By Ian Proud, Website, 11/18/24

Ian was a senior officer at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019, at a time when UK-Russia relations were particularly tense. He performed a number of roles in Moscow, including as Head of Chancery, Economic Counsellor – in charge of advising UK Ministers on economic sanctions – Chair of the Crisis Committee, Director of the Diplomatic Academy for Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Vice Chair of the Board at the Anglo-American School. He oversaw the Embassy’s preparations for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia and rebuilt embassy staffing structures following the mass expulsion of staff that followed the March 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attack.

Many western commentators are frantically predicting the imminent onset of World War III following Joe Biden’s decision to permit the use of US ATACMS missiles inside of Russia. The Russian media and political establishment will undoubtedly respond furiously to this move. But much depends on how the missiles are used. With a Trump Presidency on the horizon on a mandate to end the war in Ukraine, I believe Putin will be measured in his response.

Republican commentators have condemned the move by Biden as escalating risk of WWIII

Unlike in 2016, there has been fairly widespread condemnation from supporters of Trump at Biden’s move, which has been viewed as a blatant escalation. Donald Trump Junior went to X to claim the Biden administration was trying to ‘get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.’ Other Republican politicians including Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia have echoed the World War 3 warning. Venture Capitalist and Trump Support David Sacks asked if Biden’s goal was ‘to hand Trump the worst situation possible?’

Biden copies Obama’s final move, to break up the diplomatic ground for an incoming Trump Presidency

Biden’s move was designed to make the diplomatic terrain harder for Trump to navigate on Ukraine policy.

Putin will view it in those terms too.

He will remember that President Obama pulled a similar – though less dangerous – stunt during this final days in office. In one of his final foreign policy moves Obama announced sanctions against Russia for alleged election meddling, and expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the USA. This prompted a frenzy of reporting about how Putin might respond, much like we have seen over the past twenty-four hours. In the end, Putin chose not to respond and, instead, he paused to see where US policy would go under the incoming administration President Trump.

ATACMS decision not as significant as it appears as Zelensky’s hands still tied

Biden’s decision is an extension of the decision from May to allow limited use of US HIMARS systems to hit military installations in the borderlands of Russia to reduce attacks on Kharkiv. Zelensky won’t have weapons free to strike at will within Russia. While escalatory, it is not as significant as it seems.

The indications coming out of the US administration are that the ATACMS missiles may only be used to quell an expected major Russian assault on Ukrainian formations dug in in Kursk oblast.

Biden’s decision an attempt to help Zelensky save face after blunder of Kursk offensive

Ukraine has lost around half of the territory in Kursk that it occupied during its audacious raid in August. Clinging on to that territory until peace talks inevitably happen to end the war, Zelensky has said, will allow him symbolically to trade Russian land for Ukrainian land occupied by Russia. Since the Kursk offensive, Ukraine has lost more land to the relentless, grinding Russian advance in the Donbas, which takes small steps most days. Losing the foothold in Kursk will reveal what many commentators already point out, that the Ukrainian incursion was a strategic blunder by Zelensky that won’t change the outcome of a war he is losing. So, a US decision to permit the use of ATACMS at best is an attempt by the Biden Administration to help Zelensky save face.

Russia’s response will depend on actual ATACMS strikes

With the use of ATACMS entirely dependent on US intelligence and targeting, it is unlikely that the outgoing Biden administration will permit wider attacks outside of the Kursk theatre or in military centres that are in range of Kursk. However, we have yet to see how the missiles will be used and Putin will take his cue from that, rather than acting pre-emptively.

Putin will have to respond in some way

However, and despite the use of HIMARS already inside of Russia, Putin will have to reciprocate in some way, having said on screen in St Petersburg in September that he would. He doesn’t have the political space not to act.

