ACURA, 6/7/23

QUOTIDIANOWEBJune 7, 2023

The following is a revised and expanded version of an interview with Benjamin Abelow, author of How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe, originally published in Italian translation by the Italian news and commentary site, QuotidianoWeb.

Question: In your book on the Ukraine war, you say that the United States and NATO provoked the war. How do you understand this word, “provoked”?

Abelow: To say that the U.S. and NATO provoked the war could mean two different things. Do I mean that they wanted a war, and that they knew their actions would start one? That is one possible meaning of “provoked.”

But “provoked” can also mean that their actions caused the war unintentionally. In fact, one can provoke a war while trying to avoid war. Although it is possible that some in the U.S. foreign policy elite wanted this war, I believe that most did not. I think that most were honestly trying to stabilize the peace. In English we have an idiom, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I think this expression applies to the role of the United States and NATO in creating this war.

Question: In your book, you challenge readers to view U.S. and NATO actions through Russian eyes. You suggest that this will help them understand the origins of the war. Can you offer an example?

Abelow: One telling example occurred in 2021, the year before Russia invaded Ukraine. In that year, NATO carried out a live-fire training exercise in Estonia, a NATO country on Russia’s northwestern border. NATO fired 24 missiles. The launch sites were just 70 miles from Russia, and the missiles had a range of 185 miles. The purpose of this exercise was to practice destroying air defense targets inside Russia. The missiles did not enter Russian airspace, and NATO was not planning to attack Russia. It was trying to figure out how to react if Russia invaded one of the Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. Destroying air defense targets was part of an overall deterrent or protective strategy. But this exercise could have been perceived by Russian leaders as preparation for an offensive attack. In fact, the same exercises could be used to train for that purpose.

Now let’s picture the converse of this situation. Imagine that the United States and Canada underwent a rift in their relations, and that Russia and Canada developed close political and military ties. Now imagine that, using a training site in Canada, Russia launched missiles, 70 miles from the U.S. border, to practice destroying air defense sites inside the United States. How would U.S. politicians and the foreign policy elite, military planners, and ordinary citizens in the United States react? Would they have accepted Russian claims that their actions were only defensive? No. They would have had enough uncertainty that they would consider the exercises a threat, possibly even a prelude to war. U.S. leaders would have demanded that the exercises cease and that the missiles be removed. It is likely they would have required the Russian military to leave Canada altogether. And if Russia refused, the U.S. probably would have gone to war. If the situation required it, U.S. military planners might even have threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Keep in mind that we are not simply talking about Canada having its own military. We are talking about a country, in this example Russia, coming from far away—outside our hemisphere, in fact—and practicing with its missiles right on the U.S. border. This is exactly what the United States and NATO did with respect to Russia during their exercise in Estonia. Their actions showed a deep disregard for what risks Russia might have perceived. It also shows a lack of understanding about how easily NATO’s behavior could decrease Western security, rather than increase it, by provoking a Russian response.

Question: What lessons can be drawn from this example?

Abelow: This example illustrates what political scientists and international relations scholars call a “security dilemma.” This term refers to the idea that an action which is intended to be defensive can also have offensive potential and be perceived by another country as a threat. The result can be a spiral of action and reaction that ends in war. The dilemma is that a country wants to increase its security, but it makes decisions that have the opposite effect, by provoking defensive moves from the other side.

This example also illustrates how important it is to be able to imagine how another country, especially a potential opponent, perceives things. This ability is sometimes called “strategic empathy.” It requires an ability to step outside of one’s own limited perspective and to (so to speak) stand in the shoes of another. It requires us to recognize that—whatever else we may think about a potential opponent—the other country’s leadership consists of human beings who have some of the same security concerns and fears that we do.

The missile exercise in Estonia was just one of many NATO exercises conducted near Russia’s border. In fact, NATO carried out a very similar missile exercise in 2020, also in Estonia. All of these exercises, to one extent or another, created a security dilemma for Russia. Each was intended as part of a defensive preparation and a form of deterrence. But each exercise could also be used as part of an offensive strategy. While some people in the U.S. or Europe may laugh at the idea that NATO is a threat, from Russia’s perspective it is no joke. NATO is first and foremost a military organization. In fact, it is the most powerful military organization that has ever existed in the history of the world. And long before this war started, it was pointing at Russia.

The simple and sad fact is that the United States and NATO, as they have gone about their own efforts at security, have not adequately taken Russia’s security concerns into account. As a result, they created a situation that Russian leaders very naturally perceived to be a military threat.

Question: Do you think Putin and the Russian leadership are paranoid?

Abelow: No. I think they are dealing with legitimate security concerns of the same sort that preoccupy many national governments, including those of the United States.

Nonetheless, the way leaders view things does get shaped and modified by the historical experiences of their countries. In the case of Russia, it’s important to remember that the country has repeatedly been invaded from the West through the territory of Ukraine. The last time this happened, during Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, one out of every seven Russian citizens died. That’s 13 percent of the entire Russian population. Not 13 percent of the military. Thirteen percent of the whole Russian citizenry. As one example of the awesome destruction the country experienced, St. Petersburg—then called Leningrad—Russia’s second largest city, was put under siege for over two years and its inhabitants forced into cannibalism. Russian citizens, in the country’s second largest city, were literally eating the dead bodies of their neighbors. 

We in the United States, and I dare say in most of Europe, cannot even begin to imagine such a thing. It would be as if Los Angeles or New York had been put under siege and reduced to cannibalism. The whole thing is inconceivable to us. But it is very much a part of Russian historical memory. And that siege is just one example of what Russian citizens endured within its borders. In a single battle, that of Stalingrad, which turned the tide of the Nazi invasion, close to 1,000,000 soldiers and 40,000 civilians died.

These and other wartime events are not an historical abstraction for the Russians who are alive today. The events affected nearly every family. In Putin’s case, his parents barely survived disease and near-fatal wounds, and his older brother and several uncles died. We need to take all this, and the psychological outlook it contributed to, into account. It is one important factor we must consider when we think about strategic empathy and security dilemmas.

Question: You write about the Cuban missile crisis. Why?

Abelow: In 1962, the Soviet Union placed missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba, about 90 miles off Florida’s coast and 1,000 miles from Washington, DC. The United States almost got into a nuclear war to compel the Soviets to remove them. This episode can be instructive for Americans because in that case it was the United States that was on the receiving end of a security dilemma. Some of the same things that we experienced then can be compared to what we did to Russia before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Most importantly, Russia was demanding that we not bring Ukraine into NATO. Ukraine shares a 1,200-mile border with Russia, which at certain points is just 400 miles from Moscow. Some have argued that what the West did to Russia was a kind of Cuban missile crisis in reverse. I think there is much truth to that view.

We can learn other things, too. One of the main reasons there was no nuclear war during the crisis is that President John F. Kennedy was a man of boldness and wisdom in his relationship with the Soviet Union. Although he came into office as a cold warrior, he nonetheless established a personal relationship with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, exchanging letters through a private diplomatic backchannel. As a result, when the crisis occurred there was some element of trust, some ability to work together to keep the crisis from escalating to nuclear war.

Unfortunately, our current leaders seem to have no such wisdom. Mr. Biden has insulted Mr. Putin repeatedly and personally. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, our nation’s top diplomat, and our current Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, seem not to know what diplomacy means. There is nothing but insult, hostility, and demands coming from Washington. There is much less chance that an acute crisis could be diffused the way it was during the Cuban missile crisis.

