Chinese exports to Russia are back near levels seen before the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, propelling a rebound in trade that’s helped cool off a historic rally in the ruble.
Russia bought $6.7 billion of goods in July from China, an increase of more than a third from the previous month and up by more than an annual 20 per cent. By contrast, its imports from Russia — which surged in March-May — rose only slightly last month after a drop in June, according to data from China’s customs authority.
Chinese goods are filling the niche left by the exodus of western brands after the war with Ukraine prompted sweeping financial and trade sanctions against Russia. The isolation has catapulted products such as vehicles manufactured by the likes of Great Wall Motor and Geely Automobile Holdings to the ranks of Russia’s best-selling cars, with their market share more than doubling from last year. The revival of demand for Chinese exports is playing out in the currency market. Trading volumes in the yuan-ruble pair increased to the highest ever last month as local demand for the Chinese currency surged.
With Russian consumer spending on the mend, the influx of foreign goods is taking some pressure off the ruble by reviving demand for hard currencies. In July, the ruble was the worst performer in emerging markets with a loss of 13 per cent against the dollar.
Surging prices for Russia’s commodity products, in combination with the collapse of imports, had contributed to a surplus of foreign exchange that powered the ruble. Still, growth in sales from Russia into China has started to lag behind. Following Russia’s diversion of crude to Asia from European customers, oil shipments to China have come down from their post-invasion peak.
Some thoughts: I am very skeptical of the level of penetration they are claiming that the U.S. had of Russian military plans, especially as far back as last October. I tend to think they want to keep claiming that Putin’s initial ambitions were grandiose in order to maintain the narrative that Putin and his closest military advisors greatly miscalculated. I think there’s some info war going on with this article. They don’t have much else right now since the Ukrainian army – despite help from its western allies – has no hope of militarily defeating Russia. – Natylie
By Shane Harris, Karen DeYoung, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Ashley Parker and Liz Sly, Washington Post, 8/17/22
On a sunny October morning, the nation’s top intelligence, military and diplomatic leaders filed into the Oval Office for an urgent meeting with President Biden. They arrived bearing a highly classified intelligence analysis, compiled from newly obtained satellite images, intercepted communications and human sources, that amounted to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war plans for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
For months, Biden administration officials had watched warily as Putin massed tens of thousands of troops and lined up tanks and missiles along Ukraine’s borders. As summer waned, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had focused on the increasing volume of intelligence related to Russia and Ukraine. He had set up the Oval Office meeting after his own thinking had gone from uncertainty about Russia’s intentions, to concern he was being too skeptical about the prospects of military action, to alarm.
The session was one of several meetings that officials had about Ukraine that autumn — sometimes gathering in smaller groups — but was notable for the detailed intelligence picture that was presented. Biden and Vice President Harris took their places in armchairs before the fireplace, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined the directors of national intelligence and the CIA on sofas around the coffee table.
Tasked by Sullivan with putting together a comprehensive overview of Russia’s intentions, they told Biden that the intelligence on Putin’s operational plans, added to ongoing deployments along the border with Ukraine, showed that all the pieces were now in place for a massive assault.
The U.S. intelligence community had penetrated multiple points of Russia’s political leadership, spying apparatus and military, from senior levels to the front lines, according to U.S. officials.
Much more radical than Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and instigation of a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, Putin’s war plans envisioned a takeover of most of the country.
Using mounted maps on easels in front of the Resolute Desk, Milley showed Russian troop positions and the Ukrainian terrain they intended to conquer. It was a plan of staggering audacity, one that could pose a direct threat to NATO’s eastern flank, or even destroy the post-World War II security architecture of Europe.
