Adrien Boquet is a French writer and former soldier who spent 16 days in Ukraine on a humanitarian mission. He discussed what he witnessed with Sud Radio last week. The original interview is in French. This is a version with English subtitles. One thing to note is that Boquet says he has numerous videos as evidence of his claims. The videos are not shown on this program. Presumably, this French outlet would have looked at his evidence as part of the fact-checking process, but I can’t say that with certainty. So far, I am not aware that any other outlet has interviewed Boquet or covered his story.
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Sarah Lindemann-Komarova: Two Months into the Special Military Operation: The View From Siberia
By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Echo Siberia Blog, 5/12/22
Sarah Lindemann-Komarova has lived in Siberia since 1992. She was a community development activist for 20 years and currently, focuses on research and writing.
On February 24, 2022, the Donbas War turned into a Special Military Operation (SMO) and the Crimean special sanctions operation became a War. As the conflicts evolve, the reaction to both are similar in the two vastly different environments I live (the town of Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk and Manzherok Village, Altai Republic).
There was unified shock, no awe, among those supporting and those against the SMO. As the weeks drag on, the shock does not diminish. Those who oppose the SMO are vehement and vocal. They will bring up the topic. Those who support it are mostly silent and never introduce the subject. Support by the people I have encountered comes with an asterisk. There is no rah rah, go get em. For them, something had to be done. The operation was provoked because it did not begin on February 24 but eight years ago. They usually slip it in starting with a description of their connection to Ukraine (family, friend, where they grew up) and/or to someone serving in the Russian military there. There are no degrees of separation, this is personal. Their heartache is equal to those who oppose.
Early Days
Day one people were very active on social media. The range of Points of View were well represented:
· An Independent Deputy from Novosibirsk posted 5 Thesis: For Peace, Stop Military Actions, It is Important to be Calm, Limit your News Time, and Care Instead of Fear.
· An activist in Novosibirsk was arrested when he protested and posted photos with commentary of his experience from the holding cell to the court.
· In Manzherok, an elderly woman posted about her “Homeland Ukraine” and relatives still in Kyiv, “My heart bleeds… Ukraine is on the border of Russia, historically our peoples are brothers. Artificially separating them was a great sin… now I only rely on the mercy of God.”
· A programmer who moved his family to Siberia from the Donbas when the war started, “War is always bad. Eight years ago, the Kyiv authorities launched a war against the civilian population. The shells hit my alma mater, there were casualties, people hid in the basements.”
The assumption was it would be over in a few days so when the second week began a new reality took hold. There was not a lot of chatter about it online beyond a lively debate on the Manzherok What’s App chat about whether or not it was appropriate to celebrate Maslenitsa (the first day of Spring), we did. A neighbor’s son in law came over to install security cameras and asked, “Do you want to talk politics?” My husband answered, No”, Anton said, “Good”. The Russian government passed a law threatening 15 years in prison for people who publish “fake news”.
The second front, sanctions, kicked in noticeably. Exchanging information and advice became part of the Siberian canon: weather, food, and sanctions. Every day you woke up to discover what else you can’t do. It began with no Apple/Google pay, then fly, and shop at IKEA. Everyone started backing up data and signing up for Chinese UnionPay Cards. They said goodbye to Coke, Pepsi, KFC, McDonalds, and Burger King and checked the origin of favorite products. Everyone who did not have a VPN got one. Anyone who wasn’t on Telegram or VK moved there. The few Facebook stragglers fled when Meta announced it would relax content moderators[1] criteria in some countries to allow promoting violence against Russians and Russian soldiers and death to Putin and Lukashenko. The Russian government blocked Meta Platforms.
Then, a new sanctions category appeared with announcements about where Russian artists, athletes, and students are not welcome. When the stakes couldn’t be higher the sanctions jumped the shark with the banning of Russian cats on the International cat circuit.
