By Kylie Atwood & Michael Chance, CNN, 5/11/23

The Biden administration is scouring the globe for offers that could entice Russia to release two wrongfully detained Americans, Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The US does not currently have any high-level Russian spies in its custody, current and former US officials say, driving the need to turn to allies for help.

The Biden administration is casting a wide net, approaching allied countries who have Russian spies in custody to gauge whether they would be willing to make a trade as part of a larger prisoner swap package. But US officials have also been surveying allies without Russians in their custody, officials said, for ideas on what might entice Moscow to release US prisoners.

The White House is also exploring narrow sanctions relief, senior administration officials said.

The goal is to bring home Whelan and Gershkovich as part of the same deal, US officials have said privately, with two US officials telling CNN the administration wants to see what creative offers could gin up Russian interest.

US officials’ outreach extends to some countries that have recently arrested alleged Russian spies, including Brazil, Norway and Germany, as well as a former Soviet bloc country, to discuss the possibility of including them in any potential prisoner swaps. Germany has in its custody a former colonel from Russia’s domestic spy agency named Vadim Krasikov, who is widely seen as being atop Russia’s list of prisoners it wants back.

While some of these efforts predate Gershkovich’s detention, they have continued to intensify since The Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested in March, with White House officials directly engaged on the matter, officials said.

“Efforts to reach out to allies and partners have been intense for many months and intensified even further once it became clear that there was no way to bring Whelan home at the same time as Brittney Griner, given Russian refusal to release Whelan,” said a senior administration official. “That recognition led the US government to redouble efforts with new creativity to find a way to bring Whelan home, too.”

‘A like for a like’

In March, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US had put forward a “serious proposal” to secure Whelan but that Russia had not engaged on it.

Last April, the Biden administration secured the release of American Trevor Reed, who’d been detained in Russia since 2019, in exchange for convicted Russian drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko.

In December, when Russia agreed to release American basketball star Griner in exchange for the infamous arms trafficker Viktor Bout, it refused to release Whelan, who’s been wrongfully detained in Russia since his 2018 arrest on espionage charges. Releasing Bout was viewed as a major move for the US, though it was not enough to prompt Whelan’s release.

Unlike Griner and Reed, Russia is treating both Whelan and Gershkovich as spies. Over the course of years of conversations Russian officials have indicated that in return for Whelan, they expect someone who is connected to Russia’s intelligence apparatus, current and former US officials said. And US officials expect Russia is likely to make similar demands for Gershkovich.

While the US has multiple Russian cyber criminals in custody, Russia will not entertain them as part of a deal for Americans charged with espionage, according to current and former US officials involved in past proposals put on the table with Russia.

“Russia wouldn’t trade cyber criminals for Reed or Griner, and they are definitely not going to accept them in a trade for an American who has been convicted of espionage or an American who’s been charged with espionage,” said a former senior administration official involved in previous prisoner swaps between Russia and the US. “Russia treats espionage as a different crime, as something much more serious than anything else and they have made clear that they expect something more significant in return. They want a like for a like.”

‘Special channels’

As US officials work with allies to come up with potential tradeable assets, a person with knowledge of the discussions told CNN that an exhaustive list of who may be swapped has not yet been finalized, adding that there is “fierce competition for who gets into the package.” The source spoke with CNN on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak about the details of discussions.

Russian officials confirmed to CNN that “special channels” are active between the US and Russia, but refused to specify who they want as part of an exchange. Gershkovich and Whelan are the only two Americans who have been publicly declared as wrongfully detained in Russia.

The source told CNN that Moscow is “most interested” in the extradition of Krasikov, the former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) colonel jailed in Germany for the assassination in a Berlin park of a Georgian citizen in 2019.

It is unclear under what conditions – if any – Germany would agree to participate in a swap involving Krasikov in exchange for US citizens. Russian government officials requested the former colonel from the country’s domestic spy agency be included in a prisoner swap last year, CNN reported. US officials did make quiet inquiries to the Germans about whether they might be willing to include Krasikov in the trade, a senior German government source told CNN last year.

Last month, the Russian foreign minister told CNN there are “about 60” Russian citizens in US jails “many abducted under dubious circumstances,” indicating Moscow may want some, or all, or them returned as part of any deal.

A State Department spokesperson declined to offer specific details on the negotiation process involved with securing the release of Gershkovich or Whelan, telling CNN, “We regularly engage partners around the world to discuss wrongful detention cases and in some cases to seek assistance in effecting a release. We continue to work aggressively – using every available means – to bring home all US nationals wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad. Russia should release Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan immediately.”

