The Bell, 5/11/24

Putin’s ‘May decree’ sets ambitious development targets

Vladimir Putin has followed each of his inaugurations as Russian president since 2012 by issuing a new “May decree.” And this week – which saw him embark on his fifth presidential term – was no exception. After the formal ceremony in the Kremlin on Tuesday, Putin signed a decree that sets out a series of targets for Russia’s development. They extend not just for the six years of his current term in office, but through 2036.

In official circles, these decrees enjoy a hallowed status very similar to the five-year plans that were promulgated with great fanfare by the Soviet authorities. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, this practice was quietly forgotten. 

Putin’s most recent “May decree” reflects a general move towards state capitalism, interventionist government and economic isolationism. One of the main measurable economic targets it sets is that Russia should break into the top four nations in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). According to the World Bank, in 2022, Russia was in fifth place, just ahead of Germany. IMF calculations, however, put Russia in sixth. To get to fourth, Russia would need to overtake Japan within six years. This may be achievable given Japan’s economic stagnation (in the last decade its economy grew by an average of just 0.8% each year). Russia’s current economic growth is driven by oil windfalls and high levels of state spending. It seems the Kremlin expects more of the same in the coming six years.

The decree also promised increased labor productivity, and a fall in structural unemployment. Apparently this will happen thanks to the development of innovative technology. However, this process will be hampered by Western sanctions. If it falls short, Russia will have to choose between low unemployment, and high productivity. 

Another goal is to reduce the Gini coefficient – which measures income inequality – to 0.37 (a score of 0 is considered to mean a perfectly equal society). The Gini coefficient in Russia last year was 0.403 (up from a historic low of 0.395 in 2022). Inequality in Russia traditionally grows along with an expanding economy: the rich get richer faster than the poor see their incomes rise. But the nature of the current cycle of economic growth may mean a different outcome: spending on the war has caused lower income groups to gain wealth faster.

The decree also envisages the Russian stock market to grow to two-thirds of GDP (from its current level of one-third). That means average annual growth of 12%. This is achievable if the Central Bank is able to reduce interest rates, and avoid economic shocks. In 2023 the stock market grew 43% after à slump of 2022, but is still well below the pre-invasion level.

The decree is also designed to help achieve greater economic self-sufficiency. Imports are ordered to fall to 17% of GDP (they are currently worth 19% of GDP). However, there will almost certainly be problems with this. For example, the decree calls for 50% of Russia’s civil aviation fleet to be domestically produced by 2030. This contradicts a 2022 aviation industry development program, which envisaged hitting the 50% mark by 2027 and achieving 1,440 domestically produced planes (almost 82% of the fleet) by 2030. However, by the beginning of this year it was clear the program could not be realized.

The goal for Russia’s average life expectancy has also been adjusted. By 2030, this is now supposed to be 78 years (the current figure for Saudi Arabia). However, that was originally the target for 2024. Current life expectancy in Russia is 73.5 years. Few people remember that, back in 2012, Putin’s first May decree promised a life expectancy of 74 years by 2018.

In all the targets and goals, there is no mention of increased competition, or a more open economy. This implies that the state’s dominant role in the economy is set to continue. 

Finally, it seems clear that the 2024 decree is only achievable if the economy grows, and spending levels remain high. Notably, neither the 2012 decree, nor the one issued in 2018, was fully achieved. Several targets that were set back then, such as life expectancy, remained unfulfilled. Others have been officially scrapped.

Indeed, these May decrees could be appropriately characterized with a quote from German social democrat Eduard Bernstein that is often used by Putin (though he falsely attributes it to Leon Trotsky): “The movement is everything, the final goal is nothing.” 

Why the world should care

Putin’s “May decrees” are different from Soviet five-year plans because they lack a lot of detail, and have significantly fewer goals. Yet they set even more ambitious targets than the five-year plans. As in the Soviet Union, failures to meet the targets are swept under the carpet rather than being publicly called out and punished.

