Chinese President Xi Jinping’s extremely warm reception of President Vladimir Putin yesterday in Beijing sealed the increasingly formidable Russia-China strategic relationship. It amounts to a tectonic shift in the world balance of power.
The Russia-China entente also sounds the death knell for attempts by U.S. foreign policy neophytes to drive a wedge between the two countries. The triangular relationship has become two-against-one, with serious implications, particularly for the war in Ukraine. If U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy geniuses remain in denial, escalation is almost certain.
In a pre-visit interview with Xinhua, Putin noted the “unprecedented level of strategic partnership between our countries.” He and Xi have met more than 40 times in person or virtually. In June 2018, Xi described Putin as “an old friend of the Chinese people” and, personally, his “best friend.”
For his part, Putin noted Thursday that he and Xi are “in constant contact to keep personal control over all pressing issues on the Russian-Chinese and international agenda.” Putin brought along Defense Minister Andrey Belousov as well as veterans like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and key business leaders.
Joint Statements Matter
Putin and Xi in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Xi and Putin signed a strong joint statement Thursday, similar to the extraordinary one the two issued on Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. It portrayed their relationship as “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation …”
The full import of that statement did not hit home until Putin launched the Special Military Operation into the Donbass three weeks later. China’s muted reaction shocked most analysts, who had dismissed the possibility that Xi would give “best friend” Putin, in effect, a waiver on China’s bedrock policy of non-interference abroad.
In the following weeks, official Chinese statements made clear that the principles of Westphalia had taken a back seat to “the need for every country to defend its core interests” and to judge each situation “on its own merits.”
Nuclear War
Thursday’s statement expressed concern over “increased strategic risks between nuclear powers” — referring to continued escalation of the war between NATO-supported Ukraine and Russia. It condemns “the expansion of military alliances and creation of military bridgeheads close to the borders of other nuclear powers, particularly with the advanced deployment of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, as well as other items.”
Putin has undoubtedly briefed Xi on the U.S. missile sites already in Romania and Poland that can launch what Russians call “offensive strike missiles” with flight time to Moscow of less than 10 minutes. Putin surely has told Xi about the inconsistencies in U.S. statements regarding intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
For example, Xi is aware — just as surely as consumers of Western media are unaware — that during a Dec. 30, 2021, telephone conversation, Biden assured Putin that “Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.”
There was rejoicing in the Kremlin that New Years’ Eve, since Biden’s assurance was the first sign that Washington might acknowledge Russia’s security concerns. Indeed, Biden addressed a key issue in at least five of the eight articles of the Russian draft treaty given to the U.S. on Dec. 17, 2021. Russian rejoicing, however, was short-lived.
Foreign Minister Lavrov revealed last month that when he met Antony Blinken in Geneva in January 2022, the U.S. secretary of state pretended he’d not heard of Biden’s undertaking to Putin on Dec. 30, 2021. Rather, Blinken insisted that U.S. medium-range missiles could be deployed in Ukraine, and only that the U.S. might be willing to limit their number, Lavrov said.
The Mother of All Miscalculations
Biden and Putin meeting at the at the Villa La Grange in Geneva, June 16, 2021, flanked by Blinken on left, Lavrov on right. (White House/ Adam Schultz)
When Biden took office in 2021, his advisers assured him that he could play on Russia’s fear (sic) of China and drive a wedge between them. This became embarrassingly clear when Biden indicated what he had told Putin during their Geneva summit on June 16, 2021.
That meeting gave Putin confirmation that Biden and his advisers were stuck in a woefully outdated appraisal of Russia-China relations.
Here is the bizarre way Biden described his approach to Putin on China:
“Without quoting him [Putin] — which I don’t think is appropriate — let me ask a rhetorical question: You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world.”
The ‘Squeeze’
Putin in video conference with Xi on Dec. 15, 2021. (Kremlin)
At the airport after the summit, Biden’s aides did their best to whisk him onto the plane, but failed to stop him from sharing more wisdom on China:
“Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China.”
After these remarks Putin and Xi spent the rest of 2021 trying to disabuse Biden of the “China squeeze” on Russia: it was not a squeeze, but a fraternal embrace. This mutual effort culminated in a Xi-Putin virtual summit on Dec. 15 of that year.
The video of the first minute of their conversation was picked up by The New York Times, as well as others. Still, most commentators seemed to miss its significance:
Putin:
“Dear friend, dear President Xi Jinping.
Next February I expect we can finally meet in person in Beijing as we agreed. We will hold talks and then participate in the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games. I am grateful for your invitation to attend this landmark event.”
Xi:
“Dear President Putin, my old friend. It’s my pleasure to meet you at the end of this year by video, the second time this year, our 37th meeting since 2013. You have hailed … China-Russia relations as a model in international collaboration in the 21st Century, strongly supporting China’s position on safeguarding its core interests, and firmly opposed to attempts to drive a wedge between our two countries. I highly appreciate it.”
Is Biden still unaware of this? Have his advisers told him that Russia and China have never been closer, with what amounts to a virtual military alliance?
The Election
Putin has said he is aware that Washington’s policy toward Russia “is primarily impacted by domestic political processes.” Russia and China certainly assess that Biden’s policy on Ukraine will be influenced by the political imperative to be seen as facing Russia down.
