Russia Matters, 9/20/24

1. Rossiiskaya Gazeta has just published an interview with the head of Russia’s Central Test Site, in which he vowed that this facility, which hosted more than 200 nuclear detonations before 1990, is ready to resume testing at any moment. In the interview with this Russian government daily, Rear Adm. Andrei Sinitsyn states at least thrice that this Novaya Zemlya archipelago-based facility is ready for resuming tests. “If the order is given, we will begin tests at any moment,” the admiral stated. “If the task is set to resume testing, it will be completed within the specified time frame,” he vowed.  “The test site is ready to resume full-scale testing activities,” he said.¹ Sinitsyn’s interview is apparently meant to contribute to the Russian military-political leadership’s continued effort to dissuade the U.S. and its allies from approving Ukraine’s use of Western-made long-range missiles against targets inside “mainland Russia,” as well to exercise general pressure on the U.S. and allies as they ponder the amount and types of continued military aid to Ukraine. The interview was published less than a week after Vladimir Putin warned that if NATO countries allow Ukraine to use their long-range missiles for such strikes, it would mean that these countries “are at war with Russia.” Russia “will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us,” according to Putin, who has earlier said that Russia will resume nuclear tests if the U.S. does.*
2. The number of Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded in the war has reached roughly one million, WSJ reported, citing Ukrainian and Western estimates. Ukraine’s and Russia’s casualties are estimated to have totaled 480,000 and 600,000, respectively, this daily reported. Mobilization for the Ukrainian army, which is expected to help compensate for its personnel losses, is on track, but it would take another three months before the newly-trained troops could make an impact on the battlefield, head of the defense committee of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandr Zavitnevych, told the FT. One obstacle for this recruitment campaign is that Ukraine has lost at least 10 million people to occupation or as refugees in the past decade, according to Ukrainian government estimates cited by WSJ. About one year ago, U.S. officials estimated that the total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began was nearing half a million, according to NYT. Thus, if these latest estimates are accurate, then casualties have doubled in about one year.
3. Russian authorities have reportedly ordered their armed forces to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region by mid-October 2024 and to establish a “buffer zone” into Ukrainian border areas along the international border with Russia in northeastern Ukraine by the end of October, according to ISW. It has also been reported by The Guardian that Russia’s military had anticipated a possible Ukrainian advance into the southwestern Kursk region for months prior to the actual incursion in early August.
4. Ukraine’s electricity deficit this winter could reach as much as 6GW, around a third of anticipated peak demand, according to the IEA. “It’s time for everybody to understand that this winter could be consequential in Ukraine,” Fatih Birol, director-general of this agency, told the FT. Half of all Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been destroyed, roughly equivalent to the capacity of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, according to FT. 
5. U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s presidential nominee, will hold separate meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sept. 26 to discuss what he calls Ukraine’s “victory plan.” Zelenskyy has refused to disclose the plan, which he also wants to share with Donald Trump. The Ukrainian leader did disclose that “most of the decisions on the plan depend” on Biden, and that these decisions need to be made in October to December, according to Ukrainska Pravda. Zelenskyy’s decision to focus on obtaining Biden’s support during his visit to the U.S. is understandable, given that a potential Trump administration’s approach to ending the war calls for a “demilitarized zone” on Ukrainian territory and a guarantee of its neutrality, according to Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance.

By Andrew Napolitano, Consortium News, 9/12/24

In 1966, two famous Russian literary dissidents, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, were tried and convicted on charges of disseminating propaganda against the Soviet state.

The two were authors and humorists who published satire abroad that mocked Soviet leaders for failure to comply with the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which guaranteed the freedom of speech.

Their convictions sparked international outrage. Former U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, and then America’s U.N. ambassador, Arthur Goldberg called the charges and the trial “an outrageous attempt to give the form of legality to the suppression of a basic human right.”

When a secret transcript of the trial was circulated in the West, it became clear that Daniel and Sinyavsky were convicted of using words and expressing ideas contrary to what Soviet leaders wanted. They were sentenced to five and seven years, respectively, of hard labor in Soviet prison camps.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Political  Justice took a page from the Soviets and charged Americans and Russians with disseminating anti-Biden administration propaganda in Russia and here in the U.S. What ever happened to the freedom of speech?

Here is the backstory.

The Framers who crafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, both under the leadership and the pen of James Madison, were the same generation that revolted violently against King George III and Parliament and won the American Revolution.

