restrictions.

Given the growing geopolitical tensions, we are forced to take additional measures to ensure the security of Russia and our allies. We are doing this carefully and carefully, without being drawn into a full-scale arms race to the detriment of our country’s socioeconomic development.

We are paying serious attention to improving the combat strength of the Armed Forces and building up their capabilities. As part of these tasks, the Leningrad and Moscow military districts and a number of new units and formations have been formed. The staff strength of the Armed Forces has been increased to 1.5 million servicemen.

The army and navy are being re-equipped with modern weapons and equipment at an accelerated pace. For example, the share of such weapons in strategic nuclear forces has already reached 95 percent.

At the same time, we have clarified the basic principles for the use of nuclear weapons, which are set out in the updated Basic Principles of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence. I would like to emphasise once again that no one should accuse us of rattling nuclear weapons: this is a policy of nuclear deterrence.

Along with the nuclear triad, general-purpose forces are developing at a high pace. The troops are receiving advanced robotic systems, including the use of artificial intelligence technologies. Among them are reconnaissance and attack drones, unmanned boats and multi-purpose robotic platforms.

Today, it is important to continue the progressive, systematic development of the army and navy, to achieve the goals of the special military operation, to be ready for a prompt and effective response to potential challenges to the security of our country. At the same time, it is necessary to focus on solving the following priority tasks.

First. Of course, strategic nuclear forces remain one of the key tools for maintaining stability and protecting Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. We will continue to support their potential and balanced development, and work to create new systems and complexes of deterrence forces. Along with this, it is important to keep non-strategic nuclear forces in constant combat readiness, to continue the practice of conducting exercises with the development of issues of their use.

Second. I have already spoken today about the risks associated with the deployment of intermediate-range missiles by the United States in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. We will respond to such threats in a comprehensive manner. At the same time, the most important task is to ensure the timely detection of the launch of such missiles and their interception. At the same time, it is necessary to debug all the issues of serial production and deployment of such domestic strike systems, including hypersonic ones.

As you know, Russia’s latest powerful weapon is the Oreshnik medium-range missile system. In November, in response to strikes on the territory of our country using Western weapons, it was successfully used: a ballistic missile in non-nuclear hypersonic equipment was used. In the near future, serial production of such complexes should be ensured to protect the security of Russia and our allies. And this will certainly be done.

Third task. It is necessary to more actively introduce the experience gained during the special military operation into the combat training of troops, as well as into the programs of higher military educational institutions. At the same time, it is necessary to improve the methods of conducting military operations, clarify the fundamental statutory documents, increase the level of mastery of weapons and equipment, as well as the effectiveness of command and control of troops, especially at the tactical and operational-tactical levels.

And I would like to emphasise once again that talented officers and sergeants who have proved themselves in a difficult combat situation should become the basis of the command staff of the Armed Forces, as well as become teachers of military educational institutions.

Fourth. The experience of conducting a special military operation should be fully taken into account when determining the priority areas for the development of domestic weapons and equipment, the tactics of their use. For example, high-precision weapons systems use new methods of guidance at the final section of the missile flight, which made it possible to use them against complex and fortified objects, and to use them successfully.

The noise immunity of the onboard equipment of missile weapons has been significantly increased, and new methods of delivering flight tasks have been worked out. In the future, it is necessary to calculate them in real time for promptly identified targets – an extremely important task for our military-industrial complex. I will say more about this.

Another important innovation was the direct exchange of information between the units directly involved in the special operation and defense industry organizations – which I have just mentioned. As a result, for a number of products, the average time to eliminate the identified shortcomings is now five to seven days. But this is not enough: we need to do it even faster.

There are also positive changes in the organisation of the repair of equipment, its fine-tuning taking into account the requirements of the combat situation. But of course, there are also problems, they remain, and they need to be consistently resolved. And, of course, we must continue to do everything necessary to accelerate the introduction of advanced technologies and other innovations in the military sphere.

Fifth. To reduce the time for decision-making when managing units on the battlefield, an interspecific information exchange system based on mobile devices has been created and has shown its effectiveness. More than six and a half thousand such systems have already been delivered to the troops. As a result of their use, the time for setting tasks has decreased by one and a half to two times. Now, due to the introduction of advanced developments of the defense industry, it is necessary to form a single information loop as soon as possible, combining reconnaissance and destruction means at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of management.

Sixth. It is necessary to increase the production of robotic systems and unmanned systems of various classes and types. At the beginning of the special operation, we had problems in this area: some samples turned out to be expensive and difficult to operate. Today, several thousand drones for various purposes enter the troops every day. It is necessary to continue to improve their combat and operational characteristics. It is equally important to train the operators of such complexes, to train them according to programs developed on the basis of the experience of real combat operations.

And the seventh. We need to continue to expand military and military-technical cooperation with allies and partners, with those who are ready and willing to work with us, and these are the majority of countries in the world.

Comrades,

I have already spoken today about the enormous support of the army and navy from Russian society. People understand what we are fighting for, what we are defending, they help front-line soldiers and join their ranks themselves. This is an extremely important thing that reflects the state of our society.

Here is a figure: this year, on average, more than 1000 people enter military service under contract every day. People voluntarily go to the front. And the social guarantees of servicemen and their families must be constantly strengthened and developed. This is the most important, systemic task of the state.

Yes, a lot has been done in this area in recent years. This year alone, more than 55,000 servicemen have been provided with housing, and in the next three years, it is planned to allocate another 113 billion rubles to provide housing subsidies to military personnel.

The savings and mortgage system demonstrates high efficiency. Over the 20 years of its operation, more than 202 thousand servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have been provided with housing. I would like to add that it is necessary to continue to equip military camps and, of course, to increase the level of medical support.

The priority in the work of all authorities should be to resolve the social issues of the participants in the special operation, to take care of the families of those who died – I already spoke about this at the beginning – and those who were seriously injured during the hostilities. This should be the focus of our attention. It is necessary to delve into the problems of each of our comrades-in-arms, his family and really help solve their problems. This is the task of the Defence Ministry, the Government of the Russian Federation, and all leaders at all levels of government.

In conclusion, I would like to once again thank all the participants in the special military operation for their valor, courage and heroism, and wish the personnel and civilian personnel of the Armed Forces, the leadership of the Defence Ministry success in their service, in their difficult and responsible work aimed at protecting Russia’s sovereignty and national interests and the security of our people.

I am sure that you will continue to adequately solve all the tasks assigned to you.

Thank you for your attention.

Vladimir Putin: As usual, allow me to say just a few words – to conclude this part of your work.

The minister spoke about the illegitimacy of the regime in Kyiv, with which we are at war. I would like to emphasise once again that we are not at war with the Ukrainian people, but with the regime – the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which seized power back in 2014. This is the source of power – a coup d’état.

All the troubles of both Ukraine and Russia began just after this bloody anti-constitutional coup d’état. This matters today because these people who are in power commit crimes against their own people and against ours every day. This regime has generally lost – at least it is obviously losing – the signs of statehood.

When we talk about illegitimacy, what do we mean? Did you not go to the elections? They did not go. Does the constitution make it possible to extend the powers of the president? No. The Constitution makes it possible to extend the powers of only the representative body of power – the Rada, that’s it. And the reference to martial law does not matter: there are no ways in the constitution to extend the powers of presidential power.

