On June 4, a group referring to itself as the “Polish Volunteer Corps” issued a boastful announcement confirming its participation in a series of cross-border ground offensives into Russia. News of these audacious raids was jarring enough, given the many prior assurances of U.S. and Ukrainian war planners, who insisted no attacks would be carried out inside Russian territory. It was all the more conspicuous that the incursion units were apparently comprised of Polish soldiers.
Poland, of course, is not only a NATO member state, but the NATO member state with which the U.S. has most assiduously aligned itself since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Polish government officials deny any formal connection to the “Polish Volunteer Corps”). So the raids raised an obvious, yet oft-neglected question: Just what the hell is U.S. policy in Ukraine?
If you turn on the TV, you’ll find pundits on every channel loyally reciting from memory the broad parameters of the U.S. mission—at least as it’s being conveyed in daily rhetorical flourishes by Biden Administration officials, assorted Congressional chest-thumpers, and brave think tank warriors. Freedom and autocracy are locked in a great cosmic battle of good versus evil, or so goes the usual storyline—most often narrated with a degree of moral complexity that can be generously compared to a lower-tier Marvel Movie.
But apart from this steady stream of heavily recycled platitudes, was it ever plainly disclosed to Americans—the chief financial sponsors of the Ukraine war effort, after all—that the scope of the war effort they’ve found themselves subsidizing would eventually expand to include platoons of Polish soldiers marching straight into Russia? Did anyone back in Washington, D.C. sign off on this, or was there ever an opportunity granted for public consideration of its potentially foreboding implications?
At least in theory, the U.S. is treaty-bound to come to the defense of Poland in the event of armed attack. And while Poland may nominally disavow the Polish Volunteer Corps, a Polish journalist writing for Poland’s largest digital publication says he was in attendance at a founding organizational meeting in Kyiv this past February, during which the unit was established not as a ragtag group of untested amateurs, but as an elite “sabotage and reconnaissance” force—which from the get-go was “reporting directly to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.” Per this account, the unit was to consist of Poland’s “most experienced soldiers,” with notable imprecision as to where specifically those soldiers hailed from.
Then there’s the fact that shortly before the formation of the “Polish Volunteer Corps,” a cross-coalition bill was submitted to the Polish parliament which would make it legal for Polish nationals to fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The war against Russia was to be recognized as “a special situation from the point of view of the national security of the Republic of Poland,” the text reads, “requiring non-standard political and legislative actions on the part of the state.”
The “Polish Volunteer Corps” has been conducting joint operations with the “Russian Volunteer Corps,” another fully integrated “special unit within the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine”—euphemistically referred to in “Western” media headlines with plausible-deniability monikers like “Pro-Ukraine group of partisans.” Given how these ostensibly unattached “partisans” have been bragging about taking Russian hostages and otherwise getting themselves involved in increasingly spectacular, provocative attacks, one understands why Ukraine might wish to sustain plausible deniability.
“The ground war has come to Russia,” proclaimed one Polish state-backed media organ at the news that their soldiers had breached the border.
For many, the footage provided an occasion for rapturous joy, awash as they are in the primal euphoria of armed retribution. Meanwhile, these elite soldiers billed as “volunteers” have been razing Russian border settlements with U.S.-provided weaponry, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. The units “lobbed shells and missiles on residential areas,” the Times reported, and they appeared to be aiming their attacks at “no apparent military target.”
Convoys of armored vehicles called MRAPs, initially produced for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, were observed barreling into Russia from Ukraine, with still no explanation forthcoming as to how precisely they wound up there. Maybe someone in Kyiv just happened to leave a garage full of U.S. supplied armored vehicles unlocked. Either way, the Ukraine military was conclusively shown to have used U.S. weapons to attack Russia—the very thing President Biden and other administration officials have emphatically maintained they do not support and are not enabling.
Strangely though, this revelation of systematic government deception doesn’t seem to have moved the needle much in terms of the wider debate over U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Donald Trump could misstate the temperature outside by half-a-degree Farenheit and the entire U.S. media would be falling over themselves to piously accuse him of “lying”—but pile up mounds of incontrovertible evidence that Americans have been chronically deceived about a sprawling U.S. military intervention, and you’ll mostly get eye-rolls from the savvy-minded commentariat. That is, if you’re fortunate enough to be spared the standard sneering accusations of “Russian propagandist.”