The revolution was more than just six years of war in the colonies. It was a radical change in the minds of men — elites like Thomas Jefferson and Madison, as well as farmers and laborers generally untutored in political philosophy.

Untutored they may have been, but they knew they wanted to be able to speak their minds, associate and worship as they pleased, defend themselves, and be left alone by the government. The key to all this was the freedom of speech. Speech was then, as it is today, the most essential freedom.

The late Harvard Professor Bernard Bailyn read and analyzed all the extant speeches, sermons, lectures, editorials and pamphlets that he could find from the revolutionary period and concluded that in 1776 only about one-third of the colonists favored a violent separation from England. By the war’s end in 1781, around two-thirds welcomed independence.

Independence — From England & Government

Portrait of James Madison by John Vanderlyn. (White House Historical Association, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

But independence was bilateral. It meant not just independence from England but independence from the new government here as well.

In order to assure independence from the federal government, the colonies ratified the Constitution. Its purpose was to establish a limited central government.

After the Constitution was ratified and the federal government was established, five colonies threatened to secede from it unless the Constitution was amended to include absolute prohibitions on the government from interfering with natural individual rights.

During the drafting of the Bill of Rights, Madison, who chaired the House of Representatives committee that did the drafting, insisted that the word “the” precede the phrase “freedom of speech, or of the press” in order to manifest to the ratifiers and to posterity the Framers’ collective understanding of the origin of these rights.

That understanding was the belief that expressive rights are natural to all persons, no matter where they were born, and natural rights are, as Jefferson had written in the Declaration of Independence, inalienable.

Stated differently, Madison and his colleagues gave us a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that on their face recognized the pre-political existence of the freedom of speech and of the press in all persons and guaranteed that the Congress — by which they meant the government — could not and would not abridge them.

Until now.

“Free Speech * Conditions Apply” by Fukt. (wiredforlego, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

In the past two weeks, the feds have secured indictments against two Americans living in Russia who are also Russian citizens working for a Russian television network that expressed political views — the feds call this propaganda — contrary to the views of the Biden administration.

The same feds secured an indictment against Americans and Canadians for funneling pro-Russian ideas to the American public through social media influencers. The feds, who call the words being used by their targets “disinformation,” apparently believe that the First Amendment has some holes in it for the speech that the government hates and fears.

That belief is profoundly erroneous.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of evaluating the content of speech. The strength of an idea is its acceptance in the public marketplace of ideas not in the minds of government. This is political speech that is critical of government policies — that would be the very speech in which you and I and millions of Americans engage every day.

The speech we love to hear needs no protection because we welcome it. But the speech that challenges; irritates; expresses alternative views; exposes the government’s lies, cheats and killings — even harsh, caustic, hateful speech — is the very speech that the First Amendment was written to protect.

The United States has not declared war on Russia. Under international law, there is no legal basis for such a declaration. The U.S., however, which supplies weapons for its proxy Ukraine to attack Russia, is far more a threat to Russia than Russia is to the U.S. But you’d never know that by listening to the government. Now the government doesn’t even want you to hear speech that contradicts its narrative.

In reading about the Soviet show trial of Daniel and Sinyavsky and the recent indictments of Americans and others for expressing so-called Russian propaganda, my stomach turned. The federal government has become what it once condemned.

Just like the Soviets in 1966, it mocks free speech, it assaults basic human rights, it evades the Constitution it is commanded to uphold and now it punishes those who dare to disagree. This may bring it to the same untimely end as the Soviet Union it now emulates.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

Published by permission of the author.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO 

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

The Guardian, 9/16/24

Facebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company’s platforms.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” the company said in a written statement.

Enforcement of the ban would roll out over the coming days, it said. In addition to Facebook, Meta’s apps include Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.

The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The ban marks a sharp escalation in actions by the world’s biggest social media company against Russian state media, after it spent years taking more limited steps such as blocking the outlets from running ads and reducing the reach of their posts.

It came after the US filed money-laundering charges earlier this month against two RT employees for what officials said was a scheme to hire a US company to produce online content to influence the 2024 election.

On Friday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken announced new sanctions against the Russian state-backed media company, formerly known as Russia Today, after new information gleaned from the outfit’s employees showed it was “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.

“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Blinken said. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”

The Russian government in 2023 established a new unit in RT with “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence”, Blinken claimed, with the goal of spreading Russian influence in countries around the world through information operations, covert influence and military procurement.