Putin has been here before and probably won’t overreact

Putin knows that a major Russian retaliation that targeted US military or other assets would make it far harder for Trump to sue for peace between Russia and Ukraine, as he has promised to do. I assess it unlikely that Putin would escalate to a nuclear level on the back of what is essentially a tactical change in western weapons’ use. He won’t want to close off any space that Trump has to negotiate, which is Biden’s aim in taking the ATACMS decision.

While he has the resources and political support to continue bleeding Ukraine white, the war in Ukraine still comes at a significant economic and human cost to Russia. Trump offers a potential off-ramp that would leave Putin in a better position that he was in March 2022, when the US and UK blocked the Istanbul peace agreement.

Putin will be happy for Russian state commentators to whip up the risk of over-escalation

As happened in late 2016, Putin will undoubtedly encourage Russian talking heads to sow panic in the western media about a Russian over-escalation. That will give him space to respond in a moderate way and illuminate the western press as hysterical and Russophobic, a common attack line.

More likely, he will:

• up strategic attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine;
• possibly target NATO weapons’ distribution hubs in Poland;
• make a limited and pre-signaled strike on a US military facility in Europe or elsewhere.

The risk to the UK and France

There are signals that the UK and France are following America’s move in possibly authorising the use of Storm Shadow and Scalp Cruise Missiles inside of Russia. I believe the same limitations on targeting would apply, as above. The same risks of a limited Russian strike on UK and French assets therefore apply.

However, the bigger risk is that a Trump Administration will reverse the decision on ATACMS use inside of Russia, leaving both countries on a limb in which Ukraine still hits Russia with their weapons while Trump pushes for peace talks between Zelensky and Putin.

That will mean France and Britain have a bigger climb down from their position of unquestioning support for war in Ukraine, when ceasefire talks start. In Britain in particular, that may increase pressure on the government’s enormous spending on supporting the ongoing war, at a time when taxes are taking a massive hike and the cost of living crisis continues. There is more scope for France to pivot its position within the EU, which will be unable to match US financial military support for Ukraine if Trump pushes, instead for peace.

Keir Starmer has already got off to a bad start with Trump but sending Labour party activists to support the Harris campaign. He risks leaving the UK increasingly isolated and irrelevant on Ukraine policy. Plus ca change!

For now, don’t expect World War III to start overnight. Keep calm and carry on pressing for this mindless war to end.

***

RT: Republicans condemn ATACMS use for strikes deep inside Russia

The US, along with France and the UK, has reportedly permitted Kiev to use long-range missiles for strikes deep into Russia. The French SCALPs and British Storm Shadows have a range of about 250 kilometers, while the new American ATACMS can reach up to 300 kilometers. In response, Trump’s team accuses the Biden administration of escalating tensions and bringing the world closer to a larger conflict. RT’s senior correspondent Murad Gazdiev reports on this significant escalation.

Rumble video here.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 10/31/24

No one expected Vladimir Putin to last more than a few weeks when he was appointed prime minister a quarter century ago by then-President Boris Yeltsin. At the time, the relatively unknown, seemingly unremarkable ex-KGB agent was simply next in line after a series of failed prime ministers selected by the fading president amid spiraling crises in Russia.

But last Mr. Putin did. An entire generation has grown up knowing no other leader. Today, having been reelected to another six-year Kremlin term earlier this year, he has never looked so firmly in control.

Still, the reasons for Mr. Putin’s extraordinary ability to ride the Russian tiger so effectively for so long remain obscure.

His supporters seldom mention any unusual qualities such as charisma, infallibility, or wisdom. They tend to point to the way Russia has transformed over 2 1/2 decades: from a dysfunctional, crime-ridden post-Soviet wreck to an orderly, relatively prosperous society where people can say they feel proud to be Russian. Most of the reforms that have remade Russia were not begun by Mr. Putin, but have reached fruition under his watch.

A good example is private ownership of land, which is now a universal right. Over the past 15 years or so, the right to sell and repurpose land has produced suburban sprawl around most Russian cities that’s reminiscent of North America in the 1950s and also, along with other factors, has led to a boom in agriculture. It may not seem impressive to Westerners, but millions of contemporary homeowners are the first Russians in a thousand years – other than a czar – who can point to a piece of land and say, “I own this” with full legal control and freedom.