Speaking of claims that might arguably be considered “propaganda,” almost exactly one year ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on a U.S. media tour promising Americans from the bottom of his heart that “We are not planning to attack Russia.” These claims were echoed simultaneously by President Biden, who insisted that “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.”
Yet here we are a year later, and there’s no longer any reasonable doubt that Ukraine is “striking beyond its borders,” and in increasingly aggressive fashion—from the cross-border raids to the drone-strike on the Kremlin to the bombing barrage on a residential Moscow neighborhood. And that’s only a smattering of examples from the past several weeks.
Still, it’s harder than one might expect to rouse much critical interest—especially among a media that has been politically, ideologically, and emotionally invested in Ukraine’s glorious war-fighting cause from the outset. One perfect example of late was a CNN article in which “senior U.S. officials” were reported confiding that while they had “condemned the strikes inside Russia,” they of course privately “believe the cross-border attacks are a smart military strategy.” A state official saying one thing in public but another in private used to be the most surefire sign of official deceit a journalist could hope to uncover. Yet CNN seemed to just let it flow by like a gentle spring breeze, almost as though they were actually impressed with the guile of the “senior U.S. officials” they’d been given the honor of anonymously paraphrasing.
As it stands, the U.S. government continuously pelts the American people with provable untruths in service of maintaining a war policy that bears almost no resemblance to how it was initially presented. And in the sectors of society allegedly tasked with scrutinizing government conduct, this is mostly met with a shrug.
How much more extreme does the deception need to get before sustained pushback is no longer avoidable?
If Polish soldiers launching a self-proclaimed “ground war” in Russia isn’t enough to rattle off the complacency, one shudders to think how severe of a shock would be necessary.
I find this proposal disgusting and stupid. Karaganov ignores that even one or a few nuclear bombs would cause major effects on the weather and consequently major famine that would affect billions of people outside of the areas bombed. I hope the reckless morons controlling policy in Washington are proud that they are now getting people of significant stature in Russia to consider these kinds of ideas. – Natylie
By Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow
This article has sparked major debate among experts in Russia about nuclear weapons, their role and the conditions of their use.
This is especially the case given Sergey Karaganov’s status as a former presidential adviser to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and his position as head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a noted Moscow think tank.
Some prominent figures have reacted with dismay, while others have been less critical.
RT has decided it would be beneficial for our readers to read it in full. The following piece has been translated and lightly edited.
***
Our country, and its leadership, seems to me to be facing a difficult choice. It is becoming increasingly clear that our clash with the West will not end even if we achieve a partial – let alone a crushing – victory in Ukraine.
Even if we completely liberate the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, it will be a minimal victory. A slightly greater success would be to liberate the whole of eastern and southern Ukraine within a year or two. But it would still leave part of the country with an even more embittered ultra-nationalist population pumped full of weapons – a bleeding wound that threatens inevitable complications, such as another war.
The situation could be worse if we liberate the whole of Ukraine at the cost of monstrous sacrifices and are left with ruins and a population that mostly hates us. It would take more than a decade to “re-educate” them.
Any of these options, especially the last one, will distract Russia from the much-needed shift of its spiritual, economic, military and political center to the East of Eurasia. We will be stuck with a wasteful focus on the West. And the territories of today’s Ukraine, especially the central and western ones, will attract resources – both human and financial. These regions were heavily subsidised even in Soviet times.
Meanwhile, hostility from the West will continue; it will support a slow-burning guerrilla civil war.
A more attractive option is the liberation and reunification of the east and south, and the imposition of capitulation on the remnants of Ukraine with complete demilitarization, creating a buffer, friendly state. But such an outcome would only be possible if we are able to break the West’s will to support the Kiev junta, and use it against us, forcing the US-led bloc into a strategic retreat.
And here I come to a crucial but hardly discussed issue. The root cause of – and indeed the main reason for – the Ukrainian crisis, as well as many other conflicts in the world, and the general increase in military threats, is the accelerating failure of the contemporary Western ruling elites.
This crisis is accompanied by an unprecedentedly rapid shift in the balance of power in the world in favor of the global majority, driven economically by China and partly by India, with Russia as the military and strategic anchor. This weakening not only infuriates the imperial-cosmopolitan elites (US President Joe Biden and his ilk) but also frightens the imperial-national elites (such as his predecessor Donald Trump). The West is losing the advantage it has held for five centuries to siphon off the wealth of the entire world by imposing its political and economic order and establishing its cultural dominance, mainly by brute force. So there is no quick end to the defensive, but aggressive, confrontation that the West has unleashed.