EU to send frozen Russian funds to Ukraine

EU ambassadors agreed Wednesday to send frozen Russian funds to Ukraine. We’re talking about roughly €3 billion a year that is generated by about €229 billion of Russian Central Bank reserves currently frozen in Europe. €190 billion of this is held at Belgium’s Euroclear depositary. In total, approximately €260 billion in Russian funds are frozen in G7 countries. 

• Since the invasion of Ukraine, Euroclear has earned about €5 billion in profits from the Russian investments. Earnings from before 2024 will be set aside in case of legal challenges from Russia (they are already on the way). Of the remaining sum, 90% will be spent on weapons and military assistance. The rest will be used for humanitarian aid – a compromise achieved with neutral EU countries: Austria, Hungary, Malta.
• The decision puts an end to efforts by the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to persuade the EU to seize all of Russia’s frozen assets in support of Ukraine. And it comes despite efforts by some nations to ensure the funds remain untouched. Outlet Politico reported last month that China, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia had been actively lobbying EU politicians not to yield to U.S. and UK pressure over the Russian assets.
• For the moment, the EU plan is to tax the frozen Russian assets, generating funds to aid Ukraine that will be collected twice a year. However, they could be used in a different way if the G7 summit in June approves NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg’s plan to create a $50 billion fund to aid Ukraine. Either way, the principle will remain the same: profits from Russian investments will go to Ukraine, but the reserves will remain in Russian hands. At least for now.

Why the world should care

While Russia will undoubtedly say that the EU’s seizure of these profits is theft, it will be more interesting to see if they take any concrete steps. It’s hard to imagine that the Kremlin will opt for a dramatic move like nationalizing all foreign assets owned by “unfriendly” countries. Even stripping foreign companies of their Russian profits would only accelerate the departure of Western companies from Russia – something Moscow does not really want. On the other hand, if the response is limited to scooping up profits from funds that foreigners hold in C-type accounts in Russia, it will have no significant consequences.

Figures of the week

Amid payment complications, exports of Chinese goods to Russia fell 15.5% to $8.3 billion in April compared with the same month a year ago. Although China’s overall exports are up, this was the second month in a row that volumes to Russia recorded a fall. However, these statistics may be misleading as some Chinese goods may have been rerouted to Russia via third countries. China’s trade balance with Russia remains negative at -$3.1 billion.

Russia’s oil-and-gas revenues came to 1.23 trillion rubles in April. That’s far more than usual, but the surge was driven by a one-off tax on additional income from extraction worth 450 billion rubles. Under Russia’s budget rules, currency purchases in May will be 110.9 billion rubles, or 5.6 billion rubles per day. That’s less than the 11.8 billion per day the Central Bank will sell on the market. This will help prop up the ruble. 

Inflation in Russia from April 23 to May 2 (a 10-day period) was 0.06%, compared to 0.08% between April 16 and April 22 and 0.12% from April 9 to April 15. Weekly inflation is still slowing despite the “extra” holiday days. The main reason is a fall in prices for air travel (which shoot up in April as the May holiday season approaches, then cool during the holiday itself). Annual inflation in Russia on May 2 slowed to 7.64% from 7.82% on April 22.

Further reading

Russia’s Pro-Putin Elites. How the Dictator Recruited Them to His Anti-Western Agenda

Behind the Scenes: China’s Increasing Role in Russia’s Defense Industry

The smuggling trail keeping Russian passenger jets in the air

Trump Is Unlikely to Abandon Ukraine—and Might Dangerously Escalate the War

The Cost of Russia’s Friendship With Azerbaijan

By Simon Saradzhyan, Russia Matters, 4/12/24

The share of Russians who would like to leave Russia for permanent residence in another country has reached a record low, according to the results of a national poll conducted by Russia’s Levada Center on March 21-27, 2024.

