What do people think of this article? I tend to think it’s serving two primary purposes. The first is to try to burnish the battered image of the CIA – characterizing it’s role is constructive and restraining. The second is to try to create some kind of plausible deniability regarding any stupid, stubborn or reckless thing Zelensky is doing or might do in the future – “Gosh, we don’t really know what our vassal in Kiev is doing or thinking at any given moment.” Which seems plausible. – Natylie
One of the biggest secrets of the Ukraine war is how much the CIA doesn’t know. The Agency is as uncertain about Volodymyr Zelensky’s thinking and intentions as it is about Vladimir Putin’s. And as the Russian leader faces his biggest challenge in the aftermath of a failed mutiny, the Agency is straining to understand what the two sides will do—because President Joe Biden has determined that the United States (and Kyiv) will not undertake any actions that might threaten Russia itself or the survival of the Russian state, lest Putin escalate the conflict and engulf all of Europe in a new World War. In exchange, it expects that the Kremlin won’t escalate the war beyond Ukraine or resort to the use of nuclear weapons.
America’s stance is under threat because the near-mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, raises the question as to whether Moscow has run out of options.
“Putin’s back is really against the wall” a senior defense intelligence official tells Newsweek, warning that while the CIA fully grasps how much Russia is stuck in Ukraine, it is very much in the dark with regard to what Putin might do about it. With talk of Russian nuclear weapons possibly being deployed to Belarus, and in light of Prigozhin’s public exposure of the terrible costs of fighting, something that Moscow has suppressed, the official says that it is a particularly delicate moment. “What is happening off the battlefield is now most important,” says the official, who was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. “Both sides pledge to limit their actions, but it falls to the United States to enforce those pledges. This all hinges on the quality of our intelligence.”
“There is a clandestine war, with clandestine rules, underlying all of what is going on in Ukraine,” says a Biden administration senior intelligence official who also spoke with Newsweek. The official, who is directly involved in Ukraine policy planning, requested anonymity to discuss highly classified matters. The official (and numerous other national security officials who spoke to Newsweek) say that Washington and Moscow have decades of experience crafting these clandestine rules, necessitating that the CIA play an outsize role: as primary spy, as negotiator, as supplier of intelligence, as logistician, as wrangler of a network of sensitive NATO relations and perhaps most important of all, as the agency trying to ensure the war does not further spin out of control.
“Don’t underestimate the Biden administration’s priority to keep Americans out of harm’s way and reassure Russia that it doesn’t need to escalate,” the senior intelligence officer says. “Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?” he asks rhetorically. “Yes, but it’s also not nefarious.”
Newsweek has examined in depth the scale and scope of the CIA’s activities in Ukraine, especially in light of growing Congressional questions about the extent of U.S. aid and whether President Biden is keeping his pledge not to have “boots on the ground.” Neither the CIA nor the White House would give specific responses for confirmation, but they asked that Newsweek not reveal the specific locations of CIA operations inside Ukraine or Poland, that it not name other countries involved in the clandestine CIA efforts and that it not name the air service that is supporting the clandestine U.S. logistics effort. After repeated requests for an on-the-record comment, the CIA declined. Neither the Ukrainian nor Russian governments responded to requests for comment.
Over the course of its three-month investigation, Newsweek spoke to over a dozen intelligence experts and officials. Newsweek also sought out contrary views. All of the credible experts and officials Newsweek spoke to agreed that the CIA has been successful in discreetly playing its part in dealing with Kyiv and Moscow, in moving mountains of information and materiel and in dealing with a diverse set of other countries, some of whom are quietly helping while also trying to stay out of Russia’s crosshairs. And they didn’t dispute that on the CIA’s main task—knowing what’s going on in the minds of the leaders of Russia and Ukraine—the Agency has had to struggle.
Intelligence experts say this war is unique in that the United States is aligned with Ukraine, yet the two countries are not allies. And though the United States is helping Ukraine against Russia, it is not formally at war with that country. Thus, much of what Washington does to aid Ukraine is kept secret–and much of what is normally in the realm of the U.S. military is being carried out by the Agency. Everything that is done, including work inside Ukraine itself, must comply with limits established by Biden.
“It’s a tricky balancing act—the CIA being very active in the war while not contradicting the Biden administration’s central pledge, which is that there are no American boots on the ground,” says a second senior intelligence official who was granted anonymity to speak with Newsweek.
For the CIA, its major role in the war in Ukraine has provided a boost in morale after the sour relationship between former President Donald Trump and his spy chiefs. The second official says that while some in the Agency want to speak more openly about its renewed significance, that is not likely to happen. “The corporate CIA worries that too much bravado about its role could provoke Putin,” the intelligence official says.
That is partly why the CIA is also keen to distance itself from anything that suggests a direct attack on Russia and any role in actual combat—something Kyiv has repeatedly done, from the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline and the Kerch Strait bridge to drone and special operations attacks across the border. These attacks seem contrary to pledges by Zelensky that Ukraine would not take actions that might expand the scope of the war.
“The view advanced by many that the CIA is central to the fighting—say, for instance, in killing Russian generals on the battlefield or in important strikes outside Ukraine, such as the sinking of the Moskva flagship–doesn’t play well in Kyiv,” says one retired senior military intelligence official granted anonymity to speak with Newsweek. “If we want Kyiv to listen to us, we need to remind ourselves that the Ukrainians are winning the war, not us.”
Washington has quietly expressed its displeasure to the Zelensky government with regard to the Nord Stream attack last September, but that act of sabotage was followed by other strikes, including the recent drone attack on the Kremlin itself. Those have raised questions over one of the CIA’s main intelligence responsibilities—knowing enough of what the Ukrainians are planning to both influence them and to adhere to their secret agreement with Moscow.
Trouble Shooting
The CIA was central to the war even before it started. At the beginning of his administration, Biden tapped director William Burns as his global trouble shooter—a clandestine operator able to communicate with foreign leaders outside normal channels, someone who could occupy important geopolitical space between overt and covert, and an official who could organize work in the arena that exists between what is strictly military and what is strictly civilian.
As former Ambassador to Russia, Burns has been particularly influential with regard to Ukraine. The CIA had been monitoring Russia’s buildup and in November 2021, three months before the invasion, Biden dispatched Burns to Moscow to warn the Kremlin of the consequences of any attack. Though the Russian president snubbed Biden’s emissary by staying at his retreat in Sochi on the Black Sea, 800 miles away, he did agree to speak with Burns via a Kremlin secure phone.
“In some ironic ways though, the meeting was highly successful,” says the second senior intelligence official, who was briefed on it. Even though Russia invaded, the two countries were able to accept tried and true rules of the road. The United States would not fight directly nor seek regime change, the Biden administration pledged. Russia would limit its assault to Ukraine and act in accordance with unstated but well-understood guidelines for secret operations.
“There are clandestine rules of the road,” says the senior defense intelligence official, “even if they are not codified on paper, particularly when one isn’t engaged in a war of annihilation.” This includes staying within day-to-day boundaries of spying, not crossing certain borders and not attacking each other’s leadership or diplomats. “Generally the Russians have respected these global red lines, even if those lines are invisible,” the official says.
Once Russian forces poured into Ukraine, the United States had to quickly shift gears. The CIA, like the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, had misread Russia’s military capacity and Ukraine’s resilience as Russia failed to take Kyiv and withdrew from the north.
By last July, both sides settled in for a long war. As the war shifted, Washington’s focus changed from very public and symbolic troop deployments to Europe to “deter” further Russian moves, to providing weapons to sustain Ukraine’s ability to fight. In the face of Zelensky’s masterful public lobbying, the United States slowly and reluctantly agreed to supply better and longer-range weapons, weapons that in theory could threaten Russian territory and thus flirt with the feared escalation.
“Zelensky has certainly outdone everyone else in getting what he wants, but Kyiv has had to agree to obey certain invisible lines as well,” says the senior defense intelligence official. In secret diplomacy largely led by the CIA, Kyiv pledged not to use the weapons to attack Russia itself. Zelensky has said openly that Ukraine will not attack Russia.
Behind the scenes, dozens of countries also had to be persuaded to accept the Biden administration’s limits. Some of these countries, including Britain and Poland, are willing to take more risk than the White House is comfortable with. Others—including some of Ukraine’s neighbors—do not entirely share American and Ukrainian zeal for the conflict, do not enjoy unanimous public support in their anti-Russian efforts and do not want to antagonize Putin.