Russian spies in custody

On top of Krasikov, a number of other suspected Russian spies have recently been arrested by US allied countries.

Late last year Norway arrested a suspected Russian spy posing as an academic who was in the country after spending years studying in Canada, according to Norway’s domestic security agency.

A similar case arose with a Russian spy in Brazil late last year. Sergey Cherkasov, who attended the prestigious Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, the elite foreign policy school at John Hopkins in Washington DC. After posing as a student from Brazil, Cherkasov was arrested for identity fraud last fall. The DOJ accused Cherkasov of working for Russia’s military intelligence service, and asked Brazil to extradite him last month.

Estonia also arrested a Russian national last year who the Justice Department believes is an officer for the FSB. Vadim Konoshchenok allegedly attempted to send thousands of US-made bullets, semiconductors and other electronic components into Russia. The US has requested Konoshchenok’s extradition, though it is unclear if there are simultaneous conversations about including him in any possible prisoner swap.

When the US requests a Russian criminal to be extradited it doesn’t necessarily mean they would be involved in any swap, but it does prompt conversations between the two countries on the prisoner which could give US intelligence officials top cover engage the country on the matter, one US official said.

Other countries have also arrested alleged Russian spies recently, including Poland, Sweden and Slovenia.

Other options

US officials cautioned that it could take time for ideas to come together, especially possibilities considered more “think outside the box,” said one US official.

But identifying Russian spies in the custody of US allies remains central to the efforts underway because the US knows that Russia puts a high value on their intelligence operations.

It is the long-held position of DOJ to oppose prisoner swaps. Many Justice officials believe swaps incentivize the detention of Americans and undermine the effort to extradite foreign criminals so they can be convicted of crimes in the US.

Another tool that the US has at its disposal is dangling sanctions relief for Russian groups accused of being involved in taking Americans hostage. Russia’s Federal Security Service was sanctioned last month after being repeatedly been involved in the arrest, investigation, and detention of US nationals wrongfully detained in Russia, the State Department said.

When those sanctions were put into place administration officials said it was possible to lift them if Americans held in Russia were released. But current and former officials recognize that rolling back those sanctions alone – particularly because the FSB is already sanctioned under other authorities – won’t suffice.

“The Russians are so widely sanctioned already, so sanctions relief is unlikely to move the Russians,” said a second former US official.

By Connor Freeman & Will Porter, The Libertarian Institute, 5/10/23

President Vladimir Putin declared that all of Russia is united in support of its troops, claiming they face a “real war” intended to “destroy” their country during his annual Victory Day speech in Moscow’s Red Square on Tuesday.

Celebrated on May 9 in Russia, Victory Day is the country’s yearly commemoration to honor the Soviet troops who defeated the forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. The ceremonies and military parade were notably pared back relative to previous years, however, as Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds into its fifteenth month.

“Today, our civilization is at a crucial turning point. A real war is being waged against our country again but we have countered international terrorism and will defend the people of Donbass and safeguard our security,” Putin said.

The Russian leader declaimed that Moscow seeks peace and stability, while railing against American exceptionalism and the “Western globalist elites.” He said these forces pit countries against one another with coup plots and proxy conflicts, such as the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev and Ukraine’s subsequent war on Russian-speaking separatists in the eastern Donbass region. These actions preceded Putin’s invasion, and the president has repeatedly cited the need to “defend the people” of the Donbass as a justification for his “special military operation.”

“For us, for Russia, there are no unfriendly or hostile nations either in the west or in the east. Just like the vast majority of people on the planet, we want to see a peaceful, free and stable future,” Putin claimed.

“[Russians] believe that any ideology of superiority is abhorrent, criminal and deadly by its nature. However, the Western globalist elites keep speaking about their exceptionalism, pit nations against each other and split societies, provoke bloody conflicts and coups, sow hatred, Russophobia, aggressive nationalism, destroy family and traditional values which make us human,” he continued. “They do all that so as to keep dictating and imposing their will, their rights and rules on peoples, which in reality is a system of plundering, violence and suppression.”

The Russian leader went on to claim that the war in Ukraine is a defensive action against a collective West which seeks to subvert and balkanize Russia, ultimately hoping to wipe the country off the map. “Their goal – and there is nothing new about it – is to break apart and destroy our country, to make null and void the outcomes of World War II, to completely break down the system of global security and international law, to choke off any sovereign centers of development,” he said.

