By Bryce Greene, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 5/9/23

France-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF) recently released its scores and rankings for international press freedom. In 2022, RSF gave Ukraine a score of 55.76 out of 100, placing it 106th out of 180 countries surveyed. In the most recent report, issued after over a year of war, Ukraine shot to 79th out of 180, with a new score of 61.19. This despite wartime measures that banned opposition parties, consolidated media under state control, and saw journalists’ speech chilled by unprecedented intimidation.

Wartime measures in any country often result in a loss of press freedom. To say that such restrictions are typical, however, does not mean that they are therefore not really happening. For RSF to change the standards it applies to Ukraine, as it apparently has, because the country has been invaded is to endorse the idea that freedom of the press ought to be limited in times of danger—an odd position, to say the least, for a group dedicated to protecting the rights of journalists to take.

Deteriorating democracy

By ordinary standards, the position of the press in Ukraine has not improved in the past year, but dramatically worsened. In an exhaustive article, Branko Marcetic (Jacobin, 2/25/23) thoroughly outlined how democratic institutions have deteriorated in Ukraine as a result of the war. Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian political scientist at the University of Ottawa, told Marcetic:

“[President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy used the Russian invasion and the war as a pretext to eliminate most of the political opposition and potential rivals for power, and to consolidate his largely undemocratic rule.”

This continues a trend since before the war. In 2021, Zelenskyy had banned the most popular news website in the country, then banned media outlets affiliated with one of the most popular parties in the country. In a case that elicited international condemnation, Vasyl Muravitsky was forced to flee to Finland after being accused of “treason” and allegedly disseminating “anti-Ukrainian” materials. His prosecution began before the war, but has continued in absentia during the invasion.

The trial is happening against a backdrop of wider political repression. Among other wartime measures, Zelenskyy suspended, then banned, 11 opposition parties due to their alleged links with Russia. One of these parties had even held 10% of the seats in the Ukrainian parliament before the move. Journalists and anyone else with a political opinion are well aware of the consequences of speaking out, and the pressures have only intensified.

One Ukrainian scholar told Marcetic:

“All Ukrainian journalists and bloggers who did not want to promote Zelenskyy’s version of “truth” had to either shut up (voluntarily or under duress) or, if possible, emigrate.”

Consolidated TV

International Federation of Journalists president Dominique Pradalié Media (1/17/23): “Freedom and pluralism are in danger in Ukraine under the new media law.”

In July, Zelenskyy consolidated television organizations into a single, government-controlled channel. In a widely criticized move, Zelenskyy signed a law that expanded the ability of the state regulator, controlled by Zelenskyy and his party, to issue fines, revoke licenses and prevent publication for media organizations.

The top Ukrainian journalists’ unions opposed the law. The head of one union warned that

“government officials will declare those who disagree with their vision to be enemies of the country or foreign agents. This perspective of state and political regulation of the media is in total contradiction with the desire of Ukrainian civil society for European integration.”

The International Federation of Journalists called on the European Commission and Council of Europe to review the measure. The Committee to Protect Journalists repeatedly called on the Ukrainian government to drop the bill, warning that it “imperils press freedom in the country by tightening government control over information.”

Unlike other international journalism-centered NGOs, Reporters Without Borders offered praise for the bill. In a blog post titled “RSF Hails Ukraine’s Adoption of New Media Law, Despite War with Russia” (1/11/23), it wrote that the law was “generally welcomed by Ukrainian journalists.” This praise was based on minor provisions that were required for Ukrainian admission to the European Union, as it “harmonize[d] Ukrainian legislation with European law.”

This was acknowledged as a positive move by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), one of the unions opposed to the bill. But as NUJU made clear, journalists objected to the enormous control given to the state media regulators, not these less important provisions.

RSF acknowledged these measures, but euphemistically described them as “co-regulatory mechanisms that facilitate a dialogue between the media regulator and the media”; it wrote that the provisions “expand[ed] the media regulator’s powers,” but offered only muted criticism, suggesting that “to guarantee the regulator’s full independence…the process for its appointing members needs to be changed.” While it noted that this could be done by “amend[ing] the constitution,” it tellingly acknowledged that these changes were “impossible as long as martial law…is still in effect.”

Banning media—with improvement

RSF’s obfuscation and whitewashing of the law carried into its 2023 Press Freedom Index report for Ukraine, which merely says of the law, “A new media law that was adopted in late 2022 after years of preparation is designed to bring Ukraine in line with European media legislation.”