The exception is IT specialists who are not only welcomed, but enticed. At one Novosibirsk AI Department two out of 80 programmers decided to leave, one returned after a week. Another working for a US start-up with a wife and two kids was given the option. “I am not in physical danger, I have an apartment…why go?” But for young people without families the opportunity to travel, that was fostered by COVID distance work, the response is “why not?’ The Russian government fast tracked an order providing special benefits to the IT sphere including no Army conscription until 27, low percent mortgages, and IT companies do not pay taxes on profit for 3 years.[2]
Two Months In
The Western sanctions have done nothing to foster a negotiated settlement. There is an occasional announcement about a donation drive for refugees in Novosibirsk. Graduates of Novosibirsk State University launched a petition that has attracted 1,298 signatures representing classes from 1964. 84% provided public signatures and a few of those indicated they are living in the US. ”Z”s are not ubiquitous. I have only seen one billboard, one giant sign at a horse rental business, and less than 20 “Z” cars. I saw “Z” t-shirts for sale but have only seen one person wearing it, a young girl.
Early days there was news from relatives in Kyiv (hunkered down, not happy that weapons were being distributed to everyone) and Mariupol (hunkered down, happy the Russians arrived). Now you hear news about those serving. One friend welcomed her son-in-law home, another, waiting to hear if he will be going, got a call that his friend was killed.
Despite what has been promoted by the White House as, “The most significant and crippling sanctions package…in history” [3], early anxiety has become “what else is new”. So far, workarounds or substitutes have been found or are in the process of being developed. There is no panic or complaint, “We will just plant more vegetables” said one mother.
The Siberian calm is rooted in two things. The Russian character described in a Perestroika anecdote that defines a pessimist as someone who believes things can’t get worse and an optimist as someone who knows they can and will. The second is the experience of three previous economic shocks (early 90s, 1998, and 2008) when all aspects of life were drastically transformed overnight. Also, the 2014 Crimea sanctions demonstrated there is opportunity for those ready to take advantage of it. The cheese niche is now being filled by people like Alexei the cheddar cheese master from Tyumen.
After an initial leap up, the ruble dollar exchange is lower than it was before the SMO. 42 brands in Novosibirsk remain closed but some, like IKEA and Zara continue to pay their workers and are waiting for an opportunity to return siting supply chain issues. [4] McDonalds, Burger King, and KFC are still working. Coke is available, just no more investment or marketing. At the Mega Mall, the “Unfortunately, we are temporarily closed” signs hang on closed gates like “back in ten minutes” with fully dressed mannequins and full shelves and racks. [5] On a recent Sunday there were plenty of shoppers, many flocking to the French holdouts Leroy Merlin and Auchan.
There have been several product panics including sugar and xerox paper. The latest is female hygiene products and some stores are limiting three to a customer along with sugar and kasha. Despite some hoarding, the shelves remain full of these and most other products.
Inflation is real but fluctuating. A Novosibirsk newspaper project monitors costs for goods at ten of the most popular supermarkets. The last week of April, the average cost of most products listed are down (Sugar/-3.91%, Salt/-2.54%, Tea/-10.11%, Macaroni/-11.34%, Flour/.01%, Bread/-4.60% ). The three climbing were Rice/+4.90%, Buckwheat/2.28%, and Vodka, up 1.25%. [6]
I met an interior decorator who has never been busier, “people can’t invest abroad so they are investing it here”. Round the clock work on the massive Sberbank Manzherok Resort continues but there are concerns there may be a pause because the interiors were from Italy so a substitute may need to be found. Many people in Manzherok are building guest houses to take advantage of what is expected to be a blockbuster season since it is hard to travel abroad. However, Turkey has just made that easier by creating a new airline, Southwind, to accommodate Russian tourists.
Anyone with strong ties to the West, financial or personal, is having a harder time. The UnionPay salvation card crashed when China stopped negotiations with Russian banks due to fears of secondary sanctions. [7] One friend and her daughter lost jobs that were connected to Western business, it is clear that more layoffs are to come.