Blinken said the US treasury would sanction three entities and two individuals tied to Rossiya Segodnya, the Russian state media company. The decision came after the announcement earlier this month that RT had funneled nearly $10m to conservative US influencers through a local company to produce videos meant to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

Speaking to reporters from the state department on Friday, Blinken accused RT of crowdfunding weapons and equipment for Russian soldiers in Ukraine, including sniper rifles, weapon sights, body armor, night-vision equipment, drones, radio equipment and diesel generators. Some of the equipment, including the recon drones, could be sourced from China, he said.

Blinken also detailed how the organisation had targeted countries in Europe, Africa and North and South America. In particular, he said that RT leadership had coordinated directly with the Kremlin to target the October 2024 elections in Moldova, a former Soviet state in Europe where Russia has been accused of waging a hybrid war to exert greater influence. In particular, he said, RT’s leadership had “attempted to foment unrest in Moldova, likely with the specific aim of causing protests to turn violent”.

“RT is aware of and prepared to assist Russia’s plans to incite protests should the election not result in a Russia-preferred candidate winning the presidency,” Blinken said.

By Tabe Bergman, Pearls & Irritations, 9/4/24

Editing a book about the media and the war in Ukraine taught me first-hand lessons about censorship. It also confirmed that the Western media’s pro-elite bias is as strong as ever. At an academic conference in Europe in the summer of 2023, I witnessed how several audience members shouted at one of the speakers. That’s not how such meetings are supposed to go. They should be much less eventful.

The speaker’s transgression? To demonstrate evidence that both the Ukrainian and Russian Governments censored their own national media as the war in Ukraine raged on. According some of the audience members, the speaker should not have been allowed to give her presentation at all. Freedom of academic inquiry, not to mention speech, anyone?

The speaker, Olga Baysha, wrote one of the chapters in a book I edited with Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman on the global media coverage of the war in Ukraine. The book focuses on the treatment of dissident views.

The incident at the conference was not the only attempt at censorship I encountered. An anonymous reviewer of the book proposal that my co-editor and I had submitted to the publisher, Routledge, accused us of acting as agents of Russian propaganda. We were giving “the impression that [we] defend the views put forward by the Russian propaganda”, the reviewer wrote.

In part I replied: “First, to observe some of the same things as Russian propaganda does not logically mean that therefore it is untrue. Much of propaganda by any country is factually correct. It is anti-scholarly to in effect take the position that if Russia or any other country says something, that scholars then cannot say the same because that would be propaganda or supporting propaganda. By the same token, we would not be able to agree with anything Western Governments say, because that would also be supporting propaganda? Or do Western Governments not do propaganda?”

Let me also note, for the record, that I do not have a history of interest in or engagement with Russia: the government and/or the country. I have “been to” Russia once. I had to spend the night at Moscow airport because I missed my Aeroflot connecting flight. The other passengers and I were, in effect, locked up on a hotel floor. It was not an enjoyable experience. That’s all about Russia and me.

I thank the publisher for resisting intimidation by the totalitarian, thought policeman, disguised as an academic, and protected by anonymity. Oscar Wilde wrote, “Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth.” My experience with academic peer-reviewing, though, suggests another lesson. Protected by anonymity, some people will feel they can be as inappropriate as they want to and employ the cheapest rhetorical tricks without regard for logic and truth.

Wilde also once said that “only a dangerous idea is worthy of being called an idea at all.” An example of a dangerous idea is that what the Western media primarily do is to facilitate propaganda for their own governments. This idea challenges lessons we all learned in school, without even paying attention, about how some countries have freedom of speech and the press (luckily ours), and others do not. It makes us question not just what our governments say, but what our media says as well. Thus, we are in danger of losing faith in “venerable” institutions. Next stage, utter anarchy?

My co-editor and I went into this project with certain assumptions based on the leading research on how Western media have covered foreign affairs, especially wars, in the past. Simply, there exists quite a broad consensus among leading researchers that the Western media do not act like watchdogs as to their own government’s foreign policy. Rather, they act as a handmaiden, as Hearns-Branaman and I summarise in the introductory chapter to a previous edited volume, entitled Journalism and Foreign Policy, published in 2022.