It fell to the CIA to manage this underworld, working through its foreign intelligence counterparts and secret police rather than public politicians and diplomats. The Agency established its own operating bases and staging areas. The CIA sought help from Ukraine’s neighbors in better understanding Putin as well as Zelensky and his administration. Agency personnel went into and out of Ukraine on secret missions, to assist with the operations of new weapons and systems, some of which were not publicly divulged. But the CIA operations were always conducted with an eye to avoid direct confrontation with Russian troops.
“The CIA has been operating inside Ukraine, under strict rules, and with a cap on how many personnel can be in country at any one time,” says another senior military intelligence official. “Black special operators are restricted from conducting clandestine missions, and when they do, it is within a very narrow scope.” (Black special operations refers to those that are conducted clandestinely.)
Simply, CIA personnel can routinely go—and can do—what U.S. military personnel can’t. That includes inside Ukraine. The military, on the other hand, is restricted from entering Ukraine, except under strict guidelines that have to be approved by the White House. This limits the Pentagon to a small number of Embassy personnel in Kyiv. Newsweek was unable to establish the exact number of CIA personnel in Ukraine, but sources suggest it is less than 100 at any one time.
After all the members of the U.S. military were publicly withdrawn from Ukraine in February 2022 including special operations forces that had been behind the scenes, the White House established the roles that different agencies could play in the U.S. response. President Biden signed national security directives and a “presidential finding” authorizing certain covert operations against Russia. “Lanes of the road” were established between the Pentagon and the CIA, just as they had been established in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. Burns and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin work closely together; the relations of the two agencies, according to the CIA, have never been better.
Now, more than a year after the invasion, the United States sustains two massive networks, one public and the other clandestine. Ships deliver goods to ports in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, and those supplies are moved by truck, train and air to Ukraine. Clandestinely though, a fleet of commercial aircraft (the “grey fleet”) crisscrosses Central and Eastern Europe, moving arms and supporting CIA operations. The CIA asked Newsweek not to identify specific bases where this network is operating, nor to name the contractor operating the planes. The senior administration official said much of the network had been successfully kept under wraps, and that it was wrong to assume that Russian intelligence knows the details of the CIA’s efforts. Washington believes that If the supply route were known, Russia would attack the hubs and routes, the official said.
None of this can be sustained without a major counter-intelligence effort to thwart Russia’s own spying, the bread-and-butter work of the Agency. Russian intelligence is very active in Ukraine, intelligence experts say, and almost anything the U.S. shares with Ukraine is assumed to also make it to Russian intelligence. Other Eastern European countries are equally riddled with Russian spies and sympathizers, particularly the frontline countries.
“A good part of our time is taken up hunting down Russian penetrations of foreign governments and intelligence services,” says a military counterintelligence official working on the Ukraine war. “We have been successful in identifying Russian spies inside the Ukrainian government and military, and at various other points in the supply chain. But Russian penetration of Eastern European countries, even those who are members of NATO, is deep, and Russian influence operations are of direct concern.”
As billions of dollars worth of arms started flowing through Eastern Europe, another issue that the CIA is working on is the task of fighting corruption, which turned out to be a major problem. This involves not only accounting for where weapons are going but also quashing the pilfering and kickbacks involved in the movement of so much materiel to Ukraine.
The Poland Connection
Less than a month after Russian tanks crossed the border on their way to Kyiv, CIA Director Burns landed in Warsaw, visiting with the directors of Poland’s intelligence agencies and putting together the final agreements that would allow the CIA to use Ukraine’s neighbor as its clandestine hub.
Since the end of the Cold War, Poland and the United States, through the CIA, have established particularly warm relations. Poland hosted a CIA torture “black site” in the village of Stare Kiejkuty during 2002-2003. And after the initial Russian invasion of Donbas and Crimea in 2014, CIA activity expanded to make Poland its third-largest station in Europe.
Poland officially became the center of NATO’s response, first in handling hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the battle, and then as the logistical hub for arms flowing back into Ukraine. The country also became the center of the overt military response. A forward headquarters for the Army V Corps (5th Corps) has been established in Poland. Additional supplies and ammunition for U.S. use are stored in Poland. A permanent Army garrison has been activated, the first ever to be located on NATO’s eastern flank, and today there are now about 10,000 American troops in Poland.
But Poland’s real value is its role in the CIA’s secret war. Burns returned to Warsaw last April, meeting again with Minister of the Interior and “special services” coordinator Mariusz Kaminski, his Polish counterpart, to discuss the scope of cooperation between the two countries, especially in collecting intelligence. From Poland, CIA case officers are able to connect with their many agents, including Ukrainian and Russian spies. CIA ground branch personnel of the Special Activities Center handle security and interact with their Ukrainian partners and the special operations forces of 20 nations, almost all of whom also operate from Polish bases. CIA cyber operators work closely with their Polish partners.
The closeness of U.S.-Polish relations particularly paid off over 24 hours last November. Burns was at Turkish intelligence headquarters in Ankara meeting with Sergei Naryshkin, his Russian counterpart. There he stressed “strategic stability,” according to a senior U.S. government official, and he delivered a new backchannel warning that the United States would not tolerate nuclear threats or escalation. From Turkey he flew on to Ukraine to brief Zelensky on the talks.
While he was in transit, a missile landed in the Polish town of Przewodow, less than 20 miles from the Ukraine border, setting off a diplomatic and press frenzy. A Russian attack on a NATO country would trigger Article 5 of the NATO charter, the principle that an attack on one was an attack on all. But U.S. intelligence, through monitoring thermal signatures that track every missile launch, immediately knew the missile originated from inside Ukraine and not from Russia. (It turned out to be a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile that had gone awry.) Burns got the intelligence from Washington and immediately transmitted it to Polish president Andrzej Duda.
One crisis was averted. But a new one was brewing. Strikes inside Russia were continuing and even increasing, contrary to the fundamental U.S. condition for supporting Ukraine. There was a mysterious spate of assassinations and acts of sabotage inside Russia, some occurring in and around Moscow. Some of the attacks, the CIA concluded, were domestic in origin, undertaken by a nascent Russian opposition. But others were the work of Ukraine—even if analysts were unsure of the extent of Zelensky’s direction or involvement.
‘Karma Is a Cruel Thing’
Early in the war, Kyiv made its own “non-agreement” with Washington to accept the Biden administration’s limitations on attacking Russia, even though that put it at a military disadvantage as Russian forces launched air and missile attacks from their own territory. In exchange, the U.S. promised arms and intelligence that came in ever greater quantities and firepower as Zelensky pushed harder.
The “non-agreement held up for quite some time. There were occasional cross-border artillery attacks and some errant weapons that landed in Russia; in each case Ukraine denied any involvement.
Then came the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines on September 26. Although not in Russia, they were majority-owned by Russian state gas firm Gazprom. Again, Ukraine denied involvement despite the suspicions of the CIA. We have “nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and have no information about…sabotage groups,” Zelensky’s top aide said, calling any speculation to the contrary “amusing conspiracy theories.”
Next came the truck bomb attack on the Kerch Strait bridge on October 8. Ukraine had threatened to attack the 12-mile bridge that links Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow had annexed in 2014 in a move condemned as illegal by much of the world. Though it wasn’t clear who carried out the attack, Putin blamed Ukrainian “special services.” Meeting with his Security Council, Putin said, “If attempts continue to carry out terrorist acts on our territory, Russia’s responses will be harsh and in their scale will correspond to the level of threats created for the Russian Federation.” And indeed Russia did respond with multiple attacks on targets in Ukrainian cities.
“These attacks only further reinforce our commitment to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes,” the White House said of the Russian retaliatory strike. Behind the scenes, though, the CIA was scrambling to determine the origins.
“The CIA learned with the attack on the Crimea bridge that Zelensky either didn’t have complete control over his own military or didn’t want to know of certain actions,” says the military intelligence official.
The Kerch bridge attack was followed by an even longer-range strike on the Engels Russian bomber base, almost 700 miles from Kyiv. The CIA did not know about any of these attacks beforehand, according to a senior U.S. official, but rumors started to circulate that the Agency was, through some mysterious third party, directing others to strike Russia. The Agency delivered a strong and unusual on-the-record denial. “The allegation that CIA is somehow supporting saboteur networks in Russia is categorically false,” CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp said.
In January this year, Burns was back in Kyiv to meet with Zelensky and his Ukrainian counterparts, discussing the clandestine war and the need to preserve strategic stability. “Kyiv was beginning to taste a potential victory and was therefore more willing to take risks,” says the second senior intelligence official. “But Russian sabotage groups also had emerged by the end of the year.” The January talks had little impact. As for the sabotage strikes themselves, the senior U.S. government official tells Newsweek that the CIA has had no prior knowledge of any Ukrainian operations.