And where is the supreme court? Where is the Constitutional Court? A legitimate question. The chairman of the supreme court is in prison – they just keep silent about it, no one talks about it, but he was put behind bars. The powers of the Supreme Court include, among other things, the cancellation of unauthorized decisions of the president. Several cancellations took place, after which they were sent to prison. And the head of the regime immediately, on the same day, announced: he will be imprisoned. As you know, in all civilized countries, only the court determines whether a person is guilty or not guilty, whether he will be imprisoned or not. No, representatives of the administrative bodies said here: he will be imprisoned. This is the supreme court.

There is also a constitutional one. Do you know what happened to the Constitutional Court? The security guards have stopped letting the chairman of the Constitutional Court go to work – they are simply not allowed to work. In the end, the Constitutional Court as a whole was paralyzed, and the Chairman of the Constitutional Court himself went abroad, where, as far as we know, he is provided with state protection in the country of his residence, since there is a threat to his life.

Are these signs of statehood? No, these are just signs of the loss of statehood. Therefore, crimes are committed one after another.

I think that the next crime will be the reduction of the mobilization age to 18 years. This is exactly a crime, because even if you reduce it to 14, as in Hitler’s Germany, creating a “Hitler Youth”, it will not change the situation on the battlefield. This is clear to everyone.

But I think that at the behest of those countries whose interests are protected by the Kiev regime – it does not protect the interests of the Ukrainian people, this is already obvious today – at the behest of those whose interests it serves and defends, they will also reduce mobilization to 18 years old – and the boys will be driven to slaughter. Just as today people are caught on the street, like stray dogs, during forced mobilization, and today they are driven under bullets, so they will drive the boys, it seems to me. And then these figures of this regime will simply flee abroad under the cover of those whose tasks they are carrying out today, that’s all. Most likely, this will be the case.

Some figures of the past, recent years have already fled – they are already abroad, this is well known. And they feel good, because they stole money from the Ukrainian people, stole it from their pockets. And all these “pockets” are also abroad, with those sponsors who keep them on this hook: they stole money, accounts there, everything – and they dance to any music, performing any tasks.

It seems to me that this will continue until we achieve the goals of the special military operation.

He said what is happening with mobilization in Ukraine, and you all know this very well. He mentioned that in this sense we have personnel. Last year, over 300,000 of our citizens, our men, came to the military registration and enlistment offices and signed contracts for service in the Armed Forces – over 300,000.

This year, at the moment, there are already over 430 thousand, and this flow of volunteers does not stop. Thanks to this attitude to the fate of our country, to the fate of our children, we are doing what I have said and what Defence Minister [Andrei Belousov] was talking about: in fact, this is a turning point on the line of contact and our combat activity, a complete interception of the strategic initiative. But, of course, this is not enough.

By the way, when I spoke about these crimes, I was referring not only to crimes against the Ukrainian people, primarily against our people, including in the Kursk Region and other border regions.

Yes, of course, from a military point of view, no matter who you talk to, everyone, both our and foreign experts, believes that there is a gamble in Kursk, so they say: “Kursk adventure.” This is obvious, because there is no sense in what the Kiev regime is doing in the border regions. But from the point of view of crimes against the peoples of Russia – this is an obvious thing – this is a crime. This is especially true of the suffering of the civilian population.

Here, of course, the sacred duty of the Armed Forces is to throw the enemy out of our territory. The task of the military justice bodies is to record all these crimes, especially against the civilian population. And the task of the special services is to find and punish the criminals.

Now, as for how much money we spend and what it results in, an extremely important thing, of course. The minister said: we spend 6.3 percent of GDP on the military component – on increasing and strengthening the defense capability. This is decent money, it is about 2.5 percent higher than we used to spend. But these are not the largest, oddly enough, costs in the world – even among countries that do not have any armed conflicts.

Nevertheless, this is a lot of money, and we need to use it very rationally, very rationally, ensuring first of all social guarantees for our servicemen and the effective operation of the defence industry. And what is very important is the rational use of what the country gives to the Armed Forces: this applies to social services, equipment and weapons. It is very important to receive everything in a timely manner, to assess competently what comes in, to be able to use it and train personnel, to train people who know how to do it – they do it competently and effectively.

There are a lot of tasks here. On the whole, they are being resolved – both in what is happening in the people’s agro-industrial complex, as we are saying now, and in what is happening right on the line of contact. And we need to set up our entire military organisation for such joint work to achieve the final result.

In this regard, the latest types of weapons, including those that are well-known both in our country and abroad. First of all, I mean medium-range weapons. You all remember well and know that the Soviet Union decided to eliminate ground-based intermediate-range missiles. And the Americans did the same with their Pershings.

But the Americans, in addition to ground-based intermediate-range missiles, also had the same sea-based and air-launched missile systems, while the Soviet Union did not. Therefore, to a certain extent, we went for unilateral disarmament. A potential enemy left these systems at sea and in the air, and we did not receive anything at all.

Но в наше время, в российское уже, мы создали гораздо более современные, чем у США, комплексы морского базирования. Это и «Калибры», это и гиперзвуковые комплексы «Цирконы». Создали новейшие ракеты средней дальности воздушного базирования Х-101 с дальностью, которая кратно превышает то, что есть у вероятного противника, – свыше 4000 километров. И эта система может быть оснащена и специальном боезарядом, то есть ядерным.

And finally, the Oreshnik system, which has already proven itself well, is very powerful. I would like to repeat once again – specialists know this, the commander of the Strategic Missile Forces Sergey Karakayev is here, he thinks so and told me about it – when used in a complex manner, when several systems are used in a group at the same time, it is comparable in power to the use of nuclear weapons. But it is not nuclear, since there is no nuclear fuel, no nuclear component, no contamination. And this is a very important element when deciding what means of armed struggle we can use.

But we must watch very carefully what is happening in other countries, what is being put into service or may be put into service in the near future, in the near future in other leading military countries. So, as we have done so far, we must act precisely in the near future and in the medium term.

Let me return once again to what was just said: we spend 6.3 percent of GDP on increasing and strengthening our defense capability. In order for all components in the country, all components of the state’s life – the economy, the social sphere in the broadest sense of the word, science, education, healthcare – to develop, we also cannot pump up these expenses to infinity, increase them to infinity.

I say this so that we all understand: the state, the Russian people, give everything they can to the Armed Forces to fulfill the tasks that you and we face. And our task is to ensure the security of the Russian people, to ensure the security of our people and the future of Russia.

I really hope that the pace that has been picked up in recent months on the combat contact line will be maintained. I want to thank you for your service and wish you all the best.

Thanks a lot.

Interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko, The Bullet, 12/4/24

Volodymyr Ishchenko is a Ukrainian sociologist who was politically active and took part in several left-wing initiatives in Ukraine before moving to Germany in 2019. Ishchenko currently works at the Freie Universität in Berlin and continues his research on the Ukrainian “revolutions,” the left, and the political violence of the extreme right, which he has been studying for 20 years. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, he has also written extensively in several international media outlets on different aspects of the conflict. He was interviewed by Philippe Alcoy and Sasha Yaropolskaya for the journal Révolution Permanente.