There is one additional lesson that we can learn. Contrary to the popular notion, the Cuban missile crisis was not resolved by Kennedy staring down Khrushchev in an eyeball-to-eyeball game of nuclear chicken. Rather, a secret deal was struck in which, in exchange for the removal of the Cuban missiles, Kennedy agreed to remove intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Italy and Turkey. In fact, the placement of those missiles in 1960 and 1961 by the United States was one of the reasons Khrushchev placed missiles in Cuba. The resolution of the crisis reveals the potential for win-win diplomatic solutions to militarily intractable problems.

Question: It is difficult to talk to people about this war. People often say there is an aggressor, Russia, and a victim, Ukraine, and that nothing else matters. What do you say to these people?

Abelow: These people may be thinking something like this: “Okay, the U.S. and NATO made mistakes, but we now must deal with the current reality. What does it matter how we got here?” This sounds good on the surface, but we must understand why the war started if we want to bring it to an end with a minimum of additional destruction and risk.

My formal training is not only in history but in medicine. In medicine, we understand that if we diagnose a problem incorrectly, and then try to treat it, we will be using the wrong therapy and may make the situation worse. In fact, we may kill the patient. This is exactly what is happening now. People in Washington and the European Union, and in the various capitals of Europe, have misdiagnosed the problem. As a result, the “treatment” they prescribed—and are continuing to prescribe—is like pouring gasoline onto a fire. This fire could easily get out of control and lead to a catastrophe. It could result not only in the destruction of Ukraine and its complete termination as a functioning society, but in a direct NATO-Russia confrontation, which could lead to a nuclear war.

Some people look at this war and they think of World War II. They think of Hitler. It appears to them that Russia is trying to expand and reestablish the Soviet Union or a tsarist empire. This is nonsense. The actual reason for this war is what I described: a security dilemma resulting from the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders. But if you think you are fighting Hitler, that is, someone who wants to take over the world, someone who has no rational security concerns but only a desire to kill and expand, then it might be reasonable to keep fighting. It might make sense then to view negotiation as appeasement. That seems to be what our leaders think—and with the help of a compliant mass media, they have propagandized the populations of the United States and Europe to think the same thing. 

Let me address your question directly. You asked what to say to people who think the origins of the war don’t matter. The answer is simple: You explain why the origins matter a lot. You explain how an incorrect understanding of why the war started will lead to a bad and possibly catastrophic outcome. Ideas are the most powerful things in the world. Wrong ideas are among the most dangerous. It is currently our task to replace bad ideas with good ones, by which I mean ideas that better reflect the reality of the situation.

Question: What about the security concerns of central and eastern Europe? You’ve not said anything about them.

Abelow: I’ve focused on Russia’s security concerns because it is those concerns, and their disregard by the United States and NATO, that caused this war. And this war is what we are trying to understand. But you are right to mention Eastern and Central Europe. They have legitimate concerns too, of course. While modern Russia is absolutely not the Soviet Union, we can still understand why Eastern and Central Europeans might be fearful as a result of their own terrible histories with Moscow. These fears need to be considered.

The question is: How do you address those fears and security concerns? Do you do it by redrawing the lines of division in Europe, pushing a U.S.-dominated military alliance to Russia’s borders, and putting Russia into a massive security dilemma? Do you then act as if Putin were crazy, a paranoid madman and an inconsequential fool, even to worry about NATO and missile exercises on Russia’s border? That is what we did—and it was, and still is, an ill-conceived and very dangerous way to proceed. It was threatening to Russia, humiliating to its leaders, and it was asking for trouble. We’re seeing the results of that now in Ukraine, a country that, in terms of NATO expansion, has long been a red line for Russia.

What is needed is a security architecture for Europe and Russia that takes into account the needs of all parties. This should have been worked out decades ago. And in fact, this is exactly what Putin has been asking for—sometimes pleading, sometimes demanding—at least since 2007. But we in the West have not wanted to listen. Nobody should be surprised by this war. The leaders of the United States and NATO say the war was unprovoked for a very simple reason: to hide the fact that they provoked it.

Question: What can we expect from our leaders now?

Abelow: Many people are waiting for their elected and unelected leaders—in Washington, Brussels, and the European capitals—to recognize their mistakes. Some people probably think that, if what I’m saying were correct, our leaders would recognize their errors and try to undo them. I believe this is unlikely, for two reasons. These reasons are important to understand, because if we don’t understand them, we may continue to wait indefinitely for our leaders to fix the situation.

The first reason is that our leaders seem to be locked into a “Putin-equals-Hitler” mindset. They appear to be incapable or unwilling to apply strategic empathy, to see things through Russian eyes, and to grasp the actual causes of this war. While I believe that most of our leaders genuinely want what is best for their countries, political communities, and the world, they are dangerously limited in their outlook.

The second reason is that many of our leaders and institutions are the same ones that created the problem in the first place. They are the ones who pushed for NATO expansion. As a result, they backed not only Russia but also themselves into a corner. Think how hard it is for most of us to admit when we are wrong about something important. It can seem an overwhelming humiliation, truly shameful, to recognize and publicly acknowledge that we were wrong, especially when we have been outspoken with our views in the past. Our leaders, instead of recognizing their mistakes and making appropriate adjustments, are doubling down. They are pushing the same destructive policies even harder.

Imagine how the people who run NATO and set NATO policy feel. It must be very difficult for them to even consider the possibility that their failures of judgement destabilized European security and led to war. Ironically, the problem can be even worse if these people are fundamentally good but internally weak. Imagine what kind of inner honesty and strength of character would be required to recognize and acknowledge that, because of one’s errors, hundreds of thousands of people died and were maimed, millions have been traumatized and displaced, and now the whole world is at risk of nuclear war. In this circumstance, it would take an extraordinary person, someone of exceptional clarity and character, to be able to acknowledge their error, even to themselves.

That is why the people of Europe and the people of the United States must take action. It should be peaceful action, democratic action but powerful action nonetheless. It is up to us to see what is happening, to educate people, and to develop a mass movement that encompasses the entire political spectrum. Not just the left. Not just the right. Not just those on the fringes. Everyone. This issue is far too important to be about partisan politics. All that must be set aside. We must deal with the reality that we now face. This reality includes a risk of a direct NATO-Russia conflict and a growing possibility of nuclear war.

Question: You describe in your book how, as the Soviet Union was coming to an end, the Western countries assured Moscow that NATO would not expand eastward. Moscow made a serious mistake in not getting this assurance in writing. Do you think Moscow has made other mistakes?

Abelow: The assurances you mention were part of an arrangement by which Moscow would remove its 400,000 troops from East Germany. The goal was to let the divided Germany, East and West, reunify under NATO auspices. In exchange, NATO would not expand eastward. At that time, NATO was positioned no further east than the middle of Germany, about a thousand miles from Russia’s border. This was all agreed to verbally. We have written evidence of the process, but the understanding was never instantiated in a formal treaty. Moscow removed its troops, but the West did not carry through. As you say, this was a serious mistake by Moscow.

But in reality, when we say this was a mistake, we are really saying that Moscow was foolish to trust us. What kind of nations are we that do not abide by our word and live up to what we say we will do? Here it is worth pointing out that when Kennedy and Khrushchev prevented nuclear Armageddon by trading away Soviet missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Italy and Turkey, the deal was not instantiated in a treaty. It was done privately, through a backchannel. Trust was an essential component, especially since Kennedy, according to the terms of the deal, was not required to remove the American missiles until six months after Khrushchev removed the Soviet ones.

Coming to your question, you asked if Russia and its leaders made other mistakes. Yes, they did. And first among them was this: Russia invaded Ukraine. Even for Russia, the invasion is a disaster. It is true that NATO backed Russia into a corner, and Russia decided to come out fighting. We bear great responsibility for that and must now find a way to deal honestly with the reality we created. But still, Russia started the war. It is the moral obligation of a country and its leaders to explore every possible avenue for peace before taking such a step. The killing of innocents is unacceptable. One must walk the extra mile to avoid this. One must walk an extra ten miles. I am not convinced that Mr. Putin did that before launching this war.