Nobody needs to wear a “Z”, the sanctions have insured that the war is a shared experience: the teenager who can’t make income from Instagram, the Babushka worried about cooking oil, the beautician who can’t see American movies in the theatre, the mini-oligarch who doesn’t have access to his Swiss bank accounts, the middle class families waiting for IKEA to open or for a car part to arrive.
One acquaintance told me she hoped this inspired people to be more responsible for their country, especially government. There are some signs of this in the Village. For the first time the chat has hosted detailed, hours long discussions about improving quality of life. A protest against illegal deforestation got traction on social media and was picked up by regional news.
The Manzherok House of Culture was full for a Town Meeting that not only included the Heads of the District and Village, but representatives from the Prosecutor, Healthcare, Pension, and Tax Departments. There are also indications the government is getting serious about corruption with March 6 amendments that authorize audits for officials and their families that have assets greater than their total income for the previous two years.[9]
CONCLUSION
The SMO trend is not good, no one is backing down, everyone is arming up, and the info wars are out of control making sure everything is dumbed down to heroes and villains. The situation is complex and none of that complexity is presented in most of what you find in main-stream Western media. 30 years after the “new Russia” was born and the anticipated peace dividend celebrated, we have arrived at the worst-case scenario. There are only three certainties: anyone who makes a prediction about this situation should be ignored, the world will never be the same, and the people of Siberia will not be weakened.
[2] http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202203020001?index=0&rangeSize=1
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw6F8_JyI7Q&t=3791s
[4] https://sib.fm/news/2022/03/29/v-marte-v-novosibirske-zakrylis-42-magazina-populyarnyh-brendov
[5] https://www.thetechoutlook.com/news/ikea-plans-to-come-back-to-russia/
[7] https://intellinews.com/chinese-unionpay-payment-system-backs-away-from-russian-banks-on-secondary- sanctions-fears-242072/?source=russia
Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern Discuss Ukraine
This was an important discussion but very depressing.
James Carden: Biden and the Democrats pivot to proxy war
By James Carden, Asia Times, 5/12/22
This is the second part of a three-part series on ‘the Blob’ that runs American foreign policy. Read part one here.
WASHINGTON – The Russian war on Ukraine has seen ‘the Blob’ reassert itself with a vengeance in the 11 weeks since Russia announced the commencement of hostilities on February 24.
This article will examine the forces shaping President Joe Biden’s approach to the Ukraine crisis, and then move on to explore the state of foreign policy debate, or lack thereof, within Biden’s Democratic Party.
Former high-ranking military officials, intelligence analysts and diplomats who served at various points during the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations paint a picture in recent conversations with Asia Times of the likely policy options being presented to President Biden as he faces the gravest crisis on the European continent since the Second World War.
The past month has seen the Biden administration, by fits and starts and then seemingly all at once, adopt a militarized, hardline approach toward Russia, declaring Ukraine’s “victory” over Russia as the only acceptable outcome.
While Biden remains steadfast in assuring the public that there will be no “boots on the ground,” in point of fact, current and former officials have suggested that US paramilitaries are indeed on the ground, with military assistance being coordinated by the new appointee to the Biden National Security Council, retired US Army Lieutenant General Terry Wolff.
According to retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as secretary of state Colin Powell’s chief of staff, the administration is planning for a protracted conflict in Ukraine.
Wilkerson says “they are extremely desirous of a protracted conflict because they want to effect regime change in Moscow, destabilize Russia and then take on China. That is their long-term geopolitical strategy.”
It is helpful here to take a moment to describe the prevailing mindset of the top national security officials closest to Biden.
At the very beginning of Biden’s term, a message was sent loud and clear to both supporters and critics in Washington that it would not tolerate any deviations from the establishment orthodoxy and that the perspective and expertise of outsiders were not welcome.