The classic example in the 21st century remains the war in Iraq. Those respectable legacy media outlets that everyone knows promoted false UK and US government claims as to the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the oil-rich country ruled by Saddam Hussein. The New York Times and Washington Post apologised (kind of, at least) for their lack of critical edge in covering that momentous story – but only after the invasion was done and the occupation had begun.

Disconcertingly, as the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, there was some reason to believe that two decades later the coverage had gotten even worse than in the run-up to and during the Iraq war. That was, at least, the opinion of some genuine experts. To give but one example, as we wrote in the Introduction to the edited volume:

“The escalation of the Ukraine crisis provides the opportunity to test the possibility that, as argued by several experts, the pressures to conform to dominant pro-Western narratives, both in Western mainstream media and on social media, have increased. Such was the opinion, for instance, of the late Russia expert Stephen Cohen, who said that during the Cold War ‘the media were open – the New York Times, the Washington Post – to debate,’ but that these days ‘they no longer are. It’s one hand clapping in [America’s] major newspapers and in our broadcast networks.”

The original studies on the mainstream media as reported in the edited volume’s chapters cannot empirically prove that the media have degenerated into an even more slavish attitude towards their own government. That is something very hard, if not impossible, to prove empirically. But the chapters do show that media continue to report largely within a framework set by the government of the country the media happen to be located.

A thorough study of the war’s news on television in nine countries headed by Professor Kaarle Nordenstreng and colleagues confirms this conclusion. On the whole, the examined media, including the BBC, paid little attention to the Russian perspective, put their own (perceived) national interests as defined by their government front and centre, “supported” Ukraine, and relied mostly on established Western sources and news agencies.

Anyone who dissents from the NATO-supplied talking points on the war runs the risk of getting intimidated into falling into line, ridiculed or sidelined and ignored. For instance, a Dutch “quality” newspaper disparaged the famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh as having lost his way by succumbing to conspiracy theories for his article that reported that the United States was behind the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, jointly owned by Germany and Russia. Regardless of the truth of the matter, the notion that “if you don’t promote the party line, you must be crazy”, is totalitarian and dangerous.

Another example explored in detail in the edited volume concerns a Scottish philosophy professor, Tim Hayward, who was attacked for a tweet on 11 March 2022, that, linking to a Russian source, read: “As long as we’re still able to hear two sides of the story we should continue striving to do so.” The professor’s reply to being challenged over this tweet really just reaffirmed the value of concepts that the mainstream media claim to hold dear, namely fairness, balance, and objectivity:

“The fact is, as we know, propaganda especially thrives in war time. It is naively and dangerously mistaken to think one side has a monopoly on propaganda. Therefore, citizens who want to understand the underlying dynamics of a war need to try and find ways to look beyond the propaganda. Comparing propaganda narratives can play a part in this. Being aware of how our own understandings can be unwittingly shaped by propaganda also is very important. I sincerely worry at the way alternative news sources are getting shut down just now so that it is becoming harder to hear any view other than that approved by those in power.”

Amen.

By MK Bhadrakumar, Consortium News, 9/16/24

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with U.S. President Joe Biden in the White House on Friday with the question of the use of long-range missiles by Ukraine to hit deep inside Russia on their agenda of conversation. But there were no announcements, nor was there any joint press conference.

Starmer later told the media that the talks were “productive” but concentrated on “strategy” rather than a “particular step or tactic.” He did not signal any decision on allowing Kiev to fire long-range missiles into Russia. 

Starmer said no final decision had been taken on the Storm Shadow missiles and hinted that further developments may follow at the gathering of the U.N. General Assembly later this month. “We’ll obviously pick up again in UNGA in just a few days time with a wider group of individuals,” he said.

One reason for such extreme secrecy is that the U.S. and U.K. are intensely conscious of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s explicit warning Thursday that any use of Western long-range missiles to strike Russia “will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically.” 

Putin added in measured words: “This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries –- are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.” 

[See: Raising the Stakes in Ukraine]

Admittedly, Putin has given similar warnings before, but did not follow through even when Western weaponry was used by Ukraine  — with impunity to invade Russia recently. So much so that Biden was plainly dismissive about the latest Kremlin warning, saying, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.” 

For its part, Moscow estimates that although no official decision on the matter has been announced it has already been made and communicated to Kiev, meaning that Moscow would have to respond with actions of its own. 