And yet, because so few people seem to know it, I must emphasize that Putin tried many times to avoid this war. He tried in 2007, when he spoke out at the Munich Security Conference, emphasizing that European security must address the needs of all parties simultaneously. He tried in 2014 and 2015, during the Minsk process, which was Putin’s attempt to resolve the crisis in the Donbas, in Eastern Ukraine, where a war had broken out on Russia’s border. Putin tried again in December 2021, when he sought to negotiate the question of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. But the West, especially the United States, would not even discuss it. The American message to Russia was, in essence: NATO is none of your business, even on your border.

Also, in March 2022—just weeks after Russia invaded, at a time when Russia’s military action was still limited and had not yet caused massive destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure—Putin tried to reach a peace agreement with Ukraine. Even then he sought to avoid further war by getting Ukraine to renounce NATO membership. It seems that the basic features of an agreement were worked out, and that the war would have been brought to an end. But the West sabotaged that peace process. We know this from multiple sources, including a Ukrainian publication, from the ex-prime minister of Israel, from Turkish sources, and from two scholars writing in the journal Foreign Affairs. Apparently, the United States and Britain wanted to extend the war to punish Putin and weaken Russia.

Despite Putin’s many attempts to avoid this war and limit its extent, I still cannot view Russia’s invasion as anything but a wrongful act and a terrible mistake. I cannot justify it. I cannot accept the idea that there was nothing left for Putin to try.

Question: You discuss self-fulfilling prophecies and their role in this war. Are you referring to a metaphysical concept, something mystical in nature, perhaps something pertaining to fate, inevitability, or predestination?

Abelow: When I speak about self-fulfilling prophecies, I’m not referring to a mystical notion. I’m thinking concretely about the creation of an escalating cycle of action and reaction.

How does a self-fulfilling prophecy work? Think again of the security dilemma. Let’s say that country A is overly fearful of country B. Country A believes that country B wants to expand aggressively and must be checked by intense military pressure. Country A is convinced that only this military pressure will do any good. Country A intends this pressure to be a deterrent, a defensive action, a way to prevent a war. But country B perceives these military moves as a threat, and it responds with its own actions. Country A then perceives these actions as offensive threats—and the cycle continues. In the end, country B really does attack—just like country A was convinced it would from the start. The “prophecy” of attack is fulfilled.

This description has parallels with the war we are now witnessing. The very thing that NATO feared—a highly aggressive Russia—it made happen. The United States and NATO were so convinced that Russia was aggressive that they took actions that eventually led to Russia’s aggression.

Here, I think of a line from the British scholar Richard Sakwa, a professor at the University of Kent, England, which encapsulates much of what I’m talking about. It comes from his excellent book Frontline Ukraine. It bears directly on the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy and wonderfully captures the perverse circularity of the situation: “In the end, NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its enlargement.”

I should add that, in response to this fulfilled prophecy, NATO is now enlarging further. The new round of NATO expansion is intended defensively but will be perceived by Russia as a threat. The cycle is continuing. What will the result be? Where will this end? Unless the cycle can be interrupted, it is hard to be optimistic.

Question: It seems that this war, like many others, may not have any real winners. Hundreds of thousands on both sides will be killed and injured. Countless people, both combatants and civilians, will be scarred emotionally for life, and that harm will be passed on for generations. There is a real chance of nuclear war. The whole thing seems so irrational—yet this is typical of the human pattern. How can we explain it? Do humans have an innate drive to make war? Are unconscious influences at play?

Abelow: You’re raising questions that many have pondered, and to which they have given diverse answers. Freud and his followers have claimed there is a violent unconscious “id” and even proposed that humans have a death instinct. Christians sometimes assert that wars occur because humanity has fallen away from God. Evolutionary biologists argue that natural selection favored the survival of communities with strong in-group bonds and a tendency toward fear and violence directed at other groups.

I have a different perspective, one that arises from my study of psychological trauma, and in particular trauma during childhood. I do not discuss this in my book, and I don’t know if my ideas will resonate with those who read this interview. But perhaps some will find these ideas worth considering.

For most of history, in many cultures, and sometimes still, children have been reared with corporal punishment, especially beatings. During such a beating, what goes on in the mind of a child? The child naturally experiences fear and rage but is required to submit. If the child fights back or shows anger, even by an involuntary facial expression, the child may be viewed as insubordinate and disobedient—and the beating will be made more severe. As a result, the child is effectively forbidden to express his or her rage. That rage must be stuffed down, kept inside, and never be expressed.

But when the child grows into adulthood, those suppressed feelings can surface, because the individual is no longer small, weak, and afraid. The long-buried rage seeks a target and directs itself toward an enemy, real or imagined. Xenophobia, a desire for revenge, and ultimately war—these all provide remarkably efficient outlets for the emotions. These unconscious influences arising from childhood can merge with conscious, practical, real-world causes for conflict. They can exacerbate the situation, turning a potential conflict into actual conflict, and a small conflict into a large one. Sometimes they can create a conflict from nothing, from a situation where no conflict need exist at all.

I am speaking in very general and somewhat abstract terms. Let me make things more concrete by suggesting how these ideas can play out in practice. My comments pertain to the influence of violent, extremist groups—including the far-right, ultranationalist groups that are active in both Ukraine and Russia.

I believe that persons who are drawn to these violent, politically extreme groups have endured especially harsh childhoods—frequent or severe beatings, a lack of parental empathy, verbal mistreatment, inadequate nurture, and the like. In fact, I view members of these groups as being essentially very wounded children. They have grown into adults but remained preoccupied with the fear, rage, and sense of victimization from their early experiences. In some cases, they are fighting battles that do not exist in reality. Yet the violence they inflict, and the consequences of their emotional indifference and brutal aggression, are very real.

Let me give an example. I have studied the childrearing practices that were imposed on German children during the generations before the rise of Nazism. When one looks at the brutality these children endured, and compares it with the brutality that they, as adults, inflicted on their victims, the entire situation becomes much clearer. No longer do we feel ourselves confronted by a great mystery about the origins of their violence. Instead, we see how “trauma begets trauma”—a situation in which children who were traumatized grow into adults who inflict traumas on others.

I consider Nazi Germany to be a prototypical example of a general pattern. I think the lessons we can learn from it apply to other countries and situations where ultranationalist groups are active and use violence to impose their will on others.

Question: Speaking of the far right, you refer in your book to the role of Ukrainian ultranationalists during the lead-up to the current war. What are you referring to?

Abelow: We in the West hear a lot about fascist and ultranationalist influences in Russia, but much less about these groups in Ukraine. The subject is verboten. And we continually hear that their numbers are relatively small, which is true. However, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis, and others on the far right are well organized and willing to use violence. As a result, they have exerted an outsized influence on decision-making in Ukraine. In fact, the far right has exerted a “coercive veto” over Ukrainian policy.

A prime example pertains to Ukraine’s president, Voldomyr Zelensky. He was elected in 2019 on a peace platform. He won with a 73 percent majority vote, giving him a huge mandate. He wanted to resolve the conflict in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, where a civil war had been going on since 2014. Although Russia had lent support to the ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who were seeking greater autonomy, or actual separation from Ukraine, the conflict was fundamentally internal to Ukraine. In his inaugural address, Zelensky said he was willing to lose his office if that were the result of seeking peace. But just one week later, a leader of the far right stated in a published interview that if Zelensky carried out his plans he would lose not his office, but his life. Zelensky, he said, would hang on a tree.