As he absorbed the briefing, Biden, who had taken office promising to keep the country out of new wars, was determined that Putin must either be deterred or confronted, and that the United States must not act alone. Yet NATO was far from unified on how to deal with Moscow, and U.S. credibility was weak. After a disastrous occupation of Iraq, the chaos that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and four years of President Donald Trump seeking to undermine the alliance, it was far from certain that Biden could effectively lead a Western response to an expansionist Russia.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock)
Ukraine was a troubled former Soviet republic with a history of corruption, and the U.S. and allied answer to earlier Russian aggression there had been uncertain and divided. When the invasion came, the Ukrainians would need significant new weaponry to defend themselves. Too little could guarantee a Russian victory. But too much might provoke a direct NATO conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.
This account, in previously unreported detail, shines new light on the uphill climb to restore U.S. credibility, the attempt to balance secrecy around intelligence with the need to persuade others of its truth, and the challenge of determining how the world’s most powerful military alliance would help a less-than-perfect democracy on Russia’s border defy an attack without NATO firing a shot.
The first in a series of articles examining the road to war and the military campaign in Ukraine, it is drawn from in-depth interviews with more than three dozen senior U.S., Ukrainian, European and NATO officials about a global crisis whose end is yet to be determined. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and internal deliberations.
The Kremlin did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
As Milley laid out the array of forces on that October morning, he and the others summed up Putin’s intentions. “We assess that they plan to conduct a significant strategic attack on Ukraine from multiple directions simultaneously,” Milley told the president. “Their version of ‘shock and awe.’ ”
According to the intelligence, the Russians would come from the north, on either side of Kyiv. One force would move east of the capital through the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, while the other would flank Kyiv on the west, pushing southward from Belarus through a natural gap between the “exclusion zone” at the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant and surrounding marshland. The attack would happen in the winter so that the hard earth would make the terrain easily passable for tanks. Forming a pincer around the capital, Russian troops planned to seize Kyiv in three to four days. The Spetsnaz, their special forces, would find and remove President Volodymyr Zelensky, killing him if necessary, and install a Kremlin-friendly puppet government.
Separately, Russian forces would come from the east and drive through central Ukraine to the Dnieper River, while troops from Crimea took over the southeastern coast. Those actions could take several weeks, the Russian plans predicted.
After pausing to regroup and rearm, they would next push westward, toward a north-south line stretching from Moldova to western Belarus, leaving a rump Ukrainian state in the west — an area that in Putin’s calculus was populated by irredeemable neo-Nazi Russophobes.
The United States had obtained “extraordinary detail” about the Kremlin’s secret plans for a war it continued to deny it intended, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines later explained. They included not only the positioning of troops and weaponry and operational strategy, but also fine points such as Putin’s “unusual and sharp increases in funding for military contingency operations and for building up reserve forces even as other pressing needs, such as pandemic response, were under-resourced,” she said. This was no mere exercise in intimidation, unlike a large-scale Russian deployment in April, when Putin’s forces had menaced Ukraine’s borders but never attacked.
Some in the White House found it hard to wrap their minds around the scale of the Russian leader’s ambitions.
“It did not seem like the kind of thing that a rational country would undertake,” one participant in the meeting later said of the planned occupation of most of a country of 232,000 square miles and nearly 45 million people. Parts of Ukraine were deeply anti-Russian, raising the specter of an insurgency even if Putin toppled the government in Kyiv. And yet the intelligence showed that more and more troops were arriving and settling in for a full campaign. Munitions, food and crucial supplies were being deposited at Russian encampments.
Biden pressed his advisers. Did they really think that this time Putin was likely to strike?
Yes, they affirmed. This is real. Although the administration would publicly insist over the next several months that it did not believe Putin had made a final decision, the only thing his team couldn’t tell the president that autumn day was exactly when the Russian president would pull the trigger.
CIA Director William J. Burns, who had served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow and had had the most direct interactions with Putin of anyone in the Biden administration, described the Russian leader to the others as fixated on Ukraine. Control over the country was synonymous with Putin’s concept of Russian identity and authority. The precision of the war planning, coupled with Putin’s conviction that Ukraine should be reabsorbed by the motherland, left him with no doubts that Putin was prepared to invade.