This center has been measuring Russians’ attitudes toward emigration since 1990, registering peaks in the share of Russians who would like to leave for greener pastures in May 2011, May 2013 and May 2021. In all three instances, the share of Russians who answered “definitely yes” or “likely yes” when asked “Would you like to move abroad for permanent residence?” totaled 22% (see Figure 1). In comparison, Levada’s more recent measurements show that right after Vladimir Putin sent troops to re-invade Ukraine in February 2022, this share was 10% (March 2022), which then increased to 11% in February 2023, before declining again in March 2024 to an all-time record low of 9%. At the same time, in the period since Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine, the share of those who would not want to move abroad increased from 79% to a record high of 90% (see Figure 1). These measurements by Levada, which is the most renowned of Russia’s independent pollsters in spite of increasing constraints on the activities of such pollsters, aligns with the findings of the state-owned Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), which claims that its March 2024 poll revealed that the share of Russians who want to leave Russia for permanent residency abroad and the share of Russians who don’t reached a record low (5%) and a record high (93%), respectively, since 1991.

To some extent, the recent decreases in the share of those who’d like to leave Russia, as measured by Levada, may be explained by the departure of up to 920,000 people from Russia in 2022-2024, with these emigres no longer participating in Levada’s polls. That said, one should not overestimate the impact of the departure of less than 1% of Russia’s population on Russia’s domestic public opinions. The latter is probably influenced much more heavily by the increasing persecution of individual freedoms of speech coupled with a surge in Russians’ reporting of political dissent to the authorities. Together, this makes an increasing number of people reluctant to speak their minds to a person on the phone identifying themselves as a pollster. The Kremlin’s efforts to boost what some call patriotism and others call propaganda may have also played a significant role in shaping Russians’ opinions on the acceptability of leaving Russia for good, especially after the launch of the invasion that the Kremlin initially called a “special military operation” in Ukraine, but which it now describes as a war against the West with Russia’s very existence at stake.

Many of those who did leave Russia after the invasion were young, with one March 2023 survey by OK Russians putting the average age of those who had left at 32. That younger Russians are more inclined to leave follows from Levada’s March 2024 poll as well, but even among young Russians, those who would like to stay constitute a distinct majority. When asked by Levada in March 2024 whether they would like to move abroad permanently, 12% of Russians of all ages answered in the affirmative. In comparison, 15% of both 18-24-year-olds and 25-39-year-olds responded affirmatively (see Table 1).

Moreover, concern about being called up to participate in Russia’s war in Ukraine was far from the top reason behind Russians’ desires to relocate in March 2024. When asked what makes them think about leaving Russia (multiple answers allowed), mobilization fears ranked 10th with 16%. The top three reasons for wanting to move were: the desire to ensure a decent future for their children abroad (43%); the political situation in Russia (36%); and the economic situation in Russia (also 36%, see Table 2). Of the countries Russians were eager to relocate to, the U.S. topped the list (11%), followed by Germany (8%) and Italy and Turkey (6% each). China ranked 10-11 along with Canada (each with 3%, see Table 3). That seven out of the top 11 countries Russians would like to relocate to are members of the collective West, with 46% interested in moving to these countries, also shows the limits of the Kremlin’s efforts to instill anti-Western sentiments in the Russian public.

The intensity of the intention to relocate should not be overestimated, however. When asked to what extent they are ready to permanently relocate abroad, 0% said they were collecting and preparing documents for departure (also 0% in February 2022), and 0% said they had made a firm decision to leave (1% in February 2022). Some 3% said they are thinking about relocation options (6% in February 2022), and 7% said they sometimes think about it. Meanwhile, 89% said they have not thought about relocating, compared to 78% in February 2022.

Finally, not every Russian takes kindly to their relocating compatriots, to put it mildly. When asked who they think is leaving Russia today (asked in March 2024, multiple answers allowed), 43% said “traitors.” Only 13% described those leaving Russia to settle in other countries as “smart, educated, talented people,” with another 13% saying these emigres wanted to ensure their children’s future (see Table 4).