If NATO country hotheads send “trainers” to Ukraine, the prospect of a military dust-up is ever present. What Biden needs to know is that, if it comes to open hostilities between Russia and the West, he is likely to face more than just saber rattling in the South China Sea — and the specter of a two-front war.
The Chinese know they are next in line for the ministrations of NATO/East. Indeed, it is no secret that the Pentagon sees China as enemy No. 1. According to the DOD’s National Defense Strategy, “defense priorities are first, defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the People’s Republic of China.”
The Pentagon will be the last to sing a requiem for the dearly departed unipolar world. May sanity prevail.
Ray McGovern’s first portfolio as a C.I.A. analyst was Sino-Soviet relations. In 1963, their total trade was $220 MILLION; in 2023, $227 BILLION. Do the math.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Former Ukrainian MP Andrey Derkach, who’s reviled by the Biden Administration for sharing dirt about Hunter Biden’s Burisma corruption scandal with Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani ahead of the 2020 elections, just gave a very important interview to Belarus’ BelTA where be blew the whistle even louder. According to him, the $6 million bribe that was paid in cash to shut down the investigation into the First Son’s scandal eventually found its way to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and its military-intelligence agency.
Derkach claimed to have proof of the secret court order that divided these funds between those two, with the first investing its portion into building up their country’s drone army while the second financed terrorist attacks like the assassination of Darya Dugina, which he specifically mentioned in the interview. These allegations expand upon the ones that he shared earlier this year regarding the real-world impact of Hunter’s corruption scandal, which were analyzed here at the time.
On the subject of Ukrainian assassinations and terrorism, Derkach said that the CIA and FBI actually condone these actions despite their public claims to the contrary, but he warned that this immoral policy will inevitably ricochet into the US itself. In particular, he cited FBI chief Christopher Wray’s testimony to Congress last April where he said that law enforcement officials fear that Crocus-like attacks are presently being plotted against their country.
About that, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR is the chiefsuspect of Russia’s investigation into what became one of the worst terrorist attacks in its history, thus meaning that the portion of Burisma’s $6 million bribe that made its way into their hands likely financed part of it. In other words, the third-order effect of Hunter’s corruption scandal is that it was partially responsible for the brutal murder of innocent civilians halfway across the world some years later.
That’s already scandalous enough, but Derkach shared even more details about the other indirect consequences of this cover-up into the First Son’s illicit activities, adding that some GUR-linked figures have been connected to the Western narrative about September 2022’s Nord Stream terrorist attack. He regards that story as a distraction from the US’ complicity, the view of which was elaborated upon here at the time that it entered the discourse, but lauded the CIA for the lengths it went to cover up its role.
In his view, the CIA might very well have sent a highly trained Ukrainian diving team to the Baltic Sea exactly as the Western media reported, though only to plant fake bombs. In his words, “when a cover story is made, it is done quite well. We shouldn’t belittle the experience of the CIA or the experience of MI6 in preparing cover operations. They have quite a lot of experience in using proxies, in using cover stories to form a certain position in order to dodge responsibility. This is actually what happened.”
Looking forward, Derkach expects Ukraine to attempt more terrorist attacks against Russia, which the US public is being preconditioned to accept via the CIA’s various leaks to the media. While many might lay the blame for all this on Zelensky’s lap, Derkach believes that it’s actually his Chief of Staff Andrey Yermak who’s running the show, albeit as a Western puppet. Nevertheless, he’s also convinced that the West is indeed preparing to formally replace Zelensky, but doesn’t yet know when or with whom.
Altogether, the importance of Derkach’s interview is that he’s a former veteran Ukrainian politician who still retains a lot of sources inside the regime, having served in the Rada for a whopping 22 years from 1998-2020. While his homeland charged him with treason after he fled to Russia in early 2022, which followed the US charging him with election meddling on behalf of that country in September 2020, the argument can be made that these are politically driven attempts to intimidate a top whistleblower.
The dirt that Derkach shared about Hunter’s Burisma corruption scandal, not to mention its newly revealed third-order effects that led to the brutal killing of civilians halfway across the world after part of his company’s bribe made its way into GUR’s hands, made him an enemy of the US Government. They and their Ukrainian proxies will therefore always try to discredit him with sensational allegations, but everyone would do well to listen to what he says and then make up their own minds about it.
I was out of the country for a bit, attending the annual conference of the British Association of Slavic and East European Studies (BASEES), after which I was mysteriously locked out of WordPress for a while. However, I am now back in, and thought it would be good to post here my BASEES conference paper, as it is unlikely to be published anywhere else. So here it is. – Paul Robinson
Perceptions of Alexander III in Modern Russia
Presentation to BASEES Conference, April 2024
It is probably fair to say that Emperor Alexander III of Russia does not have a very good reputation in the English speaking world. In Russia, though, the emperor has been rehabilitated in the post-Soviet era. In November 2017, for instance, Russian president Vladimir Putin unveiled a statue of Alexander III in Crimea, commenting that “The reign of Alexander III was called the age of national revival, a true uplift of Russian art, painting, literature, music, education and science, the time of returning to our roots and historical heritage.”