“I believed he was quite serious,” Burns said months later, recalling the briefing….
The outbreak of war in Ukraine, considered by many as highly improbable until very shortly before the Russian military invasion, is not “surprising.” It is part of the West’s historical struggle to foresee the Kremlin’s decisions and to understand its objectives, both internal and external.
Contributing to this handicap in reading Russian events has been the abundant recourse to basic interpretations which, borrowed too easily from publicist narratives, have long prevented the formulation of more articulate hypotheses on what is happening in Moscow and the reasons behind these events.
Above all, the portrayal of Putin as a tsar, whose power is absolutely unchallenged in the Kremlin, is a simplification used to convey to the 24-hour infotainment audience the exceptional concentration of power in the hands of the Russian President.
Nonetheless, continually re-proposing such a simplified image without methodological adjustments has over time led to the crystallization of deforming lenses in analyzing Russia’s choices, ineffective in fully grasping their content and predicting their timing.[1]
This simple idea—easy to use for neophytes in Russian affairs—of a political framework focused on the figure of the President alone, prevents analysts from depicting the complexities of a political system that is rather difficult to decipher. And so is the institutional background (far from neutral) that accompanies it, the product of anomalous constitutionalization over the last two centuries, unparalleled in Europe.[2]
A second deforming lens leads to the obsessive focus on Vladimir Putin’s personal affairs, even on his physical and/or mental health, so much so that numerous works have gone into hypothesizing on his possible illnesses (serious, sometimes terminal) in a bid to find the causal link to the Kremlin’s decision-making strategies.
These approaches have been reinforced over the course of two decades of Putin’s rule but, despite their longevity, they have done little to help understand (not justify) Moscow’s present and future moves. In the West, they have led to the widespread belief—long outdated in the social sciences—that a country’s political course depends on one man and thus to a disregard of the remaining dynamics within Russia, creating an important information gap, to the detriment of the ability to keep an up-to-date mapping of institutional power.
The conflict in Ukraine has helped revive these basic interpretations with new vigor to such an extent that they have become pillars of the powerful and united European opposition to the war since the very first days of the Russian invasion.
Abundantly used by the media in the first conflict of the “social era,” they have also spread to professional and academic circles that are experiencing a chronic lack of Western expertise on the post-Soviet space. This is the result of the drastic decrease in investment in research studying the political and institutional aspects of Russia during the 1990s, following a dramatic decline in its geo-political importance.
OPTICAL ILLUSION
Today, alongside continuous daily reports from the Ukrainian frontlines, dramatic but failing to provide an overall picture, these deforming interpretative lenses have corroborated two beliefs, predominant in Western mass media:
a) the idea of Putin being solely responsible for the decision to unleash the war in Ukraine—and consequently for chartering its course;
b) the conclusion (which follows from point a) that Putin’s exit from the political scene is the shortest—if not the only—way to stop the hostilities.
These two premises have inspired multiple analyses and commentaries.
One predicted Putin’s exit due to the deterioration of severe illnesses (neurological and oncological) he is allegedly afflicted with; the other one openly hoped for the Russian President’s ousting, ideally at the initiative of the oligarchs angered by the harshness of the Western sanctions imposed after the start of hostilities in Ukraine at the end of February 2022.
Simplifications aside, these interpretations succeeded in immediately rallying Western public opinion, shocked by the outbreak of a real war in the heart Europe.
However, as the situation unfolded, these arguments lost relevance in the face of outcomes that contradicted the numerous predictions made in the first days of the invasion. These ranged from the duration of the conflict, which has become a marathon of attrition instead of the expected blitzkrieg, to the strengthening of the ruble despite initial projections of Russia’s default by mid-March 2022, to Moscow’s extra-Western diplomatic activism (China, India, Africa, the Middle East) despite assertions that Russia has been isolated from the rest of the world, to the absence of substantial internal opposition forces—both institutional and popular—capable of removing Putin from power (let alone the oligarchs, with their fortunes depending on the Kremlin’s decisions rather than the other way round).