Threats of violence against Zelensky and his government continued. These included direct threats on Zelensky’s life, and violent ultranationalist and neo-Nazi demonstrations that defaced the presidential building. Over time, Zelensky capitulated. He gave up on his peace platform and adopted policies acceptable to the far right. He began to assert that the Donbas crisis was, in fact, not a civil conflict but was entirely the result of Russian meddling and intervention. That was the position espoused by the far right. The Minsk accords—a pair of previously signed agreements that could have peacefully resolved the Donbas crisis—were never implemented. Jack Matlock, Jr., who was the second-to-last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, has stated that if the Minsk accords had been implemented, Russia probably would not have invaded Ukraine.

Most people in the West know little about this history. In fact, my impression is that Western governments have deliberately concealed it, because it does not fit with the story they want to tell.

Question: You say that Zelensky “capitulated” to the far right. That is not how he is usually portrayed in the West. Is it proper to speak this way when Ukraine has been invaded and is at war?

Abelow: When I say that Zelensky “capitulated” to the far right, I am repeating a word used by the Ukrainian-Canadian scholar Ivan Katchanovski, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa. He is one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts about many aspects of Ukraine’s recent political history. It’s not possible to understand what is happening in Ukraine without reading Katchanovski’s work (much of it is posted online and freely available at the Academia.edu and ResearchGate websites).

In addition to his research on the far right, Katchanovski has studied how the United States intervened in Ukrainian politics. He has described how, starting with the “Maidan” protests and overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the United States gained extraordinary influence in the selection of key figures in Ukraine’s government, as well as in the setting of its policies. At times, the control has been essentially dictatorial. According to Katchanovski, the United States gained so much control that, using the technical definitions of political science, Ukraine became a “client state” of the U.S. The United States has used its power to position Ukraine as a pawn in a geo-strategic game to exert pressure on Russia.

Because Ukraine was attacked, there is a natural tendency to not criticize its leaders. Our governments and the media reinforce that tendency. They say, in effect: “After the war is over you may say these things, but not now.” However, because of Zelensky’s capitulation, his policies are deepening and prolonging this war. He advocates maximalist negotiating positions, which are complete non-starters. He uses aggressive rhetoric. To remain silent about Zelensky, to treat him with kid gloves, is to support the war by default.

We in the West are given to believe that Zelensky has the universal backing of his people. But how can we know this? Opposition parties and opposition media in Ukraine have been banned. Men of military age—the range has been defined broadly, as between 18 and 60—are arrested if they try to leave the country. Young men are being grabbed off the street and sent against their will into the meat grinder at the front. Such measures would not be needed if everyone were eager to fight. Ukrainians who are outspoken in opposing the continuation of the war risk being killed by the far right. I have personally heard reports about how frightened some Ukrainians are to speak, even anonymously.

Question: For many in the West, Zelensky has become the face of Ukraine and the personification of a just cause. He is seen as a model and an inspiration. How do you view Zelensky?

Abelow: Zelensky is seen in the West as a great hero, a new Churchill, a bold and brave warrior. I think this portrayal is nearly the opposite of the truth. It obscures the reality of a man who, under pressure, defaulted on his greatest value and objective: to make peace in the Donbas and end Ukraine’s civil strife. As a result, the Donbas war continued and contributed to the onset of the current, broader war.

Rather than heroic, I view Zelensky as a tragic figure. He faced a great trial. Could he put the interests of his country ahead of his personal safety and his desire to maintain power? He failed utterly. But this failure is understandable, and perhaps it was inevitable. In 2019, shortly after Zelensky was elected, the late Princeton and New York University professor Stephen F. Cohen said that unless the United States protected Zelensky from the far right, his peace efforts would fail. If the U.S. didn’t have Zelensky’s back, Cohen said, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Zelensky never received that support.

Further—and this speaks volumes about the influence of the far right in Ukraine—those who threatened Zelensky’s life were not prosecuted. Neither did the police and courts protect Zelensky’s supporters and colleagues when they advocated for peace. Tellingly, Zelensky’s friend Sergei Sivokho, whom Zelensky chose to play a key role in seeking peace and reconciliation within Ukraine, was physically attacked.

Just as troubling, the Ukrainian people did not rise up to demand that the police, courts, and other state institutions provide adequate protection for Zelensky. At first glance, this is hard to understand, given his large electoral mandate and the fact that, at the time of his election, there were at least 70 pro-peace groups active in Ukraine. This background is described in an important new book by Professor Nicolai Petro of the University of Rhode Island, The Tragedy of Ukraine. Why did this popular support for peace not translate into democratic pressure to protect Zelensky and his government from violence? A major factor, no doubt, was that many people feared the far right. They knew that speaking out could put their lives in jeopardy. The coercive veto of the far right extended to the citizenry.

But the problem runs deeper than that. Many in Ukraine have an ambivalent relationship with the far right. During parts of the 1940s, armed nationalist groups headed by Stephan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych fought against the Soviets in Ukraine. Because they are cast as fighters for Ukrainian independence, Bandera and Shukhevych are esteemed by many in Ukraine today. Streets and schools are named after them, and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory has promoted them as full-blown heroes. However, to fight the Soviets, Bandera’s faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists collaborated openly with the Nazis when they invaded Ukraine in 1941, helping them carry out their totalitarian and genocidal policies. And the group headed by Shukhevych, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, committed mass murder against civilians. Not only did this group kill ethnic Ukrainians who opposed their policies, they murdered tens of thousands of Poles and Jews. Yet because Bandera and Shukhevych fought for the nationalist cause, many Ukrainians continue to hold them in high regard. As a result, when those who stand in the ideological lineage of these violent nationalist groups—the modern far right—threatened Zelensky’s life and government, the Ukrainian people did not rise to support him.

Further, few in Ukraine have seriously grappled with a central fact of the country’s recent political history: that the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2014, which came after several months of popular protest, was a violent right-wing coup. During that coup, ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis, and others on the far right not only killed police and attempted to assassinate Yanukovych, they also—as a false flag attack—killed dozens of peaceful protesters. This mass killing, the so-called “snipers’ massacre” of February 20th, has frequently but incorrectly been blamed on Yanukovych. The massacre, and the erroneous presumption that Yanukovych was responsible, was the pivotal event that led the West to recognize the new Ukrainian government. None of those responsible for the massacre was ever tried. The far right also, and more generally, played a key role in fomenting violence during what otherwise would have been largely peaceful protests. This is all documented in the painstaking research of Ivan Katchanovski.

Thus, too few in Ukraine have paid adequate attention to either the country’s brutal nationalist past or the nature of the events that constituted its post-2014 political order. This lack of national reckoning helps explain the failure of the Ukrainian people to support Zelensky when the far right threatened his life and government. In the end, Zelensky really didn’t stand a chance. He genuinely wanted peace and, at least initially, he pursued his agenda bravely. But he ultimately lacked the courage, strength of character, and the necessary support from the West, as well as from his own people, to carry through. That is why I view Zelensky as a tragic figure.

However, we must also criticize Zelensky directly. If the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is correct, Zelensky and his government have embezzled many millions of dollars of American aid since the war started. Yet, to my mind, that is not his greatest sin. I view Zelensky as a destroyer of his country. He is a man who, as Richard Sakwa has said, could have prevented this war by speaking just five words: “Ukraine will not join NATO.” Zelensky also bears responsibility for not persevering more courageously after his life was threatened. He could also have made peace in March and April, 2022, just weeks after the war started, when talks with Russia were underway and achieving success. But he caved in to Western pressure to terminate the negotiations—and so the war continued and escalated. The result has been that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed or maimed, untold millions have been displaced and traumatized, and the physical country of Ukraine has been depopulated and lost almost twenty percent of its territory.