= Monument to the Peacemaker Tsar Alexander III =
In December 2023, Putin then attended the launch of the Russian navy’s latest ballistic missile submarine, the Emperor Alexander III. Alexander is in official favour.
For this paper, I have decided to look at how historians have represented Alexander in the past 20 or so years. Alexander hasn’t received much attention from English-speaking historians – there is in fact not a single English language biography of Alexander other than one published in the year of his death in 1894 and a privately published one that isn’t available in any library anywhere. In Russia, by contrast, a huge number of works related to Alexander have been produced in recent years. The earliest one I have examined for the purpose of this talk is a biography by Alexander Bokhanov. This was originally published in 1998, but the copy I have is a sixth edition, published in 2019, indicating that there is still a lot of interest in this book.
Next are a couple of biographies by Olga Barkovets and Alexander Krylov-Tolstikovich, the first of which was produced in 2001 and the second in 2007, the latter being a slightly bigger version of the former.
Then there are further biographies by Alexander Miasnikov and I. E. Dronov from 2016, S. V. Ilyin from 2019, Nina Boiko from 2022, and V. A. Grechukhin from 2023. That’s eight biographies in about 25 years, and five in just the last 10 years. On top of that, there are a bunch of other books, for instance Tocheny and Tochenaia’s Russian Autocrats: Alexander III, Lenin, Stalin, and there are also a number of source books which publish documents about Alexander dating from his life. These include the 900 page long collection Alexander III: Pro et Contra and several volumes of correspondence between Alexander and Prince V. P. Meshchersky.
So what do these books tell us?
The first thing to note that is that for the most part, the authors of these books do not engage much with other scholarly literature, and references to English language are notable for their almost total absence. In so far as Russian historians do address previous literature it is largely to critique it for having either a communist or a liberal bias and for being too negative. The person who has the most to say on this topic is Bokhanov, who writes that ‘Russian historiography has canonized biased assessments, in which for almost a hundred years the Westernist worldview has been dominant. In accordance with this worldview, Russia is a realm of darkness, ignorance, barbarism, and “Asiaticism,” and if there was anything bright and advanced in Russia, it was only due to the influence of the “progressive West.”’ Bokhanov complains that “Liberal dogmatic terror is merciless and uncompromising. Anyone who looks at the Russian World, at Russia without contempt, who respects the history of his Native Home, the deeds of his ancestors, and who does not consider Russia’s past to be the history of a “dark kingdom,” is immediately qualified as a “monarchist” and a “reactionary.” The “Russian Europeans” forgave (and still forgive) Peter the Great everything: unthinkable debauchery, the murder of his own son, unbelievable cruelty, insane military adventures, robbery and extermination of his own people … They always praised him for “cutting a window to Europe.” Alexander III, however, was not forgiven or forgotten precisely because he was anti-Western. For his liberal slanderers, this “original sin” was enough. … The Russian Monarch was portrayed as narrow-minded, if not just plain stupid.”
While most of Alexander’s other biographers don’t say this quite so openly, they pretty much share this attitude and adopt an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward him, both on a personal and a political level. It’s worth noting, incidentally, that the personal tends to dominate over the political in these biographies. Most spend at least half their time discussing Alexander’s life prior to becoming emperor, and even when describing his time as ruler tend not to devote a lot of attention to his role in what one might call policy issues. As a result, in most cases one learns a lot about Alexander, his upbringing, habits, and family, but not always very much about his impact on major political decisions. And generally, they paint quite a positive picture of Alexander as a person, showing him as a hard working, dedicated, modest family man, who eschewed the extravagance and scandal of other Romanovs. Thus Barkovets and Krylov-Tolstikovich note that “Alexander III invariably strove to set a personal example of behavior that he considered right for each of his subjects. His ethical norms of behavior, his entire worldview proceeded from a deep religiosity. It is unlikely that any of Alexander’s twelve predecessors on the Russian imperial throne was such a pious and sincere believer. His faith – pure and free of dogmatism – explained both the God-chosen nature of the Russian autocracy and the special Russian path that it should follow.”
This last point reflects the main point that many of Alexander’s biographies consider his defining and indeed most endearing trait – his Russianness. Alexander is portrayed as Russian through and through, to the extent of being the first Russian emperor to wear a beard. Thus Boiko quotes Ivan Turgenev as saying that Alexander was “Russian and only Russian. Only a tiny drop of Russian blood flowed in his veins, but he merged himself with his people to such an extent that everything about him – his language, his habits, his manners, even his physiognomy was marked with the defining characteristics of his race.”
This Russianness is seen also as extending into Alexander’s policies as Emperor, which are positively assessed in contrast to what are seen as the failures of his father, Alexander II, whose policies are portrayed as a rather ill-judged effort to half-heartedly implant alien Western institutions into Russia. This is said to have contributed to the rise in terrorism that eventually led to the assassination of Alexander II. By contrast, the firm hand exerted by Alexander III is described as having brought Russian back from brink of collapse. Thus in a preface to Miasnikov’s biography, Bishop Tikhon, writes that Alexander “took over a country that was in a terrible moral, economic and political condition, when Russia was wracked by revolutionary terror. But he handed over to his successor a country that was fully pacified and enjoying its heyday, advancing towards a future that to many seemed cloudless and happy.”