This moral, political and economic collapse has been brewing since the mid-1960s, was interrupted by the collapse of the USSR, but resumed with renewed vigour in the 2000s (the defeats of the Americans and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the crisis of the Western economic model in 2008 were milestones).
In order to slow down this seismic shift, the West has temporarily consolidated itself. The US has turned Ukraine into a punching bag to tie the hands of Russia, the politico-military lynchpin of a non-Western world freed from the shackles of neocolonialism. Ideally, of course, the Americans would simply like to blow up our country and thus radically weaken the emerging alternative superpower, China. We, either not realizing the inevitability of the clash or hoarding our strength, have been slow to act preemptively. Moreover, in line with modern, mainly Western, political and military thinking, we were rash in raising the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, inaccurate in assessing the situation in Ukraine, and not entirely successful in launching the current military operation.
By failing internally, Western elites have actively fed the weeds that have taken root in the soil of 70 years of prosperity, satiation and peace. These comprise of anti-human ideologies: the denial of family, homeland, history, love between men and women, faith, service to higher ideals, everything that is human. Their philosophy is to weed out those who resist. The aim is to neuter people in order to reduce their ability to resist modern “globalist” capitalism, which is becoming more and more obviously unjust and harmful to man and humanity.
Meanwhile, a weakened US is destroying Western Europe and other countries dependent on it, trying to push them into a confrontation that will follow Ukraine. The elites in most of these countries have lost their bearings and, panicked by the crisis in their own positions at home and abroad, are dutifully leading their countries to the slaughter. At the same time, because of greater failure, a sense of powerlessness, centuries of Russophobia, intellectual degradation and a loss of strategic culture, their hatred is almost more intense than that of the US.
Thus, the trajectory of most Western countries clearly points towards a new fascism, which could be called “liberal” totalitarianism.
In the future, and this is the most important thing, it will only get worse. Truces are possible, but reconciliation is not. Anger and despair will continue to grow in waves and waves. This vector of Western movement is a clear sign of the drift towards the outbreak of World War Three. It has already begun and could erupt into a full-blown conflagration either by accident, or due to the growing incompetence and irresponsibility of the ruling circles of the West.
The introduction of artificial intelligence and the robotization of war increase the risk of unintended escalation. Machines can act outside the control of confused elites.
The situation is aggravated by “strategic parasitism” – in 75 years of relative peace, people have forgotten the horrors of war, have stopped fearing even nuclear weapons. Everywhere, but especially in the West, the instinct for self-preservation has weakened.
I have spent many years studying the history of nuclear strategy and have come to an unequivocal, if unscientific, conclusion. The advent of nuclear weapons is the result of the intervention of the Almighty, who, appalled that mankind had unleashed two world wars within a generation, costing tens of millions of lives, gave us the weapons of Armageddon to show those who had lost their fear of hell that it existed. On that fear rested the relative peace of the last three-quarters of a century.
But now that fear is gone. The unthinkable in terms of previous notions of nuclear deterrence is happening – a group of ruling elites, in a fit of desperate rage, have unleashed a full-scale war in the underbelly of a nuclear superpower.
The fear of atomic escalation must be restored. Otherwise humanity is doomed.
It is not only, and not even so much, what the future world order will look like that is being decided in the fields of Ukraine right now. But rather whether the world we are used to will be preserved at all, or if all will be left is radioactive ruins, poisoning the remnants of humanity.
By breaking the West’s will in imposing its aggression, we will not only save ourselves and finally free the world from the Western yoke of five centuries, but we will also salvage the whole of humanity. By pushing the West towards catharsis and the abandonment of the hegemony of its elites, we will force it to retreat before a global catastrophe. Humanity will be given a new chance to develop.
Proposed solution
Of course, there is an uphill struggle ahead. It is also necessary to solve our own internal problems – to finally get rid of the mindset of Western-centrism and of the Westernizers in the administrative class. Especially the compradors and their peculiar way of thinking. Of course, in this area, the NATO bloc is helping us, unwittingly.