All of this culminated in the May 3 drone attack inside the Kremlin walls in Moscow. Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev blamed the United States and Britain, saying that “the terrorist attacks committed in Russia are…designed to destabilize the socio-political situation, and to undermine the constitutional foundations and sovereignty of Russia.” Ukrainian officials implicitly admitted culpability. “Karma is a cruel thing,” Zelensky advisor Mykhailo Podolyak responded, adding fuel to the fire.
A senior Polish government official told Newsweek that it might be impossible to convince Kyiv to abide by the non-agreement it made to keep the war limited. “In my humble opinion, the CIA fails to understand the nature of the Ukrainian state and the reckless factions that exist there,” says the Polish official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.
In response, the senior U.S. defense intelligence official stressed the delicate balance the Agency must maintain in its many roles, saying: “I hesitate to say that the CIA has failed.” But the official said sabotage attacks and cross border fighting created a whole new complication and continuing Ukrainian sabotage “could have disastrous consequences.”
Conversations about white supremacy in America today typically center on right-wing media and incendiary politicians who blast out racist dog whistles.
But hate doesn’t need demagogues to get mainstreamed; it has also found an outlet at elite universities.
On June 29, Stanford University hosted a delegation from the Azov Brigade, a neo-Nazi formation in the Ukrainian National Guard. The panel, during which Azov’s neo-Nazi insignia was projected onto the wall, was attended by noted political scientist Francis Fukuyama, who posed for a photograph with the delegation.
This event — and the disturbing lack of reaction from Jewish organizations — showcases the limits of America’s commitment to combating white supremacy.
Call it the Ukraine exception.
Before Russia’s 2022 invasion, nearly every Western institution raised alarms about Azov. Putin’s brazen attack on Ukraine led to a much deserved outpouring of support for the country. Unfortunately, it also led to suppression of those who criticize the dark side of Kyiv: its reliance on far-right military elements, the most prominent example of which is Azov.
Even amid today’s surge of antisemitism globally, Azov has become the Teflon Neo-Nazis: freedom fighters who can do no wrong, celebrated across America, including at prestigious institutions like Stanford.
All too often, this adulation of a neo-Nazi formation has been met with silence by the Jewish community.
From neo-Nazis to heroes
Azov began in 2014 as a paramilitary battalion formed out of a neo-Nazi street gang; it helped Kyiv fight back against Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. Azov eventually grew into a brigade in Ukraine’s National Guard. In addition to committing war crimes, the unit is notorious for its recruitment of radicals from around the world, including America.
But then, Russian president Vladimir Putin used Azov as “justification” for his invasion. Moscow needed to sell the war to the public — it exploited Azov’s existence by falsely painting Ukraine as teeming with fascists and Russia’s invasion as a “denazification” mission.
The reaction of the West played in Azov’s favor. The existence of white supremacists certainly doesn’t give Putin the right to invade Ukraine. The Kremlin’s premise of “denazification” also rings hollow, considering there are plenty of neo-Nazis fighting for Moscow.
But for Azov, Moscow’s obsession has been a ticket to the limelight. Buoyed by the notion that If Putin hates them, they must be the good guys, brigade members have been welcomed to Congress and lauded on television.
In addition to an Azov veteran, the Stanford appearance featured Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband Denys was the brigade’s commander through the spring of 2022.
Denys Prokopenko has been photographed with his platoon’s informal insignia of a bearded Totenkopf, a type of skull-and-crossbones used by the SS. He was also featured on the cover of Azov’s unofficial magazine, which uses the Sonnenrad neo-Nazi rune favored by white terrorists like the perpetrator of last year’s massacre in Buffalo, New York.
Third Reich insignia on an elite campus
Last week’s event wasn’t Azov’s first Stanford tour – a delegation was also welcomed there last fall. Ironically, one of Stanford’s own institutes published a report chronicling Azov’s white supremacy mere months before the brigade’s visit.
When asked about Azov’s return to campus, a university spokesperson told me via email on June 27 that the event was co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Student Association at Stanford at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. “The university does not take positions on outside speakers that groups within our community want to hear from,” they added.
But Azov’s visit concerns an issue Stanford has taken a position on: Nazi symbolism.
The flyer advertising the Azov event contains the brigade’s official insignia, which is the wolfsangel, yet another hate symbol used by both the Third Reich and today’s neo-Nazis.
This isn’t the first Stanford incident involving Nazi imagery. However, the lack of response on Azov stands in sharp contrast to Stanford’s actions in previous cases.
In 2019, Stanford was embroiled in controversy after left-wing cartoonist Eli Valley was invited to speak on campus. Valley, whose artwork features grotesque satire using Nazi imagery, was met with protests. Indeed, it led to university officials issuing a lengthy statement condemning antisemitism.
This March, the school addressed the discovery of swastikas in a dormitory by stating, “Stanford wholeheartedly rejects antisemitism, racism, hatred, and associated symbols, which are reprehensible and will not be tolerated.”
When more antisemitic attacks followed in April, Stanford’s president said: “I want to make it very clear that we will not tolerate antisemitism and the symbols of antisemitism here on campus. It is something we need to eradicate.”
Yet despite these declarations of commitment to combating antisemitism, Stanford has not responded to repeated inquiries about the university’s position regarding the Azov event displaying the wolfsangel.
We seem endlessly surprised at politicians like Donald Trump who refuse to accept responsibility for actions that enable bigotry. It shouldn’t be surprising, considering demagogues don’t bother with responsibility; that’s what makes them demagogues.
But what about a pillar of education and enlightenment like a prestigious university? What’s Stanford’s excuse?
Calling out neo-Nazism: Void where prohibited
Our tolerance of Azov seems even more alarming when we consider reactions to neo-Nazism that don’t involve the brigade.
In 2018, Rep. Matt Gaetz was caught inviting a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union. Gaetz’s decision to platform hate on Capitol Hill was condemned by colleagues and the ADL.
But there have been no denunciations of numerous lawmakers who welcomed Azov fighters to Washington. This includes Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who was photographed with an Azov veteran whose Twitter contained pictures of him wearing a shirt with 1488 (neo-Nazi code) and “likes” of a Hitler photo and “Death to Kikes” graffiti.
Indeed, Azov delegations to Washington proudly advertise their meetings on the Hill.
Or see how Jewish media and the State Department took the trouble to condemn musician Roger Waters for wearing a fascist uniform during concerts (this is part of Waters’ performance of The Wall, a satire of fascism).
The very same day, The New York Timesexposed the prevalence of Nazi symbols in Ukraine’s armed forces, which receive billions in American weapons. You’d imagine this news would be at least as concerning as a musician’s costume. Yet neither the State Department nor Jewish watchdogs reacted to it (and neither the State Department or the ADL have responded to my requests for comment).
The American Jewish community must condemn neo-Nazism without exception, not just when geopolitically convenient. They can start by calling on institutions like Stanford to stop platforming Azov.
Lev Golinkin is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, Amazon’s Debut of the Month, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program selection, and winner of the Premio Salerno Libro d’Europa. A graduate of Boston College, Golinkin came to the U.S. as a child refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov (now called Kharkiv) in 1990. His writing on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, the far right, and immigrant and refugee identity has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Boston Globe, Politico Europe, and Time.com, among others; he has been interviewed by MSNBC, NPR, ABC Radio, WSJ Live and HuffPost Live.
The Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive has struggled to live up to Western expectations, but wartime propaganda has gone on uninterrupted.
On Monday [June 19th] at 12:30 a.m., a video was shared on Telegram by the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. The video contains brutal footage of trench warfare and the battlefield killing of numerous Russian soldiers—ten were “destroyed” according to the SOF. Only 17 minutes later the video made its way to Twitter, posted by the SOF with an English caption.
The original post has over 800,000 views; a version reposted by a journalist for the Kyiv Independent has over one million. One commenter reacted to the violence: “This went well with my morning coffee. I feel happy and energized.” Another viewer communicated his desire for more content, saying, “Cool. More vids like this? I wanna see more close quaters [sic] fighting.” The wish was granted. Another Telegram video, edited to include dubstep music in the background, was shared by the SOF on Monday afternoon, this time depicting a drone strike that “put an end to the senseless existence of the invaders.”
Public messaging in war has always sought to dehumanize the enemy. In World War I U.S. propaganda portrayed Germans as apes. During the Second World War Disney and Warner Bros. created cartoons mocking the Japanese. In eras past wartime propaganda was effective precisely because it was an exaggeration or caricature of the enemy. Indeed, many a war story include a soldier’s realization that he shares much more in common with the enemy than originally thought.
