Much of the western establishment media has been characterizing the meeting between Putin and Xi at the SCO summit as the Chinese leader subtly chastising Putin about the war in Ukraine, indicating some kind of incipient rift between the two. However, the Global Times – which is considered a mouthpiece of the Chinese government – seems to offer a different take on the matter. Emphasis by bolding is mine. – Natylie
On the afternoon of September 15 local time, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, to exchange views on China-Russia relations and international and regional issues of shared interest. It has become a conventional practice for Chinese and Russian heads of state to have bilateral talks on the sidelines of the summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). It is not only crucial for the stable development of bilateral relations that the two countries’ heads of state to have regular in-person and in-depth exchanges of views, but it’s also very beneficial for regional peace and stability.
The atmosphere of the meeting was as positive and friendly as usual. President Xi noted that since the beginning of this year, China and Russia have maintained effective strategic communication, and that China will work with Russia to extend strong mutual support on issues concerning each other’s core interests, and deepen practical cooperation in trade, agriculture, connectivity and other areas. President Putin said that the world is undergoing multiple changes, yet the only thing that remains unchanged is the friendship and mutual trust between Russia and China, and the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is as stable as mountains. As uncertainty significantly increases in today’s international landscape, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era has always been on course and has not lost momentum.
China and Russia are each other’s largest neighbors, permanent members of the UN Security Council, and emerging powers. They also share a long border of more than 4,000 kilometers. The China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era, which is based on the principles of “non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting of any third party,” has been subject to interference and provocation from third parties. Especially after the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US has stopped putting on a disguise. Instead, it has openly threatened and discredited the normal and legitimate cooperation between China and Russia. Such a scenario is rare in the history of international relations.
The good thing is that both China and Russia are countries with strong strategic determination and autonomy. Moreover, bilateral relations have a strong internal driving force. They have not and will not change their initial intentions and course due to drastic changes in the international pattern or pressure from third parties. They will always maintain their own logic and rhythm. In particular, the heads of state of China and Russia maintain close contacts and strategic communication in various ways, always leading the ties between the two countries in the right direction of development. The independent and autonomous value of China-Russia relations is both a summary of historical experience and innovation in international relations.
It is unlikely that China-Russia relations will go into rift or confrontation as expected and promoted by the US and the West. At the same time, China and Russia did not form the so-called anti-US alliance. China and Russia have united to resist the political virus of the US and the West while opposing hegemonism. These are the voices of justice from independent powers under the current international situation. It is entirely different from the “anti-US alliance” with a bloc political nature in the Western opinion context. Out of dark psychology, the US and the West desperately try to “drive a wedge” between China and Russia, hoping to defeat the two one by one; meanwhile, it forcibly “binds” China and Russia together, hoping to target the two at once. But no matter how hard they try, China and Russia have firmly maintained the right direction of “building partnerships instead of alliances.”
Such a choice made by China and Russia has made peace and cooperation a powerful force of inertia that has global significance, particularly today. Those uneasy or even fearful about this should reflect on and ask themselves, rather than spending their energy and thoughts on smearing others. The international community can clearly see that the US in recent years has strengthened the Five Eyes alliance, peddled Quad, pieced together AUKUS, and tried to create an “Indo-Pacific version of NATO.” All these are the most destructive force in the international system with the UN at the core. The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is fundamentally the consequence of the failure of the Western military and political bloc in handling equal relations with a regional power properly.
Under such circumstances, imagine that if the international community does not have another powerful enough force to really intervene, balance, hedge, and even reverse the situation from the direction of maintaining world peace and stability and promoting multilateral cooperation. The future of this world may well be tragic – a complete resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is nowhere in sight, and potential crises elsewhere will be detonated. This is something that many countries, including China, do not want to see and are trying to avoid. From a certain level, this is the significance of the meeting between the heads of state of China and Russia. As President Xi pointed out, China will work with Russia to fulfill their responsibilities as major countries and play a leading role in injecting stability into a world of change and disorder.
Sarah Lindemann-Komarova has lived in Siberia since 1992. Was a community development activist for 20 years. Currently, focuses on research and writing.
The summer of sanctions in Siberia has come to an end and their impact is a mix of muted and opportunity generating. Passing the six month mark for the SMO, the people and corporations who needed or wanted to leave, left. Coping strategies for the people and corporations who stay continue to evolve and in the case of corporations, leaving sometimes looks a lot like staying. The shared moments are surprise that the sanctions bark is bigger than their bite and everyone recognizes that we live in a new world.
There are only two complaints of note. The first is the loss of IKEA. For several months they hung in, doors closed and paying full salaries for employees on the assumption they would re-open in May. Then the announcement that they were done. This was another nail in the coffin of hope for a quick end to the SMO, everyone knows the sanctions are here to stay.
Evidence of some Western corporations coping strategies for leaving while staying in the lucrative Russian market appear every day. Reebok sent out an announcement last week, “We want to quickly announce that while the Reebok retail and online store have suspended their work, the company FLO OBUV RU LLC has received the right to sell goods under the Reebok brand in Russia.”
An American friend with 20+ years of business experience in Russia described the new incarnation of McDonalds as “placeholding” because the new name, “Vkusno i tochka” (Delicious Period), is not “brandable”. This is supported by the underwhelming signage on the drive through. The “Try MacCombo” is now just “Combo” together with “Snacks” and “Deserts” with photos of basically the same products.
Coke is supposedly out but it is still available. One rumor was they would continue to produce but would not be investing in Russia any more. That would be bad news for the seemingly endless list of new competitors vying to fill the niche. Three of them were recently available in one supermarket. Bochkari Cola and Uni Cola with labels drafting on Coke’s trademark white on red script. The third got more creative adding an eye-catching monkey in a cap to illustrate the white on red name, “Funky Monkey Cola”
The second complaint is the additional costs and time required for travel to the West. Three friends found different routes to achieve a one stop Novosibirsk-Chicago through Antalya, Dubai, and Istanbul. However most end up with two stops traveling first to Moscow and then on through Istanbul. Despite the considerable challenges associated with travel, no one I heard complain followed it with, “Putin has to go”.