Our 300-year journey around Europe has given us a lot of useful lessons and it has helped us to form our great culture. Let us cherish our European heritage. But it is time to return home, to ourselves. Let us begin, with the baggage we have accumulated, to live in our own way. Our friends in the Foreign Ministry have recently made a real breakthrough by referring to Russia as a civilizational state in their foreign policy concept. I would add – a civilization of civilizations, open to the North as well as to the South, to the West as well as to the East. Now the main direction of development is to the South, to the North and, above all, to the East.
The confrontation with the West in Ukraine, however it ends, should not distract us from the strategic internal movement – spiritual, cultural, economic, political, military and political – towards the Urals, Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. A new Ural-Siberian strategy is needed, one that includes several powerful spiritually uplifting projects, including, of course, the creation of a third capital in Siberia. This movement should become part of the much-needed formulation of the “Russian Dream” – the image of the Russia and the world to which one aspires.
I have often written, and I am not alone in this, that great states without a great idea cease to be such or simply disappear into the void. History is littered with the graves of powers that lost their way. This idea should be created from above and not rely, as fools or lazy people do, on what comes from below. It must correspond to the deepest values and aspirations of the people and, above all, it must take us all forward. But it is the responsibility of the elite and the leadership of the country to formulate it. The delay in putting forward such a vision is unacceptably long.
But for the future to come to pass, the resistance of the forces of the past – i.e. the West – must be overcome. If this is not achieved, there will almost certainly be a full-scale world war. Which will probably be the last of its kind.
And here I come to the most difficult part of this article. We can keep fighting for another year or two, or even three, sacrificing thousands and thousands of our best men and grinding up hundreds of thousands more who are unfortunate enough to fall into the tragic historical trap of what is now called Ukraine. But this military operation cannot end in a decisive victory without forcing the West into a strategic retreat or even capitulation. We must force the West to abandon its attempts to turn back history, to abandon its attempts at global domination, and to force it to deal with its own problems, to manage its current multifaceted crisis. To put it crudely, it is necessary for the West to simply “piss off” and end its interference in the direction of Russia and the rest of the world.
However, for this to happen, Western elites need to rediscover their own lost sense of self-preservation by understanding that attempts to wear down Russia by playing the Ukrainians against it are counterproductive for the West itself.
The credibility of nuclear deterrence must be restored by lowering the unacceptably high threshold for the use of atomic weapons and by moving cautiously but quickly up the ladder of deterrence-escalation. The first steps have already been taken through statements to this effect by the president and other leaders, by beginning to deploy nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles in Belarus, and by increasing the combat effectiveness of the strategic deterrent forces. There are quite a few steps on this ladder. I count about two dozen. It could even go as far as warning our compatriots and all people of good will about the need to leave their homes near the objects of possible nuclear strikes in countries directly supporting the Kiev regime. The enemy must know that we are ready to launch a preemptive retaliatory strike in response to its current and past aggression in order to prevent a slide into a global thermonuclear war.
I have often said and written that with the right strategy of deterrence and even use, the risk of a ‘retaliatory’ nuclear or other strike on our territory can be minimized. Only if there is a madman in the White House who also hates his own country will the US decide to strike in ‘defense’ of the Europeans and invite retaliation by sacrificing a hypothetical Boston for a notional Poznan. The Americans and the Western Europeans are well aware of this, they just prefer not to think about it. We, too, have contributed to this recklessness with our peace-loving pronouncements. Having studied the history of US nuclear strategy, I know that after the USSR acquired a credible nuclear retaliatory capability, Washington never seriously considered using nuclear weapons on Soviet territory, even though it publicly bluffed. When nuclear weapons were considered, it was only against “advancing” Soviet forces in Western Europe. I know that the late Chancellors Helmut Kohl and Helmut Schmidt fled from their bunkers as soon as the question of such use came up in an exercise.
Movement down the ladder of containment-escalation should be fairly quick. Given the current direction of the West – and the degradation of most of its elites – each successive decision it makes is more incompetent and ideologically veiled than the last. And, at present, we cannot expect these elites to be replaced by more responsible and reasonable ones. This will only happen after a catharsis, leading to the abandonment of much ambition.
We cannot repeat the ‘Ukrainian scenario’. For a quarter of a century we were not listened to when we warned that NATO enlargement would lead to war; we tried to delay, to “negotiate”. As a result, we ended up in a serious armed conflict. Now the price of indecision is an order of magnitude higher than it would have been earlier.