Similarly, Dronov begins his biography with a quote from the émigré conservative writer Ivan Solonevich, saying that “I would give 150 Provisional Governments for one Alexander III. In my opinion, Alexander III was a true progressive, not Kerensky or Miliukov. For it is progress when you have quiet, confidence, flourishing, and growth. And it is reaction when there is hunger, brutality, collapse, and defeat.” Dronov then follows this up with a quote from the revolutionary turned conservative Lev Tikhomirov, saying that “Under Alexander II, Russia was such a humiliated country that nobody could possibly be proud of being Russian. Under Alexander III, the situation was reversed, and Russia began to take on the form of a great national force.”
Let us therefore now move on to examine the means by which this alleged transformation is said to have taken place.
Alexander’s first achievement is said to have been that he restored order. As Bokhanov writes, “During Alexander III’s reign, the social political situation in Russia stabilized.” His various biographers admit that this was achieved by repressive means, including the actions of the secret service, censorship, and the elimination of university autonomy. But they consider this a necessary evil, and in any case not actually that repressive. Several of the biographers mention that only 17 people were executed during Alexander’s reign, all of whom were guilty of either murdering or attempting to murder the emperor or his father. They also mention that Alexander personally commuted several death sentences, and that by comparison with later communist rule, the repression of his reign was really very mild.
In addition, they all are at pains to point out that even with increased censorship, Alexander’s reign saw a significant growth in the number of publications in Russia, with even liberal publications such as Vestnik Evropy being allowed to appear. Alexander was, they point out, a strong supporter of the arts, and even leant his support to those who might in some respects have been deemed subversive. For instance, Alexander intervened to prevent Tolstoy’s novel The Kreutzer Sonata from being banned, and supported the Peredvizhniki artists. Alexander’s reign, we are told, saw a flourishing of Russian culture, associated with names such as Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Tchaikovsky. Several authors mention the large-scale expansion of education under Alexander III, with a huge increase in the number of schools, and the creation of Tomsk university and the higher women’s courses. Thus Barkovets and Krylov-Tolstikovich conclude that “It was in the reign of Alexander III that Russia first became one of the recognized centres of world culture.”
Another important step in restoring order was what are often called the “counter-reforms.” Most of Alexander’s biographers don’t devote a lot of attention to these, but those who do are supportive of his policies. Ilyin, for instance, comments that many of the institutions set up under Alexander II didn’t work very well. The Justice of the Peace (JP) courts, for instance, were very slow moving, and cases could take years to be resolved. In addition, he notes, “In disputes between peasants and landlords, the Justices of the Peace more often than not sided with the latter.” Ilyin cites the poet Fet, who served for a decade as a JP, saying that “From my bitter experience I long ago came to the conclusion about the complete unsuitability of these institutions in village life.” By contrast, Ilyin remarks, the land captains established under Alexander III provided immediate justice and were much closer to and more accessible to the peasantry.
Similarly, Boiko remarks that “the land captains helped bring order to peasant life … And above all, combatted the unconscious spirit of anarchy among the peasants.” And Dronov claims that “the establishment of the land captains decided the problem of establishing a strong, effective and operative power in the localities, while the peasantry accepted very positively the appearance of a personal, concrete, representative of the authorities, allowing for rapid justice in accordance with conscience not the law, instead of the personless mechanism of formal judicial procedures.”
Dronov notes that the counter reforms met with strong resistance from liberals within the bureaucracy, and praises Alexander for standing up to what he considers a fifth column. According to Dronov, Alexander “understood that the “external” West – the West that exists beyond Russia’s borders – is not Russia’s most dangerous enemy; that there exists also a far more dangerous “internal West” that consists of forces within Russia who identify ideologically with the West, Western values, and the Western way of life.”
Of all Alexander’s biographers, Dronov is by far the most virulent in his anti-Westernism and anti-liberalism. He comments that “Even when very young, Alexander hated liberals, not because he was opposed to freedom, but because, by a strange law of nature, it was precisely among liberals that one found the largest number of people who hated Russia and kowtowed to the West.”
Dronov’s nationalism comes out very strongly in his discussion of Alexander’s nationality policies, writing that the emperor “understood the decisive significance of the national question, and what a powerful weapon regional separatism was for destroying Russia. He saw how hostile forces were igniting national divisions within Russia.” Dronov is not alone, in supporting Alexander’s nationality policies, as these gain the almost universal endorsement his biographers. Again and again they tell us that the Russian state did not discriminate against any national group in the empire. Indeed, many national minorities enjoyed autonomy and privileges that Russians did not. And this, they say, was the real problem, for it was precisely Russians who suffered discrimination.
As for Alexander, he was allegedly free of ethnic and religious prejudice. But he could not tolerate the discrimination faced by Russians, in particular at the hand of Baltic German nobles. Thus Bokhanov writes that “While we must recognize Alexander’s nationalistic inclinations, we must also note that they never reached the level of chauvinism. No repressions of other peoples, no persecution of their culture or beliefs, was ever undertaken at the initiative of the monarch, solely because they were not Russian. However, the Tsar could not and would not tolerate discrimination against Russians.” Likewise Barkovets and Krylov-Tolstikovich remark that “Carrying out the policy of Russification, the government in no way pursued chauvinistic goals. Its task consisted solely of bringing archaic local administration in line with general state norms, and defending the rights and interests of the Russian and Orthodox population against the self-rule of the German landlord-clerical authorities.”