On the plus side of restricted Western travel is the opportunity it provides to develop domestic tourism. This process began with COVID, but sanctions kicked it into high gear. This has had a considerable impact in the Republic of Altai. Building the infrastructure to make it easier for tourists to visit this beautiful, mountainous region. This summer, the renovated airport welcomed 3 flights a day from Moscow (7 on Fridays and Sundays). 2 million people visited the Altai in 2021 and 4 million are expected to come in 2022.
The development by Sberbank of a year-round ski resort in the village of Manzherok (full disclosure, I live there), is providing an anchor and a magnet for this development. The first chairlift opened in 2010 and in 2020 the Bank announced it would invest an additional 4 Billion rubles ($65,000,000) by 2024. A 5-star hotel is set to open for New Year’s as planned before the SMO. Rumor was the primary sanctions issue could be the need to find a replacement for the interior decor ordered from Italy.
According to Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Sberbank Board, “we want to demonstrate the powerful tourism potential of the Russian regions. We see that as soon as the infrastructure appears that provides the necessary level of comfort and transport accessibility, the visits to domestic resorts increases dramatically. And this is an increase in the revenue side of regional budgets, and new jobs, and in general the money that remains inside the country and works to develop its economy.”
This massive corporate investment is happening together with an enormous growth in family owned businesses and SMEs. In addition to the traditional selling of souvenirs and fresh vegetables and fruits from their gardens, people are investing by building cabins or small hotels on their property. An IT couple from Moscow came as COVID digital nomads, liked the Village, bought a small hotel, and are currently renovating another tourist property. A world class massage therapist and her husband personally built a spa complex next to their home complete with sauna (including a river rock shower), massage room, and rental space. Another young couple opened a coffee takeout in a rental space on the main drag. All these businesses are booming.
The start of what used to be referred to as “green tourism” pre-dates the appearance of the ski resort but the season was short, half of June and July. Nadiya, one of the first to build a tourist cabin in the early 2000s, said she now has bookings through the winter. She was disappointed when “Booking.com” pulled out as a result of the SMO because she liked the clients it attracted but she is fully booked without it.
But growth comes with headaches. Several of these new businesspeople have shifted to a minimum stay model since changing sheets every day was a nightmare. Everyone suffers because prices for all goods (locally produced and chain stores) are oriented to the vacationer, there are traffic jams even on the one lane roads in the Village, and if you don’t shop by 11am on a Friday you will be standing in a long line.
Manzherok is located in the northern, most accessible part of the Republic 20 minutes from the airport, so development here is not surprising. The speed and breadth of what is happening in the south heading to the Mongol border is more notable. This is not happiness for some long time Altai visitors. One man, who has been exploring the wildest parts of the region since the 1980s, said he didn’t even want to go to Mars (a multicolored geological wonder) because of the crowds hiking up the colored hills. These crowds have traveled a dirt, rock infested, car killing 7 kms to get there. On a recent hike to the Sofiyskiy Glacier, we encountered a group of middle-aged Scandinavian walking stick hikers who turned around when they saw how rocky the terrain was.
In the middle of what used to be nowhere, a young woman from Moscow opened an outdoor pop-up Café that would look right at home in Woodstock NY. Business is good so she plans to stay open into October when it is still possible to sit comfortably on the puffy chairs and stare at the still snow covered mountains. An Altai family has turned Babyshka’s small plot of land into a tourist compound. Simple but comfortable with an outdoor toilet they are making available to other tourists for 25 r. The male relatives did all the construction and the mother and daughter are running the operation.
Valera, an Altai driver explained that during the Soviet Union the land on the way the Glacier was one of the largest state farms in the country. Now, the only animals you see are camels that sometimes block the road. In the Village Beltir, what wasn’t destroyed by the “transition” was done in by the 7.3 earthquake in 2003. No one was killed but the population that was 1500 is now hovering around 77.
Valera has less business this year but the problem could be competition. The center of Chagan Uzun Village was filled with drivers and a wide range of exotic vehicles to travel to whatever destination you chose. When the tourist season ends, he will fly North and to make money since this part of the Republic is not yet outfitted for year round.
Of course, the plan for the Republic was to continue to develop the foreign adventurer market segment. Traveling through Altai to Mongolia was the standard route for round the world bikers. New Zealanders visited us during the World Cup, two American women, a biathlon Olympian and a cold water swimmer, have also stopped by. Other Americans came even when it meant a 7 hour drive from Novosibirsk or a 2AM car ride to the airport in Barnaul. I have not hosted or encountered any foreigners this summer.
Meanwhile Russian families are making their happiest memories outside my window on the banks of the Katun River, reveling at the astonishing blue and green Geyser Lake in Aktash, and, experiencing the terror of driving down the Katy-Yaryk Pass. Everything looks normal but the situation with Ukraine is always there, lurking in the background.
The matron of the family tourist compound explained where the men were, her husband is making money in the North. She followed this with a pause and lowered her head before saying she had two sons serving in the Ukraine. Others, have elderly relatives in the Donbas who refuse to leave their homes. Most often it comes up when people talk about summers passed that were spent visiting family in the Ukraine. For some, the relationships are surviving, for others not. Even if unspoken, first and foremost in everyone’s thoughts is of the tragedy and loss. For many there is also fear and confusion at the pervasiveness of Western hatred towards Russians and how it is expressed beyond the sanctions.
Anyone who says they know how this will all play out is a fool. My best guess for the Russians is based on some wisdom I got from a woman on a train. January 31st, 1992, five weeks into the brave new world called a democratic-capitalist Russia, I was traveling from Moscow to Novosibirsk. My coupe mate was Baba Marsha, 60 and toothless, her oldest son just stole the cow that was her only valuable possession. Her advice, “If you want to understand Russians, you need to understand two words: terpelivwi (patient) and peredjit (living through it)”.
