Intellinews, 3/21/23

Russian President Vladimir Putin took time out from meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had just arrived in Moscow for a three-day state visit, to speak to lawmakers from more than 40 African countries on March 20 and woo them with generous promises of economic and military aid in a speech.

As the battle for influence in Africa heats up, Putin reminded delegates of Russia’s long-standing close ties and played on his favourite troupe of the need for a multipolar world, a sentiment echoed by many delegates, whilst vigorously rubbing raw the lingering resentment in Africa of the European colonial-era, to good effect.

“Ever since the African peoples’ heroic struggle for independence, it has been common knowledge that the Soviet Union provided significant support to the peoples of Africa in their fight against colonialism, racism and apartheid, how it helped many African countries to gain and protect their sovereignty, and consistently supported them in building their statehood, strengthening defence capabilities, laying the foundations of their national economies and workforce training,” Putin told the delegates to a round of applause.

The conference is a warm-up event ahead of the second Russia Africa summit slated for July in St Petersburg, where most of the continent’s heads of state are expected to attend. This will be the much-delayed second Russia-Africa summit after the first one, held in 2019 in Sochi, attended by 48 out of 54 African heads of state. Attempts to organise a second summit have been repeatedly delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and then the start of the war in Ukraine.

As followed by bne IntelliNews, Western and Russian diplomats have recently been travelling the world trying to shore up support in the clash that followed Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Africa has been a key battleground where Moscow has been able to capitalise on warm Cold War-era relations between Africa and the Soviet Union. The Kremlin has also been playing on and stoking lingering resentment amongst many Africans of the colonial period that still shapes politics today.

“I think that it is necessary to raise loudly the issue of compensating damage,” stressed Valentina Matvienko, the chairwoman of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament and the most powerful woman in Russian politics, who was also in attendance. “I mean financial payments to all the people in Africa who suffered during the colonial period from European oppressors, from the consequences of colonialism.”

Warm reception

Putin was playing to a receptive audience. Recent trips by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to South Africa and French President Emmanuel Macron to francophone Africa have not gone well. Blinken leaned on Petroia to end its trade and cooperation with Moscow, only to receive a cold shoulder. South Africa went ahead with joint naval exercises with Russia that began on February 24, the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine.

Macron was roasted by Felix Tshisekedi, the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, during a joint televised press conference two weeks ago. “This must change, the way Europe and France treat us, you must begin to respect us and see Africa in a different way,” Tshisekedi said. “You have to stop treating us and talking to us in a paternalistic tone. As if you were already absolutely right and we were not.”

The parliamentary delegates have voiced similar complaints during their remarks to the summit in Moscow.

The Chairman of South Africa’s National Council of Provinces Amos Masondo said that “Russia has no colonial heritage in Africa and no African country sees Russia as an enemy. On the contrary, you helped us in our liberation, you are a reliable partner.” He echoed Putin’s favourite catchphrase, saying that his country stood for a multipolar world.

Putin is playing on a widespread feeling of resentment in Africa that its people are treated as second-class citizens by the Western world and excluded from the geopolitical decision-making process. Several delegates, including the President of the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Congo Pierre Ngolo and the Chairman of the National Council of the Republic of Namibia, Lukas Sinimbo Muha, called for a reform to the UN Security Council to make it more inclusive with at least one African seat.

“The permanent historical imbalance in the Security Council must be changed,” Muha said.

In counterpoint to the bad feelings left over from European colonialism in Africa is the warm regard many countries there have for the Soviet Union that supplied many liberation movements with arms as well taking the best African students into its higher educational institutes.

The Congo’s Ngolo recalled: “Relations between Russia and Africa became special during the period of struggle for independence, when the Soviet Union was the main force supporting the national liberation movements. Thus, the USSR became the defender of the oppressed. Then it was the USSR, and now it is Russia taking a special place among the friends of Congo in difficult times,” also adding that Congo backs the idea of a multipolar world.