Philippe Alcoy, Sasha Yaropolskaya (PA-SY): Here in the West, there is much reporting of the enthusiasm of Ukrainians to defend their country. Yet today, we see images of young men deserting or refusing to serve in the army. Can you tell us how the Ukrainian population currently feels about the situation of the war with Russia?

Volodymyr Ishchenko (VI): There is no enthusiasm, or at least, this enthusiasm is limited to a much smaller group of people than in 2022. At that time, the enthusiasm was caused not only as a reaction to the Russian invasion but also by the fact that Russia’s initial invasion plan failed in a matter of days. There was not only outrage that Russia had attacked our country but also immense hopes for victory in that spring, and even more so after the Ukrainian counter-offensive in September 2022, with expectations of a greater success of the counter-offensive in 2023.

As we now know, last year’s Ukrainian campaign failed to achieve any of its objectives. We witnessed, instead, the relatively successful advance of Russian forces. This has consequences for how people feel about war. In public opinion, in particular, there are clear trends: when the situation on the front line was good for Ukraine and with chances of improvement, support for negotiations was very low. But when the situation deteriorated and hopes that Ukraine could win the war diminished, support for negotiations increased, while support for, and trust in, Zelensky decreased.

Much indicates that the enthusiasm of 2022 was quite fragile. And this is not the first time that we have seen this kind of dynamic. After the “Orange Revolution” of 2004 and the “EuroMaidan Revolution” of 2014, people had high expectations that quickly yielded to disappointment. A similar dynamic occurred after the election of Zelensky in 2019, and again in 2022. One line of interpretation was that these events were the manifestation of the rise of the Ukrainian nation with a quasi-theological dynamic, as the ultimate outcome of a national liberation struggle.

You mentioned desertion. The number of people trying to escape across the border is high. An even more telling statistic is that of the majority of men subject to military service and aged 18 to 60 who have not updated their data with the military recruitment office. This requirement had been introduced in order to make Ukrainian conscription a little more effective and to avoid resorting to the rather brutal method of grabbing people off the street but rather to try to collect data on all potential conscripts and then to start mobilizing them more effectively. If people do not update the data, they are punished with a large fine, and if they don’t pay it, they invite even more complications in their work and life.

So, it is a very serious matter. Yet despite everything, the majority of Ukrainian men have not obeyed this requirement. And as for Ukrainian men abroad, according to estimates, only a few have updated their data, although everyone was required to do so. This means that the real desire to sacrifice oneself for the state is very low.

Military conscription is becoming increasingly brutal. Videos have emerged of arrests of military conscripts in public and of clashes between police and military personnel on one side, and citizens present at the scene.

PA-SY: Is there a parallel to the situation in Russia on the issue of military conscription? And is there a fear on the part of the state that pushing for a larger conscription could lead to social discontent as in Russia, where for years there was a movement of conscripts’ families, especially wives and mothers, who mobilized to support their husbands and sons?

VI: In Russia, the regime was afraid of launching a large-scale conscription effort. It has tried to find different ways to avoid large waves of military conscription. But I feel that Ukraine, especially when supplies from the United States were low, had no choice, and so it lowered the conscription age. This was accompanied by great brutality on the part of the police.

PA-SY: Are there potential social protests that could arise from this situation?

VI: There is much one can say about this. Unlike Russia, conscription has always existed in Ukraine. So, this is not a single wave of conscription, like the one Putin announced in September 2022 in response to the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Ukrainian army obtains its soldiers mainly through conscription. Volunteers do not constitute the majority of the Ukrainian army, and their number has become negligible since 2022. All the brutal methods of mobilization are the result of a weak desire to volunteer for the army.

PA-SY: Why is it so weak?

VI: The most generous explanation for the Ukrainian state, and also the one that is repeated in some circles, is that this is simply because the United States did not supply enough weapons. This argument implies a very specific idea of ​​how the war could be won. But it is far from certain that, even if all the weapons and supplies had been delivered in 2022, a decisive victory over Russia could have been won. I won’t speculate about this. But I don’t think that there is a consensus among military experts.

The other side of the coin is that the shipment of weapons to Ukraine is conditional on the effectiveness of Ukrainian mobilization. And so, amendment of the law on conscription this year was linked to the shipment of weapons by the United States. This is confirmed by many Ukrainian politicians. The United States expected Ukraine to make conscription more effective.

Today, the most urgent issue is to reduce the conscription age. It has already been reduced from 27 to 25, and now there is strong pressure to lower it even further, to 22, or even to 18.

There’s a strong argument against this. That is the most fertile demographic cohort of the Ukrainian population, and it is also one of the smallest. In fact, if you send these young people to be massacred, the ability of the Ukrainian population to regenerate its numbers after the war will diminish even further. According to the latest UN projections for the Ukrainian population, by the end of the century it will number only 15 million, compared to 52 million in 1992, right after the disintegration of the USSR.

And this is not even the worst-case scenario. It’s based on the rather optimistic assumption that the war will end next year and that millions of refugees, especially fertile women, will return and be able to contribute to the reproduction of the Ukrainian population, which is not certain, to say the least.

This is an impossible choice. Throughout history, many nations have fought long wars against imperial conquests. And not necessarily only against imperial conquests, by the way. Take revolutionary France. After 1789, France was able to defeat the coalition of the greatest European powers until 1812, when Napoleon was defeated in Russia. For two decades, France defeated all of Europe. Such was the power of revolution. After 1917, revolutionary Russia was able to defeat the coalition of the strongest imperialist powers that all intervened because of the power of its revolution and its ability to build an effective, large, and victorious Red Army. In the Vietnamese War, the Vietnamese defeated France and the United States over a period of decades. Afghanistan defeated the USSR and the United States in a war that lasted from 1979 to 2021. Theoretically, one might think that a small nation could defeat a much larger enemy. But that requires a different social stature and politics than those of Ukraine.

All of these wars were fought by countries that had large peasant populations that could mobilize in large-scale revolutionary or guerrilla wars. In Vietnam, the demographics held up over the decades, despite the genocide that the United States committed, and even though the balance of forces was so lopsided. Such is the power of revolution.

Post-Soviet Ukraine is a very different country. Its demographic structure is very different from Vietnam’s, Afghanistan’s, and even Ukraine’s of a hundred years ago, when it was a largely peasant country with multiple revolutionary armies – the Red Army, Makhno’s anarchist army, armies of the various nationalist warlords – all of whom benefited from the demographics of the peasantry. Today’s Ukraine is a modernized urban society with a declining demographic. It’s not going to be able to wage war for decades.

And there are no revolutionary changes in today’s Ukraine. The three Ukrainian “revolutions” – 1990, 2004, and 2014 – did not create a strong revolutionary state capable of establishing an effective apparatus that could mobilize an army and the economy. The idea behind these “revolutions” was that Ukraine should integrate into the US-led world order as a kind of periphery. This type of integration would benefit only a narrow middle class, some opportunistic oligarchs, and transnational capital.

In Ukraine, the regime is still discussing a rather moderate tax increase – that after two and a half years of war. That says a lot about how much Ukrainians trust the state and about their willingness to defend that state. The question of social class was very important because the conscripts came mainly from the lower classes. These are mainly poor people who could not bribe the recruitment officers to let them go and people who could not find a way to flee the country.

PA-SY: Zaluzhnyi, head of the Ukrainian armed forces, and Kuleba, the foreign minister, were dismissed this year. Could you talk of the political struggles within the Ukrainian bourgeoisie?