Where things become a little trickier for the biographers is when they confront the issue anti-Jewish measures taken by Alexander’s government. Some of them respond by mentioning this only in passing and glossing over entirely Alexander’s role in the matter. Ilyin goes a bit further and admits that Alexander said some things that were regrettable, but he concludes that they didn’t amount to much, making the rather odd argument that “No few of Alexander III’s resolutions [on the issue of Jews] have been preserved and they have greatly harmed his reputation … Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to call him an anti-Semite as is sometime done. Contemporary reference books define anti-Semitism as a form of racism. But the emperor’s antipathy to Jews had nothing to do with race, but derived from his naïve, childish belief in the letter of holy tradition.” As I say, it’s a rather odd argument.
Even more disturbing is Dronov’s take on the matter. Dronov’s book is by far the most detailed of Alexander’s biographies, but also by far the most tendentious. It provides a huge amount of detail proving beyond reasonable doubt that Alexander was indeed anti-Semitic. In this sense, it is a much more useful book than other biographies. But Dronov doesn’t seem to find anything wrong with Alexander’s anti-Semitism. Indeed, he makes what one can only call anti-Semitic remarks of his own. For instance, he writes that “The dominant influence of foreigners (that is, Jews and Poles) in the alliance of the liberal-constitutionalists and revolutionaries was an entirely natural phenomenon. Liberal bourgeois ideology was a product of Talmudic ethics and Catholic religious doctrine, contradicting Orthodoxy and rejecting Christ in favour of the law of Moses. … Jews and Poles were the largest element in the Russian empire who were nationally and religiously incompatible with Russian Orthodox tradition.” Moving onto economic policy, Dronov also comments that “Alexander III could not but understand that freeing Russia from the yoke of German bankers and acquiring new, more favourable, loans from France, was only a relative success. The financial market in Paris, just as much as in Berlin, was dominated by Jews, and Russia ran the risk of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.”
For Dronov, Alexander’s economic policy were a huge success, greatly boosting not only industrial production but also the standard of living of the vast bulk of the population. The roots of this success, according to Dronov, lay precisely in Alexander’s willingness to adopt protectionist policies and to pursue a more autarkic model of development, free of the control of foreign financiers. He writes: ‘In the 13 years of his reign, production rose more than twice … with no inflation. … He built the Trans-Siberian Railway and didn’t order a single nail from abroad. All the rails, all the wagons, and all the engines were built only in Russian factories. He built a new fleet, and all the ships were constructed in Russian wharfs. … Under Alexander III, Russia became truly Russian and for the Russians.”
Other authors are not quite so nationalistic but concur with the positive assessment of Alexander’s economic policy. All of them note that Alexander inherited a government deeply in debt with a large budget deficit, but that by the end of his reign the government was running a budget surplus. All of them similarly note the significant rise in industrial production under Alexander, a substantial expansion of Russia’s railways, the establishment of the Peasant Bank, and the passing of factory legislation designed to protect workers from excessive exploitation. Barkovets and Krylov-Tolstikovich, for instance, write that “Alexander III inherited a desolate economy. The country was in a deep economic crisis. Its finances were in a deplorable state. … The financial and economic reforms undertaken by Alexander III opened up new, previously hidden, sources of wealth, and increased the population’s incomes.”
The final aspect of Alexander’s reign that receives a lot of coverage is foreign policy. All his biographers praise him for earning the title ‘Tsar peacemaker’ by not fighting a single war. In the late 1870s, Russia had barely managed to defeat Turkey in the war of 1877-78, and under Western pressure had then had to surrender many of its gains. After this humiliation, Alexander III is described as restoring Russia’s international prestige. Though some foreign policy failures are noted, particularly relating to Bulgaria, Alexander is considered to have been a highly successful foreign policy leader. Ilyin, for instance, concludes that “Alexander III did not make any serious mistakes in the diplomatic field. And while there were certain individual errors and failures, even such a master of diplomatic intrigue as Bismarck had those too.”
While noting that Alexander brought peace, his biographers are all point out that he did so not by surrendering Russia’s interests to the West, but rather by standing up for Russia’s interests from a position of strength, investing heavily in the Russian army and fleet. Several mention the famous statement that may or may not have been uttered by Alexander, that “Russia has only two allies, its army and its fleet. At the first opportunity, all the others will take up arms against us.” Generally, people only quote the first half of this statement, putting the stress on the need for a strong military, but interestingly Alexander’s biographers always provide the full quote and put the emphasis more on the second half, i.e. on the charge that Russia’s allies will always betray it, and thus that Western countries are not to be trusted. Thus Miasnikov states that “The bitter experience of the nineteenth century taught the tsar that every time that Russia participated in the wars of any European coalition that it would come deeply to regret it.” And Bokhanov concludes that, “Alexander III was the first Romanov emperor not to be blinded by a “love of Europe.” The emperor never forgot how the goodwill and generosity of his predecessors had been cynically abused by our so-called “friends” and how our “faithful allies” had cheated us, betrayed us, and often simply made fools of us.”