There were similar remarks from the representatives of Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, Mali, and others.

Soviet Union revanche

Putin has followed through on Russia’s promise to play the same role in Africa today as the Soviet Union did before, which was already Kremlin policy before the war in Ukraine started.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Moscow earned a lot of credit by actively exporting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of its Sputnik V vaccine to many countries in Africa at a time when the West already had a full stock of vaccines to cover its own population but were reluctant to sell doses to Emerging Markets, in what was dubbed a “vaccine apartheid” by the director of the World Health Organisation. In October 2021, the WHO reported that rich countries had an average of 133 vaccine doses per 100 people, whereas low-income countries had less than four doses per 100 people.

“I want to emphasise that our country has always and will always consider cooperation with African states a priority. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is one of the unchanging priorities of Russia’s foreign policy,” Putin said. “During the coronavirus pandemic, Russia was among the first countries to provide African states with large volumes of vaccines, test kits, personal protective equipment, and other medical and humanitarian cargoes.”

Amongst the delegates to the Russia Africa conference were members of the scientific, educational, and expert communities from Russia and African countries, the State Duma, federal executive authorities, senators of the Federation Council, chairmen of the legislative bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, as well as representatives of the business community.

The US has largely ignored Africa as unimportant until recently, highlighted by the fact is only one full-scale military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, as described in a bne IntelliNews feature Playing Real Risk and investment into raw materials and energy on the Continent is dominated by China and Russia. The US held its own US-Africa summit in December that was attended by all 49 heads of state invited and has established a $600bn infrastructure fund led by the G-7 dedicated to Africa. However, Russia is much further ahead in terms of active investment projects on the continent.

Russia means business

“Large Russian investment projects are being implemented in Africa, involving such domestic companies as Rosneft, Gazpromneft, RusHydro, ALROSA, Lukoil and many others. We will continue to help African countries with electricity production, which so far covers only a quarter of the continent’s needs,” Putin emphasised.

One of the main successes of the first Russia-Africa summit in 2021 was to establish the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) that Putin promised will integrate more closely with both the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EUU) as well as bilaterally with Russia itself.

“In the future, this zone will become a continental market with a total GDP of more than $3 trillion. We are in favour of actively developing ties with this new association both within the Eurasian Economic Union and bilaterally,” Putin added.

The promise of power is especially appealing as Russia has been actively selling its world-class nuclear power technology in Africa via the state-owned Rosatom, which is increasingly playing the same foreign policy role that Gazprom used to in places like Europe.

“Today we are offering new environmentally friendly technologies, primarily in nuclear energy. Rosatom is already building a nuclear power plant in Egypt and plans to expand its involvement in the development of the national energy systems of the African continent. I would like to note that significant, in some countries 100% funding, is provided by Russia. These are serious projects worth $15bn, $20bn or $25bn,” Putin said.

Nuclear power plant deals are particularly appealing to the Kremlin as in addition to locking in the client state with billions of dollars of debt, the NPP comes with typically 60-year servicing and fuel supply contracts that cement relations for the long term.

And Putin was flogging other Russian-made high-tech solutions. For example, Russia is helping to create the ANGOSAT satellite communication and television broadcasting system in Angola. Yandex is actively introducing information services to organise the transportation of passengers by taxi and other modes of transport in African countries.

“At the same time, Russia is always ready to share its technologies with African countries; it offers precisely joint, diverse technological development,” Putin said before specifically referring to military cooperation. “Military and defence industry cooperation continues, including the supply of Russian weapons and military equipment to African partners, and the training of relevant personnel. Currently, military personnel from over 20 African countries are studying at the institutes of the Russian Ministry of Defence.”

Russia’s Wagner PMC is already active in many African countries that are suffering from insurrections and Russia is a major supplier of arms and materiel across the continent.