Intellinews, 5/13/24

Russian President Vladimir Putin fired his long-standing friend Sergei Shoigu as head of the Defence Minister and replaced him with economist Andrei Belousov as part of a government reshuffle following his inauguration last week.

Speculation about Shoigu’s imminent departure has been swirling for several weeks after his deputy Timur Ivanov was recently arrested for massive and conspicuous corruption.

Shoigu, who has served in government since 1991, is not popular with the military so the change is seen as Putin shoring up his control over the military and the appointment of Belousov will place more emphasis on running Russia’s increasingly militarised economy.

Belousov is close to Putin but a rival of the technocratic Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who kept his job in the new government. He also has no experience of running a ministry, nor does he have any military experience.

He has largely played an advisory role to Putin for most of his career. In 2000, Belousov became an adviser to the Russian prime minister and then in 2006 the deputy minister economy ministry. From 2008 to 2012, he was director of the department for economics and finance in the years when Putin was prime minister. Belousov was Russia’s economy minister in 2012-2013, an aide to Putin in 2013-2020, and first deputy prime minister in 2020-2024. Belousov is very religious and favours Keynesianism economics of state-backed stimulus to promote growth.

In the previous government he was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister to supervise national projects, finance, foreign trade and counteraction to sanctions. He will also be responsible for the institutes of development, such as VEB.RF.

Belousov was the author of investments planned for the 12 national projects that have come back to prominence recently, and Mishustin was hired to implement them. Belousov was also behind the decision to hike VAT by 20% at the start of 2019. Belousov graduated from Moscow State University’s Faculty of Economics in 1981 with distinction and like Putin is a practitioner of martial arts, sambo and karate. He was exempted from the national service all Russian men have to perform.

Belousov is best known for proposing a super tax on the oligarchs in 2018 to pay for Putin’s May Decrees spending that increased wages in the regions among other things.

Bring Belousov in as the Defence Ministry suggests that the war spending on militarising the economy will now be dovetailed with the increased spending on the National Projects 2.0 that Putin recently announced.

As bne IntelliNews has reported, the National Projects and the military spending has become a boon for the Russian economy after the basic strategy of Putinomics changed and the Kremlin has started spending freely. Russia’s poorest regions have been the biggest winners as the military Keynesianism has boosted incomes in the far-flung regions that have largely been ignored for most of the last three decades.

“It’s very important to put the security economy in line with the economy of the country so that it meets the dynamics of the current moment,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Shoigu assumed leadership of the defence ministry in 2012 after his tenure as the emergency services minister. Shoigu was previously one Russia’s most popular ministers after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, which he was credited with orchestrating, but has been criticised for his poor handling of the military campaign in Ukraine. Under intense pressure after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Shoigu disappeared from view for two weeks, rumoured to have suffered from a massive heart attack.

Putin moved Shoigu sideways, appointing him to the powerful post of secretary of Russia’s security council, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Shoigu replaces another long-time Putin ally, former FSB boss Nikolai Patrushev, who has been the council’s secretary since 2008.

Patrushev’s eldest son, who has been Agricultural Minister, was rumoured to be a possible replacement for Shoigu at the Defence Ministry, but instead has been promoted to deputy prime minister, the most powerful of the “golden youth” of the children of oligarchs and ministers in power.

Shoigu has faced criticism from Russia’s military for mishandling the war effort in Ukraine. Specifically, when Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin mutinied earlier this year, he called for Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov to be removed from office. Shoigu was in the process of taking the control of Wagner under the direct control of the Defence Ministry at the time, a process that has now been completed.

Gerasimov continues to head the army and lead the war effort in Ukraine, but it is not clear if he will retain his job as Russia’s top general. Peskov said that a decision has not been made “yet.” It is also not clear what job, if any, Patrushev senior will be given.

Some analysts believe that Belousov is a temporary appointment and that either he will be replaced, or at least more serious military figures will be appointed around him to placate any criticism from the military bloc. Belousov is known as a supporter of boosting military spending and increasingly mobilising Russia’s economy for the war effort.

