Link here.

By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin, 10/2022

The war in Ukraine increasingly poses dangers for the entire world. Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear blackmail last week were met by hawkish Western media commentators and NATO leaders who have been insisting that the pursuit of anything less than total victory in Ukraine would mean giving in to nuclear blackmail.

For insight on the logic of past nuclear confrontations and the lessons for Ukraine today, Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic spoke to George Beebe, a longtime US intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor on Russia who today serves as director of grand strategy for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Beebe spoke about the growing danger that mistakes and miscalculations by leaders on either side could unleash an escalatory spiral, and explained how in the Cold War, each side routinely “gave in” to the other side’s “nuclear blackmail,” but in doing so actually helped establish important norms that prevented subsequent crises from going nuclear.

BRANKO MARCETIC
How alarmed should we be at what’s happening? Is there enough concern among the public, among lawmakers and officials, and other relevant stakeholders?

GEORGE BEEBE
I am quite alarmed, and I think that the American people and the world are quite alarmed at the situation as it’s been evolving. To a great degree I think Americans have lost their fear of nuclear war in the post–Cold War period. I think at least subconsciously we’ve come to believe that’s an old problem, that that’s something we overcame with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. People have moved on and we don’t need to worry about that. It seems very much a thing of the past.

But in fact, the dangers of escalation to nuclear levels have gone up, not down, over the past several years. In part, that’s because we’ve become cavalier about these dangers. In part, it’s because a number of the guardrails we established in the Cold War period to manage the dangers of that kind of escalation have gone away. And finally, the most important thing, in times of crisis during that Cold War period there was direct communication between Washington and Moscow to make sure things didn’t get out of hand, to minimize dangers of misperception. We don’t have that dialogue right now. Essentially, the two sides are almost not talking to one another at all. We don’t have the kind of back channel communication that allowed [John F.] Kennedy and [Nikita] Khrushchev to find a way out of the Cuban missile crisis.

The counterpart to Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador during the Cuban missile crisis, is Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, and he is almost persona non grata in Washington. We have a serious problem right now, the kinds of things that are necessary to prevent escalation are not in place.

BRANKO MARCETIC
Why is this dialogue not happening? Is it political pressures or something else?

GEORGE BEEBE
There have been a lot of reasons that have combined to produce this situation that we’re in. One of them is that the United States fell out of the habit of diplomatic give-and-take during the post–Cold War period. There was no peer power we faced in the world. We were not just a unipolar power, but no one else even approached the degree of military and economic might the United States had in the aftermath of the Soviet demise. We didn’t think we really had to strike bargains, we didn’t think we had to compromise with other countries. What we tended to do was to tell them what they were going to do and when they balked, our response was, “or else.” As a result, we lost the diplomatic skills that would normally be required in a world order where there is more of a balance.

Another factor is that Russia became a domestic political issue, not a foreign policy issue, in the United States. I don’t need to go into all the particulars of why that happened, I’ll just simply state that as a fact. That’s hindered our ability and willingness to engage in dialogue with Russia.

The third factor is a belief that the problem that we’re dealing with is a deterrence problem. It’s like dealing with [Adolf] Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s and we’ve all become convinced that the best way to deal with Russia is not to appease, but to stand up, to show them we’ll fight, that we’re going to stand tall and tough, and that when Russia understands what it’s up against it will back down.

I don’t think that’s the nature of the problem we’re dealing with, honestly. We’re dealing with much more of an escalatory spiral problem, and when you deal with a spiral in that way, it actually exacerbates the situation. And that’s what I think has been going on for several years now, and it’s now reached the point where it’s acutely dangerous.

BRANKO MARCETIC
What are the dangers currently? Both sides seem like they’re keen to avoid a nuclear war, but does that actually matter?

GEORGE BEEBE
I do think you’re right, both sides do want to avoid nuclear war. Any sane actor would, and I still think both the United States and Russia are rational actors, more or less, in all this.