Putin blamed the same forces for provoking the disaster in Ukraine and NATO’s ongoing proxy war against Russia, pointing to the massive casualties resulting from callous and “self-serving” Western policies. “Boundless ambition, arrogance and impunity inevitably lead to tragedies. This is the reason for the catastrophe the Ukrainian people are going through. They have become hostage to the coup d’état and the resulting criminal regime of its Western masters, collateral damage in the implementation of their cruel and self-serving plans,” he asserted.

Putin also hailed the emergence of the new “multipolar world,” saying that an “unstoppable movement is gaining momentum” towards “a world based on the principles of trust and indivisible security, of equal opportunities for a genuine and free development of all nations and peoples.”

He praised the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine as “heroes,” saying they are up against a West which has “forgotten what the Nazis’ insane claims of global dominance led to. They forgot who destroyed that monstrous, total evil, who stood up for their native land and did not spare their lives to liberate the peoples of Europe.”

Tuesday’s Victory Day ceremony and military parade were significantly smaller compared to previous years, likely due to concerns over a recent uptick in drone strikes on Russian territory – including one which targeted the Kremlin last week. Moscow claimed the strike was a failed assassination attempt against Putin, pinning blame on Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also accused the United States of involvement in the attack, saying “[Russia knows] very well that the decisions to carry out such actions, such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kiev. Rather, it is precisely in Washington.”

While some attendees complained about the scaled-down ceremony – namely the lack of tanks – the Kremlin said the parade’s motorized column was headed up by the WW2-era “legendary ‘Victory tank’ T-34–85” and featured a wide array of military hardware. That included Tigr-M and BTR-82A armored personnel carriers, Bumerang fighting vehicles, Iskander-M tactical missile systems, S-400 air defense platforms and Yars mobile missile systems, according to the Kremlin. It added that “The newest Spartak and 3-STS Akhmat armored vehicles were presented at the parade for the first time.”

The marching column consisted of 30 ceremonial regiments with more than 8,000 troops, including 530 personnel taking part in Russia’s so-called “special military operation.” According to the AP, this is the lowest such turnout since 2008. There was reportedly no fly-over of military jets and the ceremony lasted less than one hour.

Several cities also scrapped their traditional ‘Immortal Regiment’ processions, in which crowds hold up pictures of relatives who fought or died during the war against Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in the conflict, giving Victory Day deep symbolic meaning in Russia. According to local media reports, 24 different cities also canceled plans for their own military parades. Regional officials cited by the AP blamed “security concerns” and the “current situation” as the reason for the cancellations.

Alongside Putin on the stand during his speech were the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon, and the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Read full transcript of Putin’s speech here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24tWkP89220&t=3079s

Link here.

This is a talk that former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter gave to an overflow audience in St. Petersburg, Russia on May 5th. His talk was about his latest book, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.

https://vimeo.com/532331716

Link here.

“We link to Peter Watkins’ award-winning 1966 film The War Game, a docudrama about the impact of a hypothetical nuclear war. The parallels with today are chilling. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Feature) and the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film.” – American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA)

By Christopher Mott, The National Interest, 4/17/23

While the long-term results of the People’s Republic of China’s diplomatic outreach into both the Middle East and Ukraine remain unknown, it is apparent that the foreign policy establishment in Washington DC was taken aback by the speed at which Beijing’s reputation is rising. They shouldn’t be. The long-running Saudi-Iranian rivalry has been partially fueled by the United States, meaning that Washington could never serve as a reliable mediator for all parties. China’s distance and relatively non-partisan-seeming approach to the region, however, enables more parties to be willing to at least discuss putting aside one of the more dangerous rivalries of the twenty-first century. Elsewhere, India plays an agile game of diplomacy, neither endorsing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nor rejecting its long-standing and beneficial security relationship with Moscow that dates back to independence. Brazil, increasingly, tows no one’s line at the UN and is quick to question narratives from the great powers. France asserts that European core interests and North American core interests are rapidly diverging.

Commentary on the return of the multipolar world has rightfully arisen. The industrial and economic share of American power on the global stage has narrowed considerably since its heydays in the Cold War and even at the start of the twenty-first century. Regardless of what anyone thinks about it, the multipolar world is already here. And rather than being regarded as some great shock or oddity, a multipolar world is in fact the normal condition of the international system. What we are seeing now is the world emerging out from under an outlier period and into something more typical with the majority of history. It is apparent by the actions of countries like China, India, and Brazil that most of the world knows this and is working towards adapting to such a future.