These sanctions, like all the disruptions that have happened over the last 30 years (in addition to what the 20th Century rained down on this country), will be patiently lived through by most. That may turn out to be a good thing…or at least not the worst thing.
Focuses on Putin’s press conference at the SCO summit in Samarkand. He addressed criticisms of the SMO in Ukraine, gave some hints as to what may come, and dealt with some implicit criticisms of himself.
Ukraine Battlefields
Not much happening. More Ukrainian attempts on Russian positions in Kherson. Each has failed. The bridgehead at Adievka may be in its final days because of the stronger current arising from Russia’s destruction of the upriver dam. The Ukrainians have persisted with this bridgehead despite having gained nothing from it (usual demonstration of PR heroics over longer term interest? – OBB)
Further east there has been a flurry of rumors that Russia had withdrawn from the eastern part of Kupiansk (?) on the Ostol river, but this morning it is clear that the area is still under Russian control.
Is this area of eastern Kharkiv essential for Russia? Will it complicate Russian supplies? The British MOD repeated that narrative this morning. Mercouris considers the claim to be nonsense. He notes that Donetsk and Lugansk border on Russia’s Rostov oblast, together with one other. Rostov-on-Don is the official capital of southern Russia, heavily industrialized, and also very agricultural. The majority of Russian supplies go directly from Rostov to the Donbass, and Russia is not at all dependent on Kharkiv.
In the 2014-2015 war between the coup regime’s army and the people’s republics, western powers were so concerned about supplies from Rostov that the entire Ukrainian plan at that time, which failed, was to gain control of the border with Russia and cut off supplies to Donbass from Rostov. This led directly to a battle at which the Ukrainian army suffered a catastrophic defeat.
We are getting more and more information that Russian reinforcements are rolling in to the northern Lugansk region. In the ZPNN region there is much debate about a possible Ukrainian offensive, but nothing so far has happened: the longer Ukraine delays, the more difficult it will become because Russians are reinforcing fast and the climatic conditions will become more challenging for movements across the Dnieper. Likewise in the south Donetsk city of Uglada. There is a lot of news about advances by Donetsk militia around the ring road of Donetsk City. There was a failed Ukrainian attempt to retake Peskiy, at which Ukraine suffered heavy loss of life. There is continuing heavy fighting around Bakhmut.
Putin’s Press Conference (with Russian media only) at Samarkand
Putin received pointed questions from Russian journalists at this televised conference. Mercouris reads from the Kremlin’s own transcript. Western media make lots of claims about what is said at these kinds of event, and their accounts are often based on mistranslations, or taken badly out of context, or simply invented. Russian is a very subtle, nuanced language, and the Kremlin is very careful when it translates into English, seeking to achieve the same nuances that Putin sought to give.
Putin talked about the SMO in response to recent Ukrainian raids, even on Russian soil, and answers a question as to why Russia’s response is restrained. Putin said there is nothing new about this. Western countries cultivate the idea of Russian collapse. They have had a long standing plan, going back to WW1, to split Russia up. Mercouris notes that Putin conflates the Soviet Union with “historical Russia” of which Russia is its nucleus. Let the West address their own challenges, Putin says, and most likely they are doing harm to themselves. He knows the western objective and says it wont succeed, nor will the west’s attempt to pit Russia against China. The west’s trying to do these things will work against the west’s own interests. But they have always been seeking Russia’s dissolution. It is unfortunate they decided to use Ukraine for these purposes.
The SMO was designed to prevent events taking this turn. For Russia, Mercouris explains, the SMO is an existential matter. Russian authorities cannot allow the SMO to fail. Russia has the resources to make it succeed. The ultimate outcome will be Russian victory. Putin would not say Russia’s response is “restrained,” but notes that in the course of the military operation Russia has encountered terrorist attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure. Russia was at first quite restrained but this will not last forever. Recently Russian armed forces have struck blows against Ukraine’s energy system – Putin calls them “warning shots.” If such Ukrainian attacks continue, Russia will respond more forcefully.
Terrorist attacks are a serious matter; it is in the use of terrorist methods such as has been seen in the killing of officials in the liberated territories and attacks on administrative buildings for which the Ukrainian government has taken credit. We even see attempts at perpetrating terrorist attacks on the Russian federation, including attacks near Russian nuclear facilities and nuclear power stations. These may not have been reported. He is not even talking about the ZPNN. Those attacks have been perpetrated by Ukraine, something which has now been acknowledged by Ukrainian officials and by the NYT. Putin says Russia is monitoring the situation and will respond if Ukraine fails to realize that this behavior is unacceptable – they are not different from terrorist attacks – the clearest indicator that the possibility of upgrading the SMO to the status of an ATO is probably about to happen.
This does not necessarily mean a Russian mass mobilization, but may involve calling up reserves. What it does mean is that if the SMO is upgraded to an ATO, then that will give Russian military the freedom to attack civilian infrastructure, perhaps to target Ukrainian military leaders and security officials and perhaps even the political leadership, things which up to this moment in time they have not been permitted to do.
There is a discussion about the special security guarantees that Ukraine is demanding from the West. Putin hasn’t even bothered to read them. If the West were to take them seriously we would be in World War 3 (says Mercouris). Talking about the SMO plan, Putin says the plan will not be adjusted. It leaves open the possibility of an upgrade to an ATO but the terms of reference may still be the same. The General Staff takes real-time decisions: but the main goal is to liberate the entire territory of the Donbass which continues despite Ukrainian attempts to limit the Russian offensive, which is slow and gradual. Putin points out that Russia is fighting with “contracted forces,” not the Russian Army as such. Russia is not “in a rush.” The main task remains the same. So secondary objectives, such as holding on to Kharkiv, are less important. Putin notes Kiev’s active counteroffensive and says “let us see how it unfolds, and how it ends,” and notes that Ukraine has dropped negotiations in favor of winning on the battlefield – let them try!, says Putin.