In other words, the unfolding scenario lays bare the shortcomings of the vision based on the Putin=tsar equation and the consequent assumption that the imminent replacement of the Russian President by hook or crook is a guarantee of regime change preferred by the West. Hence the need to make more articulate assumptions about the actors in the Russian decision-making process.[3]
TURNOVER OF ELITES
In 2017, we argued why in a country with such resources, interests, ambitions, institutional framework and state apparatus as Russia, “the specific weight of an empire is far greater than any emperor (or tsar) coming to command it.”[4]
This is not to deny the exceptional importance of the President in Russia and in particular the figure of Putin (nor is it to reduce the weight of his political responsibilities), but rather to put forward interpretations that complement, rather than contradict, the aforementioned basic consideration, giving it greater depth.
A historical tradition of sudden internal changes within the Kremlin, which the West took note of only after they happened, unable to predict their timing and outcome, would suggest a more systematic use of social science theories—and those concerning elite relations—in deciphering Moscow’s decision-making. They should be applied first and foremost to the political-institutional context in order to reconstruct the dynamics between the groups that animate the country’s mammoth civil service, of which Putin is the apex but also the expression, synthesis and point of coexistence.
Rather than in the Russian leader’s psychological profile, it is in the evolution of the Kremlin’s internal political balances that the origin of the Kremlin’s surprising choice to invade Ukraine with old-fashioned direct military action, more in keeping with the 19th than the 21st century tradition, should be sought.
In this regard, an earlier theory of ours, which ideally divided the first fifteen years of the Putin era into three phases, according to the civil service groups that flanked the Russian president, should be renewed and updated in accordance with the current events. These are the Intelligence, the Jurists, and the Diplomats.[5]
Although quite distinct from each other, these three elites did not clash but rather worked in synergy, alternating in the leadership role of the Executive, depending on the objectives and priorities of the moment.
Granted that these are indicative periods, the first phase encompasses a flexible time span from Putin’s inauguration (December 31, 1999) until Russia’s presidency of the G8 in 2006.
At the beginning of the millennium, Russia was a country that had come out hard from the dark decade of the 1990s: socially in tatters, with a collapsing public-economic sector, launched like a trapeze artist without a safety net into liberalism without theoretical or practical brakes, with catastrophic results.
The elite called upon to take charge of this complex situation came from the intelligence services, already the undisputed vanguard of the Russian civil service since Soviet times. The oligarchs, who enjoyed political dominance in the 1990s, played the decisive role in entrusting them with the reins of government. For the most part, they had become disinterested in staying actively involved in politics and sought, instead, to entrust running the country’s political institutions to their own righthand agents. Chosen precisely because of their reliability in the public sector, the intelligence services, guided by a primatus politicae unknown to the oligarchs, began to autonomize themselves from the latter and marginalize them, starting with the choice of government priorities.
Their main objective was to secure the “Russian style” of governance, in reaction to the dominance of neoliberal economists who had brought the country one step closer to collapse and sold off its immense resources to foreign entities.
In the following five years, intelligence remained a decisive factor, but fell back into formal roles more in keeping with its tradition, leaving the stage to the classical top echelons of the civil service, best represented by jurists, due to the traditional basic training common among PA managers. It was up to them to implement a new priority task of facilitating the resurgence of a pro-government lower-middle class, largely coinciding with the huge Russian state and para-state apparatus, in the belief that it would have a conservative impact on the status quo, thus strengthening the establishment.
As the center of gravity of the political system shifted towards a type of legitimation that was linked to real popular consensus and concentrated in the public sector, the iron rule of direct proportionality between power and money, which in the 1990s had underpinned the unchallenged dominance of (certain groups of) oligarchs, had been overcome. In fact, they were increasingly marginalized from policymaking, in a trend that the West struggled to understand, as speculation that they would be the protagonists of a coup d’état that would remove Putin from power continued to resurface from time to time.