But the United States and many of its dependent allies are not. The rhetoric from places such as Washington and London is one of appealing to the logic of a “New Cold War”, where an “Axis of Authoritarianism” is rising between China and Russia that seeks to wage an ideological battle against “The Free World” in a bid for total global supremacy. With the possible exception of a reactive and increasingly culture war-obsessed Russia, however, few outside of the North Atlantic world take this rhetoric seriously. They have already moved on to focus on their regional self-interest. This begs the question: how can so much of the foreign policy class in the Beltway continue sacrificing the outcome of results for more tired declarations of loyalty to an ideology of global conflict over universal values? What is it that holds Anglo-American elites in thrall to a way of viewing the world which was questionable even in the Cold War, but is surely beyond unhelpful now?

Last year, the scholar Dr. Emily Finley released an important and comprehensive book that charts the history of this worldview. In The Ideology of Democratism, Finley charts how the world view of Rousseau, built upon by later additions coming from Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, John Rawls, Leo Strauss, and up through the Bush Era neoconservatives, injected a universalist faith in liberal democracy as the guiding principle of not just specific societies and local circumstances (the preference of Washington, Hamilton, and the early Federalists in U.S. history), but of the entire world. Democratic systems are no longer outgrowths of particular historical and geographic circumstances but are taken to be the inevitable destiny of all of mankind. For a democracy to be threatened anywhere is to be threatened everywhere. Thus, democracy becomes a kind of civic religion known as “Democratism.”

One of the paradoxes of Democratism, as described by Finley, is that the democratist claims to speak “for the people” while also being highly dismissive of local concerns or popular opinion should these contradict the missionary mentality of expansion of democracy abroad or deviate from the plans of democracy experts. The “national will” is not something left up to individual elections but is rather a long-term project that can only be entrusted to the technocrats of democratic governance. In other words, only the democratists themselves can govern policy because only the mission of democratization is a legitimate purpose for a government whose goals transcend day-to-day concerns about security and infrastructure. Finley contends that this is now the default ideology of the governing and media classes in the North Atlantic, and especially in the foreign policy establishment of Washington. In a world where the U.S. expects Europe to hold solidarity with it on Taiwan (or Japan to not breaks ranks sanctioning Russia over Ukraine), it becomes apparent that, whether cynically or genuinely used, democratism is the rhetoric if not the purpose of present-day global over-extension.

While not the entirety of the reason why the Beltway struggles to shed its imperial hubris and adapt to the new multipolar world, (much of that is simply complacency) understanding democratism’s hold over the governing elite is vital for explaining the unique hostility found in so much of foreign policy commentary towards a soberer and more realistic appraisal of the world. From the bafflement expressed at countries failing to rally behind support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, to the clueless exhortations for a “values-based” diplomacy that prioritizes a nation’s domestic politics over its strategic opportunities, democratists will not concede that perhaps their worldview is unsuited for the proper practice of diplomacy under conditions of multipolarity. Particularly in a world where non-liberal powers have a variety of localized interests and abilities to assert themselves to greater degrees than were previously possible.

Perhaps the most damaging manifestation of the democratist worldview is the assignment of a type of karma point system to how nations are ranked. “Good” countries have policies that reflect Anglo-American norms and thus are worthy of some sovereignty, while “bad” countries can have their sovereignty violated on a economic or humanitarian pretext for failing to play their assigned role in the view of North Atlantic policymakers. The backlash this inevitably causes is taken as further proof that this contest for political power is a Manichean struggle of good versus evil which is existential, rather than a clash of interests that could be solved by diplomacy. Such tendencies serve only to drive nonaligned powers further away from partnership with countries enthralled by the democratist worldview.

Geopolitics is the contest for resources and power among territorial units jealous of their security and suspicious of their rivals. The rising and more assertive middle powers cannot coast on the received wisdom of ahistorical ideological projects, they must develop and survive. Having no comforting mythological narrative to blind them, they embrace the world as it is, rather than as they wish it to be. It is this that gives them a key advantage over a self-indoctrinated global power whose commitment to democratist and exceptionalist rhetoric prevents it from adapting to the very real world in which its power is embedded. Nations that understand this dynamic will outperform expectations and those that do not will comparatively underperform. You can have effective situational crisis management, or you can wage a global jihad for abstract universal values. You cannot have both.

Christopher Mott (@chrisdmott) is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy and the author of the book The Formless Empire: A Short History of Diplomacy and Warfare in Central Asia.