Mercouris makes an aside to an article by Gordon Hahn, where Hahn discusses a paper written by Ukraine’s forces commander. It is now unequivocally the case that the Ukrainian command is not in favor of these multiple Ukrainian offensives. This demonstrates the rift between Zelenskiy in concert with his British and American advisors, who appear to be throwing away the very reserves that the Ukrainian command want to build up, and his military leaders. Putin clearly thinks Zelenskiy’s approach is the wrong one, that the Ukrainian offensives will ultimately fail.
The press conference ended with an angry debate about Ukraine’s failure to deliver its grain supplies to the Global South (they have mainly gone, instead, to the EU). Ukraine’s exports are now almost entirely agricultural.
What is the ultimate take? Putin is unfazed by Ukraine’s counteroffensive. He is confident in Russia’s General Staff. His main focus is the liberation of Donbass, which is proceeding steadily. It is highly likely that the SMO will be upgraded to ATO. He is clearly indicating that Ukraine’s conduct is setting up a situation that demands this response. This may happen very soon; – Shoigu is due to visit the Russian parliament on Monday and may announce something there.
Russia and India (based on both Russian and Indian transcripts)
Putin’s meeting in Samarkand with Indian premier Modi makes it clear that the relationship between India and Russia is coming to be second in importance to the relationship between Russia and China.
India and China appear to welcome these developments, despite their border tensions. Their mutual links to Russia will help them manage these border issues.
British media are trying to make out that there are problems with these talks between Russia and India (as they did the day before with the discussion between Putin and Jinping, by focusing just on one word – “concerns” – totally out of context). This time, the focus is on some of Modi’s words that British media have interpreted as a rebuke to Putin for the war in Ukraine. The reality is the diametric opposite.
The actual exchange between Putin and Modi shows that Putin said warm things about India, Modi, and the SCO and then specifically addressed the question of Ukraine. He said that he knew Modi’s position on Ukraine and that Russia would do its best to end the war as soon as possible. But it cannot, because Zelenskiy has chosen the objective of battlefield victory over negotiation. To this, Modi says that he knows that today’s era is not one of war, and acknowledges that he and Putin have talked before of these matters and that they will talk further.
It is clear that Modi is not criticizing Putin. He understands that Putin is trying to bring an end to the war but that Ukraine is refusing to negotiate. Unlike Zelenskiy, both Putin and Modi are saying they are committed to diplomacy. Modi was very careful to take an outwardly neutral position on the war, thankful for Ukraine’s efforts to allow the departure of Indian students from Ukraine at the beginning of the war. But if he is critical of anybody he is critical of Ukraine, not Russia. Modi also says that the relationship between India and Russia has strengthened, and has evolved over many decades; Russia’s relationship with India has been and in the eyes of the world is an “unbreakable friendship:” – the journey for both started at the same time. Modi and Putin have had a personal relationship for over twenty years and both men are constantly working to improve it for the benefit of their respective peoples.
Syria and Turkey
Erdogan of Turkey has said that had Assad attended the SCO, Erdogan would have been willing to meet with him, confirming that the rapprochement between Turkey and Syria is intensifying. A summit meeting between the two is in the works. This is a game changer with respect to developments in the Middle East.
*Link to transcript of Putin’s press conference following SCO conference here.
When a major political figure dies, it’s always significant what’s singled out for forgetting. That’s the case with former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, who’s been lionized in the Western press since his death last week, lauded for his efforts to democratize and bring new freedoms to the former USSR, and whose legacy has now been reduced to tatters by Russian president Vladimir Putin.
World leaders praised him. U.S. president Joe Biden feted Gorbachev as “a man of remarkable vision.” UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said he was “one of the great figures of the 20th century.” The president of the European commision said he was someone whose legacy is “one we will not forget.” Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul called him “a figure who made the world better” and urged us to “learn from his legacy.” “Putin seems to view himself as the anti-Gorbachev,” writes David Remnick of the New Yorker, expressing his hope that “around the world,” Gorbachev’s belief in “democracy, the rule of law, and the peaceful and orderly transfer of power” would “prevail.” Putin’s pointed refusal to attend Gorbachev’s funeral became something of a mini-scandal in the West since his death.
This is largely in line with how the Western press has treated Gorbachev over the last ten years especially, when the former Soviet minister had offered mounting criticism of Putin’s authoritarianism at home. There’s no shortage of coverage of Gorbachev slamming the Russian president, warning of the return of Stalinism and totalitarianism, or his criticisms of dubious Russian elections, points the former Soviet president has made again and again over the years.
But there’s another, overlooked element of Gorbachev’s legacy, one that’s as absent from today’s eulogies as it was ignored by officials when he was alive. That’s Gorbachev’s harsh criticism of U.S. foreign policy after the end of the Cold War, particularly toward Russia, along with his frequent warnings that the decision-making in Washington was destabilizing the world, and his urgent demands that the United States and Russia engage in robust diplomacy. It’s not hard to see why this has been erased: many of Gorbachev’s points are today dismissed in the West purely as Putin apologism and pro-war excuse-making.
“They Declared Victory”
The man exalted as the “anti-Putin” has often assailed U.S. hubris in foreign policy after the Cold War. In one of his final interviews before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gorbachev criticized the “triumphant mood in the West, especially in the United States” after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“They grew arrogant and self-confident. They declared victory in the Cold War,” Gorbachev complained.
This wasn’t an outburst from an elderly statesman in the twilight of his life, but an echo of criticisms he’d been leveling for years. All the way back in 1998, Gorbachev, writing in Time magazine, lightly admonished Bill Clinton’s talk of making the 21st century “the next American century,” asking how such “rhetoric rings in the rest of the world.” A disappointed Gorbachev noted that when the Soviet Union collapsed, “the West could not resist declaring victory in the Cold War, and the U.S. saw an opportunity to extend its influence to the former Soviet bloc.” He cautioned that the U.S. tendency to see itself as having “a right to decide for others, to impose American institutions and to promote the American way of life” was not a style of leadership conducive to “world peace and stability.”