Likewise, intimate media coverage of fighting in Vietnam—a conflict often considered the “first television war”—had the effect of dramatically reducing domestic support for continued intervention. The bitter reality of wars previous could not be fully comprehended by those at home through print newspapers. When Pope St. John Paul II issued his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae and lamented a “culture of death” that ignores the killing of the most vulnerable, he was at least able to find hope in a “new sensitivity ever more opposed to war as an instrument for the resolution of conflicts between peoples, and increasingly oriented to finding effective but ‘non-violent’ means to counter the armed aggressor.”
Yet only a generation later, full exposure to the reality of bloodshed between Ukrainians and Russians has hardly moved the American people toward a will for peace. While declining, 47 percent of Americans still say that Ukraine is either getting the right amount of aid or should be given more, while only 28 percent believe the U.S. is giving too much.
Maybe the insensitivity to war can be attributed to the fact that—at least for now—those dying are not American sons and daughters. Yet it surely has as much to do with spiritual decay and the continual growth of a culture of death.
The following is a revised and expanded version of an interview with Benjamin Abelow, author of How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe, originally published in Italian translation by the Italian news and commentary site, QuotidianoWeb.
Question: In your book on the Ukraine war, you say that the United States and NATO provoked the war. How do you understand this word, “provoked”?
Abelow: To say that the U.S. and NATO provoked the war could mean two different things. Do I mean that they wanted a war, and that they knew their actions would start one? That is one possible meaning of “provoked.”
But “provoked” can also mean that their actions caused the war unintentionally. In fact, one can provoke a war while trying to avoid war. Although it is possible that some in the U.S. foreign policy elite wanted this war, I believe that most did not. I think that most were honestly trying to stabilize the peace. In English we have an idiom, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I think this expression applies to the role of the United States and NATO in creating this war.
Question: In your book, you challenge readers to view U.S. and NATO actions through Russian eyes. You suggest that this will help them understand the origins of the war. Can you offer an example?
Abelow: One telling example occurred in 2021, the year before Russia invaded Ukraine. In that year, NATO carried out a live-fire training exercise in Estonia, a NATO country on Russia’s northwestern border. NATO fired 24 missiles. The launch sites were just 70 miles from Russia, and the missiles had a range of 185 miles. The purpose of this exercise was to practice destroying air defense targets inside Russia. The missiles did not enter Russian airspace, and NATO was not planning to attack Russia. It was trying to figure out how to react if Russia invaded one of the Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. Destroying air defense targets was part of an overall deterrent or protective strategy. But this exercise could have been perceived by Russian leaders as preparation for an offensive attack. In fact, the same exercises could be used to train for that purpose.
Now let’s picture the converse of this situation. Imagine that the United States and Canada underwent a rift in their relations, and that Russia and Canada developed close political and military ties. Now imagine that, using a training site in Canada, Russia launched missiles, 70 miles from the U.S. border, to practice destroying air defense sites inside the United States. How would U.S. politicians and the foreign policy elite, military planners, and ordinary citizens in the United States react? Would they have accepted Russian claims that their actions were only defensive? No. They would have had enough uncertainty that they would consider the exercises a threat, possibly even a prelude to war. U.S. leaders would have demanded that the exercises cease and that the missiles be removed. It is likely they would have required the Russian military to leave Canada altogether. And if Russia refused, the U.S. probably would have gone to war. If the situation required it, U.S. military planners might even have threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons.
Keep in mind that we are not simply talking about Canada having its own military. We are talking about a country, in this example Russia, coming from far away—outside our hemisphere, in fact—and practicing with its missiles right on the U.S. border. This is exactly what the United States and NATO did with respect to Russia during their exercise in Estonia. Their actions showed a deep disregard for what risks Russia might have perceived. It also shows a lack of understanding about how easily NATO’s behavior could decrease Western security, rather than increase it, by provoking a Russian response.
Question: What lessons can be drawn from this example?
Abelow: This example illustrates what political scientists and international relations scholars call a “security dilemma.” This term refers to the idea that an action which is intended to be defensive can also have offensive potential and be perceived by another country as a threat. The result can be a spiral of action and reaction that ends in war. The dilemma is that a country wants to increase its security, but it makes decisions that have the opposite effect, by provoking defensive moves from the other side.
This example also illustrates how important it is to be able to imagine how another country, especially a potential opponent, perceives things. This ability is sometimes called “strategic empathy.” It requires an ability to step outside of one’s own limited perspective and to (so to speak) stand in the shoes of another. It requires us to recognize that—whatever else we may think about a potential opponent—the other country’s leadership consists of human beings who have some of the same security concerns and fears that we do.
The missile exercise in Estonia was just one of many NATO exercises conducted near Russia’s border. In fact, NATO carried out a very similar missile exercise in 2020, also in Estonia. All of these exercises, to one extent or another, created a security dilemma for Russia. Each was intended as part of a defensive preparation and a form of deterrence. But each exercise could also be used as part of an offensive strategy. While some people in the U.S. or Europe may laugh at the idea that NATO is a threat, from Russia’s perspective it is no joke. NATO is first and foremost a military organization. In fact, it is the most powerful military organization that has ever existed in the history of the world. And long before this war started, it was pointing at Russia.
The simple and sad fact is that the United States and NATO, as they have gone about their own efforts at security, have not adequately taken Russia’s security concerns into account. As a result, they created a situation that Russian leaders very naturally perceived to be a military threat.
Question: Do you think Putin and the Russian leadership are paranoid?
Abelow: No. I think they are dealing with legitimate security concerns of the same sort that preoccupy many national governments, including those of the United States.
Nonetheless, the way leaders view things does get shaped and modified by the historical experiences of their countries. In the case of Russia, it’s important to remember that the country has repeatedly been invaded from the West through the territory of Ukraine. The last time this happened, during Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, one out of every seven Russian citizens died. That’s 13 percent of the entire Russian population. Not 13 percent of the military. Thirteen percent of the whole Russian citizenry. As one example of the awesome destruction the country experienced, St. Petersburg—then called Leningrad—Russia’s second largest city, was put under siege for over two years and its inhabitants forced into cannibalism. Russian citizens, in the country’s second largest city, were literally eating the dead bodies of their neighbors.
We in the United States, and I dare say in most of Europe, cannot even begin to imagine such a thing. It would be as if Los Angeles or New York had been put under siege and reduced to cannibalism. The whole thing is inconceivable to us. But it is very much a part of Russian historical memory. And that siege is just one example of what Russian citizens endured within its borders. In a single battle, that of Stalingrad, which turned the tide of the Nazi invasion, close to 1,000,000 soldiers and 40,000 civilians died.
These and other wartime events are not an historical abstraction for the Russians who are alive today. The events affected nearly every family. In Putin’s case, his parents barely survived disease and near-fatal wounds, and his older brother and several uncles died. We need to take all this, and the psychological outlook it contributed to, into account. It is one important factor we must consider when we think about strategic empathy and security dilemmas.
Question: You write about the Cuban missile crisis. Why?
Abelow: In 1962, the Soviet Union placed missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba, about 90 miles off Florida’s coast and 1,000 miles from Washington, DC. The United States almost got into a nuclear war to compel the Soviets to remove them. This episode can be instructive for Americans because in that case it was the United States that was on the receiving end of a security dilemma. Some of the same things that we experienced then can be compared to what we did to Russia before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Most importantly, Russia was demanding that we not bring Ukraine into NATO. Ukraine shares a 1,200-mile border with Russia, which at certain points is just 400 miles from Moscow. Some have argued that what the West did to Russia was a kind of Cuban missile crisis in reverse. I think there is much truth to that view.
We can learn other things, too. One of the main reasons there was no nuclear war during the crisis is that President John F. Kennedy was a man of boldness and wisdom in his relationship with the Soviet Union. Although he came into office as a cold warrior, he nonetheless established a personal relationship with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, exchanging letters through a private diplomatic backchannel. As a result, when the crisis occurred there was some element of trust, some ability to work together to keep the crisis from escalating to nuclear war.
Unfortunately, our current leaders seem to have no such wisdom. Mr. Biden has insulted Mr. Putin repeatedly and personally. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, our nation’s top diplomat, and our current Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, seem not to know what diplomacy means. There is nothing but insult, hostility, and demands coming from Washington. There is much less chance that an acute crisis could be diffused the way it was during the Cuban missile crisis.