But the situation has escalated and can continue to escalate even though both sides don’t want to see this reach a crisis. And there are several ways that can happen. One is by accident, and the longer the war goes on, and the more deeply entangled the United States becomes in all of this, and it’s essentially a combatant in every way but having large numbers of troops on the ground in Ukraine right now — when you’re in that situation, the chances of accident are quite high.

The other ways that this could escalate would be through the logic of what’s going on on the battlefield. Putin could come to believe that Western intelligence and military support to Ukraine has become so instrumental in Ukraine’s battlefield successes that he could decide he has no choice but to attack that support. So far he has refrained from doing that. He has attempted on a relatively limited scale to interdict the Western military supplies going to the Ukrainian front lines. He’s not really done so on a large scale. He has certainly not attacked the sources of that support inside NATO states themselves. So that’s a step he could feel compelled to take, not because he wants escalation to some sort of nuclear confrontation, but because he might feel the alternative to that might be defeat, and I don’t think he’s at all willing to contemplate defeat in this situation.

Another possibility is that he also could become convinced that NATO plans to attack Russia, and he could act preemptively. The other possibility is that as things go bad on the battlefield for the Russians, this translates into greater and greater domestic instability inside Russia itself. Putin has long been primed to believe that sort of instability is what the United States wants to see and is in fact stoking, and that could result in a perception on Putin’s part that this instability is inspired by and fueled by the United States, and that could lead him to retaliate in what he sees as self-defense.

BRANKO MARCETIC
Let’s say that the United States and Russia got into a direct conflict — for example, if the United States responded to some Russian escalation by launching a conventional strike inside Russia or by trying to assassinate Putin. How long would a conflict like this stay nonnuclear?

GEORGE BEEBE
I think if that sort of scenario started to unfold in the way you describe, that would quickly escalate into strategic nuclear levels, the reason being, the Russian nuclear deterrent is meant to deter existential threats to the Russian federation, regardless of whether those are nuclear or conventional threats. And unlike the Cold War period, when really the only weapons that could pose some sort of strategic threat to the survival of either the United States or the Soviet Union — in that era it was only nuclear weapons that could do that sort of thing — that’s not true today. Today, conventional weapons can, through their precision targeting and their explosive potential, pose the kinds of threats that only nuclear missiles used to pose.

So if the United States mounts the kind of attack you’re talking about, I think the Russians would have no choice from their perspective to retaliate, and since they don’t have the arsenal of conventional weapons to match ours, I think they’d have to go nuclear to retaliate. What you’re describing is a formula for rapid escalation to a strategic nuclear conflict.

BRANKO MARCETIC
What would that actually mean in practice, a nuclear war between the United States and Russia?

GEORGE BEEBE
It would be very hard to keep it limited. Each side would quickly believe that it was in some sort of use-it-or-lose-it scenario. When you see an attack on the way, strikes are being detected by your strategic warning system, most likely each of the leaders involved, the US and Russian presidents, would not be content to wait to see whether those strikes would take out our retaliatory capability. What each side would very quickly believe, is that the best way to limit the damage to its side is to try to take out as many of the other missiles as possible as quickly as possible, so they can’t be used. So your incentives at that point are to go big, not to sit and wait and hope that the other side is conducting some sort of demonstration strike.

It would be a very difficult thing to handle, and with very little time to make decisions. These weapons can reach the other side in a matter of minutes. You’ve got maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes, maybe less depending on what systems are being used to make fundamental decisions. It’s just an extremely unstable crisis situation. The amount of damage something like that could cause is almost unimaginable for people. It would certainly destroy most of the United States and Russia, and almost certainly all of Europe, and it would cause grave secondary effects on the rest of the world in terms of weather, food supply, and all kinds of things. It would absolutely merit the term catastrophe.

BRANKO MARCETIC
You’ve written about the danger of misreading the motivations and intentions of foreign leadership, and you’ve pointed to how the United States did so regarding Imperial Japan in World War II. Can you elaborate on that and explain how it applies to today?