But as the years wore on, the tone of these criticisms became more stern. “Americans have a severe disease—worse than AIDS. It’s called the winner’s complex,” he said in 2006, before attacking then Vice President Dick Cheney and then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as “hawks protecting the interests of the military—shallow people.”
“The American media trumpeted … about the victory in the Cold War, that socialism is down,” he complained three years later. “This disease of extreme self-confidence led to it—the [belief] that things would always go on this way. And it did last long … I think that now everyone is learning a hard lesson.” Two years later, he again complained about the “euphoria” and “winner’s complex” that emerged in the “American political elite” after the end of the Cold War.
“The United States could not resist the temptation to announce its ‘victory’ in the Cold War. … The ‘sole remaining superpower’ staked a claim to monopoly leadership in world affairs. That, and the equating of the breakup of the Soviet Union with the end of the Cold War, which in reality had ended two years before, has had far-reaching consequences.”
“They were rubbing their hands, saying, ‘How nice! We had been trying to do something about the Soviet Union for decades, and it ate itself up!’” he said in 2016, complaining that the West failed to embrace the possibilities for cooperation he believed his reforms had opened up.
The “Mistake” of NATO Expansion
Gorbachev often criticized this mentality with particular reference to the U.S.-led policy of NATO expansion, widely criticized at the time as unnecessary and destabilizing, and which officials and commentators today deny has played any role in either the ongoing war in Ukraine, or deteriorating U.S.-Russia relations more generally.
Gorbachev criticized expansion in the harshest terms from the very start. “I believe it’s a mistake. It’s a bad mistake,” he said in a 1997 speech he made in Washington, as the plan was set into motion. “And I’m not persuaded by the assurances that we hear that Russia has nothing to worry about.”
Gorbachev warned—presciently, as it turned out—that the move would spark backlash in Russia, hardening the hardliners and empowering political conservatives. “I feel that if the same kind of games continue to be played, if one country plays some card against the other country, then all of those problems, all of those issues that we have been mentioning today, will be very difficult to resolve,” he said.
Despite receiving a standing ovation in the U.S. Capital, Gorbachev was ignored. Twenty-four years later, his opinion had only hardened.
“The ‘winners’ decided to build a new empire,” he said in 2021. “Hence the idea of NATO expansion.”
“The Americans promised that NATO wouldn’t move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted,” he told the Telegraph in 2008.
In the same interview, Gorbachev complained that “we had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them,” because “the United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently.” The conservative newspaper noted that Gorbachev’s statement “mirrors the most belligerently anti-Western speeches of Vladimir Putin,” and that he “sounded like the ageing hardliners he struggled against in the Kremlin during the 1980s” for railing against the military-industrial complex.
“Whereas American interests extend thousands of miles, and to many continents, let’s accept that Russia has natural interests in the former Soviet states. Let’s have a dialogue about this,” he had said four years earlier. He elaborated on the importance of taking Russia’s interests into account years later in a 2016 interview: “The relations between us are so important and concern everyone else, so we must take the interests of others into account.”
This critique extended right up to the escalating crisis over Ukraine. In the very same 2009 interview in which Gorbachev gave the harshest criticisms of Putin he had offered up to that point, he echoed Putin and his officials’ long-held objections to Ukraine’s potential membership, questioning the wisdom of the idea. By 2016, seven years later, he was more strident.
“NATO has begun preparations for escalating from the Cold War into a hot one,” he warned, in the context of deteriorating diplomatic relations and intensifying military exercises in Europe by Russia and NATO members, the United States in particular. “All the rhetoric in Warsaw just yells of a desire almost to declare war on Russia. They only talk about defense, but actually they are preparing for offensive operations.”
Today, these words—which suggest that even though Moscow bears primary responsibility for the war it chose to launch, we need to understand the role Western foreign policy choices played in triggering such an appalling decision—are anathema in a political climate where everyone from the Pope to Noam Chomsky is attacked as being a war supporter or even a fascist sympathizer for so much as noting the existence of Western provocations.
That same year, in 2016, Gorbachev suggested that a neutral Ukraine was a solution to the worsening crisis, stating that “a democratic and unaligned Ukraine is in the interests of the Ukrainian people,” and that this be codified in the country’s constitution. Instead, three years later, it was Ukraine’s future entry into NATO that was enshrined in the document.
For Gorbachev, this was no doubt a particularly sore point. Both documents and the recollections of the players involved have firmly established that he was assured by U.S. and NATO officials that the alliance wouldn’t move east if a reunified Germany became a member, a promise he failed to get in writing. It wouldn’t be surprising if Gorbachev held a special bitterness over the fact that he’d been misled.
But he also made clear the issue was about something bigger. As a committed multilateralist, Gorbachev viewed NATO’s expansion—along with its transformation from a defensive alliance to a vehicle for proactive military force—as a blow to a budding world order where problems would be resolved via international law, diplomacy, and institutions like the United Nations.
“The United States and its allies instead decided to expand NATO eastward, bringing that military alliance closer to Russia’s borders while claiming for it the role of a pan-European or even a global policeman,” he said in 2011. “This usurped the functions of the United Nations and thus weakened it.”
“International organizations, particularly the United Nations, crippled by the unilateralism of the United States and NATO, are still faltering, unable to fulfill their task of conflict settlement,” he concluded.
Even before the turn of the century, he had made this point, quoting John F. Kennedy’s vision of a peace that wasn’t defined by “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” but was a “product of many nations.” This meant prioritizing working through the UN rather than through NATO, he had said.
Unilateralism “Unworthy of a Great Power”
These critiques of U.S. foreign policy weren’t limited to NATO expansion. Echoing numerous experts and even Putin himself, Gorbachev was scathing about a host of instances of Washington unilateralism that dented relations between the two countries, starting with NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.