VI: Zaluzhny is a potential political opponent of Zelensky. It was dangerous for Zelensky to see a popular general become a politician. This was one of Zelensky’s motives in sending him to the UK as ambassador. As for Kuleba, there was also a problem of trust.

We can analyze this as building a vertical power structure, an informal way of consolidating the elite and of governing the country using both formal institutions, such as the democratic Constitution and the Parliament, but also informal mechanisms. All Ukrainian presidents have tried to build this informal power. Zelensky’s power vertical started to be built before the invasion. But the war offered more opportunities, and his chief of staff, Andrei Yermak, is considered the second most powerful person in the country, with enormous informal power and the ability to build an effective informal structure that consolidates power around the presidential office.

The dynamics of these conflicts, that sometimes break out into public view, remain mostly hidden. They are mainly related to the results at the front and to military developments. In case of bad developments for the Ukrainian army, these conflicts would intensify, and some radical nationalists, even some oligarchs, could raise their heads, and so forth.

A lot depends on the position of the US and the EU and the strategy that Trump will choose. Zelensky has to end this war in a way that could be presented to the Ukrainian public as a victory, for example, by obtaining EU or NATO membership or some generous funding programs for Ukraine, even if it loses territory. With an outcome perceived as a defeat, Zelensky would probably not have much future.

PA-SY: What is the role of the far right in Ukraine?

VI: This topic has been widely discussed in Western media throughout the war. Some liberal media outlets try to portray the Ukrainian far right as less dangerous than the Western far right, because it is fighting on the right side of history against a Russia that is the more important enemy. The Zelensky regime has tried to appeal to these sectors of the far right by holding official ceremonies for the Azov Battalion or celebrating the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the extreme nationalist and Nazi sympathizer. It is difficult to follow from France how this dynamic is evolving as the war progresses.

PA-SY: Is the far right a small but powerful segment due to its presence in the military. Or is it gaining popularity outside of traditional sectors of the far right? Does the far right play a significant role in the Ukrainian political landscape, or is its influence being exaggerated by the media?

VI: When people in the West discuss the Ukrainian far right, I think they are using the wrong point of comparison. For example, in France, the far right, mainly the Rassemblement national, Le Pen’s party, is much less extreme than the movements that we are talking about in Ukraine. Le Pen’s party probably does not use Nazi symbols and has a more sophisticated attitude toward the Vichy collaboration during World War II. They are trying to clean themselves.

But such is not the case in Ukraine. You mentioned Stepan Bandera, who is openly glorified, and even more so the Waffen-SS, especially by members of the Azov Battalion. The degree of extremism of the Ukrainian far right is much greater than that of the West’s far right.

Recently, an international conference, “Nation Europa,” was held in Lviv, the largest city of Western Ukraine, to which groups such as Dritte Weg from Germany, CasaPound from Italy, and similar neo-Nazi groups from many European countries were invited. All major far-right organizations of Ukraine participated, including the Svoboda party and prominent members of Azov/National Corps. These Ukrainian parties, organizations, and military units are generally referred to as the “far-right,” but they have international relations with Western groups that are much more extreme and violent than the mainstream far-right parties. Incidentally, most of the Ukrainian military units that participated in this conference have ties to the Ukrainian military intelligence service, the GUR.

The ideologically sanctioned capacity for political violence of the Ukrainian far right is much greater than that of the dominant far-right parties in the West. They have much more weaponry and many paramilitary movements built around official military units that are capable of political violence. Unlike mainstream Western far-right parties seeking parliamentary status, the power of the Ukrainian far right has always rested on its ability to mobilize in the streets and to threaten violence. They have not been able to get elected, with the exception of the elections of 2012, when the far-right Svoboda party won over 10% of the vote. (But the far right was able to gain much more significant representation and to form the largest factions in many local councils in Western Ukraine.)

Their main source of power comes from their ability to mobilize outside parliament, unlike parties formed by oligarchs (big capital) or by the weak liberals. Ukrainian nationalists can draw on a political tradition that goes back to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was part of a family of fascist movements in interwar Europe. And post-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists have often drawn their inspiration directly from the OUN. This tradition has been upheld in the Ukrainian diaspora, particularly in North America. The Canadian public is only now discovering the number of Ukrainian fascists that its government welcomed after World War II. Other post-Soviet Ukrainian political currents don’t have this advantage of a preserved political tradition.

The members of the Azov battalion have today become very legitimate as war heroes. They enjoy extraordinary media attention and present themselves as an élite unit, a claim that the media uphold. Many Azov speakers have become celebrities. They have also benefited from a certain whitewashing in Western media, which before 2022 referred to them as neo-Nazis. Today, they easily forget this part of history.

And finally, we must think not only about the far right itself but also about the complicity of Ukrainian and Western elites in whitewashing the Ukrainian far right and ethno-nationalism. Not only in Ukraine but also in the West, discussing this topic today can immediately lead to ostracization. For example, Marta Havryshko, a Ukrainian historian who moved to the United States, continues to write critical articles about Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian ethno-nationalist politics, the Ukrainian far right, and she receives thousands of threats, death threats, rape threats.

PA-SY: Is Azov, in your view, the main force of the Ukrainian far right? Wasn’t it greatly weakened in the battles of Mariupol and Bakhmut? Do you think that it will still play an important role in the future, in the recomposition of the far right?

VI: On the contrary, Azov has grown, now forming two brigades – the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Azov Brigade of the National Guard. This is in addition to a special unit, the Kraken, which are subordinate to the GUR (military intelligence). Their political appeal and publicity in the media have grown considerably. Their legitimacy has also grown. So, they are not weakened, but strengthened. And contrary to popular myth, they have not become depoliticized.

PA-SY: Are you afraid that after the war, the extreme right, and in particular those that had fought at the front, will be the only force to have a sufficiently coherent ideological project for post-war Ukraine, given the absence of ideology of the neoliberal project for Ukraine and the weakness of the left?

VI: That depends entirely on the outcome of the war. And the range of possible outcomes is still very large. A nuclear war is a possible outcome, although one hopes that it is not the most likely one. In that case, everything we are discussing today will no longer matter. A lasting ceasefire is also possible, but unlikely.

The radicalization of the Ukrainian far right will depend on the stability of Zelensky’s government and the stability of the Ukrainian economy. In the event of the disintegration of state institutions and a failing economy, the nationalists will have a good chance of consolidating their power because they are a very legitimate, very well-known, and militarized political force.

PA-SY: What is the situation of the labour movement? There have been some minor strikes in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, especially in the health sector. But it is difficult to know what the real situation is. What is the situation and the capacity of the working class to organize and perhaps play a role, at least to counterbalance the rise of the extreme right in the country?

VI: The working class cannot play any role in the current situation. The labour movement in Ukraine was weak long before the war. The last really massive political strike was in 1993 among the miners of Donbass. They demanded autonomy for Donbass and closer relations with Russia, ironically. But even that strike was linked to the interests of the “red directors” of former Soviet enterprises who had a lot of power in the immediate post-Soviet years. They used the strike to obtain some concessions from the government. Eventually, the strike led to early elections and a change of government. But since then, there has been no large-scale strike.