Question: Even if the result has been a prolonged war, might Zelensky be serving some higher purpose? Might the sacrifice that Ukrainians are making be justified as part of a wider struggle against authoritarianism? And in the most limited sense, might Zelensky be acting in ways that serve American and European interests?

Abelow: No, none of these purposes are being served. In fact, Zelensky is bringing great risks to the United States and Europe. He has taken steps that could draw NATO into a direct war with Russia. For example, when a Ukrainian air-defense missile crashed in Poland, a NATO ally covered by the Article 5 provision for collective defense, Zelensky claimed it was a deliberate Russian missile attack on Poland. It appears he was lying for the purpose of drawing NATO into direct combat with Russia. Here it must be noted that a direct NATO-Russia war carries an unacceptably high risk of nuclear escalation. This was the conclusion of a January 2023 study by the RAND Corporation. RAND is a think tank funded by the U.S. military. It does not issue such warnings lightly.

Moreover, in an address to an Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, Zelensky made a recommendation that, if followed, would lead directly to nuclear war. He suggested that the West launch a preemptive attack on Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Here is a translation of Zelensky’s remarks made by Professor Nicolai Petro. Zelensky mangled his sentences, but his intent is clear enough:

What should NATO do to make the use of nuclear weapons by Russia impossible? What is important, I must again address the international community as before the 24th—preventive strikes, so that they know what will happen to them if they use [nuclear weapons], not wait for nuclear strikes by Russia and then say, “Well, you’ve done it, now here’s a taste of your own medicine.” Review the procedure of applying pressure. I believe what needs to be done is to review the order of the actions taken.

Zelensky wanted to “review the order of the actions taken” and implement a new order, one that would result in “preventive strikes.” This means to shift from a posture of assured retaliation, after a nuclear attack, to one of attacking first—nuclear preemption. Some have claimed that Zelensky was misunderstood, that he was advocating economic sanctions. But his own words tell otherwise. Incredibly, Zelensky really does seem to believe that attacking Russia’s nuclear forces would stabilize the nuclear peace. In actuality, such an attack would almost certainly lead immediately to a strategic nuclear exchange, which could then escalate to a full-scale thermonuclear war. Such a war would kill hundreds of millions or even billions of people.

The fact is, Zelensky is essentially a mouthpiece. He speaks for the foreign policy elite of the United States, which wants to keep the war going so that it can continue to weaponize Ukraine as a proxy to weaken Russia, using the land of Ukraine as a battlefield and Ukrainian citizens as cannon fodder. Yet the goal of weakening Russia, which is the pipe-dream of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, is not in the interest of American or European citizens. It is unlikely to be successful. It is harming the West economically and destroying Ukraine. And if the West ever starts to achieve its goal—the destruction of Russia as a great military power—the likely result would be the Russian use of battlefield nuclear weapons, which could readily escalate to strategic nuclear war.

Those in the United States, Ukraine, and Europe who see this conflict as a struggle of democracy against authoritarianism are misreading what is happening. Some may do so out of ignorance, others as willful deception in support of a geo-strategic agenda. The reality is that, in crucial respects, democracy in Ukraine was long ago subverted by Ukraine’s far right—and the United States.

Question: Much of what you say runs contrary to the Western narrative and conflicts with current American policies. You could be perceived as anti-American. Are you anti-American? Do you hate America?

Abelow: Absolutely not. My grandparents came to the United States to escape violence in other countries and to find a better life. Even now, two generations later, I continue to hold in my mind the image of America as a shining beacon of freedom and safety to the world.

Despite all that is happening, I continue to believe that, at its core, America is a great country. It helped give to humanity invaluable philosophical concepts about freedom, and about the rights of the individual. No doubt, it has sometimes failed badly to live up to these high values, but other times it has succeeded. And in any case the ideals stand on their own and have played a transformative role in the world. I also believe that the United States—along with the Soviet Union, which for all its great evil played a decisive role in defeating Hitler—may have literally saved the world from Nazism.

So, no, I am not anti-American. I see my comments here, as well as my book and my broader efforts regarding the Ukraine war, as an expression of American patriotism—an attempt to help realign U.S. policies with the true interests of the United States as a nation. These are my attempts to peacefully influence policies so that they better reflect the highest ethical values of the United States. To achieve this end, a hope which many share, we must face reality, even if that reality is uncomfortable. We must be willing to speak openly.

About the Author:

Benjamin Abelow is the author of How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe. The book has been translated into German, Italian, Polish, Danish, and Slovenian, with French, Dutch, and other translations forthcoming. Abelow holds a B.A. in modern European history from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine, where he also served as Lecturer in Medicine. He previously worked in Washington, DC, writing, lobbying Congress, and lecturing about nuclear arms policy. His other areas of interest include the study of trauma, including war trauma. 

The preceding was a revised and expanded version of an interview originally published in Italian by the news and commentary site, QuotidianoWeb. This interview may be freely reproduced and distributed in the English language, but may not be sold as a print book, ebook, or recording, or translated out of English, without permission from Abelow. He can be reached via BenjaminAbelow.com. Copyright © 2022 Benjamin Abelow. All rights reserved.

The Bell, 7/7/23

How ruble weakness affects the country’s finances
The Russian currency has been tumbling all week. The rate against the U.S. dollar dropped as low as 94 rubles on Thursday, while against the euro it fell to 102. This is the weakest the ruble has been since March 2022 when it collapsed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The ruble has lost about a third of its value since the start of the year and is — so far — this year’s worst performing emerging market currency.

What’s going on?
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection last month was the immediate trigger for the currency’s current weakness. The mercenary leader’s short-lived uprising meant people again began factoring in the risk of domestic political instability to the value of the ruble. It’s the first time since opposition protests in 2011 and 2012 that domestic politics has led to serious fluctuations in the price of the ruble.

However, there are also underlying issues. Everything is stacked against the ruble at the moment: low exports, increased imports, the ongoing transfer of funds out of Russia to accounts abroad, extremely low liquidity levels and the absence of non-residents in the currency markets.

The final point is particularly significant. In previous years, a serious devaluation of the ruble attracted non-residents looking to capitalize on the differences between interest rates and exchange rates. Today, they are gone — and Western sanctions, Russia’s isolation and the war in Ukraine mean they won’t be coming back.

As a result, the ruble exchange rate is far more dependent on Russia’s balance of trade. That’s what Central Bank deputy head Ksenia Yudayeva identified as the key factor behind the current slump. “We are seeing a significant reduction in the current account this year, when compared with last year and the last quarter. Among other things, this is due to a decrease in export earnings and, in my opinion, falling prices,” she said Tuesday.

Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina also said the changes to the balance of trade (a drop in the difference between exports and imports) was the main reason for the ruble’s weakness.

The ruble’s collapse coincided with an unexpected midnight meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin that extended into the early hours of Wednesday morning. It’s not known whether the ruble was discussed and there is no word of it in the published account of the meeting. However, the economic successes that Mishustin reported to Putin (and which are in the published account) are yet more reasons for the ruble’s fall — they include an increase in real incomes, record low unemployment and growing demand among consumers and wholesalers.

What does it mean for the Russian government?
One school of thought suggests that the ruble’s devaluation is good for officials as it means the country acquires more rubles for the same amount of raw material exports. This idea dates back to the late 1990s when revenue was directly linked to oil prices — but it is much less relevant today. Now, revenues are prescribed in advance and the link to fluctuating oil prices (and, thus, fluctuating exchange rates) is counterbalanced by self-imposed rules obliging the Finance Ministry to buy or sell foreign currency reserves (according to the export price for oil). As a result, exchange rate fluctuations are not reflected in the budget.