But what if the present Western leaders refuse to back down? Perhaps they have lost all sense of self-preservation? Then we will have to hit a group of targets in a number of countries to bring those who have lost their senses back to their senses.
It’s a morally frightening choice – we would be using God’s weapon and condemning ourselves to great spiritual loss. But if this is not done, not only may Russia perish, but most likely the whole of human civilization will end.
We will have to make this choice ourselves. Even friends and sympathizers will not support it at first. If I were Chinese, I would not want an abrupt and decisive end to the conflict, because it will draw back US forces and allow them to gather forces for a decisive battle – either directly or, in the best Sun Tzu tradition, by forcing the enemy to retreat without a fight. As a Chinese person, I would also oppose the use of nuclear weapons because taking the confrontation to the nuclear level means moving to an area where my country is still weak.
Also, decisive action is not in line with the Chinese foreign policy philosophy, which emphasizes economic factors (with the accumulation of military power) and avoids direct confrontation. I would support an ally by providing him with rear cover, but I would go behind his back and not enter the fray. (In this case, perhaps I don’t understand this philosophy well enough and am attributing motives to my Chinese friends that are not their own.) If Russia uses nuclear weapons, Beijing would condemn it. But Chinese hearts would also rejoice in knowing that that the reputation and position of the US had been dealt a severe blow.
How would we react if (God forbid!) Pakistan attacked India, or vice versa? We’d be horrified. Upset that the nuclear taboo has been broken. Then let us help the victims and change our nuclear doctrine accordingly.
For India and other countries of the world majority, including nuclear weapon states (Pakistan, Israel), the use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable, both for moral and geostrategic reasons. If they are used “successfully”, the nuclear taboo – the notion that such weapons should never be used and that their use is a direct route to nuclear Armageddon – will be devalued. We are unlikely to win support quickly, even if many in the Global South would feel satisfaction at the defeat of their former oppressors who plundered them, carried out genocides and imposed an alien culture.
But in the end, the victors are not judged. And the saviors are thanked. Western European political culture does not remember, but the rest of the world does (and with gratitude) how we helped the Chinese to free themselves from the brutal Japanese occupation, and many Western colonies to throw off the colonial yoke.
Of course, if they do not understand us at first, they will have all the more incentive to educate themselves. Still, it is very likely that we can win, and focus the minds enemy states without extreme measures, and force them to retreat. And after a few years, we take take up a position as China’s rear, as it is now performing for us, supporting it in its struggle with the US. Then this fight can be avoided without a big war. And we will win together for the good of all, including the people of the Western countries.
At that stage, Russia and the rest of humanity will pass through all the thorns and traumas into the future, which I see as bright – multipolar, multicultural, multicolored – and giving countries and peoples the opportunity to build their own destinies in addition to the common one, which should unite worldwide.
Considering that Russia’s abortion laws are similar to those of many western European countries, there is no death penalty, guns are seriously restricted, street cops generally don’t carry guns, and support for strong welfare state programs are popular across the political spectrum, it seems that Russia is mainly conservative on issues relating to homosexuality and trans issues. – Natylie
Most Russians believe it is no longer necessary to have a single head of the family and that a rigid gender hierarchy has been replaced by the model of seeking a consensus in the family, a recent poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) suggests.
According to the survey, which was published on the organization’s website on Monday and polled some 1,600 people across the country on their beliefs about family structure, the share of Russians who believe there should be a clear head of the family has gone down from 58% to 29% over the past 15 years.
Only about one in five people said they adhered to the paternalistic model and believed that the eldest man in the house should be the head of the family, and if there isn’t one, then that role should belong to the eldest woman. About 18% believe that the duty of providing for the family should rest with the man and that women should be in charge of the housework and raising children.
The poll showed that those adhering to the paternalistic model of decision-making in the family are primarily men (23% versus 15% women), and also those with an incomplete secondary education, active television viewers, and residents of villages.
Meanwhile, over two thirds of respondents, or 68%, instead said that they believe in a consensus model, and that important decisions in the family should be made jointly while smaller ones should be made in accordance with the existing division of responsibilities. Many respondents also said that a strict division of household chores is a thing of the past and that both spouses equally contribute to resolving domestic and family issues.