For three decades, we have seen only small-scale strikes, usually limited to individual companies, at best to certain segments of the economy, and very rarely politicized. Moreover, it was precisely the inability to launch a political strike during the EuroMaidan of 2014 that led to the escalation of violence because that protest movement was unable to put sufficient pressure on a government that was unwilling to make concessions. This gave the radical nationalists the opportunity to promote their violent strategy of protest.

And so yes, since the current large-scale invasion, strikes are banned. The strikes that have taken place are probably informal strikes.

What will happen after the war still depends a lot on how it ends. But from what we understand, the empowerment of the labour movement would require some economic growth so that workers are not laid off. This requires a successful reconstruction of the Ukrainian economy.

In some very optimistic – but not necessarily likely – scenarios, Ukrainian soldiers returning to the Ukrainian economy could demand more from the government. That has indeed happened after some wars, particularly after World War I. But that remains speculative today. Much darker scenarios now seem more likely…

PA-SY: As concerns the situation and the positions of the Ukrainian left, at the beginning of the war, many articles and texts presented the point of view of Ukrainian left activists and explained how blind some of the Western left is for not supporting NATO arms deliveries more. In your articles, you try to present a more nuanced point of view on the war.

How have the positions of the Ukrainian left, the organized left, but also intellectuals, changed since the two years after the invasion? Is the left adopting a more critical position toward the Ukrainian government and NATO’s role in the conflict?

VI: The Ukrainian left has always been very diverse.

Ironically, the largest left party in Ukraine, the Communist Party of Ukraine, supported the Russian invasion. The Communist Party of Ukraine was a very important party… until EuroMaidan. It was the most popular party in the country in the 1990s. The Communist Party candidate won 37% of the vote in the 1999 presidential elections. Even on the eve of EuroMaidan, the Communist Party won 13% of the vote. Although its support had declined, it had significant representation in parliament and effectively supported the government of Viktor Yanukovych. After EuroMaidan, it lost its electoral stronghold in Donbass and Crimea, as these territories were cut off from Kiev. The party also suffered repression due to the government’s “decommunization” policies – the party was suspended, and in 2022, it was permanently banned, as were a number of other so-called pro-Russian parties.

Petro Simonenko, the leader of the party since 1993, fled to Belarus in March 2022. From Belarus, he supported the Russian invasion as an anti-fascist operation against the “Kiev regime.” The communist organizations in the areas occupied by Russia have merged with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and participated in the local elections organized by Russia in 2023, even entering some local councils. The same merger occurred with the soviet-type Ukrainian trade unions in the occupied areas. Such is the lion’s share of what was called the left in Ukraine.

At the same time, there were much smaller and younger left groups. They were always critical of the communists and integrated better with the democratic socialists and the liberal left in the West. They also had a very different social base than the communists – closer to the pro-Western NGO-ized “civil society” of the middle class in Ukraine. After the invasion began, they were able to communicate their position much more effectively to the West through a kind of identity politics: “We are the Ukrainian left. The stupid and arrogant Western left does not understand anything about what is happening in the country.”

Of course, this position was very problematic, to say the least, from the very beginning. For comparison, the Communist Party had 100,000 card-carrying members in 2014. The young left milieu had no more than 1,000 activists and sympathizers in the whole country, even in the best years of its development, and their numbers have been declining since then, after Euromaidan. Among that left, most supported Ukraine, many volunteered for the army, but they were not able to create a left-wing military unit comparable to the extreme right units, even on a much smaller scale. Many also participated in humanitarian initiatives.

Today, some of them are tending to revise their positions on the war, especially in response to the brutal conscription. It is really difficult to claim that the war is still some kind of “people’s war” when the majority of Ukrainians do not want to fight. The extent to which they are willing to express this revised position also depends on their fear of repression. It is difficult to speak critically of the war in the Ukrainian public sphere. That kind of criticism exists mostly in private conversations, in “friends only” Facebook accounts and so on, and is articulated only very cautiously in publications.

There is also criticism of the ethno-nationalism coming from this left environment because it has become too difficult to ignore how Ukraine has changed in two years, with the spread of discrimination against Russian speakers and the regime’s ethnic assimilation policies. For example, Russian is no longer taught in Ukrainian schools, even as an option, even in massively Russian-speaking cities like Odessa, where probably 80-90% of even ethnic Ukrainian children speak Russian with their parents. A recently introduced bill could ban speaking any Russian in schools, not only in class with teachers, but also during breaks, in private conversations of students among themselves. The bill has already been approved by the Minister of Education.

The third segment of the Ukrainian left is Marxist-Leninist, and is part of what I call the “neo-Soviet revival” that is happening in many post-Soviet countries. They are usually organized in kruzhki – literally ‘circles’. These are proto-political organizations, something more than just Marxist-Leninist reading groups. They are much more popular in Russia, where they are able to create YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In Russia, Belarus and Central Asia, kruzhki can involve thousands of young people who have not lived a single day in the USSR, but who are critical of the social and political reality of their country and who find in orthodox Marxist Leninism instruments to deal with this reality. They exist and have even developed in Ukraine as well, despite decommunization and the rise of anti-Russian nationalism and anti-communist attitudes.

Almost from the very beginning, these groups opposed their governments and adopted a revolutionary defeatist position. One can wonder whether a social revolution is even possible, as it was a hundred years ago in Ukraine in the collapsing Russian Empire. Nevertheless, from the very beginning, these groups criticized forced conscription, called for internationalism, and did not try to legitimize the actions of the Ukrainian state. •

Volodymyr Ishchenko is a political activist in Ukraine and editor of the review Spiln’ya. He is a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.

By Brian McDonald, Twitter, 12/15/24

The fall of Assad and the “loss” of Syria isn’t actually that critical for Russia. Historically, the Soviet Union endured much larger setbacks in the Middle East. For example: Egypt’s sudden shift from a Soviet ally to a US partner in the 1970s.

Despite investing heavily in Egypt through military aid and infrastructure projects like the Aswan Dam, Moscow was blindsided when Anwar Sadat aligned with Washington. Yet, the USSR eventually restored much of its influence in the region through alliances with other Arab states.

This precedent makes a key point: Russia’s geopolitical fortunes in the Middle East aren’t tied to a single leader or country. The region’s fluid power dynamics mean that today’s setback can be tomorrow’s opportunity.

Russia’s approach to Syria, therefore, should be viewed through this broader historical lens. Strategic losses are part of a long game where influence can quickly be regained.

Plus, the rebel leaders have already said they are open to a deal with Moscow. And Russia has quite a bit to offer them. For instance, lots of cheap grain.

***

Interpreting Putin’s Remarks On Syria, Israel, And Turkiye

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 12/20/24

Putin commented on Syria’s regime change during his annual Q&A session on Thursday. According to him, Russia’s military intervention succeeded in its goal of preventing the creation of an Afghan-like terrorist enclave. The groups that just seized power there, including terrorist-designated and -affiliated ones, have apparently changed their views over the years. That’s why the West wants to establish relations with them. The regime change therefore can’t be seen as a defeat for Russia.

Putin then defended his armed forces’ conduct during recent events by claiming that Russia no longer had any ground troops in Syria. Moreover, the estimated 30,000 Syrian and “pro-Iranian units” that were defending Aleppo surrendered the city to just 350 militants, after which they gave up the rest of the country to them too with few exceptions. He also revealed that Russia evacuated 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran while other allied units fled to Lebanon (a reference to Hezbollah) and Iraq without a fight.