“We don’t ask why Putin is popular. It just doesn’t seem like the right question,” says Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow. “We concentrate on the life around us. It seems to me that when the state and society have their own separate spheres, and don’t interfere too much with each other, life is OK. Putin seems to have found a formula that, at least so far, works.”

Better than the 1990s?

Mr. Putin has survived a string of harsh challenges, any of which might have wrecked the careers of many politicians. They include a tragic disaster with the sunken submarine Kursk in his first year as president, financial crisis, the seemingly irreparable rupture of relations with the West, and the most intense blizzard of sanctions ever leveled against a country. He has also faced a military mutiny that featured a march on Moscow, and a costly, still-ongoing war in Ukraine that he appears to have started without consulting even many of his closest advisers.

Throughout all this, Mr. Putin’s public approval rating has seldom dipped below 60% and is currently running around 80%.

“In Russian society, there is a solid base of support for the country’s leader, where about two-thirds of people express loyalty regardless of the current policy,” says Alexei Levinson, an expert with the Levada Center, an independent [western backed] polling agency. “The lowest points occurred at times of economic hardship, when the population expressed its discontent,” while imperial successes, such as the 2008 war in Georgia and the 2014 annexation of Crimea, tended to boost support by up to 20%.

And while political freedoms have contracted, especially since the war in Ukraine began, the private lives of the conforming majority have remained largely untouched. For Russians over 40 years old, the cataclysmic 1990s appear to be the main reference point.

“Perhaps Putin had a good team, but they were able to overcome the difficult crises of the 1990s, with all that disorder, chaos, and banditry,” says Marina, a working Moscow pensioner. “We’ve had a lot of experience with things going wrong, so obviously we cherish stability and calm. It’s hard to imagine anyone but Putin at the top of this country.”

“Putin was the one”

Even Russian opposition figures, many of whom are in exile these days, don’t seem to agree on the sources of Mr. Putin’s political resilience.

Some point to the aura of state propaganda, in which most independent and opposition voices are banished from the official airwaves. Others say deepening repressions, especially since the Ukraine war began, have created an atmosphere of fear that makes any discussion of genuine popularity impossible. Still others stress traditional Russian political culture, and say Mr. Putin has ensconced himself as a czar who is seen by the population as above any sort of democratic accountability.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter-turned-opponent who is now living in exile, says Mr. Putin answered society’s need for a strong hand following the devastating decade of the ’90s, when society collapsed, the economy imploded, and all efforts to build democracy appeared to fail. “Putin was the one who could satisfy this demand,” he says.

At first, Mr. Putin recognized the need to integrate Russia into the wider world led by the West, he says. But since then, he’s discovered that stoking nationalism and blaming the external enemy for Russia’s troubles is a better formula.

“When the external agenda dominates, the authorities look like strong patriots, and the opposition appears to be a bunch of traitors,” Mr. Gallyamov says. “When the focus is on internal affairs, people see the authorities as corrupt, looking out only for their own interests. … The principle that ‘Russia is surrounded by enemies’ has always worked well in the past.”

A comfortable mystery

Everyone agrees that Mr. Putin has changed over the years, reinventing his public image even as the country and its society evolved.

Recently the Minchenko Consulting group in Moscow issued an analysis that attempts to define Mr. Putin’s changing role in Russian society. Using a framing largely in line with Russian mainstream thinking, it presents him first as a “warrior” who restored order to a badly fractured country, defeating Chechen separatists and exiling delinquent oligarchs, in the early 2000s.

Then, it says, he morphed into a “caring ruler,” presiding over a surge of market-driven growth and the creation of Russia’s first-ever working consumer economy. In his latest incarnation, Mr. Putin is presented more as a global “creator,” or a leader who drives the establishment of a new world order with an entirely new role for Russia.