GEORGE BEEBE
What happened with Imperial Japan in the run-up to World War II is the United States was quite concerned by Japanese expansion in Asia during the 1930s. We became convinced this posed a grave threat to US security, and I think quite rightly, but what we attempted to do was use economic sanctions that were quite draconian, that essentially cut Japan off from its ability to have vital supplies of strategic resources, including oil, in the belief that that sort of coercion could cause the Japanese to reconsider the costs and benefits of their aggression in Asia.

What happened instead was the Japanese came to believe they were in an untenable situation, that this kind of pressure economically coupled with the potential of being encircled by hostile states, including the United States, the Soviet Union, and a revived China, was simply an unacceptable situation. They thought Japan’s survival was at stake. The United States believed in that period that Japan would retaliate in some way, but they expected it to be a somewhat limited retaliation, probably in Southeast Asia. They didn’t expect a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. That was simply too much of a roll of the dice to believe a rational actor would undertake.

One of the lessons we ultimately drew from all this was that we didn’t realize the degree to which the Japanese regarded their situation as a life-and-death matter, that they felt pressed against the wall and had no choice but to retaliate in a way the United States thought was highly risky.

I think the analogy for us today with the Russians is that, like Japan in the lead-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Russians think that what they have at stake in Ukraine is existential, that unless they defend what they perceive as a vital redline there, that Russia’s existence is at stake. And when states feel that way, they can do things that appear quite reckless to outsiders. I think that’s what we’re dealing with here with Russia. It’s a state that increasingly feels cornered and desperate, and so is doing things that appear to outsiders as enormously reckless and quite aggressive.

How you deal with that is different to the way you deal with a Nazi Germany. You’re going to have to find some way of compromising. There has to be a diplomatic exit to all this, because the alternative is you’re going to be in a direct war with a nuclear power. Had Japan or Nazi Germany had nuclear weapons in World War II, those conflicts would’ve ended in a much different way than they did.

BRANKO MARCETIC
Are there enough voices, or enough pressure, in the United States and other NATO states calling for diplomacy and making that a viable political option — at least some sort of dialogue with Russia in the direction of de-escalation?

GEORGE BEEBE
I think there is very little political pressure in the West right now on any of the governments involved to find some sort of diplomatic solution to this problem. That does not mean the general publics in Western states don’t favor it. Quincy sponsored a poll that suggests very strongly that American people on balance believe the United States should be supporting Ukraine’s legitimate self-defense, but also, we need diplomatic efforts to find our way out of this war. The two are not incompatible, and in fact, I would argue that both of those elements have to be present and working together in a complementary way to produce a successful resolution to this war.

But I think there is a gap, and has been, between foreign policy elites in the United States and the American people more broadly, and increasingly, the interests of the American people and the desires of the majority of voters have been having very little effect on the foreign policy behavior of the Washington establishment, and I think that’s going to have to change.

BRANKO MARCETIC
The counterargument right now is that Putin won’t negotiate, and that all the sides are now too dug in anyway, so it’s useless to call for negotiations. What would you say to that?

GEORGE BEEBE
I think to some degree that’s true. It wasn’t true at the beginning of this war or the early stages, but increasingly it’s accurate to say Putin is more or less giving up on the possibility of a negotiated settlement, not because he doesn’t want one, but because he believes primarily the United States is opposed to one.

I think we had opportunities before this war to find a compromise, but the United States refused to explore those opportunities. There was I think a serious negotiation effort that took place under Turkish mediation in the early weeks of this war, and it in fact made some substantial progress. The Ukrainians broke off those negotiations. The Russians have accused the United States and Great Britain of having essentially discouraged the Ukrainians from pursuing that peace settlement effort at the time. To a great degree, those opportunities have been lost. It’s going to be very hard right now to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine.

That does not mean, however, that crisis management diplomacy between the United States and Russia is impossible. I think the Russians would like that kind of dialogue to go on. That wouldn’t be about finding some sort of permanent peace settlement in Ukraine that would delineate Ukraine’s borders and all of that, but it would and could focus on preventing further escalation and moving ultimately toward some kind of cease-fire. That kind of effort is both possible and quite necessary right now. It doesn’t depend on Russia and Ukraine trying to work out their differences. It depends on the United States and Russia talking about the larger strategic context for this war, and attempting to put in place some guardrails that prevent this situation from spiraling completely out of control.