As for the future of Russian influence in Syria, Putin claimed that “The overwhelming majority of [the groups that control the situation there] tell us that they would be interested in our military bases remaining”. He then proposed that they could be used to deliver humanitarian aid. The main beneficiary of the latest events is Israel, in his opinion, since they’ve practically demilitarized Syria and expanded their occupation zone in the country. He condemned those moves and hoped that they’d leave someday.

Putin also took the opportunity to condemn Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestine as well as its ongoing military operation in Gaza. These are all consistent Russian positions and nothing new. Observers might have been surprised though that he didn’t also condemn Turkiye. Instead, he explained that “Turkey is doing everything to ensure its security on its southern borders as the situation in Syria develops”, which he said is aimed at returning refugees and “push[ing] back Kurdish formations on the border.”

In connection with that second imperative, Putin expressed hope that there won’t be an aggravation of the situation like some have reported that Turkiye is planning. He also said that “we need to solve the Kurdish problem. Within the framework of Syria under President Assad, this had to be solved, now we need to solve it with the authorities that control the territory of Syria, and Turkey needs to somehow ensure its security. We understand all this.” This basically amounts to giving Turkiye a free pass in Syria.

Putin’s apparent double standard towards the similar issues of Turkish and Israeli military involvement in post-Assad Syria can be explained by Russia’s complex interdependence with the former. They’re closely tied together through nuclear energy cooperation, air defense systems (S-400s), natural gas, trade, and Istanbul’s prior role in mediating between Moscow and Kiev. By contrast, although Israel hasn’t armed Ukraine nor sanctioned Russia, there’s much less trade and no military-technical cooperation.

There are also optics to consider as well. Although Syria is still politically divided and Turkiye does indeed back the UN-designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, there’s no denying that many Syrians support Ankara as do many other Muslims in the region. The same can’t be said for Israel, which is universally reviled in Syria, except among some of the Druze that welcomed the self-professed Jewish State’s forces, and fiercely hated by most Muslims in the region.

It’s therefore better for Russia’s soft power interests to criticize Israel for occupying part of Syria while remaining silent about Turkiye doing the same thing. Likewise, considering the domestic and regional mood, it also makes sense for Putin to remind everyone about the pro-Iranian units’ cowardice in giving up cities without a fight and then fleeing abroad. After all, “Russia Dodged A Bullet By Wisely Choosing Not To Ally With The Now-Defeated Resistance Axis”, so it has no reason to sugarcoat what they did.

Altogether, Putin’s remarks on Syria, Israel, and Turkiye show that Russia eschews responsibility for what just happened in Syria, condemns Israel for its ongoing invasion there, and downplays Turkiye’s own. This is a coldly realist and ultra-pragmatic approach to the latest developments that fully aligns with Russia’s national interests as Putin sincerely understands them to be. It also contradicts the expectations that many members of the diverse non-Mainstream Media community had of him condemning Turkiye.

As can be seen, Putin doesn’t really care that Turkiye is a NATO member nor that it patronizes terrorist-designated HTS since he’s always insisted that the most important factor in their contemporary ties is the excellent working relationship that he has with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Russian leader sang his praises in October 2022 while speaking at the Valdai Club’s annual meeting when he was asked about whether his views on him had changed over the past two years. Here’s what he said:

“He is a competent and strong leader who is guided above all, and possibly exclusively, by the interests of Turkiye, its people and its economy…President Erdogan never lets anyone get a free ride or acts in the interests of third countries…But there is a desire on both sides to reach agreements, and we usually do it. In this sense, President Erdogan is a consistent and reliable partner. This is probably his most important trait, that he is a reliable partner.”

Putin wasn’t playing “5D chess to psyche out Turkiye” like some members of the diverse non-Maisntream Media community imagined at the time but was candidly sharing his views about Erdogan. Those who took his words seriously therefore knew better than to expect him to condemn Turkiye for its actions in Syria. Putin’s responsibility is to ensure Russia’s national interests, not conform to his online supporters’ fantasies about him spewing this or that talking point, which requires maximum flexibility.

“Non-Russian Pro-Russians” and even some Russians might be disappointed with his position towards recent events in Syria, but they should at least understand the reasons behind it. Russia couldn’t stop what just happened, which was the result of the Syrian Arab Army’s and pro-Iranian units’ cowardice in the face of the foreign-backed terrorist-driven blitz, and it won’t go to war with Turkiye over this either. By adapting to this new reality, Putin now has the best possible chance of advancing Russian interests.

It doesn’t mean that he’ll succeed, but there’s no guarantee of failure as would have been the case had he criticized Turkiye after being unable to stop it and unwilling to go to war with it afterwards. Even if things don’t work out like he envisages, Russia’s mutually beneficial bilateral ties with Turkiye won’t be jeopardized, nor will his country’s soft power be damaged since it’s not opposed to the outcome that the domestic and regional majority support. Putin’s pragmatic hedging therefore preserves Russian interests.

***

Putin Thinks Al-Qaeda in Syria Is Reformed Too

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 12/20/24

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia’s goal to defeat jihadism in Syria had actually succeeded because the rebranded al-Qaeda force that seized power on Dec. 8 has put its extremist past behind it. 

Putin said this in answer to a Western journalist at a Moscow news conference (video) on Thursday:

“Those who pay your salary would like to present the current developments in Syria as Russia’s defeat. I assure you that this is not the case, and here is why. We came to Syria ten years ago to prevent the creation of a terrorist enclave there, like the one that we saw in some other countries, for example, Afghanistan. We have achieved that goal, by and large.

Even the groups that were fighting against the Assad regime and the government forces back then have undergone internal changes. It is not surprising that many European countries and the United States are trying to develop relations with them now. Would they be doing this if they were terrorist organisations? This means that they have changed, doesn’t it? So, our goal has been achieved, to a certain degree.”

The remark aligns Putin with Western nations who claim that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — which was al-Nusra Front and before that al-Qaeda in Syria — is no longer a terrorist group and is fit to rule Syria. 

This conclusion, after less than 10 days of HTS in power, puts a spin on events that seeks to benefit both Russia and the West.  Both sides now need to portray the militants as reformed extremists.   

Putin is right to say that at least one of Moscow’s goals in Syria in 2015 was “to prevent the creation of a terrorist enclave there.”

(Other goals appeared to have been to save Russia’s Mediterranean bases in Syria, which they may still do, and to protect gas sales to Europe at the time — now lost to sanctions —  against a rival pipeline project through Syria to Europe led by Qatar, which necessitated overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, who opposed it.) 

Putin told the U.N. General Assembly from the podium in New York on Sept. 28, 2015 — days before Russia intervened in Syria at the governments’ invitation — that Moscow’s aim was to defeat jihadism there lest it spread, threatening regional and Russian security. 

Russia had to that point already fought Western-backed jihadists in a 30-year struggle against encroachment into its sphere of influence by militant Islamism.

The support the U.S. and Gulf Arab nations gave these terrorist groups opened a three-decade Western rift with Russia that began in Afghanistan and ran across the Northern Caucasus to the Balkans and then into Syria.