And the state-funded RT global TV network recently released a tool that divides Mr. Putin’s 25 years into three distinct periods, and uses artificial intelligence to convert key speeches from each into clear, spoken English.

“It just remains a mystery, but one that most Russians seem comfortable with,” says Mr. Mukhin. “When Putin came to power, things started to work. People are afraid of him, yes, but it’s hard to imagine an alternative. He exercises a kind of alchemy, maybe, but very many people see him as a genuine leader.”

YouTube link here.

“In a last ditch effort to cement his legacy as an absolute lunatic, outgoing President Joe Biden has approved the use of American ATACMS by Ukrainian proxy forces for attacks inside Russian territory.” – Active Measures

By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 11/13/24

Ever since the outcome of the presidential election was clear on 6 November; all attention of American political analysts has been directed to whom Donald Trump will choose to fill the key positions in his administration on the understanding that such individuals equate with policy. Today, when names have been put to most of the slots which the Russians would call ‘power ministries’ in any government, the Kremlin has made public its conclusions about the individuals named and about the policies they expect Trump 2.0 to implement in general and towards themselves in particular.

In the past I would never have suggested that I divine what Vladimir Putin, or more broadly what ‘the Kremlin’ thinks on any given subject. But since that is precisely the phrasing that is used by my host on ‘Judging Freedom,’ I have stopped arguing and regularly use the most authoritative political talk show in Russia, ‘The Great Game,’ hosted principally by the hereditary Kremlin insider Vycheslav Nikonov, with guest panelists from the leading universities and think tanks, to represent what Vladimir Putin and his closest confidantes are thinking.

And so, as the Brits love to say, let’s get cracking.

*****

The single most important observation by ‘the Kremlin’ is that all of the key nominees, namely Mike Waltz for National Security Advisor, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense; John Ratcliffe at the CIA, and (presumably) Marco Rubio as Secretary of State are soft on Russia and hard on China. This all supports the notion that Donald Trump genuinely wants to end the Ukraine war as soon as possible so that he can focus U.S: foreign policy on this other greater concern, and in this connection he is likely to respond positively to Russia’s terms for peace, including their claims to the Donbas and Novaya Rossiya oblasts that they have annexed and their demand that Ukraine be a neutral state without any prospects of joining Nato, without having foreign troops and installations on their territory.

Under the same logic, the Kremlin assumes that the USA under Trump however pro-Israeli it may be, will press Israel to de-escalate its campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, and to conclude cease-fires as soon as possible. Moreover, the Kremlin does not expect the enmity towards Iran among several of those named in the Trump team to translate into hostilities of any kind. Indeed, given his pleasure in doing the unexpected, as was the case in his dealings with the North Korean leader, Trump is seen as possibly opening a dialogue with Teheran now and reducing tensions there.

Otherwise Nikonov and his panelists reported with some amusement on the likely changes at the Pentagon both before the confirmation in the Senate of Hegseth and after. They mentioned specifically the firing of the generals and others responsible for the debacle of America’s exit from Afghanistan and the purge of generals who in one way or another owed their promotions to the ideological agenda of the Democrats favoring gender equality, nontraditional sexual orientation and the like over merit. In this regard, they noted that the head of the Air Force Brown, present head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be flung out early in the new administration.

The panelists on The Great Game do their homework: they read both major US and UK mainstream press such as The Washington Post and The Economist as well as the leading American professional journals such as Foreign Affairs. Accordingly they quoted today from the latest article by Harvard professor Stephen Walt clearly conceding that Ukraine has lost the war and should sue for peace now; accepting Russian terms, while there is still something of their country left to save.

The Kremlin is taking great comfort in the latest professional commentary in the USA to the effect that it must reconcile itself to being just a major superpower among others that has no ‘exceptional’ status. All-in-all that comes to what Vladimir Putin has been saying at least since 2013, when he spoke of growing trust with Barack Obama after their deal on destruction of Syrian chemical weapons but still upbraided Obama for his retaining the unacceptable characterization of his country that had been given by Madeleine Albright as standing taller than others and seeing farther.