There is one additional lesson that we can learn. Contrary to the popular notion, the Cuban missile crisis was not resolved by Kennedy staring down Khrushchev in an eyeball-to-eyeball game of nuclear chicken. Rather, a secret deal was struck in which, in exchange for the removal of the Cuban missiles, Kennedy agreed to remove intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Italy and Turkey. In fact, the placement of those missiles in 1960 and 1961 by the United States was one of the reasons Khrushchev placed missiles in Cuba. The resolution of the crisis reveals the potential for win-win diplomatic solutions to militarily intractable problems.
Question: It is difficult to talk to people about this war. People often say there is an aggressor, Russia, and a victim, Ukraine, and that nothing else matters. What do you say to these people?
Abelow: These people may be thinking something like this: “Okay, the U.S. and NATO made mistakes, but we now must deal with the current reality. What does it matter how we got here?” This sounds good on the surface, but we must understand why the war started if we want to bring it to an end with a minimum of additional destruction and risk.
My formal training is not only in history but in medicine. In medicine, we understand that if we diagnose a problem incorrectly, and then try to treat it, we will be using the wrong therapy and may make the situation worse. In fact, we may kill the patient. This is exactly what is happening now. People in Washington and the European Union, and in the various capitals of Europe, have misdiagnosed the problem. As a result, the “treatment” they prescribed—and are continuing to prescribe—is like pouring gasoline onto a fire. This fire could easily get out of control and lead to a catastrophe. It could result not only in the destruction of Ukraine and its complete termination as a functioning society, but in a direct NATO-Russia confrontation, which could lead to a nuclear war.
Some people look at this war and they think of World War II. They think of Hitler. It appears to them that Russia is trying to expand and reestablish the Soviet Union or a tsarist empire. This is nonsense. The actual reason for this war is what I described: a security dilemma resulting from the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders. But if you think you are fighting Hitler, that is, someone who wants to take over the world, someone who has no rational security concerns but only a desire to kill and expand, then it might be reasonable to keep fighting. It might make sense then to view negotiation as appeasement. That seems to be what our leaders think—and with the help of a compliant mass media, they have propagandized the populations of the United States and Europe to think the same thing.
Let me address your question directly. You asked what to say to people who think the origins of the war don’t matter. The answer is simple: You explain why the origins matter a lot. You explain how an incorrect understanding of why the war started will lead to a bad and possibly catastrophic outcome. Ideas are the most powerful things in the world. Wrong ideas are among the most dangerous. It is currently our task to replace bad ideas with good ones, by which I mean ideas that better reflect the reality of the situation.
Question: What about the security concerns of central and eastern Europe? You’ve not said anything about them.
Abelow: I’ve focused on Russia’s security concerns because it is those concerns, and their disregard by the United States and NATO, that caused this war. And this war is what we are trying to understand. But you are right to mention Eastern and Central Europe. They have legitimate concerns too, of course. While modern Russia is absolutely not the Soviet Union, we can still understand why Eastern and Central Europeans might be fearful as a result of their own terrible histories with Moscow. These fears need to be considered.
The question is: How do you address those fears and security concerns? Do you do it by redrawing the lines of division in Europe, pushing a U.S.-dominated military alliance to Russia’s borders, and putting Russia into a massive security dilemma? Do you then act as if Putin were crazy, a paranoid madman and an inconsequential fool, even to worry about NATO and missile exercises on Russia’s border? That is what we did—and it was, and still is, an ill-conceived and very dangerous way to proceed. It was threatening to Russia, humiliating to its leaders, and it was asking for trouble. We’re seeing the results of that now in Ukraine, a country that, in terms of NATO expansion, has long been a red line for Russia.
What is needed is a security architecture for Europe and Russia that takes into account the needs of all parties. This should have been worked out decades ago. And in fact, this is exactly what Putin has been asking for—sometimes pleading, sometimes demanding—at least since 2007. But we in the West have not wanted to listen. Nobody should be surprised by this war. The leaders of the United States and NATO say the war was unprovoked for a very simple reason: to hide the fact that they provoked it.
Question: What can we expect from our leaders now?
Abelow: Many people are waiting for their elected and unelected leaders—in Washington, Brussels, and the European capitals—to recognize their mistakes. Some people probably think that, if what I’m saying were correct, our leaders would recognize their errors and try to undo them. I believe this is unlikely, for two reasons. These reasons are important to understand, because if we don’t understand them, we may continue to wait indefinitely for our leaders to fix the situation.
The first reason is that our leaders seem to be locked into a “Putin-equals-Hitler” mindset. They appear to be incapable or unwilling to apply strategic empathy, to see things through Russian eyes, and to grasp the actual causes of this war. While I believe that most of our leaders genuinely want what is best for their countries, political communities, and the world, they are dangerously limited in their outlook.
The second reason is that many of our leaders and institutions are the same ones that created the problem in the first place. They are the ones who pushed for NATO expansion. As a result, they backed not only Russia but also themselves into a corner. Think how hard it is for most of us to admit when we are wrong about something important. It can seem an overwhelming humiliation, truly shameful, to recognize and publicly acknowledge that we were wrong, especially when we have been outspoken with our views in the past. Our leaders, instead of recognizing their mistakes and making appropriate adjustments, are doubling down. They are pushing the same destructive policies even harder.
Imagine how the people who run NATO and set NATO policy feel. It must be very difficult for them to even consider the possibility that their failures of judgement destabilized European security and led to war. Ironically, the problem can be even worse if these people are fundamentally good but internally weak. Imagine what kind of inner honesty and strength of character would be required to recognize and acknowledge that, because of one’s errors, hundreds of thousands of people died and were maimed, millions have been traumatized and displaced, and now the whole world is at risk of nuclear war. In this circumstance, it would take an extraordinary person, someone of exceptional clarity and character, to be able to acknowledge their error, even to themselves.
That is why the people of Europe and the people of the United States must take action. It should be peaceful action, democratic action but powerful action nonetheless. It is up to us to see what is happening, to educate people, and to develop a mass movement that encompasses the entire political spectrum. Not just the left. Not just the right. Not just those on the fringes. Everyone. This issue is far too important to be about partisan politics. All that must be set aside. We must deal with the reality that we now face. This reality includes a risk of a direct NATO-Russia conflict and a growing possibility of nuclear war.
Question: You describe in your book how, as the Soviet Union was coming to an end, the Western countries assured Moscow that NATO would not expand eastward. Moscow made a serious mistake in not getting this assurance in writing. Do you think Moscow has made other mistakes?
Abelow: The assurances you mention were part of an arrangement by which Moscow would remove its 400,000 troops from East Germany. The goal was to let the divided Germany, East and West, reunify under NATO auspices. In exchange, NATO would not expand eastward. At that time, NATO was positioned no further east than the middle of Germany, about a thousand miles from Russia’s border. This was all agreed to verbally. We have written evidence of the process, but the understanding was never instantiated in a formal treaty. Moscow removed its troops, but the West did not carry through. As you say, this was a serious mistake by Moscow.
But in reality, when we say this was a mistake, we are really saying that Moscow was foolish to trust us. What kind of nations are we that do not abide by our word and live up to what we say we will do? Here it is worth pointing out that when Kennedy and Khrushchev prevented nuclear Armageddon by trading away Soviet missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Italy and Turkey, the deal was not instantiated in a treaty. It was done privately, through a backchannel. Trust was an essential component, especially since Kennedy, according to the terms of the deal, was not required to remove the American missiles until six months after Khrushchev removed the Soviet ones.
Coming to your question, you asked if Russia and its leaders made other mistakes. Yes, they did. And first among them was this: Russia invaded Ukraine. Even for Russia, the invasion is a disaster. It is true that NATO backed Russia into a corner, and Russia decided to come out fighting. We bear great responsibility for that and must now find a way to deal honestly with the reality we created. But still, Russia started the war. It is the moral obligation of a country and its leaders to explore every possible avenue for peace before taking such a step. The killing of innocents is unacceptable. One must walk the extra mile to avoid this. One must walk an extra ten miles. I am not convinced that Mr. Putin did that before launching this war.
And yet, because so few people seem to know it, I must emphasize that Putin tried many times to avoid this war. He tried in 2007, when he spoke out at the Munich Security Conference, emphasizing that European security must address the needs of all parties simultaneously. He tried in 2014 and 2015, during the Minsk process, which was Putin’s attempt to resolve the crisis in the Donbas, in Eastern Ukraine, where a war had broken out on Russia’s border. Putin tried again in December 2021, when he sought to negotiate the question of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. But the West, especially the United States, would not even discuss it. The American message to Russia was, in essence: NATO is none of your business, even on your border.