Moreover, the old belief that a falling exchange rate boosts revenues is greatly undermined when the government is financing expenditure by borrowing on the markets. The Finance Ministry last year issued 3.3 trillion rubles’ worth of bonds (almost $50 billion) and plans to do the same this year. The ruble’s collapse leads to faster inflation and, as a result, higher interest rates — making borrowing more expensive.

Of course, exporters who are paid in foreign currency and spend in rubles will benefit from the falling ruble. Part of their profits will, however, be collected as tax — but that will come later. Those exporters who are in no hurry to return foreign earnings to Russia could be the ones who ultimately stabilize the exchange rate. In previous moments of crisis, it appears that exporters have received urgent requests to buy rubles from the Kremlin.

It’s unlikely the Central Bank will intervene to prop up the ruble. Since 2014, the regulator has preferred to fight inflation by adjusting interest rates. Central Bank officials never tire of repeating the mantra that exchange rates are determined by supply and demand, and that any ruble rate is acceptable to them. We heard such a statement again this week.

In theory, nothing prevents the Central Bank from making a currency intervention if it fears a threat to the stability of the financial system. For example, immediately after the invasion of Ukraine last year, the Central Bank sold 100 billion rubles’ worth of foreign currency. However, the regulator has said that it currently sees no threat to the stability of the system. That means there won’t be any intervention — at least, not yet.

Why the world should care
As always, a falling ruble will drive up prices for imported goods in Russia, especially those that the country does not produce (from smartphones and laptops to rum and whisky). Prices are likely to rise faster for goods arriving in Russia as “parallel imports” — a scheme introduced after Western sanctions that allows importers to bring in goods to Russia that were not originally intended for the country.

However, the falling ruble will affect prices across the board in Russia. While earlier devaluations incentivized domestic productivity and import substitution, the shortage of labor and capacity might prevent a repeat of such an effect this time around.

Another potential consequence is a jump in inflation and a decision at the Central Bank meeting on July 21 to raise rates. Finally, it also appears inevitable that sharp fluctuations in the value of the ruble will now become routine.

How will Russia make budget cuts?
The Finance Ministry is proposing major cuts in government spending in next year’s budget, with each ministry to reduce expenses by 10%. The reasoning is clear: the budget deficit is growing. A government commission on budget projections discussed the issue at a meeting last week. Increased borrowing was mooted as an alternative to cutting costs, but this was reportedly strongly opposed by Central Bank officials.

Past crises in Russia have also led to spending cuts. In 2018, pension provision went under the knife via a decrease in transfers to the pension fund (there are not anticipated to be any increases in revenues for the pension fund this year, nor an increase in insurance premiums). Back then, defense spending also faced cutbacks (but this is obviously not happening in 2023). It remains unclear how the Finance Ministry will cut expenditures, but calls to cut costs are a traditional opening gambit in the process of negotiating the budget.

Key figures
Central Bank figures for April continue to show household funds flowing into deposits abroad — or into cash. There’s been little sign of this trend changing in May and June — something that has put extra pressure on the ruble.

Nabiullina said that the Central Bank still believes its monetary policy to be effective. The policy, which includes a floating exchange rate and inflation targeting, remains unchanged despite the weakening ruble.

The State Statistics Service (Rosstat) released figures about GDP by usage in the first quarter of this year. State orders reached a historic high of 24.7% of GDP, which will be no surprise to most. Exports were down 5.5 percentage points — however, it’s impossible to reliably estimate real imports and exports as Russia no longer publishes trade data.

Inflation is up for the second week running. The consumer price index from June 27 to July 3 rose 0.13% compared with the previous week. And that’s despite the fact that the usual July increase in utility payments did not happen — they were indexed back in December. Annual inflation moved up from 3.2% to 3.3% over the course of the last week.

By Prof. Geoffrey Roberts, Pearls and Irritations, 7/6/23

The aftermath of Ukraine’s ailing counter-offensive may be the country’s last chance to avert the utter destruction of a senseless forever war.

So far, Ukraine’s month-long ‘counter-offensive’ has been a very costly failure. Attacks on Russian forces in the southern province of Zaporozhe have yet to achieve any significant strategic success, and the same is true all along the line of contact. Some of Kiev’s most fervent supporters are beginning to doubt Ukraine’s armed forces have the firepower to penetrate Russia’s multi-layered defensive belt, which bristles with minefields, tank traps, trenches and concrete bunkers.

‘Prepare for Ukraine’s counter-offensive to falter’, Colonel Richard Kemp warns conservative readers of the UK’s Daily Telegraph.

Expectations that Russia’s supposedly demoralised soldiers would cut and run at the first opportunity have been dashed, while Russian artillery and air forces have cut a destructive swathe through Ukraine’s western-supplied tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

A stronger attack by the Ukrainians might gain some traction but the cost will be brutal and any breakthrough difficult to sustain. According to US Staff Chief, General Mark Milley, the Ukrainian offensive is “going to be difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody.”

Irrespective of the final outcome of current battles, the war of attrition with Russia will go on, and that is a fight Ukraine cannot hope to win. No amount of western military aid can tilt the balance of power in Ukraine’s favour – Russia has too many troops, tanks, planes and guns. Russia’s defence industry is out-performing western arms manufacturers and President Vladimir Putin is well able to add to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers he has already mobilised and deployed.

Domestically, Putin is riding high on popular support for Russia’s ‘existential’ war with Ukraine and its NATO allies. It remains to be seen if Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed Wagner revolt will dent his power and popularity but the omens are not good for those who long for a collapse of Putin’s regime.

As Strana.UA – the Ukrainian daily newspaper that provides outstandingly well-informed and impartial coverage of the war – has commented, Prigozhin’s mutiny failed because of a complete lack of support in the country’s armed forces, among Russia’s elites and in Russian society. Having quelled the rebellion without a bloodbath, exiled Prigozhin to Belarus and dismantled the Wagner PMC, President Putin is looking stronger than ever.

As to the impact of Wagner’s demise on Russia’s war effort, Ukraine’s Commander-Chief, Genera Valerii Zaluzhnyi, was adamant in a recent Washington Post interview that its withdrawal from the frontline had made no difference whatsoever. In that same interview he complained bitterly that Ukraine had been forced to undertake an offensive without air cover and with grossly insufficient artillery support – something that neither NATO nor Russia would dream of doing.

Former Ukrainian Presidential advisor, Oleksii Arestovych, was even more forthright, claiming that Ukrainians are shedding their blood for the sake of future western negotiations with Russia.

Ukraine’s only real hope of victory is that NATO will escalate its proxy war on Russia into a full-scale engagement. But that could result in an all-out NATO-Russia war that would quickly cross the threshold of nuclear weapons’ use. Thankfully, even hardline anti-Russia states such as Poland and the Baltics have recoiled from such a drastic step, for the moment anyway.

Ukraine’s leaders and people are determined to fight on come what may. But faced with a prolonged, devastating and losing war of attrition their fortitude may begin to falter.

As Strana.UA reports, within Ukraine there are many who believe the country should cut its losses, hold its nose and do a peace deal with Russia – and their numbers and voices can only grow as hopes of recapturing lost territories continue to fade. As Ukraine’s ‘peaceniks’ also point out, those same territories contain millions of Ukrainians who want to be part of Russia. Re-capturing these territories from Russia will perforce be a war of conquest as well as liberation.