BRANKO MARCETIC
And what about the issue of giving in to nuclear blackmail? Won’t that, as Timothy Snyder recently argued, create a precedent that makes future war and future nuclear war more likely?

GEORGE BEEBE
In short, I think that’s nonsense. The history of the Cold War puts the lie to that belief. The United States and the Soviet Union recognized they were essentially co-hostages with each other in the nuclear era, that the security of one depended on ensuring a degree of security in the other. That you could not have circumstances in which one side clearly triumphed unconditionally over the other side. “Giving in to nuclear blackmail” did not in fact encourage new crises. It helped establish some norms, some of which were formalized, some of which were tacit about what was permissible and what wasn’t.

I’ll give you an example that’s appropriate today: the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This was a situation in which the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a proxy conflict in the Middle East, one that initially had the Israelis on their back foot — they were taken by surprise by the Egyptian and Arab attacks, and the United States put its nuclear forces on alert, in part as a signal to the Soviet Union that should Soviet proxies go too far, the United States was willing to escalate this into a genuine crisis with the Soviet Union.

Then things changed. The Israelis gained the momentum, and threatened to completely rout the Arab and Egyptian forces, and the Soviet Union signaled that they were willing to use nuclear force if things went too far. What happened was both parties, the United States and Soviet Union, restrained their allies in the region. We insisted that the Israelis not proceed with attacks and forego the opportunity to rout the Egyptian forces altogether.

That wasn’t giving in to nuclear blackmail and it did not encourage the Soviet Union to push the boundaries in future crises. In fact it established norms that ensured stability over time. That’s the kind of thing I think we need right now. This belief that the Ukrainians should press on as far and fast as they can, in the hope of not only defeating Russian forces on the battlefield completely, but also creating some sort of cascade effect that’ll result in regime change in Russia is an extremely dangerous belief. It’s likely to provoke retaliation on the Russian part that could in fact escalate to nuclear levels.

BRANKO MARCETIC
Anatol Lieven has said that just as the United States has drawn red lines for Russia, we need to do so for Ukraine too. What do you think about that?

GEORGE BEEBE
I don’t think the US government should put the security of the American people in the hands of the Ukrainian government. These are decisions about our security that should be made in Washington by Americans. That’s the fundamental point. We shouldn’t surrender agency to the [Volodymyr] Zelensky government on this.

As a matter of simply smart negotiating tactics, we should not threaten preemptively to cut the Ukrainians off, because that would disincentivize the Russians from making the concessions it will be necessary for them to make in any kind of negotiated settlement. Ideally, we should be talking privately to the Ukrainians, saying that we believe we need to find a negotiated settlement. And we should be warning them privately that any attempt to reconquer Crimea — as morally justified as that may be — would very likely spark a nuclear response from Russia and therefore is something the United States government strongly opposes.

By Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics, 10/10/22

September opinion polls in Russia continue to show Putin maintaining high popularity and trust ratings, despite slow progress and significant setbacks such as in Kharkiv. Nevertheless, those ratings have taken a hit in response perhaps to that taken by NordStream, and they are only likely to fall further as a result of October 7th attack on the Crimean bridge. Putin’s best opinion survey performance came in the Foundation for Public Opinion (FOM) survey for September, which showed Putin’s approval rating falling from 80 percent before declaration of the partial military mobilization (September 18) to 75 percent in its immediate wake (September 25). The survey registered a fall in trust in Putin from 77 percent to 74 percent. Before the ‘special military operation, Putin’s approval and trust ratings ranged between 58 and 63 percent, according to FOM. Perhaps, most disturbingly, the percentage of Russians who expressed “concern” over developments grew from 35 percent to 69 percent (www.ng.ru/editorial/2022-10-03/2_8555_editorial.html). This latter shift means a fertile field now exists for further downward trending in Putin’s ratings. The Levada Center recorded a decline among survey respondents in Putin’s approval rating from 83 percent in August to 77 percent in September and a decline of respondents who feel Russia is moving in the right direction from 67 to 60 perrcent in the same period (levada.ru). The exception to this new downward trend was in the September 26 – October 2 VTsIOM polling, which found slight boost for Putin’s approval and trust ratings of approximately one percent to around 80 percent (https://wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/reitingi-doverija-politikam-ocenki-raboty-prezidenta-i-pravitelstva-podderzhka-politicheskikh-partii-20221007). It seems to this observer that the first two surveys are more reliable for this general period. Taking into account that this downward trend was registered before the Kerch bridge attack, we can expect perhaps a further decline to come, with the caveat that the damage to the bridge turned out to be relatively limited and failed to cut off the Crimea supply line.