Belousov’s job is “to integrate the military-industrial complex into the country’s economy,” Peskov said in comments on May 12, adding a civilian was appointed to head the defence minister as ” the ministry should be open to innovation and progressive ideas.” Veteran Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also kept his job so far, although it is known that he has wanted to retire for some time.

Cabinet:

Andrey Belousov – Minister of Defence

Sergei Lavrov – Minister of Foreign Affairs

Konstantin Chuychenko – head of the Ministry of Justice

Vladimir Kolokoltsev – head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Alexander Kurenkov – head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations

Alexander Bortnikov – Director of the FSB

Sergei Naryshkin – head of the SVR

Viktor Zolotov – head of the Russian National Guard

Dmitry Kochnev – head of the Federal Protective Service (including presidents security service)

***

More information on the new Defense Minister Belousov from The Bell:

Who is Andrei Belousov? 

Belousov is often dubbed Putin’s closest economic advisor. There is some truth in that. He has worked directly with Putin in various roles since 2008. “A statesman surrounded by enemies,” was how one government source described him to The Bell in 2018. Since being appointed first deputy prime minister in 2020, Belousov has lived up to that description, actively sniffing out and seizing excess profits from commodities companies to bankroll his notion of a high-spending powerful central government.

• Andrei Belousov was born in 1959. He graduated from the prestigious Moscow School of Physics and Mathematics No. 2 and the economics faculty at Moscow State University. He followed in the professional footsteps of his father, a famous Soviet economist who worked on preparing the Kosygin economic reforms in 1965. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Belousov worked at the Institute of National Economic Forecasting at the Russian Academy of Sciences, then set up his own Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-term Forecasting. In 2006, German Gref made him his deputy at the economy ministry and in 2008, when Putin began his four-year term as Dmitry Medvedev’s prime minister, Belousov became director of the government’s department of economics and finance. By then he had become renowned as a competent economic forecaster, his reputation burnished by successfully predicting the 2008 economic crisis in a report published three years earlier.
• Inside government, Belousov became known as Putin’s man. In 2013 he was appointed to a key role as economic aide to the presidential administration. All papers and economic proposals intended for Putin came through Belousov, a federal official told The Bell. In 2020, Belousov became first deputy prime minister with responsibility for economic policy in a major government reshuffle that saw Mishustin replace Medvedev.
• Belousov has his own vision of how Russia’s economy should operate and works hard to bring his ideas into reality, another official said. Crucially, Putin listens to him. Belousov is an uncompromising believer in the state and sees a “circle of enemies” surrounding Russia, another source told The Bell. “In 2014 he was the only one of Putin’s economic circle to support the annexation of Crimea,” they said.
• Belousov has always urged for increased government spending. Back in the mid-2000s, as Gref’s deputy, he argued with then Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin that the oil windfalls kept in the Stabilization Fund should be spent on infrastructure projects rather than saved.
• To build up the government’s bankroll for spending, Belousov constantly tried to find new sources of revenue. In 2018 he proposed seizing 500 billion rubles ($5.5 billion) of “extra profits” from leading commodities companies and using the money to pay for Putin’s proposed May decrees, a vast plan for state investment. At that time, the oligarchs combined forces to fight back, prompting Belousov, who doesn’t mince his words, to call them “idiots and fools.” Belousov later managed to force through a highly controversial hike in sales tax from 18% to 20%, which brought the budget even more money.
• After the invasion of Ukraine, business found it harder to fight off government demands. In 2023, Belousov secured a one-time budget contribution of 300 billion rubles ($3.2 billion) through a windfall tax. The government is currently preparing an “adjustment” to the tax system, the key elements of which could be an increase in income tax to 20% and corporate tax to 25%, which could generate up to two trillion rubles ($22 billion) a year.
• Belousov has also seen success in developing Russia’s military-industrial complex, which the government does not officially regulate. One of his biggest successes has been a national project overseeing drone production, for which the government distributed preferential loans and passed special regulations.