Consider, for instance, the case of respected Russia expert Dr Matthew Rojansky. For years, Rojansky had served as the director of the mainstream, congressionally-funded Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center think tank.
No fierce challenger of the establishment, Rojansky had been a fixture in track-two level talks between American and Russian political scientists and former government officials.Russia expert Matthew Rojansky’s views are unwanted by the Biden administration. Image: Twitter / Bucknell University
Yet when news leaked that Rojansky was under consideration for an appointment to Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), the knives came out and the Democratic hawks made Rojansky their prey. The appointment was torpedoed – and quickly.
Rojansky is now head of a US-Russia-focused non-profit, far from the corridors of power. That’s worrying because, outside of Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns, deep expertise on Russia is thin on the ground in the Biden administration, according to former and current officials who spoke to Asia Times.
But if Russia expertise is lacking, what the vast majority of Biden’s foreign policy appointments do have are deep connections to the reflexively hawkish and dominant wing of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, and that, in part, explains the trajectory of the administration’s policy in Ukraine.
The evolution of Biden’s policy was described to this correspondent by former ambassador Chas Freeman, now a senior fellow at the Watson Institute at Brown University who remains deeply engaged in the foreign policy debate in Washington. Freeman said: “It took about eight weeks for the administration, in the person of NSC Advisor [Jake] Sullivan, to enunciate war aims for the proxy war.
“At the outset of its response to the Russian invasion, the administration was careful to limit possible provocation of the Russians. But, not having seen direct retaliation from Moscow, it has become progressively less cautious.
“This lack of caution is aided by the fact that it is Ukrainians, not Americans, who are dying and by the success of pro-Ukrainian propaganda and the effective Western ban on contradictory information from non-Ukrainian sources. There is a risk that the administration will inhale its own propaganda and underestimate the risks it is taking,” said Freeman.
George Beebe, former head of Russia analysis at the CIA and a senior member of the intelligence service who served on the national security staff of vice president Dick Cheney, agrees.
“It seems to me that the United States and NATO are experiencing the phenomenon of the appetite growing with eating. We didn’t expect the Ukrainians to be as successful as they proved to be,” Beebe said.
Beebe, now the director of the grand strategy program at the Quincy Institute, continued: “A good part of the credit goes to the Ukrainians themselves, their leadership, their courage and fighting against the Russians. A good part of it comes from our own support for them, the intelligence and military assistance that we’ve provided that they’ve used very effectively.
“But I think that has produced battlefield successes that go well beyond anything that the US government expected when Putin launched this invasion. As a result, we started to think, ‘Hey, maybe we can win this.’”Ukrainian soldiers use a launcher with US-made Javelin missiles during military exercises in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on December 23, 2021. Photo: Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Service
“Our eyes, “ says Beebe, “have grown bigger. You walk around here in Washington and there are very few people that are worried that we might get into an escalation spiral that we can’t control. Seems to me that much of Congress is worried that they might be accused of not doing enough to support Ukraine, not of doing too much that tips us over the edge here into a very dangerous situation. So I think it is fair to say that we are in a much more dangerous situation right now from the point of view of escalation than we’ve been in my lifetime.”
Freeman observes that as a result of the war fever enveloping Washington, “It is now taboo in the United States to inquire into the origins of the war, to suggest that Western policy had any role in provoking it, or that there has been or is any basis for Russia’s security concerns.”
And nowhere is the taboo of raising even the most basic questions about American involvement stronger than on Capitol Hill. Indeed, what the last couple of weeks in Washington has shown is that, with respect to the proxy war the administration has now embarked upon, there is essentially a uni-party on Capitol Hill.
This is thanks in large part to one person: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rules her caucus – including the so-called “Squad” – with an iron discipline. In some respects, as Beebe pointed out, Congress appears to fear it is not doing enough.
Pelosi is working overtime – and with the full support of the small and now politically neutered progressive caucus – to ensure that the dominant perception is otherwise.