And finally, Putin offered food. Russia is currently the world’s biggest grain exporter and Africa is particularly dependent on imports of Russian grain. A new Black Sea grain export deal was agreed on March 14, although some uncertainty remains over if it will run for 60 days or the full 120 days of the previous deals. The Kremlin’s room for manoeuvre on grain exports is limited as while preventing grain exports starves Kyiv of a major source of foreign exchange earnings, it also plunges Russia’s partners in Africa into famine and crisis. Putin assured delegates that would not happen.

“I would like to stress that Russia is reliably fulfilling all its obligations pertaining to the supply of food, fertilisers, fuel and other products that are critically important to the countries of Africa, helping to ensure their food and energy security,” Putin said. “You probably know that we are ready to supply some of the resources we have frozen in European countries to countries in need free of charge, including fertilisers; and the first batches have already been sent. But unfortunately, there are obstacles here as well.”

On the subject of grain exports, Putin didn’t miss the opportunity to rub raw the colonialist resentments by pointing out that while the Black Sea grain deal was sold as necessary to prevent famine in Africa, most of Ukraine’s grain was actually sold to the EU.

“For reference, I can give you the following information. From August 1, 2022, to March 20, 2023, 827 ships left Ukraine, of which only 3mn tonnes of grain were sent to Africa and 1.3mn to the poorest countries in Africa. As I said, almost 45% went to well-fed European countries, despite the fact that this whole deal was presented under the pretext of ensuring the interests of African countries,” Putin said. “By the way, let me note that at the same time, despite all the restrictions and limitations on the export of Russian grain, almost 12mn tonnes were sent from Russia to Africa.”

Putin went on to promise that if the deal does expire after 60 days, Russia was prepared to continue to export grain to Africa in the same volumes as under the deal, and send it to the countries in most need at no cost, which brought a round of applause.

BY NABIH BULOS, Los Angeles Times, 3/2/23

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates —  

There’s always an element of the surreal at arms fairs. You catch it in the chipper tone of salespeople hawking new instruments of destruction; in the euphemisms — “defense” instead of “warfare,” “weapons platforms” rather than “guns” — sprinkled throughout glossy brochures; in the mini-lesson given by a jovial ex-soldier on best practices for operating an antitank missile system.

Now, there’s the added frisson of Europe’s biggest terrestrial armed conflict in decades — namely, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has made one thing clear: Nothing invigorates the business of war like a war.

The combat in Ukraine, now in its second year, has jacked the global arms trade, fueling a new appetite for materiel not just in Moscow and Kyiv but also around the world as nations gird themselves for possible confrontations. The war has rocked long-standing relationships within the weapons industry, rejiggered the calculations of who sells what to whom and changed customers’ tastes in what they want in their arsenal.

Signs of those shifts abounded at last week’s International Defense Exhibition and Conference, or IDEX, the biennial arms bazaar held in the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi. This year’s showwas the largest in the event’s 30-year history, organizers said, bringing in 1,350 companies, 350 delegations and about 130,000 attendees from 65 countries.

They flooded Abu Dhabi’s national exhibition center with enough armored vehicles, attack aircraft and air, land and sea drones to equip a not-so-small army.

Defense spending is surging in European nations seeking to keep up stocks at home while helping to arm Kyiv with rocket launchers, missiles and tanks. The German government has shaken off its usual hesitancy regarding military matters and pledged to spend $100 billion on reequipping its armed forces, though no money has yet been spent on weaponry.

In Asia, Japan and South Korea are boosting military spending in response to China, whose defense budget grew by 7% in 2022. That translates into Beijing’s largest-ever annual increase in absolute terms — $16 billion, adjusted for inflation, according to a report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Weapons companies are seeing their shares rise on the stock market to their best level in years, with indexes for the defense sector outperforming those tracking the broader market by a wide margin, experts say. That reverses a trend before the year-old Ukraine war of people putting their money in so-called ESG investments — those focusing on the environment and social and corporate governance — rather than the defense industry, said Kevin Craven, who heads the ADS Group, a trade organization representing British aerospace, defense, security and space companies.