With these two phases over and government objectives achieved on the domestic front, roughly with the end of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential term in 2012, the outlook changed to refocus on the international front. With foreign policy strongly downsized after the end of bipolarity, which had relegated Moscow to secondary roles in the major negotiations of the time (above all, the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995), the Kremlin sought to regain the status of super-power, lost after the collapse of the USSR.
This explains why the third phase of government action focused on diplomats, particularly those trained at MGIMO University and disciples of Yevgeny Primakov, a figure of absolute reverence in Russian foreign policy circles, and a strong proponent of a doctrine designed to contain the U.S. through Moscow’s multilateral activism. Called upon to play key roles even outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the diplomats give a new twist to Russian protagonism in areas of geo-political interest as well as to the instruments used for this purpose. They work to create and maintain an intense network of privileged bilateral relations with international players, even opposing ones, from Saudi Arabia to Iran to Turkey, via Israel and Hamas, but above all, from India to China.
Driven by its ambition to regain the role of global actor it once played in the days of bipolarity, Moscow shows interest in macro-areas—such as the former Soviet space—that were, in fact, snubbed during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency and characterized by post-ideological rejection of any elements even remotely reminiscent of the communist period.
In foreign policy, the new course manifested itself most vividly in the pursuit of objectives by using diplomatic instruments rather than military action, even when a symmetrical response would be predictable and consonant with Russian tradition. It was in this context that the decision had matured to channel huge resources into international aid policies, with Moscow definitively leaving behind the subordinate role of Beneficiary to become one of the main Re-emerging Donors of the period.
Russia’s specificity lies in interpreting this role by reconnecting to the Soviet tradition of “catch-all” aid: not limited only to cooperation and/or humanitarian interventions but extended to any sphere or resource of state competence, including interventions in the fields of defense, energy, technology, and up to direct financial support.
A clear example of this modus operandi in the field of international aid is Russia’s recent assistance to third countries during the pandemic, in particular its support for their immunization campaigns. The Russian vaccine, the first of the kind announced on a global scale (August 2020), is characterized by a purely public matrix that allows the state to control its entire production and distribution cycle, making it a geo-political instrument in the pursuit of its foreign policy objectives.
Similar to what has been seen in other fields such as sports (Olympic Games in Sochi, FIFA World Cup) or technology (cooperation in international missions in space and the Arctic), Russian aid seeks to pursue soft power politics, which alongside the aims of classical power politics creates a new image of an open and engaging country, as opposed to the harsh and military one of the Soviet period.
From this perspective, the Kremlin’s turn towards Ukraine represents a striking departure from the choices made in previous years. It is so incongruent with the previous policy that it cannot reflect the preferences of Russia’s diplomats. Even if they are opposed to war, observers have nevertheless harbored excessive hopes that this might lead to active opposition, which is rarely the outcome of disagreement in Russia’s rigidly vertical state culture.
Updating the theory of the turnover of Kremlin elites, the decision to use the military instrument to defend national interests in foreign policy is to be placed in the fourth phase, which began even before the Ukraine crisis and was marked by the growing influence of the military. A traditional element of national identity, the military (Armiya) is an operational manifestation of the defense sector, unlike the U.S. military, which is strictly public and acts as the driving force behind research in a variety of fields (such as, referring to pandemics, bacteriological studies) that are private in the West and have civil applications.
Having begun its rise during the conflict in the Caucasus in 2008, continued it with the spectacular annexation of Crimea in 2014 (through an intelligence operation rather than combat action), and solidified it in Syria, with results being far from predictable, however, the military has repeatedly demanded a greater political role in the last decade. In Russian military culture, this has never propelled anyone directly to the top of the government (as in Latin American military regimes), but rather reflected the ability to show one’s worth in combat, be it a classic war scenario or a hybrid intervention such as the aid campaign in Italy “From Russia with Love,” during the COVID-19 outbreak.