Ukraine’s ability to resist Russia’s onslaught is almost wholly dependent on Western support. As Putin pointed out in a recent Q&A with Russian war correspondents, if the West wants a ceasefire and a peace deal all it has to do is to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, whose leaders would then quickly seek an armistice.

Remarkably, Putin remains open to diplomacy and a negotiated end to the war “as I have said a thousand times”, he told the same gathering, “we have never refused to participate in any talks that may lead to a peace settlement.”

Putin then spoke about the draft peace agreement initialled by Russia and Ukraine during the abortive Istanbul ceasefire negotiations of spring last year, pointing out this detailed document dealt thoroughly with Ukraine’s security issues but Kiev, he claimed, just “threw it away”.

A few days later, at a meeting with an African leaders’ peace delegation, Putin reiterated that Russia had never refused talks with the Ukrainians. He even showed them a copy of the ‘Treaty on Permanent Neutrality and Guarantees of Security of Ukraine’ that had been provisionally agreed in Istanbul

The details of that draft agreement remain opaque but the basic quid pro quo was that Ukraine would neutralise and disarm and acquiesce in territorial losses to Russia in return for guarantees about its future independence, sovereignty and security.

After more than 15 months of a war that has cost Russia dearly, Putin is sure to drive a harder bargain if those talks are resumed, above all he will want continuing control not just of Crimea but of the four territories formally incorporated by Russia last autumn – Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhe.

Such a deal would be a very bitter pill for Ukrainians to swallow but the longer the war goes on, the more likely is further Russian expansion into southern and eastern Ukraine, including capture of the crucial Black Sea city-port of Odessa and Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkov – both of which contain large numbers of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

As Putin also told the assembled journalists and military bloggers, while Russia must treat Ukrainians with respect, not least those who wish to live in a separate, independent state, their preferences cannot be at the expense of Russia’s security. Under no circumstances will Putin permit Ukraine to remain a pro-Western ‘anti-Russia’, especially not in what he claimed were Russia’s ‘historical lands’ – territories that Lenin and the Bolsheviks transferred to the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922.

According to Putin’s definition, these historical lands include the Black Sea coast as well as the Kharkov area – a clear warning of further radicalisation of his territorial demands should the war continue for much longer.

Ominously, Putin warned that the Russian army could ‘go back’ to Kiev if the military situation so demanded, though a renewed assault on the Ukrainian capital would require a further round of mobilisation to augment his existing force of 700,000-800,000 troops (only half of which are currently deployed against Ukraine).

But can Putin be trusted to keep any peace deal, even one that capitulated to his main demands?

Trust is a problem that cuts both ways. Putin never tires of repeating that for years he strove for implementation of the Minsk agreements that would have returned rebel Donetsk and Lugansk to Ukrainian sovereignty on the basis of a regional autonomy that would protect the interests of the two territories’ pro-Russia population. Now he has to endure the boasting of ex-President Francois Hollande and ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, that for France and Germany – the agreements’ Western underwriters – Minsk was merely a device to buy time for Ukraine to build-up its military power.

To paraphrase former US President, Ronald Reagan, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends. You trust they will stick to their agreements but remain vigilant and verify that they do so.

The Russia-Ukraine war could have been prevented by implementation of the Minsk agreements. It could have been curtailed by successful conclusion of the Istanbul peace talks.

The aftermath of Ukraine’s ailing counter-offensive may be the country’s last chance to avert the utter destruction of a senseless forever war.

BBC Monitoring, Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1005 gmt 29 Jun 23   

The Russian public remains sure of a successful course of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to the results of a poll by Russian Field, influential business daily Kommersant reported on 28 June.

While over half of those questioned (58%) approved the actions of the Russian armed forces, a little more than a fifth of the respondents took the opposite view. At the same time, the share of those who support the termination of the operation and a transition to peace negotiations (44%) is practically equal to the number of those who support the continuation of hostilities (45%).

In the course of Russian Field’s 12th survey on the attitude of Russians to the war, sociologists spoke on the phone to 1,600 respondents from 16-19 June 2023. According to the study, 58% of Russians say the campaign is going well, while 21% think it is not. And 64% of respondents would approve the president’s decision to attack Kyiv – a record for the entire time of the study, the survey’s authors note.

A transition to peace talks, however, would be positively viewed by 72% of respondents, the poll found. Among those respondents who trust official sources of information (46% of those questioned), 84% positively assess the current results of hostilities, and 74% would support an attack on Kyiv.

Split on peace or war

When respondents were asked to choose between continuing hostilities or peace negotiations, their answers were roughly evenly divided: 45% and 44%, respectively. The position on this issue depends on age: among citizens aged 18 to 29, 62% support a transition to diplomacy, while only 36% of those aged 60 and older did so.

In the event that a second wave of mobilisation is required to continue the war, the majority in all age groups (54% of the total number of respondents) will approve the peace negotiations, with only 35% in favour of continuing hostilities in such a situation.

Respondents of all age groups, regardless of their attitude to the continuation of hostilities or negotiations, do not see an early end to the war: the proportion of those who believe that it will go on for more than a year is regularly growing and has reached 49% (in March 2022, this was expected by only 13% of respondents).

Divided over strategy

The question of what specific steps to take at the moment divided the respondents. A transition to offensive operations is favoured by 39%, while another 30% are in favour of consolidating the gains achieved, while 12% are in favour of a complete withdrawal of troops.

Russian Field notes that the number of supporters of maintaining the status quo is highest among the more well-off respondents, but falls again when it “gets close” to the wealthiest group of respondents. It is also noticeable that the proportion of supporters of an offensive strategy is higher among those who trust official data on the course of the war.

On the whole, however, the fighting in Ukraine remains a distant event in the perception of most Russians – 40% of respondents are tired of news related to the war. This figure has been stable since March 2022. Relations with some relatives or friends have been broken off because of a disagreement on the Ukrainian issue by 11% of respondents.

Public opinion regarding the war is now set, political scientist Alexei Makarkin told Kommersanta. “The absolute majority have decided on their views,” he said. “Now there are no events that would prompt people to reconsider these views.”

Hardened attitudes

Although Russians have access to various sources of information, they use them mainly to affirm their opinions, Makarkin said. “Information in most cases does not change their approach: if it contradicts their worldview, they almost immediately cut it off.”

According to him, in almost a year and a half since the start of the war, it has managed to “become routine”, and the events related to it do not occupy the Russians in the same way as they did in February 2022 and at the start of “partial mobilisation”. It is unlikely that the failed rebellion of the Wagner PMC will seriously affect their position, he said: “Everything was rapid, everything was very rapid, people did not have time to get scared.”

Kremlin says most Russians support war

On 29 June, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman was asked to comment on “data from an opinion poll according to which the number of Russians who support the special operation is equal to those who are in favour of the negotiation process”, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

Dmitry Peskov replied: “The data that we have is different, it still shows the absolute predominant support for the special operation, the absolute dominant support for the president”.

“Everything is clear there, the methodologies are clear – these are, in fact, provided by the pillars of our sociology,” he said.

He declined to comment on the opinion poll mentioned by the journalists, saying that he was not aware of its methodology, Interfax said.

By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, 7/3/23

Following the attempted coup in Russia carried out by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, US President Joe Biden “made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”

It is not quite so clear that Russian officials believe him. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Russia’s security services are investigating whether Western or Ukrainian intelligence services were involved in the rebellion. Former President and current deputy chairman of the Russian security council Dmitry Medvedev released a statement that it is likely that Western intelligence services were working with Prigozhin.

It is very unclear what happened in Russia that day. But whether or not the US, Ukraine or other Western intelligence services were working with Prigozhin or actively involved in the rebellion, there are other ways to be complicit in a coup. Before the coup, you can enable it by not sharing intelligence that it is being planned; after the coup, you can take advantage of it with information or disinformation that exploits or creates cracks.