Also, in March 2022—just weeks after Russia invaded, at a time when Russia’s military action was still limited and had not yet caused massive destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure—Putin tried to reach a peace agreement with Ukraine. Even then he sought to avoid further war by getting Ukraine to renounce NATO membership. It seems that the basic features of an agreement were worked out, and that the war would have been brought to an end. But the West sabotaged that peace process. We know this from multiple sources, including a Ukrainian publication, from the ex-prime minister of Israel, from Turkish sources, and from two scholars writing in the journal Foreign Affairs. Apparently, the United States and Britain wanted to extend the war to punish Putin and weaken Russia.
Despite Putin’s many attempts to avoid this war and limit its extent, I still cannot view Russia’s invasion as anything but a wrongful act and a terrible mistake. I cannot justify it. I cannot accept the idea that there was nothing left for Putin to try.
Question: You discuss self-fulfilling prophecies and their role in this war. Are you referring to a metaphysical concept, something mystical in nature, perhaps something pertaining to fate, inevitability, or predestination?
Abelow: When I speak about self-fulfilling prophecies, I’m not referring to a mystical notion. I’m thinking concretely about the creation of an escalating cycle of action and reaction.
How does a self-fulfilling prophecy work? Think again of the security dilemma. Let’s say that country A is overly fearful of country B. Country A believes that country B wants to expand aggressively and must be checked by intense military pressure. Country A is convinced that only this military pressure will do any good. Country A intends this pressure to be a deterrent, a defensive action, a way to prevent a war. But country B perceives these military moves as a threat, and it responds with its own actions. Country A then perceives these actions as offensive threats—and the cycle continues. In the end, country B really does attack—just like country A was convinced it would from the start. The “prophecy” of attack is fulfilled.
This description has parallels with the war we are now witnessing. The very thing that NATO feared—a highly aggressive Russia—it made happen. The United States and NATO were so convinced that Russia was aggressive that they took actions that eventually led to Russia’s aggression.
Here, I think of a line from the British scholar Richard Sakwa, a professor at the University of Kent, England, which encapsulates much of what I’m talking about. It comes from his excellent book Frontline Ukraine. It bears directly on the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy and wonderfully captures the perverse circularity of the situation: “In the end, NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its enlargement.”
I should add that, in response to this fulfilled prophecy, NATO is now enlarging further. The new round of NATO expansion is intended defensively but will be perceived by Russia as a threat. The cycle is continuing. What will the result be? Where will this end? Unless the cycle can be interrupted, it is hard to be optimistic.
Question: It seems that this war, like many others, may not have any real winners. Hundreds of thousands on both sides will be killed and injured. Countless people, both combatants and civilians, will be scarred emotionally for life, and that harm will be passed on for generations. There is a real chance of nuclear war. The whole thing seems so irrational—yet this is typical of the human pattern. How can we explain it? Do humans have an innate drive to make war? Are unconscious influences at play?
Abelow: You’re raising questions that many have pondered, and to which they have given diverse answers. Freud and his followers have claimed there is a violent unconscious “id” and even proposed that humans have a death instinct. Christians sometimes assert that wars occur because humanity has fallen away from God. Evolutionary biologists argue that natural selection favored the survival of communities with strong in-group bonds and a tendency toward fear and violence directed at other groups.
I have a different perspective, one that arises from my study of psychological trauma, and in particular trauma during childhood. I do not discuss this in my book, and I don’t know if my ideas will resonate with those who read this interview. But perhaps some will find these ideas worth considering.
For most of history, in many cultures, and sometimes still, children have been reared with corporal punishment, especially beatings. During such a beating, what goes on in the mind of a child? The child naturally experiences fear and rage but is required to submit. If the child fights back or shows anger, even by an involuntary facial expression, the child may be viewed as insubordinate and disobedient—and the beating will be made more severe. As a result, the child is effectively forbidden to express his or her rage. That rage must be stuffed down, kept inside, and never be expressed.
But when the child grows into adulthood, those suppressed feelings can surface, because the individual is no longer small, weak, and afraid. The long-buried rage seeks a target and directs itself toward an enemy, real or imagined. Xenophobia, a desire for revenge, and ultimately war—these all provide remarkably efficient outlets for the emotions. These unconscious influences arising from childhood can merge with conscious, practical, real-world causes for conflict. They can exacerbate the situation, turning a potential conflict into actual conflict, and a small conflict into a large one. Sometimes they can create a conflict from nothing, from a situation where no conflict need exist at all.
I am speaking in very general and somewhat abstract terms. Let me make things more concrete by suggesting how these ideas can play out in practice. My comments pertain to the influence of violent, extremist groups—including the far-right, ultranationalist groups that are active in both Ukraine and Russia.
I believe that persons who are drawn to these violent, politically extreme groups have endured especially harsh childhoods—frequent or severe beatings, a lack of parental empathy, verbal mistreatment, inadequate nurture, and the like. In fact, I view members of these groups as being essentially very wounded children. They have grown into adults but remained preoccupied with the fear, rage, and sense of victimization from their early experiences. In some cases, they are fighting battles that do not exist in reality. Yet the violence they inflict, and the consequences of their emotional indifference and brutal aggression, are very real.
Let me give an example. I have studied the childrearing practices that were imposed on German children during the generations before the rise of Nazism. When one looks at the brutality these children endured, and compares it with the brutality that they, as adults, inflicted on their victims, the entire situation becomes much clearer. No longer do we feel ourselves confronted by a great mystery about the origins of their violence. Instead, we see how “trauma begets trauma”—a situation in which children who were traumatized grow into adults who inflict traumas on others.
I consider Nazi Germany to be a prototypical example of a general pattern. I think the lessons we can learn from it apply to other countries and situations where ultranationalist groups are active and use violence to impose their will on others.
Question: Speaking of the far right, you refer in your book to the role of Ukrainian ultranationalists during the lead-up to the current war. What are you referring to?
Abelow: We in the West hear a lot about fascist and ultranationalist influences in Russia, but much less about these groups in Ukraine. The subject is verboten. And we continually hear that their numbers are relatively small, which is true. However, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis, and others on the far right are well organized and willing to use violence. As a result, they have exerted an outsized influence on decision-making in Ukraine. In fact, the far right has exerted a “coercive veto” over Ukrainian policy.
A prime example pertains to Ukraine’s president, Voldomyr Zelensky. He was elected in 2019 on a peace platform. He won with a 73 percent majority vote, giving him a huge mandate. He wanted to resolve the conflict in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, where a civil war had been going on since 2014. Although Russia had lent support to the ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who were seeking greater autonomy, or actual separation from Ukraine, the conflict was fundamentally internal to Ukraine. In his inaugural address, Zelensky said he was willing to lose his office if that were the result of seeking peace. But just one week later, a leader of the far right stated in a published interview that if Zelensky carried out his plans he would lose not his office, but his life. Zelensky, he said, would hang on a tree.
Threats of violence against Zelensky and his government continued. These included direct threats on Zelensky’s life, and violent ultranationalist and neo-Nazi demonstrations that defaced the presidential building. Over time, Zelensky capitulated. He gave up on his peace platform and adopted policies acceptable to the far right. He began to assert that the Donbas crisis was, in fact, not a civil conflict but was entirely the result of Russian meddling and intervention. That was the position espoused by the far right. The Minsk accords—a pair of previously signed agreements that could have peacefully resolved the Donbas crisis—were never implemented. Jack Matlock, Jr., who was the second-to-last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, has stated that if the Minsk accords had been implemented, Russia probably would not have invaded Ukraine.
Most people in the West know little about this history. In fact, my impression is that Western governments have deliberately concealed it, because it does not fit with the story they want to tell.
Question: You say that Zelensky “capitulated” to the far right. That is not how he is usually portrayed in the West. Is it proper to speak this way when Ukraine has been invaded and is at war?
Abelow: When I say that Zelensky “capitulated” to the far right, I am repeating a word used by the Ukrainian-Canadian scholar Ivan Katchanovski, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa. He is one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts about many aspects of Ukraine’s recent political history. It’s not possible to understand what is happening in Ukraine without reading Katchanovski’s work (much of it is posted online and freely available at the Academia.edu and ResearchGate websites).
In addition to his research on the far right, Katchanovski has studied how the United States intervened in Ukrainian politics. He has described how, starting with the “Maidan” protests and overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the United States gained extraordinary influence in the selection of key figures in Ukraine’s government, as well as in the setting of its policies. At times, the control has been essentially dictatorial. According to Katchanovski, the United States gained so much control that, using the technical definitions of political science, Ukraine became a “client state” of the U.S. The United States has used its power to position Ukraine as a pawn in a geo-strategic game to exert pressure on Russia.