When the Kremlin’s initial plan to implement a “blitz-without-war” in Ukraine on the Crimean model, with a co-optation of the leadership and nerve centers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and regime change in Kiev evaporated, an alternative plan was undertaken that envisages a full-scale long-term military action with the use of professional army units on the Syrian model. However, the point is that once these sectors of the army are mobilized, it becomes difficult to limit the scope of their advance or call them back in the name of negotiations, precisely because of the enhanced role of the military in the Kremlin.
CONCLUSIONS
This can be summed up in three observations from the recent past, which form the basis for several predictions for the immediate future:
On the past:
-The Russian political system cannot simply be reduced to the role played by Vladimir Putin, albeit decisive and powerful. Although he is at the top of the decision-making pyramid, his power is nevertheless mediated by a huge public and para-state sector and internal interest groups, whose influence must be balanced and managed.
-After the Intelligence Service, the classic Civil Service, and Diplomacy, the defense sector has taken central stage in the Kremlin’s decision-making process.
-Moscow’s choice to switch from the carrot (aid) to the stick (war) in pursuing its geopolitical goals should be understood in this context.
On future scenarios:
-Possible escalation of the conflict in Ukraine in intensity and duration precisely because it is managed by the Kremlin’s military rather than political logic.
-Moscow’s recourse to military action to resolve its disputes could become a recurring instrument of its foreign policy.
-A change of leader in the Kremlin (highly unlikely to come at the hands of the oligarchs) will not make the leadership that planned and supported the Ukrainian invasion fade away. Moreover, it would be difficult to come to terms with any post-Putin leadership because we know very little about the actors operating backstage.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen,
Esteemed foreign guests,
Let me welcome you to the anniversary 10th Moscow Conference on International Security. Over the past decade, your representative forum has become a significant venue for discussing the most pressing military-political problems.
Today, such an open discussion is particularly pertinent. The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign development based on their own distinct identity, traditions and values.
These objective processes are being opposed by the Western globalist elites, who provoke chaos, fanning long-standing and new conflicts and pursuing the so-called containment policy, which in fact amounts to the subversion of any alternative, sovereign development options. Thus, they are doing all they can to keep hold onto the hegemony and power that are slipping from their hands; they are attempting to retain countries and peoples in the grip of what is essentially a neocolonial order. Their hegemony means stagnation for the rest of the world and for the entire civilisation; it means obscurantism, cancellation of culture, and neoliberal totalitarianism.
They are using all expedients. The United States and its vassals grossly interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states by staging provocations, organising coups, or inciting civil wars. By threats, blackmail, and pressure, they are trying to force independent states to submit to their will and follow rules that are alien to them. This is being done with just one aim in view, which is to preserve their domination, the centuries-old model that enables them to sponge on everything in the world. But a model of this sort can only be retained by force.
This is why the collective West – the so-called collective West – is deliberately undermining the European security system and knocking together ever new military alliances. NATO is crawling east and building up its military infrastructure. Among other things, it is deploying missile defence systems and enhancing the strike capabilities of its offensive forces. This is hypocritically attributed to the need to strengthen security in Europe, but in fact quite the opposite is taking place. Moreover, the proposals on mutual security measures, which Russia put forward last December, were once again disregarded.
They need conflicts to retain their hegemony. It is for this reason that they have destined the Ukrainian people to being used as cannon fodder. They have implemented the anti-Russia project and connived at the dissemination of the neo-Nazi ideology. They looked the other way when residents of Donbass were killed in their thousands and continued to pour weapons, including heavy weapons, for use by the Kiev regime, something that they persist in doing now.