“Now, one year on, you find people remembering that a government’s first duty is to defend its citizens, and actually the freedoms that we have require a strong military capability and defense industry,” Craven said.

He added that Britain’s robust support for Ukraine — it’s the second-largest contributor of military assistance after the U.S., supplying antitank missiles, artillery and armored vehicles — has generated interest in those products from prospective buyers.

Emirati officials insisted that the event was about commerce, not geopolitics. During his visit to the fair, Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan said it highlighted the Emirates’ “approach of building bridges of communication and cooperation” so as to achieve “peace, stability and a better future for humanity,” according to local media — despite the lethal nature of the merchandise.

An example of new cooperation would be the Emirates’ growing military relationship with Israel, which had no fewer than 60 companies in its pavilion. The two nations, which formally recognized each other less than three years ago, have embarked on joint weapons development; at IDEX, the Emirati defense conglomerate Edge debuted an unmanned boat it had worked on with Israel Aerospace Industries.

But the war in Ukraine has made business with Russia a tricky one. The Emirates, a top regional ally of the U.S. that has sought deeper military links with Washington, risked backlash by welcoming a significant portion of Russian business — along with many emigres — blacklisted by the West.

Washington sent Treasury officials to the Emirates in January to warn Abu Dhabi that it would “continue to aggressively enforce its sanctions” against Russian individuals and institutions, and that companies doing business in what it called “permissive jurisdictions” could risk losing access to U.S. and European markets. Last week, it imposed sanctions on a Russian bank recently allowed to begin operations in the Emirates.

Despite the international sanctions, Moscow dispatched its top defense firms to Abu Dhabi. In what was perhaps a nod to political sensitivities, their displays were placed in the outdoor area of the convention — a roughly seven-minute walk and a sky bridge away from the Ukrainian and American pavilions in the main exhibition area.

To one side of Russia’s display, a quartet of blond women urged visitors to check out civilian versions of helicopters from manufacturers Mil and Kamov as a giant screen showed footage of their military counterparts in combat. On the other side was a large tent that served as a dedicated pavilion to Russian firms Kalashnikov, Rosoboronexport and Almaz-Antey, which brought in about 200 full-scale samples of weapons, military equipment and ammunition, including many examples of the materiel now deployed in Ukraine.

Inside the tent, dozens of prospective customers — Algerian generals, representatives of several Asian countries, paunchy men surrounded by grim-faced bodyguards — milled around dioramas featuring Grad missile launchers and checked out shelves lined with weapons.

“The sanctions situation creates a certain closed nature of relationships, negotiations, and we try not to talk about it. But we can say with confidence Russian weapons are in great demand and authority,” Rosoboronexport Chief Executive Alexander Mikheev told Russian state news agency Tass. “That’s why we are here: in order to maintain relations with our partners.”

The weapons showcased at IDEX underscored how the war has shifted development toward loitering munitions, cheaply made exploding drones that can monitor the battlefield from above and then ram themselves into a target. In recent months, Russia deployed Iranian-made exploding drones in a devastating campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure. (Iran did not participate in IDEX.)

“The entire product line of the group is in demand, but unmanned aerial vehicles are the priority,” Alan Lushnikov, president of Russia’s Kalashnikov Group, said in an interview with Tass, adding that the company’s KUB exploding drone was its top seller.

“The volume of orders has grown significantly,” Lushnikov said. “The group’s enterprises are working in a more intensive mode.”

Neither Lushnikov nor Rosoboronexport chief Mikheev were made available to The Times for interviews despite repeated requests.

Faisal Bannai, who heads the Emirati conglomerate Edge, said the war in Ukraine proved how essential autonomous systems and electronic warfare were becoming for client nations.

“That’s where the market is. That’s where the future is,” Bannai said, adding: “I can sell ammunition or a bomb, but that’s not where the main volume of my business is coming from.”