Because Ukraine was attacked, there is a natural tendency to not criticize its leaders. Our governments and the media reinforce that tendency. They say, in effect: “After the war is over you may say these things, but not now.” However, because of Zelensky’s capitulation, his policies are deepening and prolonging this war. He advocates maximalist negotiating positions, which are complete non-starters. He uses aggressive rhetoric. To remain silent about Zelensky, to treat him with kid gloves, is to support the war by default.
We in the West are given to believe that Zelensky has the universal backing of his people. But how can we know this? Opposition parties and opposition media in Ukraine have been banned. Men of military age—the range has been defined broadly, as between 18 and 60—are arrested if they try to leave the country. Young men are being grabbed off the street and sent against their will into the meat grinder at the front. Such measures would not be needed if everyone were eager to fight. Ukrainians who are outspoken in opposing the continuation of the war risk being killed by the far right. I have personally heard reports about how frightened some Ukrainians are to speak, even anonymously.
Question: For many in the West, Zelensky has become the face of Ukraine and the personification of a just cause. He is seen as a model and an inspiration. How do you view Zelensky?
Abelow: Zelensky is seen in the West as a great hero, a new Churchill, a bold and brave warrior. I think this portrayal is nearly the opposite of the truth. It obscures the reality of a man who, under pressure, defaulted on his greatest value and objective: to make peace in the Donbas and end Ukraine’s civil strife. As a result, the Donbas war continued and contributed to the onset of the current, broader war.
Rather than heroic, I view Zelensky as a tragic figure. He faced a great trial. Could he put the interests of his country ahead of his personal safety and his desire to maintain power? He failed utterly. But this failure is understandable, and perhaps it was inevitable. In 2019, shortly after Zelensky was elected, the late Princeton and New York University professor Stephen F. Cohen said that unless the United States protected Zelensky from the far right, his peace efforts would fail. If the U.S. didn’t have Zelensky’s back, Cohen said, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Zelensky never received that support.
Further—and this speaks volumes about the influence of the far right in Ukraine—those who threatened Zelensky’s life were not prosecuted. Neither did the police and courts protect Zelensky’s supporters and colleagues when they advocated for peace. Tellingly, Zelensky’s friend Sergei Sivokho, whom Zelensky chose to play a key role in seeking peace and reconciliation within Ukraine, was physically attacked.
Just as troubling, the Ukrainian people did not rise up to demand that the police, courts, and other state institutions provide adequate protection for Zelensky. At first glance, this is hard to understand, given his large electoral mandate and the fact that, at the time of his election, there were at least 70 pro-peace groups active in Ukraine. This background is described in an important new book by Professor Nicolai Petro of the University of Rhode Island, The Tragedy of Ukraine. Why did this popular support for peace not translate into democratic pressure to protect Zelensky and his government from violence? A major factor, no doubt, was that many people feared the far right. They knew that speaking out could put their lives in jeopardy. The coercive veto of the far right extended to the citizenry.
But the problem runs deeper than that. Many in Ukraine have an ambivalent relationship with the far right. During parts of the 1940s, armed nationalist groups headed by Stephan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych fought against the Soviets in Ukraine. Because they are cast as fighters for Ukrainian independence, Bandera and Shukhevych are esteemed by many in Ukraine today. Streets and schools are named after them, and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory has promoted them as full-blown heroes. However, to fight the Soviets, Bandera’s faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists collaborated openly with the Nazis when they invaded Ukraine in 1941, helping them carry out their totalitarian and genocidal policies. And the group headed by Shukhevych, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, committed mass murder against civilians. Not only did this group kill ethnic Ukrainians who opposed their policies, they murdered tens of thousands of Poles and Jews. Yet because Bandera and Shukhevych fought for the nationalist cause, many Ukrainians continue to hold them in high regard. As a result, when those who stand in the ideological lineage of these violent nationalist groups—the modern far right—threatened Zelensky’s life and government, the Ukrainian people did not rise to support him.
Further, few in Ukraine have seriously grappled with a central fact of the country’s recent political history: that the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2014, which came after several months of popular protest, was a violent right-wing coup. During that coup, ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis, and others on the far right not only killed police and attempted to assassinate Yanukovych, they also—as a false flag attack—killed dozens of peaceful protesters. This mass killing, the so-called “snipers’ massacre” of February 20th, has frequently but incorrectly been blamed on Yanukovych. The massacre, and the erroneous presumption that Yanukovych was responsible, was the pivotal event that led the West to recognize the new Ukrainian government. None of those responsible for the massacre was ever tried. The far right also, and more generally, played a key role in fomenting violence during what otherwise would have been largely peaceful protests. This is all documented in the painstaking research of Ivan Katchanovski.
Thus, too few in Ukraine have paid adequate attention to either the country’s brutal nationalist past or the nature of the events that constituted its post-2014 political order. This lack of national reckoning helps explain the failure of the Ukrainian people to support Zelensky when the far right threatened his life and government. In the end, Zelensky really didn’t stand a chance. He genuinely wanted peace and, at least initially, he pursued his agenda bravely. But he ultimately lacked the courage, strength of character, and the necessary support from the West, as well as from his own people, to carry through. That is why I view Zelensky as a tragic figure.
However, we must also criticize Zelensky directly. If the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is correct, Zelensky and his government have embezzled many millions of dollars of American aid since the war started. Yet, to my mind, that is not his greatest sin. I view Zelensky as a destroyer of his country. He is a man who, as Richard Sakwa has said, could have prevented this war by speaking just five words: “Ukraine will not join NATO.” Zelensky also bears responsibility for not persevering more courageously after his life was threatened. He could also have made peace in March and April, 2022, just weeks after the war started, when talks with Russia were underway and achieving success. But he caved in to Western pressure to terminate the negotiations—and so the war continued and escalated. The result has been that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed or maimed, untold millions have been displaced and traumatized, and the physical country of Ukraine has been depopulated and lost almost twenty percent of its territory.
Question: Even if the result has been a prolonged war, might Zelensky be serving some higher purpose? Might the sacrifice that Ukrainians are making be justified as part of a wider struggle against authoritarianism? And in the most limited sense, might Zelensky be acting in ways that serve American and European interests?
Abelow: No, none of these purposes are being served. In fact, Zelensky is bringing great risks to the United States and Europe. He has taken steps that could draw NATO into a direct war with Russia. For example, when a Ukrainian air-defense missile crashed in Poland, a NATO ally covered by the Article 5 provision for collective defense, Zelensky claimed it was a deliberate Russian missile attack on Poland. It appears he was lying for the purpose of drawing NATO into direct combat with Russia. Here it must be noted that a direct NATO-Russia war carries an unacceptably high risk of nuclear escalation. This was the conclusion of a January 2023 study by the RAND Corporation. RAND is a think tank funded by the U.S. military. It does not issue such warnings lightly.
Moreover, in an address to an Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, Zelensky made a recommendation that, if followed, would lead directly to nuclear war. He suggested that the West launch a preemptive attack on Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Here is a translation of Zelensky’s remarks made by Professor Nicolai Petro. Zelensky mangled his sentences, but his intent is clear enough:
What should NATO do to make the use of nuclear weapons by Russia impossible? What is important, I must again address the international community as before the 24th—preventive strikes, so that they know what will happen to them if they use [nuclear weapons], not wait for nuclear strikes by Russia and then say, “Well, you’ve done it, now here’s a taste of your own medicine.” Review the procedure of applying pressure. I believe what needs to be done is to review the order of the actions taken.
Zelensky wanted to “review the order of the actions taken” and implement a new order, one that would result in “preventive strikes.” This means to shift from a posture of assured retaliation, after a nuclear attack, to one of attacking first—nuclear preemption. Some have claimed that Zelensky was misunderstood, that he was advocating economic sanctions. But his own words tell otherwise. Incredibly, Zelensky really does seem to believe that attacking Russia’s nuclear forces would stabilize the nuclear peace. In actuality, such an attack would almost certainly lead immediately to a strategic nuclear exchange, which could then escalate to a full-scale thermonuclear war. Such a war would kill hundreds of millions or even billions of people.