Under these circumstances, we have taken the decision to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine, a decision which is in full conformity with the Charter of the United Nations. It has been clearly spelled out that the aims of this operation are to ensure the security of Russia and its citizens and protect the residents of Donbass from genocide.
The situation in Ukraine shows that the United States is attempting to draw out this conflict. It acts in the same way elsewhere, fomenting the conflict potential in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As is common knowledge, the US has recently made another deliberate attempt to fuel the flames and stir up trouble in the Asia-Pacific. The US escapade towards Taiwan is not just a voyage by an irresponsible politician, but part of the purpose-oriented and deliberate US strategy designed to destabilise the situation and sow chaos in the region and the world. It is a brazen demonstration of disrespect for other countries and their own international commitments. We regard this as a thoroughly planned provocation.
It is clear that by taking these actions the Western globalist elites are attempting, among other things, to divert the attention of their own citizens from pressing socioeconomic problems, such as plummeting living standards, unemployment, poverty, and deindustrialisation. They want to shift the blame for their own failures to other countries, namely Russia and China, which are defending their point of view and designing a sovereign development policy without submitting to the diktat of the supranational elites.
We also see that the collective West is striving to expand its bloc-based system to the Asia-Pacific region, like it did with NATO in Europe. To this end, they are creating aggressive military-political unions such as AUKUS and others.
It is obvious that it is only possible to reduce tensions in the world, overcome military-political threats and risks, improve trust between countries and ensure their sustainable development through a radical strengthening of the contemporary system of a multipolar world.
I reiterate that the era of the unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. No matter how strongly the beneficiaries of the current globalist model cling to the familiar state of affairs, it is doomed. The historic geopolitical changes are going in a totally different direction.
And, of course, your conference is another important proof of the objective processes forming a multipolar world, bringing together representatives from many countries who want to discuss security issues on an equal footing, and conduct a dialogue that takes into account the interests of all parties, without exception.
I want to emphasise that the multipolar world, based on international law and more just relations, opens up new opportunities for counteracting common threats, such as regional conflicts and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and cybercrime. All these challenges are global, and therefore it would be impossible to overcome them without combining the efforts and potentials of all states.
As before, Russia will actively and assertively participate in such coordinated joint efforts; together with its allies, partners and fellow thinkers, it will improve the existing mechanisms of international security and create new ones, as well as consistently strengthen the national armed forces and other security structures by providing them with advanced weapons and military equipment. Russia will secure its national interests, as well as the protection of its allies, and take other steps towards building of a more democratic world where the rights of all peoples and cultural and civilisational diversity are guaranteed.
We need to restore respect for international law, for its fundamental norms and principles. And, of course, it is important to promote such universal and commonly acknowledged agencies as the United Nations and other international dialogue platforms. The UN Security Council and the General Assembly, as it was intended initially, are supposed to serve as effective tools to reduce international tensions and prevent conflicts, as well as facilitate the provision of reliable security and wellbeing of countries and peoples.
In conclusion, I want to thank the conference organisers for their major preparatory work and I wish all participants substantial discussions.
I am sure that the forum will continue to make a significant contribution to the strengthening of peace and stability on our planet and facilitate the development of constructive dialogue and partnership.
Eduard K. can’t recall the exact chain of events that led him to approach a Ukrainian military checkpoint and shout: “Putin is my president.” The fashion designer says he remembers an increasing state of panic as war raged outside his home in northern Kyiv. Even when shells weren’t exploding nearby, he would cry uncontrollably at the news he saw on his phone. He became obsessed by the Russians, the evil forces advancing on the other side of the forest. Perhaps he was searching for them when he left his home, in slippers and pyjamas, for the Ukrainian positions inside the woods. Instead, he remembers saying he was looking for Katya Chilly—a camp, new-age Ukrainian Eurovision entrant—before announcing his allegiance to Russia’s president. He was roughed up for his troubles.