The books mentioned in this presentation vary greatly in their length, quality, and style. Still, they do all end up telling much the same story. The basic message is that Alexander III inherited a country in political and economic chaos, with low international prestige, and a weak military, but thereafter restored order, boosted the economy, and made Russia great again, putting Russia’s interests ahead of those of other countries and relying on native Russian values and institutions rather than artificially imported Western ones. There is, I think, a strong contemporary political subtext to this narrative. In this sense, the portrayals of Alexander discussed in this paper are very much a product of their time.
Apparently the insanity in Washington is not letting up. – Natylie
In another step in the creeping escalation, the US said sending military trainers” to participate in the War in Ukraine is “inevitable,” The New York Times (NYT) reported on May 16.
The US’ highest-ranking officer, General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Western armies will provide military trainers to Kyiv “at some point” in a move that would mark a significant departure from Nato’s previous reluctance to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.
“We’ll get there eventually, over time,” Brown told reporters, according to reports. He stressed that doing so now would put “a bunch of Nato trainers at risk” and tie up air defences that would be better used protecting Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield, the NYT reported.
The revelation comes only a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that it was “up to Ukraine to decide” if it wanted to use US-made weapons to strike targets inside Russian territory, a significant softening of the previous ban, due to fears of provoking a similar Russian retaliation.
The announcement also follows on from French President Emmanuel Macron’s earlier remarks that Nato should not take the possibility of committing troops to the fight in Ukraine off the table in order to maintain “strategic ambiguity” in the struggle against Russia. Those remarks provoked a strong condemnation from the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military manoeuvres with Russian nuclear missiles in response as a signal to the West of what its direct involvement in the war in Ukraine might lead to.
A growing number of European countries have followed Macron’s lead and signalled a willingness to consider sending military personnel to Ukraine. An Estonian official said last week they are “seriously” discussing the possibility of sending troops into western Ukraine in non-combat roles, while Lithuania’s foreign minister said training missions in Ukraine “might be quite doable.” Other leading European countries such as Germany have ruled out any direct involvement in the war by their troops.
The suggestion of direct Western military participation in the conflict comes as the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) come under increasing pressure from a new heavy assault on the eastern city of Kharkiv, where Russian forces are making their first advances in months. At the same time, little of the $61bn of new US military aid has appeared on the battlefield, according to battlefield reports, and Russia continues to pulverise Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with impunity. At least half of all of Ukraine’s generating capacity has been damaged or destroyed since an intense barrage began in January that has only intensified since then.
In addition to an ammo crisis, Ukraine is suffering from a manpower shortage, as undisclosed losses reach “catastrophic levels”, according to Ukraine’s former top general Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was removed from office earlier this year.
As a result, Ukrainian officials have asked their American and Nato counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment, the NYT reports. A Ukrainian delegation is currently in Washington to lobby for more US aid.
So far, the US has rejected these calls but Brown said at a press conference that a Nato deployment of trainers appeared to be “inevitable.” “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said.
Previous US efforts to train Ukrainian soldiers have not been successful. Ahead of last summer’s much vaulted counteroffensive, elite troops were trained by the US in Grafenwoehr in Germany, but the counter-offensive was effectively thwarted by heavy Russian defences built up in the nine-month lull before the summer counteroffensive could be launched.
Compounding the problem is that Ukrainians are facing a battlefield far different and more intense than what American forces have fought on in recent years, the NYT reports.
“Moving the training into Ukraine, military officials acknowledge, would allow American trainers to more quickly gather information about the innovations occurring on the Ukrainian front lines, potentially allowing them to adapt their training,” the NYT reports.
Battlefield situation
Russia is widely expected to launch its own counter-offensive this summer; it may be already under way. Fighting to the north of Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, has already become intense, with Russian forces making slow but steady advances, albeit with heavy casualties.
Nato said on May 16 that it doesn’t believe Russia will make a breakthrough in the Kharkiv Oblast, but Rob Bauer, chairman of the Nato Military Committee, told journalists that even providing Ukraine with more military aid in a timely manner will “not necessarily discourage Russia from offensive operations,” reports European Pravda.
Christopher Cavoli, Supreme Commander of Nato’s Allied Forces Europe, said at a press briefing that the Russians “don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough,” Ukrayinska Pravda reports.
“More to the point, they don’t have the skill and capability to do it, to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage. They do have the ability to make local advances and they have done some of that,” he added, saying that he was confident that the AFU will hold the line.
A Ukraine delegation in Washington is pressing for permission to use US missiles to strike at Russian forces being massed on the Russian side of the border and logistical supply lines in Russia, before crossing over to join the Kharkiv offensive. Video on Russian social media showed Grad missile launchers on the Belgorod highway, just inside Russian territory, parked on the road and firing missiles into Ukraine with impunity, as Ukraine can only use its homemade drones to strike at them under the current rules of engagement when they are in Ukraine proper.