Biden and Starmer at the White House on Friday. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street, CC BY 2.0)

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Moscow’s point person on the diplomatic track, was quoted as saying on Saturday:

“The decision has been made, the carte blanche and all indulgences have been given (to Kiev), so we [Russia] are ready for everything. And we will react in a way that will not be pretty.” 

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the country’s security council, went a step further saying that the West is testing Russia’s patience but it is not limitless. He said Ukraine’s invasion already gave Russia formal grounds to use its nuclear arsenal. 

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Medvedev warned that Moscow could either resort to nuclear weapons in the end, or use some of its non-nuclear, but still deadly novel weapons for a large-scale attack.

“And that would be it. A giant, grey, melted spot instead of ‘the mother of Russian cities’,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, referring to Kiev. 

Putin, in his remark on Thursday once again rejected the Anglo-American sophistry that it is Ukraine that will be using any Western long-range missiles and not NATO. He pointed out that the Ukrainian army 

“is not capable of using cutting-edge high-precision long-range systems supplied by the West. They cannot do that. These weapons are impossible to employ without intelligence data from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or U.S. satellites – in general, NATO satellites…most important, the key point even – is that only NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this.

Therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about deciding whether NATO countries become directly involved in the military conflict or not.” 

Interestingly, neither Washington nor London has so far refuted Putin’s above explanation and, curiously, it has been missing from British press reports — perhaps on fears that public opinion might militate against such direct involvement by the U.K. in a war against Russia in a combat role.

Moscow anticipates that the U.S.-U.K. ploy may be to test the waters by first (openly) using Britain’s Storm Shadow long-range air-launched cruise missile, which has already been supplied to Ukraine.

On Friday, Russia expelled six British diplomats assigned to the Moscow embassy in a clear warning that U.K.-Russia ties will be affected. Russia has already warned the U.K. of severe consequences if the Storm Shadow were to be used to hit Russian territory. 

U.K. embassy in Moscow. (NVO, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

What makes the developing situation extremely dangerous is that the cat-and-mouse game so far about NATO’s covert involvement in the Ukraine war is giving way to a game of Russian roulette that follows the laws of Probability Theory.

That is to say, although Russia cannot be defeated or evicted from the territories in eastern and southern Ukraine that it annexed, Washington and London regard that the final outcome of this random event cannot yet be determined before it occurs; it may even be any one of several possible outcomes, and the probability cannot be ruled out that the actual outcome  might even be determined by chance.

Apparently, Biden believes that Russia’s current battlefield dominance is a random phenomenon and possible outcomes range from an annihilation of Russian military power to a large-scale disruption of life in Russia and a possible collapse of Russia — at a minimum, the weakening of the Russian hand in any future negotiations.

Simply put, the war is now about Russia rather than Ukraine and long-range missiles can be a game changer. 

Storm Shadow missile on display at the Royal Air Force Museum London. (Corrado Baldassi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Thus, Biden, with no political constraints working on him anymore, is escalating the war to create new facts on the ground before his presidency ends in January, which may create conditions for permanent NATO military presence on Ukrainian territory and present Russia with a fait accompli. 

Such a strategy built on the quicksands of probability is akin to a game of Russian roulette — an act of bravado. Indeed, Biden’s options to support Ukraine are shrinking with each escalation. As The Wall Street Journal puts it, 

“With only four months left in the Biden administration and little hope of Congress approving additional funding for Ukraine no matter who wins the presidency, the White House is debating how best to help Kyiv given its limited toolbox.” 

Equally, Europe’s interest in the war is also waning.

European politics is becoming unpredictable with the ascendancy of the far-right in Germany, the crisis of leadership in French politics, the relative decline of the EU’s economy vis-a-vis global rivals due to limited innovation, high energy prices and skills gaps, etc. and, of course, the overarching economic crisis in Europe with no end in sight, as brought out starkly in the recent report by Mario Draghi. 

Basically, Biden is pre-setting the trajectory of the war beyond next January so that even after his retirement, his policy approach aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia remains on track.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Saturday that Washington is working on a “substantial” round of further assistance for Kiev. He confirmed a meeting this month between Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Zelensky.

Sullivan noted that Biden is working to put Ukraine in the “best possible position to prevail” during his final months in office.

The bottom line is that Biden’s war strategy is attenuating as “escalation management” while NATO transitions as a direct party to hostilities. 

M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat. He was India’s ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. Views are personal.

This article originally appeared on Indian Punchline.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.