The fact is, Zelensky is essentially a mouthpiece. He speaks for the foreign policy elite of the United States, which wants to keep the war going so that it can continue to weaponize Ukraine as a proxy to weaken Russia, using the land of Ukraine as a battlefield and Ukrainian citizens as cannon fodder. Yet the goal of weakening Russia, which is the pipe-dream of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, is not in the interest of American or European citizens. It is unlikely to be successful. It is harming the West economically and destroying Ukraine. And if the West ever starts to achieve its goal—the destruction of Russia as a great military power—the likely result would be the Russian use of battlefield nuclear weapons, which could readily escalate to strategic nuclear war.
Those in the United States, Ukraine, and Europe who see this conflict as a struggle of democracy against authoritarianism are misreading what is happening. Some may do so out of ignorance, others as willful deception in support of a geo-strategic agenda. The reality is that, in crucial respects, democracy in Ukraine was long ago subverted by Ukraine’s far right—and the United States.
Question: Much of what you say runs contrary to the Western narrative and conflicts with current American policies. You could be perceived as anti-American. Are you anti-American? Do you hate America?
Abelow: Absolutely not. My grandparents came to the United States to escape violence in other countries and to find a better life. Even now, two generations later, I continue to hold in my mind the image of America as a shining beacon of freedom and safety to the world.
Despite all that is happening, I continue to believe that, at its core, America is a great country. It helped give to humanity invaluable philosophical concepts about freedom, and about the rights of the individual. No doubt, it has sometimes failed badly to live up to these high values, but other times it has succeeded. And in any case the ideals stand on their own and have played a transformative role in the world. I also believe that the United States—along with the Soviet Union, which for all its great evil played a decisive role in defeating Hitler—may have literally saved the world from Nazism.
So, no, I am not anti-American. I see my comments here, as well as my book and my broader efforts regarding the Ukraine war, as an expression of American patriotism—an attempt to help realign U.S. policies with the true interests of the United States as a nation. These are my attempts to peacefully influence policies so that they better reflect the highest ethical values of the United States. To achieve this end, a hope which many share, we must face reality, even if that reality is uncomfortable. We must be willing to speak openly.
About the Author:
Benjamin Abelow is the author of How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe. The book has been translated into German, Italian, Polish, Danish, and Slovenian, with French, Dutch, and other translations forthcoming. Abelow holds a B.A. in modern European history from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine, where he also served as Lecturer in Medicine. He previously worked in Washington, DC, writing, lobbying Congress, and lecturing about nuclear arms policy. His other areas of interest include the study of trauma, including war trauma.
How ruble weakness affects the country’s finances The Russian currency has been tumbling all week. The rate against the U.S. dollar dropped as low as 94 rubles on Thursday, while against the euro it fell to 102. This is the weakest the ruble has been since March 2022 when it collapsed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The ruble has lost about a third of its value since the start of the year and is — so far — this year’s worst performing emerging market currency.
What’s going on? Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection last month was the immediate trigger for the currency’s current weakness. The mercenary leader’s short-lived uprising meant people again began factoring in the risk of domestic political instability to the value of the ruble. It’s the first time since opposition protests in 2011 and 2012 that domestic politics has led to serious fluctuations in the price of the ruble.
However, there are also underlying issues. Everything is stacked against the ruble at the moment: low exports, increased imports, the ongoing transfer of funds out of Russia to accounts abroad, extremely low liquidity levels and the absence of non-residents in the currency markets.
The final point is particularly significant. In previous years, a serious devaluation of the ruble attracted non-residents looking to capitalize on the differences between interest rates and exchange rates. Today, they are gone — and Western sanctions, Russia’s isolation and the war in Ukraine mean they won’t be coming back.
As a result, the ruble exchange rate is far more dependent on Russia’s balance of trade. That’s what Central Bank deputy head Ksenia Yudayeva identified as the key factor behind the current slump. “We are seeing a significant reduction in the current account this year, when compared with last year and the last quarter. Among other things, this is due to a decrease in export earnings and, in my opinion, falling prices,” she said Tuesday.
Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina also said the changes to the balance of trade (a drop in the difference between exports and imports) was the main reason for the ruble’s weakness.
The ruble’s collapse coincided with an unexpected midnight meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin that extended into the early hours of Wednesday morning. It’s not known whether the ruble was discussed and there is no word of it in the published account of the meeting. However, the economic successes that Mishustin reported to Putin (and which are in the published account) are yet more reasons for the ruble’s fall — they include an increase in real incomes, record low unemployment and growing demand among consumers and wholesalers.
What does it mean for the Russian government? One school of thought suggests that the ruble’s devaluation is good for officials as it means the country acquires more rubles for the same amount of raw material exports. This idea dates back to the late 1990s when revenue was directly linked to oil prices — but it is much less relevant today. Now, revenues are prescribed in advance and the link to fluctuating oil prices (and, thus, fluctuating exchange rates) is counterbalanced by self-imposed rules obliging the Finance Ministry to buy or sell foreign currency reserves (according to the export price for oil). As a result, exchange rate fluctuations are not reflected in the budget.
Moreover, the old belief that a falling exchange rate boosts revenues is greatly undermined when the government is financing expenditure by borrowing on the markets. The Finance Ministry last year issued 3.3 trillion rubles’ worth of bonds (almost $50 billion) and plans to do the same this year. The ruble’s collapse leads to faster inflation and, as a result, higher interest rates — making borrowing more expensive.
Of course, exporters who are paid in foreign currency and spend in rubles will benefit from the falling ruble. Part of their profits will, however, be collected as tax — but that will come later. Those exporters who are in no hurry to return foreign earnings to Russia could be the ones who ultimately stabilize the exchange rate. In previous moments of crisis, it appears that exporters have received urgent requests to buy rubles from the Kremlin.
It’s unlikely the Central Bank will intervene to prop up the ruble. Since 2014, the regulator has preferred to fight inflation by adjusting interest rates. Central Bank officials never tire of repeating the mantra that exchange rates are determined by supply and demand, and that any ruble rate is acceptable to them. We heard such a statement again this week.
In theory, nothing prevents the Central Bank from making a currency intervention if it fears a threat to the stability of the financial system. For example, immediately after the invasion of Ukraine last year, the Central Bank sold 100 billion rubles’ worth of foreign currency. However, the regulator has said that it currently sees no threat to the stability of the system. That means there won’t be any intervention — at least, not yet.
Why the world should care As always, a falling ruble will drive up prices for imported goods in Russia, especially those that the country does not produce (from smartphones and laptops to rum and whisky). Prices are likely to rise faster for goods arriving in Russia as “parallel imports” — a scheme introduced after Western sanctions that allows importers to bring in goods to Russia that were not originally intended for the country.
However, the falling ruble will affect prices across the board in Russia. While earlier devaluations incentivized domestic productivity and import substitution, the shortage of labor and capacity might prevent a repeat of such an effect this time around.
Another potential consequence is a jump in inflation and a decision at the Central Bank meeting on July 21 to raise rates. Finally, it also appears inevitable that sharp fluctuations in the value of the ruble will now become routine.
How will Russia make budget cuts? The Finance Ministry is proposing major cuts in government spending in next year’s budget, with each ministry to reduce expenses by 10%. The reasoning is clear: the budget deficit is growing. A government commission on budget projections discussed the issue at a meeting last week. Increased borrowing was mooted as an alternative to cutting costs, but this was reportedly strongly opposed by Central Bank officials.
Past crises in Russia have also led to spending cuts. In 2018, pension provision went under the knife via a decrease in transfers to the pension fund (there are not anticipated to be any increases in revenues for the pension fund this year, nor an increase in insurance premiums). Back then, defense spending also faced cutbacks (but this is obviously not happening in 2023). It remains unclear how the Finance Ministry will cut expenditures, but calls to cut costs are a traditional opening gambit in the process of negotiating the budget.
Key figures Central Bank figures for April continue to show household funds flowing into deposits abroad — or into cash. There’s been little sign of this trend changing in May and June — something that has put extra pressure on the ruble.
Nabiullina said that the Central Bank still believes its monetary policy to be effective. The policy, which includes a floating exchange rate and inflation targeting, remains unchanged despite the weakening ruble.
The State Statistics Service (Rosstat) released figures about GDP by usage in the first quarter of this year. State orders reached a historic high of 24.7% of GDP, which will be no surprise to most. Exports were down 5.5 percentage points — however, it’s impossible to reliably estimate real imports and exports as Russia no longer publishes trade data.
Inflation is up for the second week running. The consumer price index from June 27 to July 3 rose 0.13% compared with the previous week. And that’s despite the fact that the usual July increase in utility payments did not happen — they were indexed back in December. Annual inflation moved up from 3.2% to 3.3% over the course of the last week.