However, in addition to public angst, the Russian patriotic and official intelligentsia is beyond impatient with Putin’s restrained ‘special military operation’ and slow progress on the front. Russian state television channels’ various political talks shows and the social web are now filled with angst over the troops’ slow advance, the withdrawal from Kharkiv, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines’ destruction, and the terrorist attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea with the Russian mainland. For example, during Sunday’s program ‘Evening with Solovev’, one participant argued that the country was on the verge of a wave of repressive reaction from below, as people were beginning to blame less patriotic citizens for any war failure, demanding to know ‘what have you done to bring victory and if nothing then you are not with us but against us. The participant feared that people may soon act in accordance with these feelings, and reprisals could eat the country up. The popular and elite sense is that it is time to take the gloves off, enter the Russian army’s infantry proper (not rely on Chechens, Wagner, and DPR and LNR forces alone) and mount a major combined arms offensive to destroy Ukraine’s civilian and military infrastructure and the Ukrainian army.

Continue reading here.

By Matt Taibbi, Substack, 10/10/22

After publishing “On John Lennon’s Birthday, a Few Words About War” last night, old friend and former Moscow Times editor Matt Bivens* and I discovered we’d written on the same topic. You can find Matt’s excellent essay here. He notes a big thing I missed. A series of ominous statements was buried in Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent joint press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, trumpeting the “tremendous opportunity” the Nord Stream blasts afforded to remove “the dependence on Russian energy.” A few public figures questioned those comments, but Blinken said something else that was worse. The relevant passage:

I also made clear that when Russia made this move, the United States and our allies and partners would impose swift and severe costs on individuals and entities – inside and outside of Russia – that provide political or economic support to illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory…

We will hold to account any individual, entity, or country that provides political or economic support for President Putin’s illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory.  In support of this commitment, the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce are releasing new guidance on heightened sanctions and export control risks for entities and individuals inside and outside of Russia that support in any way the Kremlin’s sham referenda, purported annexation, and occupation of parts of Ukraine.

There’s no way to know what a State Department official might believe meets the definitions of “political support,” support “in any way,” the “Kremlin’s sham referenda,” or any of a half-dozen phrases in that passage. This is why the negative precedent of government watch lists after the PATRIOT Act was important. By making lists, officials can seriously impact your life without notice or right of appeal. Even if courts later strike down the activity, it may take nearly 20 years to get there, and that’s assuming a) the state discloses enough to make a court challenge possible and b) they abide by any judicial rulings.

From Google and Twitter to the Departments of Justice and State, we’ve become a blacklisting society, and it’s beginning to look like the excesses of the Bush years were just a warmup.

Continue reading here.

Link here.

Meeting of Russian Prime Ministers with Deputy Prime Ministers. The agenda includes the results of a government commission’s work to determine the cause of the incident and eliminate the consequences of the damage caused to the Crimean bridge, managing traffic across the Kerch Strait, supporting tourists and tourism organisations in Crimea, resettlement from dilapidated housing, and planned priority measures to ensure the operation of the economy during partial mobilisation.

Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks

Marat Khusnullin’s remarks

Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev’s remarks

Dmitry Chernyshenko’s remarks

Excerpts from the transcript:

Mikhail Mishustin: Colleagues, last Saturday, a terrorist attack occurred in Crimea aimed at destroying the Russia’s critical civilian infrastructure. This resulted in the temporary suspension of transport links between the peninsula and the Krasnodar Territory. At the President’s instruction, a government commission was created, headed by Marat Khusnullin, to organise relief efforts as soon as possible. Within a few hours of the incident, it was possible to completely extinguish the fire thanks to the coordinated efforts of all services and the heads of regions’ prompt action. I would like to specifically thank the governors of the Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of Crimea, and Sevastopol.

Specialists arriving at the site carried out an initial assessment of the technical condition of the railway section of the bridge and the undamaged part of the roadway. Emergency repairs were performed. Already during the first day, train services resumed, as well as vehicle traffic in temporary reverse mode. At the same time, ferry service across the Kerch Strait was also launched. It will take over part of the passenger and freight traffic load.

Mr Khusnullin, you visited the site and know the situation on the ground. Please tell us how the work is being organised, what is being done to restore the bridge, and about any latest updates.

Marat Khusnullin: Mr Mishustin, colleagues, on Sunday, 8 October, as soon as you established a governmental commission for the situation on the Crimean Bridge, under the President’s instructions, I held a field meeting with the commission members at the site of the incident, where we personally inspected the nature of the damage and adopted the necessary decisions.

Let me briefly describe today’s transport situation. Within 24 hours we have repaired the barriers, restored the lighting and painted temporary road markings. This made it possible, as you said, to reopen one-way vehicle traffic on the same day and two-way traffic on one side the next day after the terrorist attack. To cut inspection and waiting times on the approaches to the bridge, the Interior Ministry, FSB, and the Ministry of Transport were instructed to hire additional personnel.

We are inspecting the railway tracks, and preliminarily, we see that we will need to replace two spans, but the Crimean Railway restored both freight and passenger service along one track on the first day. The repair operations are not influencing cargo or passenger service. Lorries and buses are also being transported by ferry. We are stepping up this alternative.

Regarding the damage, we continue to analyse how serious it is. Divers have been checking the bridge supports since yesterday morning. Following diagnostic inspections, it has been found necessary to remove damage from the expansion joint on one of the supports. We estimate that the damage will be removed by the end of this week. But this does not affect the safety of traffic on the side that has been opened. Two full shifts are working around the clock. Twice a day, at 8 am and 8 pm, the supervisors submit progress reports. They have already removed the asphalt from the cantilever sections of the motorway spans. We have employed about 150 people to work on this. A plan and schedule to dismantle the damaged sections is being drafted. We expect it to be operational within three days. By that time, additional construction equipment, such as floating cranes and other equipment, will arrive. We have contacted the building material suppliers. I want to thank everyone for expediting this work. We expect the steel components to begin arriving from Tyumen, Kurgan, and Voronezh by the end of this week. 

The Ministry of Transport and the road police have been instructed to escort the shipment of these large components so they arrive promptly and without delay. The governmental commission has also discussed the necessary organisational measures with the heads of the Republic of Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory. We have made arrangements to inform the local residents about the developments and to organise, jointly with the Interior Ministry and the Emergencies Ministry, temporary parking lots, food points, and intercept parking with the necessary amenities.

The commission has instructed the Ministry of Transport to work out the entire logistics of freight deliveries to the peninsula. We have an alternative route running through the liberated territories. This year, we began repairs and restoration work on about 500 kilometres of roads in the new territories. We are planning to be finished in November or December, including 180 of the 359 kilometres of this alternative route. Work is under way on this road, with individual stretches opening every day. But we can still use these roads safely now. The Ministry of Transport will report on logistics details.

Mikhail Mishustin: Thank you, Mr Khusnullin, for your promptness and for the overall management of these efforts. Of course, the Crimean Bridge is crucial in connecting the peninsula with other regions of the country. It is necessary to restore its full working capacity in the shortest possible time. Please keep these issues under your personal control.