Why has he been appointed now? 

Belousov’s appointment as defense minister was so unexpected that, at first, many observers found it hard to believe.

• There’s nothing unique in itself about having a defense minister without a military background. In fact, none of Putin’s appointments in the role have: Sergei Ivanov (2001-07) came from foreign intelligence; Anatoly Serdykov (2007-2012) was a tax officer; Shoigu worked in construction, as a party official and head of the emergency situations ministry. Nonetheless, Belousov is the most overtly civilian defense minister, having never served in law enforcement or even completed national service. Instead, he’s mostly worked as an economist in academia and then in government roles focused on the domestic economy.
• A late-night Sunday briefing by Putin’s spokesman Peskov made it clear that the Kremlin wants Belousov to monitor and improve how the country’s rapidly growing military budget is being spent. Spending by the defense ministry and the security services has more than doubled to 6.7% of GDP — approaching “the mid-80s situation, when security spending was 7.4% of the economy,” Peskov said. Belousov’s tasks are “to fit the security budget into the national economy so they match the dynamics of the current time” and to make the defense ministry “absolutely open to innovation, to the introduction of all advanced ideas and to create the conditions for economic competitiveness.”
• It’s not hard to believe Peskov’s explanation is genuine. He even slightly underplayed the extent to which the economy has been militarized. Spending on defense and national security is set to exceed 8% of GDP this year. The rapid growth of the military-industrial complex has pushed the economy into overdrive. Therefore it makes sense to put a trusted economist in charge of overseeing a third of the government’s entire expenditure. But there could still be another motive behind the ministerial switch. As Ukraine’s arsenals are depleted and Western aid is delayed, Russia is making military progress after months of stagnation on the front lines. If Putin believes victory is getting closer, it makes sense to replace the PR-hungry Shoigu with an office-based economist less concerned with promoting his own role.

***

From Russia Matters, 5/13/24

Vladimir Putin’s post-inaugural decision to replace former emergency situations tsar Sergei Shoigu with career economist Andrei Belousov as Russia’s defense minister suggests that the Russian autocrat is doubling down on his war-of-attrition strategy, according to The Economist. Putin believes he can outproduce Ukraine and its Western backers, and Belousov would be instrumental in doing so, this British newspaper argued. Both The Economist’s sources and ISW’s analysts interpreted Belousov’s appointment as a signal that Putin expects the war to be protracted. Belousov’s appointment also “shows that Putin has serious concerns over corruption levels and misuse of funds within the Russian military, conflicts between the military and the Russian DIB and the perceived inefficacy of the Russian MoD as a whole,” ISW wrote in its assessment of Putin’s May 12 government reshuffle. Belousov’s appointment indicates Putin wants closer control over Russia’s defense spending—and a pliant official to do it, two people who know both men told FT. “He’s absolutely not corrupted … He’s a workaholic. He’s a technocrat,” one of the two people said in reference to Belousov.

YouTube link here.

By James Carden & Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation, 5/2/24

Last week’s passage of the Ukraine aid package by both the House and the Senate showed if nothing else that bipartisanship—at least on matters of foreign policy—remains alive and well in Washington, with leading Democratic progressives joining Republican hawks to pass the $61 billion package.

Mark Green, a former four-term Democratic congressman from Wisconsin, and current head of the Wilson Center, captured the current D.C. zeitgeist well, writing that “moments like the final passage of this assistance package show the world that, just as America never turns its back on key allies and important challenges, they should never fully count us out.”

Yet, despite the torrent of self-congratulation, concerning details surfaced soon after the House vote—not least what appears to be the Biden administration’s likely use of questionable, highly subjective intelligence to win over Republican Speaker Mike Johnson.