Equality in family relations was most often advocated for by women (70% versus 64% of men), people between the ages of 18 and 34, those with at least a secondary education, residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as those who prefer the internet over traditional television.
As the war in Ukraine spilled into Russian territory, with shelling in the Russian city of Belgorod, President Vladimir Putin was busy explaining that he “sleeps like a normal person” during an online meeting with families to honor Children’s Day. That Putin mentioned his healthy sleeping pattern, without discussing the ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Belgorod – where civilians, including children, were being evacuated — left some observers wondering who is actually running the country while he plays war.
The Russian regime is far from monolithic, and there are other forces in power besides Putin and the turbo-patriots
Putin has a penchant for disengaging and struggling to make decisions, especially when there are no good ones left to make. He will micromanage his generals, but when it comes down to serious policy choices — like whether to announce another round of mobilization, or intercede in the vicious conflict between his defense minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of the Wagner mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin — he can’t seem to make up his mind.
Which is odd, because aside from his floundering military campaign, the Russian economy is doing surprisingly well for a country slapped with unprecedented sanctions and isolation. Despite forecasts of a double-digit contraction, the economy shrank by just 2.1 percent in 2022 — less than it did during the pandemic year of 2020. And in April, the International Monetary Fund raised its prognosis for 2023, forecasting growth of 0.7 percent.
While Putin is focusing all of his attention on the front — but without actually deciding much — the business of actually running the country has fallen to his prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin. The resilience of Russia’s economy and its day-to-day functioning is owed to Mishustin and his team of technocrats in the cabinet, as well as the fiscal miracles being worked by Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina. The prime minister has done a great deal to reorient Russia’s economy towards the global southeast, and has acted with a considerable degree of autonomy in dealing with foreign heads of state.
It was Mishustin, not Putin, who traveled to China on May 24. He met not only with his counterpart, premier Li Qiang, but also directly with President Xi Jinping. Russia is the junior partner in its relationship with China, so it is significant that Mishustin, and not Putin, reciprocated this state visit.
What is interesting, though, is that evidence suggests Mishustin does not support the war. At the fateful Security Council meeting on February 21, 2022, when Putin essentially asked each of his officials to approve a decision to recognize the secession of a good chunk of Ukrainian territory, Mishustin was one of only three officials who instead favored continuing talks with the West. Insiders say Mishustin was not even informed of the plans to invade until the night before. Moreover, in his public statements, Mishustin, unlike the majority of officials eager to stoke patriotic fervor, avoids talking about the “special military operation” when he can. True, he was responsible for implementing Putin’s orders on economic and social mobilization to support the war effort, but it is believed that even in private he doesn’t like talking about the war.
That has led some observers to identify a “party of silence” or even a “party of peace” in the Kremlin that does not support the war, and which includes powerful officials close to Putin such as Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
And this is where things get interesting. While Russia is very much ruled by a system where personal relations with the president often take precedence over institutional power, that is only part of the picture. Institutions still matter, and as prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin is the second most powerful man after Putin, regardless of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s temper tantrums. All state bodies — except the so-called of “men of force,” or siloviki, such as the defense ministry and security agencies — report to the prime minister. In addition, Putin’s practice of over-delegating hard decisions — especially during the pandemic — further beefed up Mishustin’s role.
Mishustin cannot simply go to Putin and talk him out of the invasion. His power depends on his trustworthiness and his impeccable loyalty. Which leaves him little other choice but to make the best out of an impossible situation and at least preserve Russia’s economy to the extent that he can.
All of this is important, however, because it demonstrates that the Russian regime is far from monolithic, and there are other forces in power besides Putin and the turbo-patriots — the loud supporters of the war in Ukraine.
Right now, keeping quiet and doing their job is the only option for these silent, pragmatic technocrats, and we shouldn’t expect them to be in a position to sway Putin towards peace anytime soon. But a time will come when these forces may well be deciding Russia’s future. It is a giant stretch to call them the “good guys”: mired in corruption and complicit in the war, they will inevitably face a reckoning. But beyond the magical thinking about Russia’s disintegration, or conversely its overnight transformation into a peaceful democracy, western policymakers need to start thinking about a realistic future for Russia if they are serious about sustainable security in Europe. These technocrats will not have the answers anytime soon, but alienating them wholesale is not in anyone’s interests.