Mr Savelyev, please report on the work done within your area of responsibility. How is passenger transportation being organised, including alternative routes, and delivery of goods to the peninsula? And in general, what is the situation with logistics?

Vitaly Saveliev: Mr. Mishustin, colleagues,

Together with the Deputy Prime Minister Mr Khusnullin, we are working on repairing the damage to the Crimean bridge in terms of logistics for passengers and freight during the period when the full resumption of traffic is being carried out.

As for road traffic, on 8 October, from 4 pm reversible passenger car traffic was launched with an interval of 40 minutes on and off in a single lane. Fixed lighting was fully restored as of 9 pm. On 9 October, two-way traffic was provided as of 4pm. As of 8 am this morning, 6,851 vehicles have passed through. To increase the capacity of the Crimean Bridge, we expect to receive a mobile inspection unit from the Federal Customs Service on 10 October. No cargo or passenger buses will be allowed on the Crimean bridge for the time being. A decision has been taken to send them to the Kerch ferry crossing, where sea ferries have resumed operation. I would like to point out in particular that cargo vehicles carrying perishable goods will be sent on the ferries as a matter of priority.       

In terms of ferry service. Three passenger vessels with capacity of 100, 200, and 250 passengers started operation on 8 October. By 7 am on 10 October, 2,882 people were transported by passenger ferries and other vessels that that were activated for this. Two car ferries with total capacity of up to 50 cars started operating on 9 October. By the morning of today, 407 trucks and 1,756 passengers were carried in both directions. On 10 and 15 October two more automobile ferries are scheduled to arrive. The arrival of three railway ferries is expected approximately on October 12 and 15. Two ferries arriving on October 15 have limitations: the depths in the port of Kerch are insufficient. A Rosmorport dredging vessel from Gelendzhik has been engaged to carry out dredging works. Estimated time for the works to be completed is October 14.

Railway ferry operation is not critical for the situation today, as one line of the railway covers all transport needs. We will keep them as part of our reserves.

On the evening of 8 October, railway traffic was resumed along one railway line of the Crimean bridge. Today the movement of freight and passenger long-distance trains is carried out according to the standard schedule in both directions. This guarantees that the residents of Crimea will be provided in full with goods transported by rail.

Suburban passenger traffic along the section of the Crimean bridge has also been fully restored. The trains travelling through the damaged section do so at a speed of 40 km per hour. It is expected that the Russian Railways company will conclude their survey and assessment of condition of the faulty track by 13 October. I would like to express my gratitude to the Russian Railways and personally to General Director Oleg Belozyorov, as well as to the staff of the Crimean Railways for the prompt work done.

Now on the various forms of traffic. Passengers who were travelling to Crimea, but who were redirected to Anapa, have been delivered and accommodated in hotels. Eight buses were used and more than 2,000 people were transported to their place of accommodation and back to the trains. In addition, buses have been prepared for ferry transportation to and from the Krasnodar Territory and the Republic of Crimea.

The prompt communication to the public about the situation regarding the liquidation of damage to the Crimean Bridge and the restoration has been organised.

Work is underway to bring regulations in line with the provisions of the Presidential Executive Order dated 8 October 2022.

Alternative routes are being developed, as Mr Khusnullin has just said.

Mr Mishustin, the logistics decisions that we have already made helped us fulfil the priority tasks for the stable supply of goods to the population of Crimea. We are working closely with respective subjects of the Russian Federation. The Unified Transport Directorate of the Ministry of Transport of Russia, in cooperation with the Crimean government, and the administration of the Krasnodar Territory, are engaged in providing temporary parking, meals, and accommodation for passengers, and the delivery of passengers by alternative routes to their destinations. This work will continue.

Mikhail Mishustin: Thank you, Mr Savelyev.

It is very important to reopen traffic to and from Crimea in full volume and to analyse all the details to the greatest possible extent in order to prevent any further incidents. Please continue to coordinate this effort.

Although traffic has been partially restored on the Kerch Strait Bridge, many Russian citizens visiting Crimea or planning to visit the peninsula have been forced to change their plans.