“The United States is conducting itself irresponsibly on the world stage,” he charged that year, in an early criticism of what he called Washington’s “superiority and victory complex.”
Gorbachev called the Bill Clinton administration’s decision to resolve the Kosovo crisis through a unilateral bombing campaign “uncivilized” and “unworthy of a great power.”
“The argument that you intervened in Yugoslavia ‘because you could’ only encouraged nuclear-threshold countries to do everything possible to arm themselves with nuclear weapons,” he warned.
The same year, he told Larry King that NATO’s air strikes, done without UN authorization, were a “mistake.”
“I believe that instead this will boomerang and they will certainly rue this and the view of the people, not just the Yugoslav people, but the people throughout the world, is very negative,” he said. Meanwhile, he urged the Russian government to “not lose our heads,” and “stick to the position that it is for a political settlement.” (The later deployment of Russian troops to the conflict nearly triggered war between the two nuclear powers).
The NATO bombing was arguably the most pivotal early episode in the decline of U.S.-Russian relations, even more so than the alliance’s first eastward expansion. The pro-Western president Boris Yeltsin announced he was “deeply angered,” cut Moscow’s ties to NATO, and recalled his chief military representative to the alliance, while a Russian man shot up the U.S. embassy in Moscow with a submachine gun. Decades later, Putin himself pointed to the bombing as the starting point of deteriorating relations, as well as to justify his illegal annexation of Crimea.
Gorbachev continued to inveigh against Washington foreign policy as the years went by.
“While America’s role is acknowledged throughout the world, her claim to hegemony, not to say domination, is not similarly recognized,” he wrote in 2000 in an open letter to the newly elected George W. Bush. He accused the United States of continuing “to operate along an ideological track identical to the one it followed during the Cold War — but now without a cold war,” pointing to “the expansion of NATO eastward, the handling of the Yugoslav crisis, the military theory and practice of U.S. rearmament,” and said that responsibility for worsening relations “must be shared between Russian and American leadership.” In one particularly prescient passage, he wrote that:
“For 10 years, U.S. foreign policy has been formulated as if it were the policy of a victor in war, the Cold War. But at the highest reaches of U.S. policy-making no one has grasped the fact that this could not be the basis for formulating post-Cold War policy. In fact, there has been no ’pacification.’ On the contrary, there has been a heightening of inequalities, tension and hostility, with most of the last directed toward the United States. Instead of seeing an increase in U.S. security, the end of the Cold War has seen a decline. It is not hard to imagine that, should the United States persist in its policies, the international situation will continue to deteriorate.”
Calling for finding “mutually acceptable” solutions as U.S.-Russia relations seemed to warm a year later, Gorbachev chided those in the United States who wished to deploy a missile defense system and enlarge NATO over Russian objections. “The subtext is: if, to achieve these goals, we must sometimes talk nice to the Russians, let’s do so,” he wrote. “The same pundits and politicians are equally blunt about consultations with American allies and partners: we can talk, but in the end we shall do what’s good for us.” (Gorbachev’s words eerily anticipated Clinton’s deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott’s later explanation for the U.S. push to expand NATO: “We do what we can in our own interest.”).
“One would have to be very naïve to think that such a strategy would not be resisted,” Gorbachev warned.
Ten years later, Gorbachev charged that “as long as the West insisted on its purported victory in the Cold War, it meant that no change was needed in the old Cold War thinking … such as using military force and political and economic pressure to impose one model on everyone.” Pointing to the 1999 NATO bombing, the Iraq War, and U.S. military threats against Iran, he lamented that, especially in the United States, “policy-making and political thinking are still militarized,” and that this mindset had made the UN and Security Council “expendable or at best an impediment.”
A few years later, he laid out his hypothetical advice to Putin—who had by then returned to the Russian presidency for a third term over Gorbachev’s public objections—for managing U.S.-Russia relations:
“I learned that you can listen to the Americans, but you cannot trust them. When they get an idea to do something, they’ll turn the world onto a different axis to get it done.”
The Road to Another Versailles
Gorbachev’s condemnations of U.S. foreign policy were often paired with warnings about humiliating or ignoring Russia, and the deleterious effect it would have both on public opinion and political sentiment within the country, as well as global stability more generally.
“I think we have a unique chance to create a new quality of relations with the West,” he said in 2004, at the tail end of Putin’s early attempts to ally Russia with the United States, viewed within Russsia as one more unreciprocated bit of outreach by another pro-Western president. “But we don’t want to be beggars. We don’t want to be treated by the EU or by the United States like we are down; that is something we will not accept.”
Seven years later, Gorbachev would bemoan that that despite “numerous declarations of cooperation and even strategic partnership,” post-Soviet Russia “is still being treated as an outsider,” and had not been “given a voice in resolving key problems, and obstacles were put in the way of its integration into the European and global economy.” Shortly after, in 2014, Gorbachev again cited this treatment to explain the emergence of a New Cold War. The West had “tried to turn us into some kind of backwater, a province,” and tried to “push us out of politics” instead of treating Russia like an equal partner.
“Our nation could not let that pass,” he said. “It’s not just about pride. It’s about a situation where people speak to you however they want, impose limitations, and so on. It’s America calling the shots in everything!”
By 2008, the U.S.-Russia relationship had again reached a nadir, owing to a confluence of factors. On the Russian side, there was Putin’s increasing authoritarianism at home and his meddling in Ukrainian politics, and his anger at U.S. criticism of both. On the U.S. side, there were a series of foreign policy decisions Moscow had stressed were contrary to its foreign policy interests, including Bush’s controversial announcement that he would pursue neighboring Ukraine and Georgia’s membership into NATO.
“Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts,” Gorbachev protested in a New York Times editorial in 2008, four months after Bush’s declaration. “Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?”
Pointing to talk about rethinking the U.S. approach to Russia, Gorbachev urged officials to rethink one thing in particular: “the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.”