Russia was opposed to regime change in Syria not only on principle, analysts and diplomats at the U.N. told me in June 2012, but because the likely new regime would be headed by an Islamist government inimical to Russian interests.

In his 2015 U.N. speech, Putin appealed to the U.S. to join Russia in a military campaign against the common enemy of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other jihadists, the way the U.S. and the Soviet Union had fought together against Nazism.

The Obama administration arrogantly rejected the proposal out of hand with some American commentators calling it “Russian imperialism.” But it would be odd to invite your adversary to join your imperial adventure. 

In fact the United States was in alliance with al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups trying to overthrow al-Assad and did not want to fight them. Putin understood that the U.S. had long supported Islamist extremists.

He pointed this out at the U.N. in 2015:

“The situation is extremely dangerous. In these circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about the threat of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade. 

It is equally irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them. … the people you are dealing with are cruel but they are not dumb. They are as smart as you are. So, it’s a big question: who’s playing who here? … 

Relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism. Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of parties willing to stand firm against those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind.”  [Emphasis added.]  

So the question is, has the HTS and lesser extremist groups in Syria really changed their stripes? Have they really transformed from Jihad to Jefferson?

The U.S., the U.K. and the EU are in the process of dropping HTS’ terrorist designation and the U.S. in lifting the $10 million bounty on its leader’s head.

But it seems too early for Putin to say that the HTS — in nominal charge in Damascus — are no longer terrorists because the West would not be “developing relations” with them “if they were terrorist organisations.”  It belies what he knows to be true, that the U.S. has had relationships for decades with some of the most notorious terrorists on the globe to achieve short-term strategic objectives.

Putin may be saying they aren’t terrorists anymore as a way to get out of admitting Russia likely failed in Syria to prevent terrorists from taking over. He did not cite Russian intelligence saying these are reformed killers, but said they must be reformed because otherwise the West would have nothing to do with them, when he knows full well the West has had plenty to do with them when they were openly terrorists. 

This may just be Putin trying to find a creative way out of the fact that Assad’s overthrow appears to have been a Russian defeat unless the HTS are truly reformed. And if they are reformed, still very much uncertain, the U.S. and Turkey would have been behind it, not Russia.   

A commenter on this article on X suggested Putin was just making fun of the journalist. Perhaps he was employing sarcasm but it was on the record and people take Putin seriously. 

What happens in Syria over the coming months will tell the rest of this story. Will Alawis, Christians and other minorities be left alone to live as they please?

Or will the HTS reanimate as terrorists to go after are these vulnerable peoples? Will the HTS serve the interests of stability in Syria and the region as Putin seems to think?

Or will they revert to what they have long been, especially now that they have power?

By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, 12/9/24

There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.

In December of 2021, Putin presented the U.S. and NATO with a proposal on security guarantees. Then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the “promise [of] no more NATO enlargement… was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine.”

The U.S. was not then, nor are they yet, willing to offer NATO membership to Ukraine. Ukraine was then willing to abandon its pursuit of NATO membership, as signaled by both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and by his advisors. According to polls, only 24%-39% of Ukrainians even wanted NATO membership. But the U.S. said no.

That “no,” that could have brought peace to Ukraine, instead brought the “military-technical” response that Putin promised a “no” would bring.

The U.S. sacrificed Ukraine for the principal that NATO had the right to enlarge wherever it wanted to go: even up to Russia’s border. But still, in the first days after Russia’s invasion, peace was still possible.

In the days after the invasion, Russia and Ukraine were engaged in direct bilateral negotiations that led to an initialed draft agreement. Even then, Ukraine could have maintained its prewar territory and, perhaps, even more in a return to the idea of an autonomous Donbas still as part of Ukraine.

Once again, Ukraine could have lost few lives and little land. But the United States, Britain, Poland and their NATO partners said no. Instead of encouraging and nurturing the talks and the diplomatic path that could have quickly saved Ukrainians from the horrors of the war that were to come, the West dissuaded Ukraine from pursuing that path and pushed them down the path of war with promises of whatever they need for as long as they need it.

Twice, once in the weeks before the start of the war and once in the days after the start of the war, the U.S. declined the opportunity to negotiate a peace for the people of Ukraine, prioritizing its own foreign policy objectives over the goals and interests of Ukraine. Russia is surely to blame for starting the war with Ukraine. But from the moment the U.S. and Britain blocked the promising peace talks, they shared responsibility for the suffering of Ukrainians that was to come.

As the possibility of negotiations and a diplomatic settlement faded into the past and the full horror of war came to Ukraine, U.S. officials would, once again, make decisions and encourage policies and strategies that they knew would bring suffering and loss of life to Ukraine.

Perhaps the turning point in the war was the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive of the summer of 2023. The last best hope for stopping Russia from winning the war was a devastating failure for Ukraine. It gained them no land and cost them many lives.

The U.S. encouraged and pushed Ukraine to launch the counteroffensive. They told Ukraine and the world that the Ukrainian armed forces could win. U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin told a Senate Armed Services Committee that Ukraine now had a “significant advantage” over Russian forces that had suffered “significant losses” and that had “depleted their armoured vehicles in a way that no one could have ever imagined.” He told them that “Ukraine will have a very good chance for success” in the coming counteroffensive.

That’s what he said. It’s not what he knew. Privately, military officials knew that Ukraine was ill prepared to take on Russia in a counteroffensive. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons – from shells to warplanes – that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.” Incredibly, military officials were prepared to count on “Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness.”

The Ukrainian soldiers were courageous and resourceful. But courage is no shield against Russian weapons and troops when you lack training and weapons of your own.

At the start of the war, the U.S. pushed Ukraine off the path of peace and diplomacy and onto the path of war. In the middle of the war, they pushed them to launch a counteroffensive that they knew they lacked the training and weapons for. Both times, the U.S. used Ukrainian soldiers to pursue its own foreign policy interests, and hundreds of thousands of those Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded.

And now, the U.S. wants Ukraine to throw even more soldiers into a war they know Ukraine has lost.

The war has not gone well for Ukraine. Already a year ago, on November 1, 2023, a close aid to Zelensky had complained that, even if Ukraine had all the weapons they needed, they “don’t have the men to use them.” One year, and thousands of deaths, injuries, amputations and desertions later, the manpower situation is much worse.

At the end of November, the Biden administration began to pressure Kiev to lower the draft age from 25 to 18. “The pure math,” one senior Biden official said, is that Ukraine needs to draft more soldiers to replace its battlefield losses. The U.S. may can send more weapons, but now “manpower is the most vital need,” White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary. Right now, 18- to 25-year olds are not in the fight.” And National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “In fact, we believe manpower is the most vital need they have. So, we’re also ready to ramp up our training capacity if they take appropriate steps to fill out their ranks.”

Asking Ukraine to throw more soldiers into a losing war is a lot. Asking them to send 18-25 year old soldiers is a lot more. Through death and emigration, the war has decimated Ukraine’s population. But there is a special problem with asking Kiev to send in 18-25 year olds.

Ukraine is in a precarious position that it does not have enough of that generation. That means both that there isn’t a sufficient pool of 18-25 year olds to draw on and that losing large numbers of them on the battlefield will leave a void in the workforce and create a challenge to the future population of the country. The U.S. wants Kiev to throw young people at the Russians to win the war and risk losing Ukraine: and the former, they know, is hopeless. As The New York Times puts it, “Ukraine must balance the need to counter a relentless Russian offensive by adding more troops against the risk of hollowing out an entire generation.”