In the report, RSF acknowledged some repression:

“Media regarded as pro-Kremlin were banned by presidential decree, and access to Russian social media was restricted. This has intensified since the start of Russia’s invasion. Media carrying Russian propaganda have been blocked.”

RSF even acknowledged that “the application of martial law sometimes results in reporting restrictions for journalists.” To RSF, however, this increase in censorship does not overshadow the improvements in Ukraine’s media environment, as embodied by the EU-compliant regulations, so it gave the country a higher score than last year.

Looking at previous years of RSF index reports, the language hasn’t changed much since the 2021 index, which reads:

“Ukraine has a diversified media landscape…. Much more is needed to loosen the oligarchs’ tight grip on the media, encourage editorial independence and combat impunity for crimes of violence against journalists.”

In the 2022 report, this changed to “Ukraine’s media landscape is diverse, but remains largely in the grip of oligarchs who own all of the national TV channels.” The report criticized the Russian invasion for replacing the media in occupied areas with Kremlin propaganda. There was no criticism of the government’s consolidation of control, or the deteriorating political situation.

‘Front line of resistance’

The latest RSF report downgraded Russia’s already low standing, from 155th to 164th place (38.82 to 34.77). Its report on Russia began, appropriately, by noting what the Russian government had done to the press:

“Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, almost all independent media have been banned, blocked and/or declared “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations.”

The report on Ukraine, by contrast, began by talking about Russia:

The war launched by Russia on 24 February 2022 threatens the survival of the Ukrainian media. In this “information war,” Ukraine stands at the front line of resistance against the expansion of the Kremlin’s propaganda system.

This framing allows RSF to present the banning of “media regarded as pro-Kremlin” as an act of “resistance” rather than repression.

Rising score ‘a joke’

Political scientist Gerald Sussman called Ukraine’s rising score “a joke,” especially when the “US ranking dropped to No. 45 (from 42).” (RSF cited states’ efforts to restrict reporters’ access to public spaces, among other issues.) Sussman has extensively studied the role of seemingly independent international NGOs in pushing US-centric, market-oriented values around the world. He connected RSF’s Press Freedom score to other “Freedom” indexes, like Freedom House’s “democracy score,” which often judges “democracy” according to market standards. “Groups with the name ‘freedom’ in their title are almost always conservative,” Sussman stated in a statement to FAIR.

Freedom House has yet to release its 2023 democracy scores, though its 2022 report criticized Ukraine for pre-war repression, citing “imposition of sanctions on several domestic journalists and outlets on national security grounds, leading to three TV channels being taken off the air.” As we noted, RSF had no such critique.

Reporters Without Borders is a prestigious international institution, respected by many in the world of media and human rights. Unfortunately, like many in the media, it appears to have taken on the role of cheerleader for Ukraine in the proxy war, abandoning the pretense of being an objective monitor.

In Ukraine, the past year has been devastating for a country already struggling with media repression. RSF’s denial of reality does nothing to actually help Ukraine, but downplaying these problems will only further imperil press freedoms.

Link here.

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 5/11/23

​​Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced a bill to the Russian parliament that will pull Russia out of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), a key Cold War security deal that will heighten military tensions with the West further.

The document was made publicly available in the Duma’s database on May 10 and is the latest in a string of security deals to collapse. In December Putin suspended the new START missile treaty that he renewed in January 2021 in the first week of US President Joe Biden’s presidency. Last month Putin released a more aggressive foreign policy concept that does away with the idea of “co-operation” with the West and replaced it with a focus on Russia’s “national interests” and building tighter relationships with the non-aligned countries of Eurasia and the Global South.

The signing of the new START agreement was taken as a breakthrough at the time and a reversal of decades of the US policy of unilaterally withdrawing from the Cold War-era security deals. The process began under former President George W Bush, who unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002. Subsequently the US withdrew from several other key missile control and mutual inspection treaties that contributed to Putin’s paranoia that Nato was preparing to attack Russia.

As a senator at the time, Biden was opposed to the US withdrawal from the ABM treaty, which he said would be “destabilising.” His decision to renew the START deal reversed the US policy of withdrawing from these deals and was warmly welcomed by the Kremlin, who immediately suggested that work begin on restarting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INS) that prevents the placement of nuclear capable missiles near the mutual borders.