Russian television reporting on the war remains upbeat, very confident that it is going well in part thanks to the Zelensky’s grievous strategic mistake in committing so much of his best trained reserves to the hopeless invasion of Russia’s Kursk region where they are now being pulverized.

*****

Despite the waves of news coming out of the Middle East each day, there are many developments of great importance that are under-reported. One of those in the past 24 hours was the missile and drone attack on the U.S; aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its squadron in the Red Sea by the Houthis of Yemen. The Houthis were the first to announce that their mission was successful. The Pentagon spokesman in Washington confirmed to assembled journalists that an attack took place but said that no military personnel were injured and that the drones were all destroyed. This spokesman did not say anything about the ship-busting Palestine 2 hypersonic ballistic missiles that were allegedly used by the Houthis as part of the attack, and so perhaps there was some serious damage to the ships.

So far, so good. We may assume that the missiles were provided to the Houthis by Iran. But who gave them the precise coordinates of the ships, likely obtained from satellites overhead, shall we say by Russian satellites. This is similar to the question of the Russian role in countering the Israeli attack on Iran a week ago. For the moment the Pentagon seems to avoid speaking of the Russian activities in the Middle East even as it overventilates describing the way the Russians have integrated 10,000 North Korean infantry into their 50,000 man force that is about to crush or drive from Kursk what remains of the Ukrainian invasion force.

****

Finally, I direct attention to the confused use of political nomenclature used by the American media, both mainstream and alternative media, as they put labels on each and every nominee by Trump for his incoming administration. Most commonly we hear that candidate X or Y is a ‘Neocon’ when what is really meant is that they just take aggressive stands on international issues. After all, behind the true Neocons like Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan there is an entire ideology, not merely the will to subdue one or another potential geopolitical competitor of the United States. That ideology is founded on the belief that they see the direction history is taking and want to accelerate that trend by staging coups d’etat or orange revolutions here and there, for example.

In this sense, I maintain that the America First promoters whom Trump is nominating are not Neocons, whereas those whom he has specifically rejected like Bolton are.

I also call attention to the US media confusion over Trump’s position against globalism. Globalism is also a whole ideology based on the premise that in our age the business of running the world can be left to transational corporations and other supranational organizations. Such views are essentially a denial of national sovereignty, just as the free movement of people across borders to seek employment where they will is a denial of sovereignty.

And so, in the end, there is indeed a closeness between the conservative; shall we say ‘retro’ political thinking of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. But it is not in what Trump’s enemies are suggesting, namely that he admires strongmen rulers, authoritarians and dictators and wishes to be one himself. No, what they have in common is the pride of place they both give to national sovereignty. And; to give credit where it is due, this all goes back to 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia, and the then belief that the nation state is the best defender of the freedoms of their citizens.

By Anatol Lieven, The Nation, 10/29/24

Whoever wins the US election, the start of a new administration should be an opportunity for a serious reevaluation of US policy toward the war in Ukraine. For it is abundantly clear that the present course is unsustainable, and if persisted in, is likely to lead sooner or later either to Ukrainian collapse or to direct NATO involvement in war with Russia. This is indeed now tacitly admitted by some US commentators like Robert Kagan, though he has not been willing to tell Americans that they must go to war in order to prevent Ukrainian defeat or a compromise peace.

The news from the Ukrainian front line is grim. Ukrainian forces are heavily outnumbered and outmatched in artillery and ammunition. There are growing signs of exhaustion, demoralization, desertion, and evasion of service by both the elites and ordinary people. Russian success is grounded in the fact that Russia simply has far greater resources than Ukraine in terms of both industry and manpower. It has been able to recruit hundreds of thousands of new troops by paying them very high wages, up to six times the average salaries in the regions from which they are drawn.