“The politicians in America sometimes act in a way that seems disrespectful toward our country and our people,” he cautioned a month later. “The Russians are people who value their dignity. You better not mess with that.”
In Gorbachev’s warnings, we can see the shadows of the road not traveled after World War One. After that conflict, the Allies embarked on a short-sighted attempt to contain a future resurgent Germany, treating the nation as a defeated power, imposing on it a harsh reparations regime, and generally implementing measures felt by Germans to be a national humiliation—all of it feeding into a dangerous upsurge of German nationalism that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and, ultimately, a second World War.
Gorbachev himself had explicitly brought up this comparison in 1997, warning the West not to impose the kind of peace that the Allies had on Germany after World War One.
“You may not humiliate a nation, a people, and think that it will have no consequences,” he said.
Dialogue At All Costs
But arguably Gorbachev’s most important words—just as ignored and unspeakable in today’s political climate—were his warnings about nuclear war and his urgent calls for peace. Despite his brutal assessment of U.S. foreign policy, Gorbachev simultaneously spent the past thirty years urging cooperative U.S.-Russia relations, and calling for dialogue between the two governments without delay, in spite of their deep mutual mistrust and what he viewed as serious oversteps by U.S. administrations.
Writing for the Times in 2001, Gorbachev celebrated what seemed to be warming relations between the two powers under Putin and Bush, who had recently convened a summit in Ljubljana. He praised the two leaders for “understand[ing] the importance of the relationship” between their nations and defying “the hawks in Washington and Moscow who would like to put Russian-American relations on the foreign policy back burner.”
“Something else was said at the summit: Russia and the United States are not enemies,” he wrote. “Continuing to emphasize this truth is of crucial importance.”
This was a theme Gorbachev would stress again and again over the coming decades: that, as he put it in 2004, dialogue between the two nuclear powers must “not be broken off whatever the challenges and complications we have to face.” Even as U.S.-Russia relations deteriorated and ultimately fell apart, Gorbachev continued to insist, to the leadership of both countries, that the two could still “develop a serious agenda” for cooperation, that they should rebuild trust through dialogue and the lifting of sanctions, and hold a summit “with a broad agenda, without preliminary conditions.” He urged the same approach from Europe, calling for the same kind of summit between Russia and the EU, and for European powers to “defrost relations” with Russia.
“We shouldn’t be afraid that someone would ‘lose face,’ or that someone would obtain a propaganda victory,” he wrote. “This should all belong to the past. We should think of the future.”
Gorbachev’s calls for dialogue continued despite—or rather, because of—the ever-escalating crisis over Ukraine, and the steadily worsening U.S.-Russian relationship that came with it. A longtime proponent of arms control who called again and again for nuclear weapons to be abolished, Gorbachev cautioned that the ratcheting tensions had put the world on a “dangerous threshold.”
“This is extremely dangerous, with tensions as high as they are now,” he wrote back in 2014, when tensions were nowhere near where they sit today. “We may not live through these days: someone could lose their nerve.”
Gorbachev’s calls to “return to the path we charted together when we ended the Cold War” were based not on idealism, but on experience. As Soviet president, he had, after all, forged a close working relationship with Ronald Reagan, a virulent anti-communist who had repeatedly branded his country an “evil empire,” and whose language was so extreme it sparked alarm even among European allies. It was at a nadir in U.S.-Soviet relations—after, among other things, Moscow had shot down a Korean airliner in 1983, killing a U.S. congressman and sixty-two other Americans—that Gorbachev and Reagan began their successful pursuit of diplomacy, ultimately signing a landmark arms control agreement and paving the way for ending hostilities.
As Gorbachev repeatedly stressed over the years, it was the very process of dialogue and negotiations, pursued in spite of the serious difficulties and mistrust in the U.S.-Soviet relationship, that helped reduce tensions and lay the foundation for peace. “The dialogue that president Reagan and I started was difficult,” Gorbachev later wrote. But,
“in the final outcome, our insistence on dialogue proved fully justified. … While addressing these vital tasks, we changed the nature of relations between our two countries, moving step by step to build trust and to test it by concrete deeds. And in the process, we—and our views—were changing too.”
Gorbachev credits this painstaking diplomatic work for Reagan’s 1988 recanting of his “evil empire” label, and to his and George H. W. Bush’s joint declaration a year later that the Cold War was over.
Forgetting At Our Own Peril
There’s so much more one could mention that’s been wiped clean from today’s tributes to Gorbachev, from his criticism of U.S.-led globalization and Washington’s decades-long blockade of Cuba, to his insistence that environmental degradation and growing inequality and poverty were the true security challenges of our time. But as the United States and Russia stand on the brink of outright war, it’s his tireless advocacy for U.S.-Russian cooperation—an appeal he made equally to the hawks in both countries—and his decades of warnings about the consequences of short-sighted Washington foreign policy choices that are most urgent today.
Liberal commentators in the West have justifiably made much of Putin’s rollback of Gorbachev’s democratizing reforms at home, and the erasure of his legacy that it represents. But there’s next to no introspection about how that same liberal establishment has itself undermined the other major part of Gorbachev’s legacy: his work to normalize relations between the United States and Russia, his calls for restraint and strategic empathy in Western foreign policy, and his insistence on dialogue and diplomacy. There’s little of Gorbachev’s spirit among the leading liberal voices of today, who by and large mock diplomacy as appeasement or surrender, dismiss criticism of Western foreign policy choices like NATO expansion as irrelevant propaganda or even war-justification, and speak of inflicting defeat or even regime-change on Russia.
More importantly, it should be a wake-up call that Gorbachev—a man lauded this past week as the antithesis of Putin, and valorized for his liberalism, his wisdom, and his foresight—shared many of the same complaints about U.S. foreign policy that have been cited not just by Moscow’s current leadership, but by a host of foreign policy thinkers who are today targeted in the crudest McCarthyite terms.