Because what happened in Russia is so unclear, what is happening in response in Washington is unclear. But it would be concerning if the US was taking advantage of the attempted coup.

One thing that has become clear is that US intelligence knew in advance that Prigozhin was planning some sort of rebellious military action. CNN reported that US intelligence was aware of Prigozhin’s planning “for quite some time” and that they saw signs of the preparations, including the massing of weapons and ammunition. The New York Times reported that US intelligence briefed military and Biden administration officials that Prigozhin was preparing military action against senior Russian defense officials. But both CNN and The Times say that they did not brief Moscow.

Two reasons for the decision not to inform Moscow are given. Both CNN and The Times report that the motivation was to prevent Putin from weaponizing US knowledge to imply US involvement. The Times adds the second motivation that the US “clearly had little interest in helping Mr. Putin avoid a major, embarrassing fracturing of his support.”

But both explanations are troubling. Not sharing the intelligence with Moscow may create the appearance that the US was not involved. But it also risks, if that lack of sharing becomes known, as it very quickly did, creating the appearance of complicity. And it is complicity. What better way could there have been to demonstrate a lack of complicity in a coup – if you really don’t want it to happen – than to inform Moscow of the intended coup?

The second explanation makes that complicity clear. The US didn’t share the intelligence because – whether or not they thought the mutiny could succeed – they didn’t want to help Putin avoid, at least, the embarrassment.

The denial of knowledge of the coup planning was intended to prevent the appearance that there was complicity; the revelation of the knowledge of the coup planning appears to confirm that there was.

The charge of enabling could be upgraded to involvement if information in the Discord intelligence leaks turn out to be true that Prigozhin had offered Ukrainian intelligence, with whom he was alleged to have maintained secret communications, information on Russian troop locations in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing forces from Bakhmut. If confirmed, such reports would suggest that Prigozhin was collaborating with Western intelligence.

Whether or not the US was involved before the coup, they seem to be taking advantage after the coup. As The Times says, the US has an interest in embarrassing Putin and fracturing his support. Hence the many statements insisting, rightly or wrongly, that Prigozhin’s march reveals the cracks in the Russian military and the weakened position of Putin in Russian politics.

There is also the oddity of one of Prigozhin’s statements just before his rebellion in which he repeated the West’s claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. He said that “There was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24. The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block. The special operation was started for a completely different reason.” What was the real reason? “The war was needed … so that Shoigu could become a marshal, … so that he could get a second ‘Hero’ [of Russia] medal. The war wasn’t needed to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine.”

It is odd that Prigozhin, in the days leading up to his rebellion, was reading off the Western script. It is especially odd since Prigozhin is no supporter of Shoigu – indeed, the removal of Shoigu was one of his key demands – but has been a leading supporter of the war. Prigozhin has called, not for Russia to end the war, but for Russia to fight it more aggressively.

The West has repeated this rejection of Putin’s narrative uncritically, reinforcing the already set public doubt of Putin’s claims of provocation. As if Putin was deceived by an ambitious politician and had not been issuing warnings – along with Yeltsin and Gorbachev before him – about NATO expansion into Ukraine and demilitarization for decades.

The Western media has also shifted a key piece of the narrative to reframe loyalty to Putin at the highest levels to disloyalty to Putin at the highest levels, suggesting instability and cracks and a weakening of Putin’s hold on government.

Prigozhin’s forces were small. Not only much smaller than Russian forces, but much smaller than the picture that he projected. His force of 25,000 was less than a third of that. He probably hoped, if the coup theory is correct – and we don’t even know that yet – that elements of the Russian military would defect to his side. One of the keys to that hoped for defection was General Sergei Surovikin. Surovikin is powerful, influential and respected: even by Prigozhin who, in demanding the removal of Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, nominated Surovikin to replace him.

But rather than defecting and taking part of the Russian army with him, Surovikin publicly condemned Prigozhin, stayed loyal to Putin and implored Prigozhin’s mutineers to lay down their arms. In a video appeal, Surovikin said, “I urge you to stop. The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country. Before it is too late, it is necessary and it is needed to obey the will and order of the popularly elected President of the Russian Federation.”

Many expert commentators see this public appeal as a decisive moment in the rebellion. Many of the Wagner forces, when they realized they were in rebellion against the Russian government and military, reportedly laid down their arms and left. As far as is known at this point, no one in the Russian military, government or security services defected to Prigozhin. No Wagner commanders or officers joined the rebellion.

But the Western media has retold this story to undermine the loyalty narrative and recast Surovikin as the traitor and not the savior.The New York Times accepted the role of lead writer.

On June 27, The Times reported that, according to US officials, Surovikin “had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership.” Despite the richness of the innuendo, of course he had advance knowledge of the rebellion. Everyone at his level of command had advance knowledge of the rebellion. That’s how they made the plans to quickly and effectively stop it. Knowledge does not imply involvement.

The Times, engaging in implication rather than reporting, then says that US officials “are trying to learn if Surovikin “helped plan Mr. Prigozhin’s actions.” That the US is trying to learn if he did does not mean that he did. Nor is it a “sign” that Russian generals “may” have supported Prigozhin, as The Times claims, that Prigozhin “would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power would come to his aid.” He likely did believe that. He was likely wrong.

Employing the word “if” as the foundation of their reporting, The Times then serves up the whole point of the innuendo: “If General Surovikin was involved in last weekend’s events, it would be the latest sign of . . . a wider fracture” in the Russian military and government.

Later in the article, The Times says that the US officials “emphasized that much of what the United States and its allies know is preliminary.” The reporters go on to say, “Still, American officials have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Surovikin.”

Days later, reports broke that Surovikin had been arrested. Many outlets, including The Times, picked up the story. Surovikin, several media outlets reported, has not appeared in public; though his daughter reportedly claims this is untrue and that he is “at his work location.” Stating that the “circumstances surrounding the status of the general, Sergei Surovikin, are still very murky” and that “the reports were not conclusive,” The Times reports that Surovikin “appear[s] to have [been] detained.” What is not often reported is that Surovikin seems to have been detained before The New York Times reported that he knew of the rebellion in advance.

The report then says that “American officials would not say – or do not know – if he was formally arrested or just held for questioning.” That’s a big difference.

Maybe Surovikin has been arrested and maybe he hasn’t. But the story is being used to take advantage of the coup to exploit or create cracks with information or disinformation. Surovikin may have disappeared, and he may have been detained. But if he has been called in for questioning or debriefing that is normal and not news. If he has been called in for interrogation because he is suspected of participating in the rebellion, that is news. But since US officials “do not know,” the headlines and the story seem to be being framed in such a way as to imply cracks and a weakening of Putin’s position.

Weakening Putin’s position may seem to be obviously desirable. However, there are many reasons why removing Putin could lead to a worse alternative for the West. A little discussed one is that the removal of Putin could lead to a replacement with a more hardline foreign policy toward the West. In line behind Putin are hardliners who pushed Putin to go further in 2014 and annex not only Crimea but the Donbas. Putin has been more a restrainer than a hardliner. The leader who emerges victorious from a coup, like Prigozhin, could be a worse hardliner.

It is still very unclear what happened that day in Russia. Time may tell if Biden is telling the truth that the US “had nothing to do with” the coup or if Russian concerns are warranted that they did. But whether they did or whether they didn’t, there are other ways to be complicit in a coup. The US may have been guilty of such complicity before the coup attempt by not sharing intelligence with Russia that the coup was taking shape. And they may be being complicit after the coup attempt by disseminating information or disinformation that exploits or creates cracks that could weaken the Putin government.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.