Moscow’s reaction
The war of words is also being ratcheted up. Putin has already ordered nuclear missile military exercises and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a stern statement after Blinken’s comments allowing missile strikes inside Russia using Western-made weapons. It reminded the West that Russia’s military doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons if Russia faces an “existential threat.” On May 16, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov added that Moscow may lower the level of diplomatic relations with Washington if “certain scenarios” unfold, reports TASS. So far Russia has not broken off diplomatic relations with Washington and backchannel talks are ongoing, according to various reports.
Ryabkov said that Russia has never been the first to make such moves in its relations with the US or other Nato countries.
“But, in my opinion, [such steps are] quite possible if the West chooses the path of escalation,” the diplomat said, without saying what specifically would trigger such a move.
“I’m not ready to theorise on the subject,” he said. “If the situation continues to deteriorate, it will become a subject of specific analysis and decision-making at the level of political leaders.”
A uniquely Ukrainian strain of Neo-Nazism is spreading throughout Europe, which openly advocates violence against minorities while seeking new recruits. With Kiev’s army collapsing and a narrative of Western betrayal gaining currency, the horror inflicted on residents of Donbas for a decade could very soon be coming to a city near you.
Centuria, an ultra-violent Ukrainian Neo-Nazi faction, has cemented itself in six cities across Germany, and is seeking to expand its local presence. According to Junge Welt, a Berlin-based Marxist daily, the Nazi organization’s growth has been “unhindered by local security services.”
Junge Welt traces Centuria’s origins to an August 2020 Neo-Nazi summit “at the edge of a forest near Kiev.” There, an ultranationalist named Igor “Tcherkas” Mikhailenko demanded the “hundreds of mostly masked vigilante fighters present,” who were members Kiev’s fascistic National Militia, “make sacrifices for the idea of ‘Greater Ukraine.’” As the former head of the Neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine’s Kharkiv division, and commander of the state sponsored Azov Battalion from 2014 to 2015, Mikhailenko has professed a desire to “destroy everything anti-Ukrainian.”
Junge Welt reports that since 2017, the National Militia “had been practicing brutal vigilante justice” throughout Ukraine, including “tyrannizing the LGBTQ scene.” Centuria was subsequently blamed for a terrifying November 2021 attack on a gay nightclub in Kiev, in which its operatives assaulted revelers with truncheons and pepper spray.
Now the same Neo-Nazi sect “has an offshoot in Germany,” Junge Welt revealed. On August 24 2023, the 32nd anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, Centuria convened a “nationalist rally” in the central city of Magdeburg, “unmolested by Antifa and critical media reporting.”
Participants proudly posed with the flag of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) founded by World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Centuria boasted at the time on Telegram, “although Ukrainian youth are not in their homeland, they are starting to unite.” Meanwhile, they threatened the “enemies” of their country with “hellish storm,” pledging that “Ukrainian emigrants” would not “forget their national identity for a few hundred euros.”
Junge Welt reports that Centuria “is currently raising funds for its parent organization’s combat unit,” which is commanded by Andriy Biletsky – the Azov Battalion founder who infamously stated in 2014 that the Ukrainian nation’s mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen.” At home, Centuria’s members express similar attitudes towards Muslims, Africans, and gays, whom they refer to, respectively, as the “German Caliphate,” “black rapists,” and “pedophiles.”
Now, the group’s members are working hard to pass their ideological vision down to future racists across the continent. “We are creating a new generation of heroes!” Centuria’s Telegram channel boasts. Accordingly, the neo-Nazi group has been arranging hiking trips to Germany’s Harz mountains with a Ukrainian nationalist scout association called Plast. This outfit opened chapters across the Western world beginning in the 1950s, in response to the Soviet Union’s hounding of fascists and nationalists. Besides receiving ideological indoctrination, Plast’s youthful members may have the opportunity to improve their physical fitness and receive military training. As Centuria ominously declares on Telegram, “free people have weapons.”
Opening ceremonies at the Lithuanian camp “Iskra” with Plast youth in an apparent “scout’s honor” salute, 2022
As Washington gradually backs away from its sponsorship of Ukraine’s war with Russia, it has begun ceding responsibility for the military campaign’s management – and likely failure – to Berlin. If US arms shipments continue to dwindle, Germany will become Kiev’s chief supplier of weapons. And the Germans may find that saying “no” to Ukraine could result in some nasty surprises.
Unlike the US, Germany does not enjoy an ocean-length buffer between itself and the fascistic proxy warriors it sponsors in Ukraine. After Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive finally collapsed in late 2023, its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, grumbled a veiled threat during an interview with the Economist: “There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned.”
While Ukrainians have generally “behaved well” and are “very grateful” to those who sheltered them, it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to “drive these people into a corner,” Zelensky remarked to the outlet.
To understand how more radical elements of a spent proxy force could turn their guns on the Western governments that armed them, one need only look at the events of September 11, 2001.
A secret Western-backed Nazi network
Centuria is seemingly not the only Azov-related Ukrainian movement seeking to infiltrate Europe. An apparently separate but identically named Centuria is doing the same, with help from an entrenched structure of elite European support.
In September 2021, George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) published a detailed and deeply unsettling report which documents how a once-secret order called Centuria was nurtured by a “self-described order of ‘European traditionalist’ military officers that has the stated goals of reshaping the country’s military along right-wing ideological lines and defending the ‘cultural and ethnic identity’ of European peoples against ‘Brussels’ politicos and bureaucrats.’”