That afternoon Eduard K. was admitted to one of Kyiv’s psychiatric hospitals. Yaroslav Zakharov, the doctor who saw him first, says his illness was far from unique in a country traumatised by five months of fighting. War has affected every Ukrainian in some way, and stress is magnifying problems present in the most vulnerable. In normal circumstances the psyche works like a digestive system, the doctor says; it is able to adapt and process extreme experiences. Prolonged war changes that. The expectation of suffering debilitates the nervous system. “People like to control things, and war doesn’t let you do it,” he says. Ukraine’s health ministry predicts that the war will leave 3m-4m people in need of pharmacological interventions, and another 15m requiring psychological support.
Dr Zakharov’s ward was a hive of activity when The Economist dropped by in late July. A soldier had just been admitted after an incident in which he turned firearms on a colleague on the frontline. The entire second floor of the building had been taken over by the military, the doctor revealed, with new admissions increasing in line with the hostilities in the contested Donbas region, in Ukraine’s east.
The most intense pressure on resources, however, came during the battle for Kyiv in March, when the hospital stayed open despite missiles flying over and landing near it. The doctors discharged all but the most dangerous patients, and spread their meagre resources as best they could. There were many tragic incidents. One of the discharged men, who had a history of mental illness, hanged himself after discovering that his home near Kyiv had been ransacked by Russian soldiers. His wife is now receiving treatment.
Eduard K. says that many of the patients admitted alongside him came directly from Bucha or Irpin, suburbs of Kyiv where occupying Russian forces committed terrible atrocities. The men were of all ages and backgrounds, he says, from the very young to the very old, and friendly. One group of patients got it into their heads that Eduard K. was God. “They introduced themselves one by one: this is Archangel Michael, and this so-and-so is Archangel Gabriel”, he recounts.
Some were too traumatised to speak, but brought Eduard offerings instead: apples, odd tea bags, coffee, socks. By the end of his first day on the ward his bedside table was overflowing with unsolicited gifts. One young patient would bring him one-kopeck coins. He had evidently witnessed Russian atrocities near his home in Bucha, though he was never able to communicate exactly what.
The Ukrainian government has sent mental-health specialists into some of the worst-hit towns. Nataliya Zaretska, a psychologist, has been working in Bucha for the past three months, helping civilians process the trauma of occupation. She expected her programme to end after six months, but the demand has been so high that she has opened a new mental-health centre in the town. Ms Zaretska says that the spectrum of mental illness is wide. She works with soldiers who have returned after being tortured in captivity, and locals who have been prisoners in their own homes.
The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of Vladimir Putin’s invasion—the bogus claims of Ukrainian Nazism, of “liberating” Russian-speaking Ukrainians, of “high-precision” missiles that end up killing civilians in shopping centres—makes recovery complicated for many people. There are few things as dangerous for mental health as the feeling of betrayal and illusion, says Olena Nahorna, a colleague of Ms Zaretska now embedded with Ukrainian troops in Donbas. Those who understood from the start that Russia was the enemy were better at coping with the horrors of the war, she argues. Those who thought they were friends found it tougher. “A lot of Ukrainians saw in Moscow a neighbour, albeit an eccentric one. It was a personal tragedy when that eccentric friend burst into their homes and started killing them.”
Ms Nahorna identifies one potential upside to war: the national unity forged by the shared experience of trauma. Eduard K., now discharged from Mr Zakharov’s care, says the extreme nature of his experience has given him new clarity in life. “I realise I could be dead, that different soldiers might have shot me, and that is a big kick up the backside.” His doctor agrees, but cautions it is too early to know the full extent of his trauma—and Ukraine’s. Mr Putin, he says, has dropped a delayed-action bomb on the psyche of every Ukrainian.
Barely holding back tears, the doctor reveals that his own rage pushed him to try to enlist. He was persuaded against it by a former patient now fighting in Donbas. “She told me I needed to take good care of myself, that I would be needed by all of them when the war is over.” She was right.