At the collapse of the Soviet empire, economic hardships led to plummeting birth rates in the newly independent Ukraine. Birth rates dropped from 1.9 per woman to 1.1 in the first year. The small number of children born then are the 18-25 year old cohort now. And many of them are either serving already, have been killed or injured, have left Ukraine or are exempt, making the small pool even smaller.

The looming population threat created by the lack of a generation has already been made worse by the war. In addition to the millions who have died or left Ukraine, the birth rate had dropped by nearly half by 2023 compared to the year before the war.

At the start of the war, the U.S. discouraged Ukraine from negotiating a diplomatic settlement, ushering in a war that has cost Ukraine so much in land and lives. In the middle of the war, the U.S. pushed Ukraine into a counteroffensive it new it was ill prepared and under armed to fight, leading to the loss of tens of thousands more lives. And now, at the end of the war, with no living chance of victory, the U.S. is pressing Zelensky to send its anemic generation of young people to prolong the war in service of the wishful thinking that it will preserve the current lines for the inevitable negotiations. Of course, the current lines could be preserved by just starting talks currently.

One day, when after all the death and debility, Ukraine negotiates a peace with Russia that it could have negotiated in the first days of the war minus all the vast land it has lost since then, Ukrainians may come to hate the States for blocking the peace, pushing the counteroffensive and sacrificing a generation of young people.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

Russia Matters, 12/20/24

1. “I would like to emphasize from the very beginning that the outgoing year has been crucial in achieving the goals of the special military operation,” Vladimir Putin told an expanded annual meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board on Dec. 16. He then claimed during his annual call-in show on Dec. 19 that Russian forces were moving toward achieving their “priority goals.” Russia is yet to establish full control over the four Ukrainian regions it has annexed since the beginning of its re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,¹ but Vladimir Putin is already seeking to shape the narrative so that he can present his gains in Ukraine as a victory next year, while his planning horizon for the five Ukrainian regions Russia has already claimed as its own stretch as far as 2030.*
2. “He [Zelenskyy] should be prepared to make a deal. That’s all,” Donald Trump asserted on Dec. 16 at his first post-election victory press conference. Trump is already planning to send his special envoy for the Ukraine war Keith Kellogg to Kyiv, along with London, Paris and Rome after his inauguration, and Kellogg, a retired general, is also open to visiting Moscow, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Putin is sending conflicting signals on whether he would agree to a ceasefire instead of pursuing a peace deal. “I didn’t reject it,” Putin said during his Dec. 19 call-in show with regard to Viktor Orban’s proposal for a Christmas truce, according to Meduza. At the same time, however, Putin told the annual call-in-show that “we don’t need a truce; we need peace.” When asked during the call-in show about Russia’s conditions for negotiations with Ukraine, Putin reiterated that negotiations can begin without preliminary conditions, but at the same time they must be based on what he has described as “agreements in Istanbul” that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators discussed during the early weeks of the war, and negotiations must also take into account “the realities that are taking shape on the ground today.” He added that any treaty could only be signed with a “legitimate government.” In his turn, Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected a return to the Istanbul agreements because he claimed that there were none. At least one of the drafts of the agreement Ukrainian and Russian negotiators discussed in Spring 2022 would have designated Ukraine as a “neutral” state that would not join NATO, but could join the EU and could seek security guarantees from other countries. On top of that, Putin—who insists Zelenskyy’s presidential powers have expired—continues to demand regime change in Kyiv by stressing that he can only negotiate with a legitimate government of Ukraine. 
3. In the past month, Russian force have made a net gain of 204 square miles (an area roughly equivalent to 1/3rd of the total area of London), according to RM staff’s estimate that was published in the Dec. 18 issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card, and that is based on data provided for that period by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). One sign of how worried the Ukrainian leadership has become about Russian advances in this eastern province of Ukraine, where Russian troops have reached the outskirts of the key town of Pokrovsk this week, is the replacement of the commander of the Ukrainian forces there less than a month after replacing the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. As NYT has observed, “On the battlefield, the situation has not looked this desperate for Ukrainian troops since the start of the invasion.”
4. The commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) Defense Forces Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov has been killed in an bomb blast, which was allegedly set up by an Uzbek national on the orders of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The SBU claimed the Russian military’s NBC chief—whom it had accused of ordering the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops—was a legitimate target, but even inside Ukraine some questioned the wisdom of the assassination. Joe Biden’s NSA Jake Sullivan disapproved of the hit, arguing that “we do support and enable Ukraine to defend itself and to take the fight to Russian forces on the battlefield, but not operations like this,” while Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s nominee for special envoy for the conflict, called the assassination “not a very good idea.” Moreover, Ukraine’s forces are steadily losing ground on the battlefield and assassination won’t improve their war effort, analysts and Western officials told NYT. The Russians will find a replacement for that general, a Ukrainian special forces officer told NYT, predicting that as a condition of any peace settlement, Russia would insist not only on a cessation of military operations, but also of secret operations that kill their generals. As for the Russian reaction, it went beyond threats of retaliation, with Vladimir Putin offering a rare criticism of his special services. “Our security services allowed a serious terrorist act to happen. Such grave failures cannot be tolerated,” Putin said during his call-in show one day before it was revealed that the head of the FSB’s Military Counterintelligence Department Nikolai Yuryev resigned. Such a public criticism of Russia’s secret services by Putin, an ex-KGB officer and former head of the FSB himself, occurs rarely and could be a sign of what Russians call “organizational conclusions.”
5. Vladimir Putin flaunted Russia’s nuclear forces during his Dec. 16 address to the expanded annual meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Board yet again. “The army and navy are being re-equipped with up-to-date weapons and equipment at an accelerated pace. For example, the share of such weapons in the strategic nuclear forces has already reached 95%. Meanwhile, we have specified the fundamental principles for the use of nuclear weapons envisaged in the updated Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence. Let me stress once again, so that no one accuses us of trying to scare everyone with nuclear weapons: this is a policy of nuclear deterrence,” he said. He also flaunted the purported capabilities of the Oreshnik MRBM yet again both in the Dec. 16 address to the MoD board and during his Dec. 19 annual call-in show. During the latter, he proposed a “21st-century high-tech duel,” in which Russia would field the Oreshnik and the West deployed a system in Ukraine that Western experts think can intercept that MRBM. This week also saw Putin threaten to stop complying with the INF Treaty, which he claims to be complying with in spite of the legal death of that treaty, while also having the chief of his Strategic Missile Forces Sergei Karakayev participate in nuclear saber-rattling, including a claim that Russia may automate nuclear retaliation. In his interview to the RF MoD’s Red Star this week, Karakayev also implied Russia may have disclosed to the U.S. the area the Oreshnik was to target in Ukraine prior to the Nov. 21 launch of this MRBM.
6. On Dec. 16, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told an expanded meeting of his agency’s board that one of the priorities for the Russian armed forces is “ensuring full readiness for a possible military conflict with NATO in the next decade… The first among the priority areas is victory in the special military operation,” he said.
7. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria has conceded that it will probably allow Russia to keep some or all of its bases, and it is likely to respect Russia’s lease at Tartus port, according to The Economist.