IERES reported that Centuria’s military wing began training in 2018 in Ukraine’s Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Army Academy (NAA), Kiev’s “premier military education institution and a major hub for Western military assistance to the country.”
The paper revealed that “as recently as April 2021, [Centuria] claimed that since its launch, members have participated in joint military exercises with France, the UK, Canada, the US, Germany, and Poland.”
Indeed, many of the neo-Nazi group’s members have drilled at the de facto NATO base in Yavoriv, just a few kilometers east of the Polish border.
Photo posted by the Canadian Armed Forces in Ukraine in 2020 shows the NAA graduation ceremony at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Yavoriv.
What’s more, “the group claims that its members serve as officers in several units of Ukraine’s military. Since at least 2019, Centuria has… [called] on ideologically aligned members of the AFU to seek transfer to specific units where the group’s members serve. To attract new members, the group – via its Telegram channel, which has over 1,200 followers and a dedicated mobilization bot – continues to tout its alleged role in the AFU and access to Western training, military, and exchange programs.”
Every Western government the IERES researchers approached claimed not to tolerate neo-Nazis in their militaries, insisting they “trusted the Ukrainian government to select and identify the right candidates” for their training programs. But Ukraine’s Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Army Academy (NAA) has explicitly declared it carries out no such screenings, while also denying Centuria operates within its headquarters.
After the report’s author reached out to Centuria and the NAA for comment about the training of neo-Nazis, operatives of the extremist movement began purging their online footprints, and have concealed their real-world activities ever since.
Western media outlets have almost completely ignored the IERES report, save for a single article in the Jerusalem Post. The silence around the issue is all the more unusual given the credentials of its author, a Washington DC-based Ukrainian citizen whose work has been published by US government outlet Voice of America, and the US and UK-government funded “open source” investigative outfit Bellingcat.
Among Western officials, only the Canadian Armed Forces have commented on the report’s meticulously-documented findings, preposterously claiming that photos posted to Facebook by Centuria members had been “doctored” to advance “Russian disinformation.”
Such disingenuity is not surprising given the Canadian military’s well-documented history of providing training to hardened Ukrainian fascists — and its refusal to disavow Ukrainian Nazis.
To this day, the leader of the country’s military, Gen. Wayne Eyre, continues to refuse to apologize for giving a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, a WWII Nazi collaborator honored by Canada’s parliament.
According to researchers, Centuria fighters within Ukraine have spent at least the last five years attempting to indoctrinate their high-achieving comrades into Neo-Nazism. The IERES report notes that Centuria “has been able to proselytize Ukraine’s future military elite inside the NAA.”
Portrait of a British-trained Neo-Nazi
Underlining the extent of the neo-Nazi penetration of Western military apparatuses, NAA cadet Kyrylo Dubrovskyi, attended an 11-month Officer Training Course at Britain’s esteemed Sandhurst Royal Military Academy in 2020. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs celebrated his graduation while the NAA published a 12-minute video profile of the new graduate’s path to military leadership. IERES noted that Dubrovskyi “showed very keen interest in Centuria matters” while attending the Academy.
Dubrovskyi appears to have narrated a Centuria promotional video circulated on Telegram in May 2020, in which the group’s members are shown marching in Lviv, attending an NAA event, and firing their weapons. Dubrovskyi can be heard intoning, “our officers are raising the new army of Ukraine… We are the Centuria. We are everywhere… defend your territories, your traditions till the last drop of blood.”
A month before, Centuria posted an interview with an unnamed “cadet of Her Majesty’s Armed forces,” a description that could only match one individual: Dubrovskyi. He made clear he preferred training in Ukraine, as British training for military officers “put less emphasis on theory.” During this time, “Dubrovskyi enjoyed access to foreign cadets who visited the Academy,” and “on several occasions escorted foreign delegations that visited the Academy,” including cadets from the US Air Force and the French military.
It is unclear how much “theory” Dubrovskyi injected into the daily routines of Western soldiers with whom he crossed paths while at Sandhurst. IERES concluded that “Dubrovskyi and Centuria leveraged his status as a Sandhurst cadet” to promote the group and its ideology. On the “about” section of his personal YouTube channel, Dubrovskyi describes himself as “a cadet of the Royal Academy of Great Britain.” There, he posted multiple videos about his experiences at the academy, and at least one message expressing a desire to join the neo-Nazi Azov Regiment.
On Telegram in December 2020, Centuria made clear that infiltrating the Ukrainian military’s highest echelons was but the first step in a much wider ideological blitzkrieg: “Centuria is shaping a first-of-its-kind military elite whose goal is to attain the highest ranks inside the Armed Forces in order to become an authoritative core able to hold significant influence.” After consolidating its hold on the military, the group plans to penetrate the ranks of “Ukraine’s political elite,” in order to “carry out societal changes.”
Editor’s note: This article has been clarified to explain that Centuria exists as two separate organizations, both with origins in the neo-Nazi Azov movement.
Kit Klarenberg discusses this topic with Alex Rubenstein at their YouTube channel Active Measures.