Ukrainians and Western hawks claim that more Western weapons will make a critical difference; and indeed, if some of these had been provided in 2022, when the Russian armed forces were outnumbered and in serious disarray, they might have led to much greater Ukrainian success. Now however, so great is the Russian advantage that Western supplies can make little difference.

Western industry cannot produce anything like the number of artillery shells Ukraine needs; the USA cannot provide sufficient air defense systems to Israel and Ukraine and keep enough for a possible war with China. And above all, NATO cannot manufacture more soldiers for Ukraine. The German government has already declared that it is freezing military aid, and will cut aid to Ukraine by almost half next year, and by more than 90 percent by 2027.

Faced with this reality, Western advocates of unconditional support for complete Ukrainian victory are becoming increasingly desperate. Earlier this year, we were told by the likes of retired Gen. Ben Hodges that the (genuine) success of Ukrainian missiles and drones in driving the Russian Black Sea Fleet from its bases in Crimea meant that these could also drive the Russian army from Crimea and somehow regain it for Ukraine (after he told us in June 2023 that Ukraine could “free Crimea by the end of summer”). Then, we were told that the (genuine but very limited) Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region of Russia marked a turning point in the war. Now, we are being told that allowing Ukraine to fire missiles guided by US satellites into Russia will allow Ukraine to transform the war.

It is true that the Ukrainian forces, with tremendous grit, are forcing the Russians to advance very slowly, and are inflicting heavy casualties. Together with the war weariness of much of the Russian population, and Russian economic problems, this could allow Ukraine to reach a peace settlement that would limit Russian territorial gains, and, while excluding NATO membership, allow Ukraine to seek membership of the European Union at some point in the future. This would be very painful for Ukrainians, but it would still be a great triumph in historical terms, and vastly better than what they are likely to get if the war continues. Headlines like “Ukraine must turn the tide before it can negotiate” are, however, meaningless, if by this is meant not just conducting a dogged fighting retreat but also driving the Russians back.

Tragically, the Ukrainian government and Western establishments have so often condemned the very idea of a compromise peace and insisted on complete Ukrainian victory that it is now very difficult for them to change course. They have also by now uttered so often the argument that if Putin is allowed to keep southeastern Ukraine he will go on to attack NATO that they may even have come to believe this nonsense themselves.

A more cogent argument, advanced for example by Ivan Krastev in the Financial Times, is that with the Russian army advancing, Putin has no incentive to seek peace at present; and that his offer of a ceasefire in return for Ukrainian withdrawal from the cities of Zaporizhia and Kherson (claimed but not occupied by Russia) is completely unacceptable.

This is true as far as it goes, but the counterargument is that we cannot discover which Russian conditions are absolute, and which negotiable, until we enter into negotiations with Russia; and starting negotiations does not mean accepting initial Russian terms. Members of the Russian establishment have suggested to me the possibility that in return for a treaty of neutrality excluding NATO membership, Russia would give up further territorial ambitions.

Let us make this suggestion in private and see what Moscow’s response is. Even better, empower neutral powers like India and Brazil to make such proposals for peace to the Russians. Given the effort that the Russian government has put into wooing these states and the “global majority,” it would be very difficult for it to spurn a peace initiative from them.

Western support to Ukraine should continue during negotiations so that the Ukrainian forces can continue to fall back slowly and inflict heavy casualties, thereby encouraging the Russians to accept a compromise. We must not, however, delude ourselves either that our support will last indefinitely, or that it can possibly help Ukraine to regain territory that it has lost. We therefore have no honest and viable alternative to also putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to accept a compromise peace.

If the next US administration fails to adopt this course, then there is a serious risk that, like First World War armies after years of trench warfare, the Ukrainian army will eventually collapse. Washington will find itself faced with a choice between accepting severe Ukrainian defeat or intervening directly and risking—or even ensuring—nuclear war with Russia. We must hope that the leaders of the next administration will have the intellectual clarity and the moral courage to recognize this, and act accordingly.