Bahadir Ozer, a business development director for Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar, agreed that the war in Ukraine has “been a huge advertisement for us.”

Even before the conflict started, the company was supplying Kyiv with its Bayraktar TB2 drone, a relatively low-cost unmanned aerial vehicle that had been deployed to great effect in conflicts such as those in Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya and Syria. It proved to be no less lethal against Russia’s armor in Ukraine — so much so that some Ukrainians rhapsodized its prowess in song.

“The TB2 has been successful for a long time, but the difference now is that we got the attention of the West,” Ozer said, adding that NATO member Poland and 28 other countries have purchased Bayraktar drones. More nations are interested.

“They’re combat-proven — that’s been a big deal,” Ozer said.

Even Ukraine, despite being under attack by Russia for more than a year, was represented in Abu Dhabi. Stanislav Shyldskyi, a business development manager with drone manufacturer Ukrspec, described the moment when Russian journalists came to check out the Ukrainian pavilion in the main convention center.

“They told us, ‘You guys don’t have anything.’ They wrote an article the next day that the Ukrainian pavilion is very small,” Shyldskyi said. “It was pretty childish, and we told them to stop filming.”

He said most of what Ukrainian firms were producing was going toward domestic consumption, but it was still important to be at an arms show such as IDEX.

“It’s a good time for us to be here to show the world that we’re alive, working, making great products,” he said. “The war is making people know about Ukraine. It’s not the best thing. But of course they’re more interested.”

Not far from the Ukrainian pavilion, Belarus, which has sided with Russia in the conflict, occupied a larger corner stand with several meeting rooms. One of the half-dozen sales representatives there said sanctions had done little to hamper their trade.

“We actually got more interest after sanctions. If someone wants to sanction you, it means we are strong,” he said, adding that the prohibitions had been an impediment only in the first two months of their application. He spoke on condition of anonymity to comment on geopolitical matters.

“We expected it would be more difficult to do business, but when there’s interest, a client will always find a way to make it work.”

By Eli Clifton and Ben Freeman, The Guardian, 3/1/23

This article was co-published with Responsible Statecraft.

Some of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists are providing their services to Ukraine for free – but at the same time, they are taking in millions in fees from Pentagon contractors who stand to benefit from the country’s war with Russia.

Following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s internationally condemned decision to invade Ukraine there was an outpouring of support to the besieged nation from seemingly every industry in America. But, arguably, one of the most crucial industries coming to Ukraine’s aid has been Washington’s powerful lobbying industry.

The invasion has led some of the lobbying industry’s biggest players to do the unthinkable – lobby for free. While the influence industry may have altruistic reasons for representing Ukraine pro bono, some lobbying firms also have financial incentives for aiding Ukraine: they’ve made millions lobbying for arms manufacturers that could profit from the war.

The surge in pro-bono Ukraine lobbying

US law requires agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities to make periodic public disclosures of their relationship under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara). Twenty-five registrants have agreed to represent Ukrainian interests pro bono since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, just 11 Fara registrants were working on behalf of Ukrainian interests.

“I don’t recall a comparable surge in pro-bono work for any foreign principal,” said David Laufman, a partner at the law firm Wiggin and Dana, who previously oversaw Fara enforcement at the justice department.

Many of these new pro-bono Ukrainian lobbyists are pushing for greater US military support for the Ukrainian military. As one registrant explained in a Fara filing, they intend “to lobby members of the US government to increase US Department of Defense spending on contracts related to equipment and other efforts which will aid the ability of the Ukrainian military to succeed in its fight against the Russian military”.

While many of these pro-bono lobbyists may be doing this work purely out of solidarity with Ukraine, some of the firms working free of charge for Ukraine have an added incentive.

Hogan Lovells

Before winning the speakership in the new Republican Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy warned that Republicans wouldn’t approve a “blank check” for Ukraine aid once they took power. But, just last week the GOP’s biggest fundraiser agreed to provide pro-bono assistance in loosening Congress’s purse strings when it comes to Ukraine.