Contrary to the Telegraph’s 2008 assessment, Gorbachev didn’t turn into a hard-liner or into Putin as he aged—in fact, his criticism of the Russian president only became harsher over time. The record shows that Gorbachev consistently made the same warnings and complaints, often prescient ones, from as far back as the 1990s, as he reacted with dismay to what he regarded as arrogant and foolish foreign policy decisions that ran counter to the spirit of U.S.-Russian cooperation he thought he’d forged in the Soviet era.
It should all cause serious rethinking of the belief that simply replacing Putin, even with a liberal alternative, will solve current U.S.-Russia tensions, or allow the past decades’ direction of U.S. foreign policy in that part of the world to carry on unimpeded. And it should trigger serious self-reflection in the West: that maybe Putin, as bad as he is, is not the only thing that has to change for the sake of peace and stability.
I shouldn’t have to say this but just because I post an article on this site doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with everything in it. This site is not about satisfying anyone’s confirmation bias. In the case of this article, it is important to be aware of what Ukrainians think about what is going in their country. – Natylie
By Janina Dill, Carl Muller-Crepon, Mamie Howlett, The Conversation, 9/12/22
Kyiv’s counteroffensive in the north-east of Ukraine appeared to take everyone by surprise, not least Russia’s war planners who had been moving troops south to meet an offensive in the Kherson region which Ukraine had been trumpeting about for several weeks. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is claiming that his military has won back 700 square miles of territory, including key Russian supply bases Kupiansk and Izium.
Ukraine’s military success must have equally surprised politicians and pundits around the world who have, over the last six months, urged Ukraine to offer concessions in order to secure a peace settlement with Russia. Giving up territory in the east or pledging to remain neutral would save Ukrainian lives and reduce the risk of a Russian nuclear strike, they argue. But this has raised the question as to what sort of settlement would be acceptable to Ukrainians and whether they would support ceding territory or sovereignty to end the violence.
Ukraine has a just cause for war – self-defence. Russian opinions excepted, this is something most of the rest of the world agrees on. But even a war with a just cause may not be worth fighting. Moral philosophers and lawyers caution that a war of self-defence must still be proportionate – the projected costs should not exceed the benefits.
Calls on Ukraine to negotiate or surrender often echo this argument. Ukraine can’t expect to defeat its large neighbour in the long run, so it should give up self-defence now to limit the costs of the war. But should resistance to aggression really be constrained by such cost-benefit calculations?
You could just as easily think about self-defence in absolute terms. Some outcomes are unacceptable – regardless of how costly it is to resist. The many reports of war crimes in Russian-occupied territory could well motivate Ukrainians to want to fight to the end to resist Russian control.
What is victory worth?
To find out how Ukrainians think about self-defence, in late July 2022 we surveyed a representative sample of 1,160 Ukrainians in all regions not contested by Russia. We asked our respondents about what concessions they might accept, offering various scenarios.
Some of these included upfront territorial concessions, while others didn’t. What’s more, the scenarios featured strategies with different projected costs and benefits after three more months of fighting. They varied regarding projected military and civilian deaths, the risk of a nuclear strike and the likely political outcomes.
We found that Ukrainians strongly prefer strategies that preserve Ukraine’s political autonomy and restore its territory, including Crimea and the Donbas region. This is the case even if making concessions would reduce projected civilian and military deaths, or the risk of a nuclear strike over the next three months.
Of the people we surveyed, 79% opposed all options that would lead to a Russian-controlled government in Kyiv. Importantly, the minority of people who accepted a Russian-controlled government did so because they prioritised restoring Ukraine’s territory in the choice they faced.
Russian control of the government in Kyiv or of territories in the east would put the lives of many Ukrainians at risk, as it is well documented that Russia has committed widespread human rights violations in temporarily occupied territories.
One way to interpret our findings is that Ukrainians reject Russian political control or territorial concessions because they prefer the immediate costs of self-defence – civilian and military fatalities and nuclear risk – over the long-term costs of Russian control. But our findings suggest that not giving in to Russia is about more than the important aim of saving Ukrainian lives overall.
How many extra deaths or increased nuclear risk after three months would lead to a similar rejection by respondents as a Russian-controlled government? The answer we found after extrapolating our statistical analysis is it would take about 12 million additional civilian deaths or more military fatalities than the country has inhabitants (44 million) – or the certain prospect of a nuclear attack – for Ukrainians to react as strongly as they reject a Russian-controlled government.
Clearly, this is unrealistic – no realistic strategy for self-defence could have such costs after three months. So these calculations reveal that Ukrainians take an absolute stance: they categorically reject Russian control and territorial concessions – regardless of the costs.
Why does it matter what Ukrainians think?
We conducted this study because the voices of ordinary Ukrainians have been absent from the intense international debate about whether – and how – Ukraine should defend itself. We worked closely with the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology to gather reliable data while ensuring the safety of interviewers and respondents.
It’s difficult to conduct surveys in a war zone, but we have at least three urgent reasons to care about what Ukrainians think. First, the costs of self-defence, but also the costs of potential concessions, are primarily borne by ordinary Ukrainians. They deserve a say in which of many difficult paths their country takes.
Second, we cannot properly judge what is at stake in Ukraine’s defensive war without understanding how strongly Ukrainians oppose Russian control and how highly they value territorial integrity. A cost-benefit calculation from afar is unsound.
Third, it is dangerous for the international community to pressure Zelensky and his government to pursue a strategy that contradicts what Ukrainians want. Trying to go against the wishes of the people could destabilise the government and would ultimately be unsuccessful.
Put simply, it is neglectful, unsound and unwise to judge Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia – and make political demands based on such judgments – without understanding how Ukrainians think about the costs and benefits of self-defence. Back in April, the philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky urged Kyiv to settle, even if it meant territorial concessions, famously asserting that Ukraine and its western allies should “pay attention to the reality of the world”.
As Ukrainian troops bravely advance east, we have a fuller picture of this reality. Ukrainians categorically reject Russian control and territorial concessions – regardless of the immediate costs of resistance.