Two landmark pieces of legislation recently signed into law by Biden help tell the tale. Legislation to revive the lend lease program and apply it to Ukraine passed the House on April 28 by a vote of 417 to 10; the 10 opposition votes were all Republicans. Two weeks later, the House passed by a wide margin, 368 to 57, a US$40 billion aid package to Ukraine. Once again, there were no Democratic dissenting votes.
What, then, accounts for Pelosi’s total effectiveness in pushing the war agenda through the House with only token Republican opposition?
A longtime and current Democratic Party insider with ties going back to the Clintons says that Pelosi has become the most effective and feared House Speaker since Sam Rayburn because she is a “Workhorse not a show horse. She understands the substance and policy better than all those folks who just want to hear themselves talk.”
“Don’t ever,” she said, “bet against Nancy Pelosi.”In this file photo taken on October 9, 2021, US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, speaks to the press on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP / Nicholas Kamm
It helps, too, to control the money. The insider noted that Pelosi’s power comes as much from her legendary indefatigability, showing up at all hours to events large and small to press the flesh and charm the intended marks, as from her access to the high dollar donor base that funds the Democratic party.
In a contest between large dollar donors and small donors such as those who were the lifeblood of the two Bernie Sanders presidential runs, there is no contest.
And in this administration, as with all others, it’s the big donors, like Mr. Biden’s patron, former Comcast CEO David Cohen, who is now his ambassador to Canada, and fundraisers like Jane Hartley, now US ambassador to the United Kingdom, who have the ear of the president and Pelosi.
Pelosi has faced no opposition from her left flank on the massive funding for the war effort, and not simply because progressives are outspent and outnumbered. Progressives have a very weak infrastructure on Capitol Hill when it comes to foreign policy.
As the longtime defense analyst and critic Winslow Wheeler said, “I worked in the Senate and Government Accountability Office for 31 years. I worked for three Republicans and one Democrat. I know the difference between quality staffers and obedient functionaries.”
“Bernie,” says Wheeler, “has a bunch of non-entities on his defense staff. But, on the bright side, at least Elizabeth Warren has Mandy Smithberger, a diamond in the wasteland.”
And so, Biden’s approach to the war is reflective of a kind of “hegemonic multilateralism” that presidents Obama and Clinton practiced, which is basically the pursuit of global hegemony as set out by the infamous 1992 Defense Planning Guidance authored by Paul Wolfowitz and disguised with rhetorical nods to “humanitarianism” and the importance of multilateral international institutions such as the UN.
But there are serious risks in such an approach. Beebe, who has long experience with Russia, says Biden’s wartime policy reflects a zero-sum mentality that is “something that we’ve accused the Russians of, I think with some justification, for many years.”
The idea that whatever weakens Russia and hurts Putin is good for the US, says Beebe, “makes us susceptible to winding up in strategic situations in which our interests are actually hurt. As the Russian conventional military weakens, one of the dangers is that Russia’s dependence on its nuclear arsenal grows.”Russia has threatened to use nuclear arms in retaliation for the West’s support to the Ukrainian resistance. Photo: Getty / Twitter
Freeman’s assessment is equally bleak.
“The US, our NATO allies, Ukraine, and Russia are now locked into long-term hostility. It is entirely possible that the conflict in Ukraine’s east and south, like that between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, will sustain warfare for decades to come. If so, there will be a constant danger of an outbreak of hostilities on Europe’s eastern frontiers and of escalation to direct conflict between Russia and the United States, including a possible nuclear exchange,” he said.
“Given the absence of any serious diplomatic dialogue between Washington and Moscow,” said Freeman, “it is far from obvious how such escalation can be prevented.”
Documentary: Ukraine on Fire
This documentary about the historical context of the 2014 Ukraine war has been banned from YouTube and other venues. I just got around to watching it myself last week. I’m posting it here for those who haven’t seen it yet. For those receiving this via email, I think you’ll have to go to my actual blog to be able to click on and view it.