The CFE treaty is arguably the most important treaty of all, as while most of the other Cold War treaties govern the placement and use of missiles, the CFE treaty prevents the build-up of conventional forces at or near mutual borders. Russia already has hundreds of thousands of troops in Ukraine, which shares a border with EU and Nato members Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

“Europe” is defined as including all the Russian territory up to the Ural mountains, which lie some 400 km to the east of Moscow. The treaty prevents Russia from building up conventional forces in the European part of Russia, but withdrawing from it would in theory allow Russia to amass large forces in its military bases in places like Rostov-on-Don in the south right on the Ukrainian border and in the Northern Military District that faces Poland and the Baltic States or the Crimea peninsula.

Sergey Ryabkov, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, was previously appointed as Putin’s official representative for the consideration of the CFE treaty denunciation in Parliament. Ryabkov also played the lead role in the negotiations with the US in January 2021, together with his boss, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in insisting on a “legally binding guarantee” from the West that Ukraine would not be allowed to join Nato. When those talks failed at the end of February Russia immediately invaded Ukraine.

According to the bill’s explanatory note, the treaty “was a sufficiently efficient and effective tool for the early 1990s to strengthen European security.” However, it has since become “largely outdated and out of touch with reality,” due to significant military-political changes, particularly those associated with Nato’s enlargement, Tass reports.

The note also highlights that the treaty has been suspended to “encourage a change in attitude from Western countries towards European security.”

The explanatory note claims that the situation surrounding conventional arms in Europe has deteriorated since 2007, when Putin made his famous speech at the Munich Security Conference warning Russia would “push back” if Nato’s eastward expansion was not curtailed. The note also accuses the United States and its allies of pursuing a policy of military confrontation with Russia, which “could have disastrous repercussions.”

Since its start over a year ago, the clash between Ukraine and Russia has steadily escalated, with Ukraine’s Nato allies providing increasingly powerful weapons. Initially reluctant to send any offensive weapons that could be constituted by the Kremlin as an attack on Russia via the proxy of Ukraine, those foibles have been steadily eroded. Earlier this year the West collectively agreed to send some 400 modern German-made Leopard II tanks to Ukraine; these are ostentatiously offensive weapons that can outgun any tanks Russia has.

Most recently, the UK crossed another line by announcing this week that it would provide Ukraine with long-range missiles with a range of some 300 km – an offensive weapon that can reach into Russia proper and take out targets like airfields and fuel and ammo dumps deep inside Russian territory.

The US has noticeably refrained from providing Ukraine with this type of missile so far and repeated this week that it has no plans to supply them. The highly accurate and deadly HIMARS missile system the US has provided to date includes rockets with a maximum range of 80 km, but the US has refrained from providing Kyiv with a more advanced version of the rockets with a range of more than 300 km.

In addition to nixing the CFE treaty, the bill states that Russia will terminate any related international agreements immediately. These include agreements on maximum conventional arms levels, signed in Budapest in 1990, and the document agreed among the State Parties to the CFE Treaty of November 19, 1990, in relation to the final document of the First Conference to Review the Operation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

The CFE Treaty was signed in 1990 in the dying days of the Soviet Union and as part of the rapprochement between the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev and his counterpart George Bush senior. It was further adapted in 1997 by Boris Yeltsin as relations continued to improve.

However, Nato countries did not ratify the adapted version and continued to abide by the 1990 provisions, resulting in Russia declaring a moratorium on implementing the terms of the treaty in 2007. On March 11, 2015, Russia suspended its participation in meetings of the Joint Consultative Group on the CFE Treaty, effectively ending its membership, with Belarus representing Russia’s interests since then, Tass reports.

Link here.

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, 1945, 5/11/23

Ukraine has a complex reality it must face: U.S., UK, and EU senior leaders have voiced over the past few days strong support for Ukraine and their widely reported upcoming offensive. Reading some of the off-headline comments they’ve made, however, exposes the growing realization in the West that the hope of Zelensky accomplishing his stated objectives of driving Russia entirely out of Ukraine has a low probability of success.

A change in Western policy, therefore, is urgently needed – before Kyiv suffers more combat losses that are unlikely to alter the fact that the war will most likely end with a negotiated settlement.

Recent Developments in Ukraine War

In just the past few days, a bevy of senior Western political leaders have made strong declarations of support for Ukraine and the embattled country’s looming offensive. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleaverly, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have all issued strongly worded statements of support for Ukraine. The question, however, is whether the West can make good on its claims.

There is growing evidence that for the remainder of 2023, the West in general and the U.S. in particular likely do not have sufficient on-hand stocks of key weapons and ammunition to match what has been provided to Ukraine over the first 14 months of the war. On Tuesday, the United States announced yet another tranche of military support to Ukraine, this time in the form of a $1.2 billion package.