Multiple mainstream media outlets report that the Biden administration arranged several multiple “high-level” intelligence briefings for the speaker. According to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, “It only took a higher level of intelligence briefings, granted to congressional leaders, for [Johnson] to pick up that old Cold War hymnal.” Martin noticed that, after having received briefings by the US Intelligence Community, several members of Congress, including Johson, House majority leader Steve Scalise, House foreign affairs committee chair Michael McCaul, and Representative Brian Fitzpatrick were all using the phrase “axis of evil” to refer to Russia, Iran, and China. As McCaul put it, “They’re all related, man…. To abandon Ukraine will only invite more aggression from Putin but also Chairman Xi in Taiwan. The ayatollah has already reared his ugly head.”

Where did this language come from, asked Martin?

“Spend an hour in the SCIF getting briefed,” Fitzpatrick shot back, referring to the secure facility used for classified briefings. “These are not isolated problems.”

After the vote, Johnson told Bloomberg, “I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we got…. I think Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed.”

If the US IC is putting forward cherry-picked conjecture (“Putin will march through Europe”) as fact, then don’t we once again have to confront the specter of politicized intelligence?

More worrying still, reporting on the aid package shows that the president and his staff have been serially misleading the public about what exactly US forces have been up to in Ukraine. Politico reported last week that “the administration secretly sent long-range [ATACMS] missiles to Ukraine for the first time in the war—and Kyiv has already used them twice to strike far behind Russian lines.” If true, this would contradict the president’s public assurances that (a) his administration would not send ATACMS to Ukraine, and (b) the US would not, due to the risks, countenance direct attacks on Russia.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung indicates that “scores of images recently leaked online, many with classified US military and intelligence assessments, illustrate how deeply the United States is involved in virtually every aspect of the war, with the exception of US boots on the ground.”

All of which raises the question: What else are they not telling us?

One important consideration—but one that remains notable for its absence in the coverage of the war—involves the risks of escalation. Professor Lyle Goldstein, who for 20 years taught at the Naval War College, has written about what he calls the “nuclear paradox”—that is, “if the US and NATO increase their military spending and conventional forces in Europe, the weakness of Russian conventional military forces could prompt Moscow to rely more heavily on its nuclear forces.”

Ignoring such risks, supporters of the aid package have instead cited it as a boon to the US economy. Yet, besides being morally grotesque, lining the pockets of defense industry behemoths like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainian and Russian soldiers will do little to further the president’s campaign pledge to “build back better.”

Still more, the animating idea behind the aid package— that it helps Ukraine live to fight another day—is deeply misguided. It would be hard to improve upon the formulation of George Beebe, former CIA head of Russia analysis and director of the Quincy Institute’s Grand Strategy Program, that, if Washington “were intentionally to design a formula for Ukraine’s destruction, it might look a lot like the aid package passed by Congress this week.” At this late date, better and more weapons and ordnance will not carry the day—and they will certainly not in the absence of a Ukrainian Army able to deploy them. Recent reporting by BBC Ukraine indicates that 650,000 military-age men have fled the country.

Too often missing from the conversation is the humanitarian toll the war has taken on Ukraine. Estimates show that between 2021 and 2023, Ukraine’s GDP has shrunk by nearly 30 percent, with millions out of work. The Economist predicts that the country will need $37 billion in external financing in 2024. In short, there has to be a better way than prolonging the suffering in order to ward off the phantom of never-ending Russian expansion—after all, Putin’s military tried and failed to cross the Dnieper and take Kiev only two years ago. The idea that Ukraine is but a first step in Putin’s plans to retake Eastern Europe, while popular, simply overestimates Russian strength while ignoring the root cause of the current conflict. Wiser heads (if they indeed exist) in Washington might use the opportunity provided by the Ukraine Recovery Conference this June in Berlin to reassess our priorities.

The answer to war is not more war. A negotiated end to the cruel conflict will require hard choices and painful trade-offs. But the sooner it is done, the sooner Ukraine’s reconstruction, reconciliation, and entry into Europe can and should begin.