On 16 February, former senator Norm Coleman, senior counsel with the law firm Hogan Lovells, filed Fara paperwork revealing that he is pro-bono lobbyist for a foundation controlled by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Coleman oversaw the raising and spending of over $260m in funds supporting Republican congressional candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.

Coleman, who has extensive experience as a lobbyist for foreign interests via his longstanding role as an agent for Saudi Arabia, was already busy at work for Ukraine. Emails from 4 February disclosed as part of Coleman’s Fara disclosures, revealed him requesting assistance from senators Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis’s chiefs of staff in hosting an event at the Capitol “to give members of Congress a better understanding of the horrific loss of life and the tragic agony that the people of Ukraine have experienced over the course of the last year as a direct result of Russian war crimes” and “do as much as possible to ensure continued, strong, bipartisan support for the truly heroic efforts that this administration and Congress have made to provide the essential military and economic assistance to Ukraine”.

While Hogan Lovells conducts this work pro bono, two of the firm’s paying clients, Looking Glass Cyber Solutions and HawkEye 360, have extensive defense department contracts and an interest in the conflict in Ukraine.

Looking Glass, which paid Hogan Lovells $200,000 in 2022, holds a five-year contract with the Department of Defense to “to provide tailored cyber threat intelligence data and enhance the mission effectiveness of US military cyber threat analysts and operators” and writes on its website about the role of such threats in Russia’s military strategy.

HawkEye 360, which also paid $200,000 to Hogan Lovells in 2022, similarly is a defense department contractor, specializing in detection and geolocation of radio signals. Their detection network conducted analysis in Ukraine and their website boasts of identifying GPS interference in Ukraine, appearing to be part of Moscow’s “integration of electronic warfare tactics into Russian military operation to further degrade Ukraine’s ability for self-defense”.

Hogan Lovells did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

BGR

BGR Government Affairs (BGR), a lobbying and communications firm, began working pro bono for two Ukrainian interests last May. The contracts are with Vadym Ivchenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, and Elena Lipkivska Ergul, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In 2022 BGR made more than half a million dollars lobbying for Pentagon contractors, some of whom are already profiting from the Ukraine war. Raytheon, for example, which paid BGR $240,000 to lobby on its behalf in 2022, according to OpenSecrets, has already been awarded more than $2bn in government contracts related to the Ukraine war.

Indeed, two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a BGR adviser was publicly calling for increased military aid to Ukraine in the face of Putin’s recognition of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics as independent states.

“Militarily, the United States and Nato allies need to get far more serious about helping Ukraine defend itself,” wrote Kurt Volker, BGR senior adviser and former US Nato ambassador, in an article published by the Center for European Policy Analysis (Cepa).

His article, “Buckle Up: This is Just the First Step”, was promoted on the BGR website. Cepa did not disclose Volker’s BGR affiliation in the article.

“BGR has no conflict of interest and is proud of its work on behalf of Ukraine and all of its clients,” said BGR’s president, Jeffrey H Birnbaum, in a statement responding to questions about whether their work posed any such conflict.

Mercury

Mercury Public Affairs (Mercury), a lobbying, public affairs and political strategy consultancy, began working pro bono for GloBee International Agency for Regional Development (“GloBee”), a Ukrainian NGO, in mid-March 2022. The firm made headlines for agreeing to work for a Ukrainian client pro bono. The firm’s Fara filing later in the year shows that Mercury’s work consisted of sending just four emails on Globee’s behalf in the first three and a half months of this arrangement.

Mercury, like BGR, was also working on behalf of Pentagon contractors in 2022, while working for a Ukrainian client pro bono. All told, Mercury reported being paid more than $180,000 for lobbying on behalf of Pentagon contractors in 2022.