Mr Dmitry Chernyshenko, please report on efforts to keep the public apprised of the situation and what support measures have been implemented.

Dmitry Chernyshenko: Mr Mishustin, as per your instructions, we got to work quickly, and we issued the relevant instructions to the Federal Agency for Tourism, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, the Ministry of Transport and to the regional authorities on how to support our tourists.

What has been done? First, about 50,000 tourists from various regions were staying in Crimea at the time of the terrorist attack. It was suggested that those guests planning to complete their vacation in Crimea stay at hotels and health centres free of charge. About 1,000 people agreed and extended their stay by 24 hours.

Due to the long delays, passengers from two trains were accommodated at hotels in Feodosia and Simferopol and were provided with hot meals. They have now departed safely on trains to their respective destinations.

As instructed by the Head of the Republic of Crimea, hotels will be reimbursed from the republic’s budget for accommodating tourists.

Second, the Federal Agency for Tourism has been instructed to monitor the situation in the tourism industry and to submit damage assessments to the Government. The Ministry of Finance and we have already decided to allocate 1.6 billion roubles by redistributing funds under the national project on tourism. The money will be used to support the Crimea and Sevastopol tourism industries. The Federal Agency for Tourism will draft and submit the relevant regulatory documents on Wednesday.

I would like to note that, so far, we are not seeing any major decline in the number of tourists planning to visit Crimea. An insignificant number of ticket reservations for later dates have been cancelled so far.

Third, on the morning of 8 October, the Federal Agency for Tourism, with support from the communications ministry, was instructed to open a federal hotline service. Along with the republican call centre, tourists can receive updates. Most calls were received on 8 October. About 1,300 people from various Russian regions called this federal number: 8 (800) 707 9741. 

The situation with transport availability is constantly updated. I would like to note that the hotline will continue to operate.

Mikhail Mishustin: Thank you, Mr Chernyshenko. I would also like to ask you to monitor the operation of Rosturism’s hotline so that it works properly and help the region’s tourism industry to work stably.

Now, colleagues, a few words about important measures aimed at supporting businesses in the context of partial mobilisation announced by the president. They will help ensure the stable operation of the Russian economy. The corresponding priority action plan was approved by the government.

A draft federal law will be prepared, according to which people will be able to remain owners of their businesses and engage in entrepreneurial activities, both personally and through third parties.

When individual entrepreneurs and heads of businesses, the sole founders of their companies, are called up for military service, they will have several days to issue a power of attorney to the new head. And if they have already been called up, the deadlines for paying taxes, insurance premiums, and other obligatory payments, as well as submitting declarations or other reports, will be extended for such organisations.

They will also be able to arrange a repayment holiday, rent deferral, and if it is impossible to further fulfil their obligations due to the mobilisation of the company owner, such businesses will have the right to change the terms of contracts and write off the incurred penalties. This rule will affect government contracts concluded before the end of next year.

Grant support conditions may also be readjusted. It will be possible to extend the implementation of such projects, reduce requirements for them, and eliminate penalties.

Colleagues, all planned decisions and legislative initiatives must be prepared as soon as possible.

One more issue. The government continues to work on resettling people from emergency housing, which was identified as unfit for living before 1 January 2017.

We are building new, comfortable and safe residences to replace these buildings. However, due to the imposed external sanctions, the cost of building materials and equipment has recently increased significantly. In order to compensate the regions for the increase in spending, the government will allocate an additional 24 billion roubles for such purposes on behalf of the head of state. Until the end of the year, 43 Russian constituent entities that need federal funding most urgently will receive funds.

The situation in this area was discussed in detail at the June meeting of the Presidential State Council Presidium. As a result, a number of decisions were made. And in August we launched another programme to reduce the emergency housing, which has been recognised as such over the past five years, or, to be more precise, before 1 January 2022.

In these conditions, it is necessary to monitor the effective use of each rouble. I would like to ask Mr Khusnullin to have a constant personal control of how the work is progressing.