What is key about this promised support is that it was not given under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, but the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. The difference in the two programs is significant and has ominous implications for Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) operations through the rest of this year, especially following the outcome – win, lose, or draw – of the upcoming Ukrainian offensive.

Policy and Timing

The drawdown authority means Biden can order the immediate delivery of existing U.S. weapons and ammunition, meaning they can, in theory, be delivered to the battlefield within weeks. The security assistance initiative, on the other hand, means contracts must be written, publicized, undergo a bidding process, and then defense contracting companies that win bids must produce the ammunition or military gear, sometimes taking years to complete. This means Ukraine will not see the primary benefits of this latest round of U.S. support until at least 2024.

In an interview on May 5 with Euronews, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell admitted “If I stop supporting Ukraine, certainly the war will finish soon,” because Ukraine would be “unable to defend itself” and would “fall in a matter of days.”

Cleaverly optimistically added that since the war’s start, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have “outperformed expectations.” However, he concluded in a sober word of caution, “We have to be realistic. This is the real world. This is not a Hollywood movie.” And it is here that Western leaders would be wise to consider the ramifications of this accurate statement.

It is clear and understandable that those in the West would be against Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine and would desire to see Kyiv recover all its territories. If we were writing the script of a movie, that’s exactly how this story would end. But, as the British Foreign Secretary points out with painful accuracy, we have to make policy based on the most accurate, realistic, and sober recognition of ground truth and a lot less on our emotionally-charged preferences.

First, we must understand the enormity of the task facing the UAF on the eve of launching its offensive. As one who has fought in a large-scale offensive tank battle and trained over many years to conduct defensive operations in armored units, I can conclusively state that the defensive is the far less challenging and difficult form of war, and a combined arms offensive is the most difficult and complex.

Ukraine Strategy Evolves

Ukraine has suffered massive casualties over the first 14 months of this war. It is currently staffed with soldiers and leaders who have limited experience in war and only surface-level training in combined arms operations. One must not underestimate the challenge facing the UAF troops in a theater-level offensive that requires tight coordination of every unit over hundreds of kilometers, especially when no soldier, officer, or general in Ukraine has performed such a task of this magnitude.

Second, Russia has been preparing extensive defensive positions for more than half a year almost across the entire 1,000km front. According to some U.S. analysts, the Russians have designed and built an impressive series of defensive belts that would be difficult to breach even for fully-trained Western armies. To succeed, Zelensky’s troops will have to attack this elaborate defense with limited offensive air power, limited air defense, insufficient quantities of artillery shells, and a force that is equipped with a hodge-podge of modern and antiquated armor – staffed by a mix of conscripts with no combat experience and some officers and men with basic training by NATO instructors.

Some Ukrainian leaders are aware of the magnitude of the challenge. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the Washington Post last week that he was concerned that the “expectation from our counteroffensive campaign is overestimated in the world,” which he fears may lead to “emotional disappointment.” The level of success, he warned, could be as few as “ten kilometers.” What the Defense Minister didn’t address, however, is what would come next.

Even if Ukraine again exceeded Western expectations and captured 50 or 100km of territory, the number of casualties they will have suffered would be high under any scenario, leaving the Ukrainian Armed Forces weaker then than they are today. As described above, it is very unlikely the West could replace lost equipment or provide enough ammunition to sustain the Ukrainians for the rest of this year, and according to the Washington Post, in addition to the 300,000 troops Russia presently has in Ukraine, there are another 200,000 poised just across the border.

Once the Ukrainian offensive has played out – regardless of how successful they may or may not have been – a Russian counterattack would almost certainly follow. Ukraine would then be vulnerable, for many months, to such an attack as they would have even fewer artillery shells, air defense missiles, and troops. As this sober analysis makes plain, these are towering challenges that stand in the way of a victorious and decisive Ukrainian spring offensive.

If that is the case, then the chances of Zelensky ever accomplishing his objectives of forcing Russia out of Ukraine are highly improbable. The most likely outcome is that the war will continue on regardless of this offensive, but over time the conditions will continue tilting in Russia’s direction. Eventually, Kyiv will likely be compelled to seek a negotiated end to the fighting. The West should recognize this probability – now – and begin privately supporting such an outcome with Ukrainian officials. Refusing to take such actions in the hope that Ukraine produces a major battlefield victory could condemn Kyiv to a much worse deal later.