Mercury’s work for a Ukrainian client is also notable because before the Ukraine war the firm had, for years, been working on behalf of Russian interests. This work included lobbying on behalf of Russia’s Sovcombank, as well as a Russian energy company founded by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska was recently implicated in a scheme to bribe an FBI agent that was investigating him. Mercury dropped both of these Russian clients when the Ukraine war began, but not before earning nearly $3m from these Russian interests in the five years before the firm agreed to work for a Ukrainian client pro bono, according to Fara filings.

Mercury did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Navigators Global

On 29 April 2022 Navigators Global, which describes itself as an “issues management, government relations and strategic communications” firm, registered under Fara to represent the committee on national security, defence and intelligence of the Ukrainian parliament. According to the firm’s Fara filing, they reached out to dozens of key members of Congress on behalf of the Ukrainian parliament – including eight phone calls, texts and emails with McCarthy – and contacted the House and Senate armed services committees two dozen times.

As Navigators Global was doing this pro-bono lobbying of the policymakers in Congress with, arguably, the greatest sway over US military assistance to Ukraine, the firm was also raking in revenue from Pentagon contractors. Specifically, in 2022 Navigators Global made $830,000 working on behalf of defense contractors, according to lobbying data compiled by OpenSecrets. The firms’ lobbying filings also show that their work for these contractors was directed, among other issues, at the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act, the defense policy bill that increased spending on the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative by half a billion dollars.

Navigators Global did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Ogilvy

On 26 August 2022 Ogilvy Group, a giant advertising and public relations agency, registered under Fara to work with the ministry of culture and information policy of Ukraine on the ministry’s Advantage Ukraine Initiative. The initiative’s website describes it as the “Investment initiative of the Government of Ukraine”. The top listed investment option is Ukraine’s defense industry. Ogilvy is joined in this endeavor by fellow Fara registrants Group M and Hill & Knowlton Strategies, as well as the marketing company Hogarth Worldwide, which has not registered under Fara.

While the Ogilvy Group spread “the message that Ukraine is still open for business”, as its statement of work with the ministry explains, Ogilvy Government Relations was lobbying for Pentagon contractors who paid the firm nearly half a million dollars in 2022. These two Ogilvy organizations are technically separate entities. They are owned by the same parent company, WPP.

At least one of the contractors that Ogilvy Government Relations lobbies for, Fluor, would appear to directly benefit from increased US military support for Ukraine and heightened US military presence in Europe more generally. In 2020, the US army’s seventh army training command awarded Fluor with a five-year Logistics Support Services contract, which a Fluor spokesman explained, “positions Fluor for future work with the US European Command and the US Africa Command headquarters located in Germany”. Fluor paid Ogilvy Government Relations $200,000 for lobbying in 2022, according to OpenSecrets.

Ogilvy did not respond to a request to comment on the record.

As the war in Ukraine heads into its second year, US defense spending continues to balloon. Weapons and defense contractors received nearly half – $400bn – of the $858bn in the 2023 defense budget.

“There’s high demand for weapons to transfer to Ukraine and to replenish shrinking US stockpiles … contractors are seeing billions of dollars in Ukraine-related contracts.” said Julia Gledhill, who investigates defense spending at the government watchdog the Project On Government Oversight.

Link here.

By Norman Solomon, Salon, 2/21/23

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, media coverage of the war hasn’t included even the slightest mention of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Yet the war has boosted the chances that ICBMs will set off a global holocaust. Four hundred of them — always on hair-trigger alert — are fully armed with nuclear warheads in underground silos scattered across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming, while Russia deploys about 300 of its own. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world,” warning that “they could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”

Now, with sky-high tensions between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, the chances of ICBMs starting a nuclear conflagration have increased as American and Russian forces face off in close proximity. Mistaking a false alarm for a nuclear-missile attack becomes more likely amid the stress, fatigue and paranoia that come with protracted warfare and maneuvers.

Because they’re uniquely vulnerable as land-based strategic weapons, with the military precept of “use them or lose them,” ICBMs are set to launch on warning. So, as Perry explained, “If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them. Once they are launched, they cannot be recalled. The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision.”

But rather than openly discuss — and help to reduce — such dangers, U.S. mass media and officials downplay or deny them with silence. The best scientific research tells us that a nuclear war would result in “nuclear winter,” causing the deaths of about 99 percent of the planet’s human population. While the Ukraine war is heightening the odds that such an unfathomable catastrophe will occur, laptop warriors and mainstream pundits keep voicing enthusiasm for continuing the war indefinitely, with a blank check for U.S. weapons and other shipments to Ukraine that have already topped $110 billion.

Meanwhile, any message in favor of moving toward real diplomacy and de-escalation to end the horrendous conflict in Ukraine is apt to be attacked as capitulation, while the realities of nuclear war and its consequences are papered over with denial. It was, at most, a one-day news story last month when — calling this “a time of unprecedented danger” and “the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been” — the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its “Doomsday Clock” had moved even closer to apocalyptic midnight: just 90 seconds away, compared to five minutes a decade ago.

A vital way to reduce the chances of nuclear annihilation would be for the United States to dismantle its entire ICBM force. Former ICBM launch officer Bruce G. Blair and Gen. James E. Cartwright, a former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote: “By scrapping the vulnerable land-based missile force, any need for launching on warning disappears.” Objections to the United States shutting down ICBMs on its own (whether or not reciprocated by Russia or China) are akin to insisting that someone standing knee-deep in a pool of gasoline must not unilaterally stop lighting matches.

What is at stake? In an interview after publication of his landmark 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” Daniel Ellsberg explained that nuclear war “would loft into the stratosphere many millions of tons of soot and black smoke from the burning cities. It wouldn’t be rained out in the stratosphere. It would go around the globe very quickly and reduce sunlight by as much as 70 percent, causing temperatures like that of the Little Ice Age, killing harvests worldwide and starving to death nearly everyone on Earth. It probably wouldn’t cause extinction. We’re so adaptable. Maybe 1 percent of our current population of 7.4 billion could survive, but 98 or 99 percent would not.”

However, to Ukraine war enthusiasts proliferating in U.S. media, such talk is notably unhelpful, if not perniciously helpful to Russia. They have no use for, and seem to prefer silence from, experts who can explain “how a nuclear war would kill you and almost everyone else.” The frequent insinuation is that calls for reducing the chances of nuclear war, while pursuing vigorous diplomacy to end the Ukraine war, are coming from wimps and scaredy-cats who serve Vladimir Putin’s interests.

One corporate-media favorite, Timothy Snyder, churns out bellicose bravado under the guise of solidarity with the Ukrainian people, issuing declarations such as his recent claim that “the most important thing to say about nuclear war” is that “it’s not happening.” Which just goes to show that a prominent Ivy League historian can be as dangerously blinkered as anyone else.

Cheering and bankrolling war from afar is easy enough — in the words of Andrew Bacevich, “our treasure, someone else’s blood.” We can feel righteous about providing rhetorical and tangible support for the killing and dying.

Writing in the New York Times on Sunday, liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof called for NATO to further escalate the Ukraine war. Although he noted the existence of “legitimate concerns that if Putin is backed into a corner, he could lash out at NATO territory or use tactical nuclear weapons,” Kristof quickly added reassurance: “But most analysts think it is unlikely that Putin would use tactical nuclear weapons.”

Get it? “Most” analysts think it’s “unlikely” — so go ahead and roll the dice. Don’t be too concerned about pushing the planet into nuclear war. Don’t be one of the nervous nellies just because escalating warfare will increase the chances of a nuclear conflagration.

To be clear: There is no valid excuse for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its horrific ongoing war on that country. At the same time, continually pouring in vast quantities of higher and higher tech weaponry qualifies as what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” During his Nobel Peace Prize speech, King declared: “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction.”