Daily Archives: March 15, 2022

Billy Joel plays in Moscow in 1987. ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images hide caption

Billy Joel plays in Moscow in 1987.

As a Gen-X kid, I have to admit there was particular poignancy to the news that, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia isn't getting The Batman.

It's part of a much, much bigger and more important story, of course several much, much bigger, much more important stories. NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas has reported on many severed relationships in arts in recent weeks.

Most of these have been attributed not simply to being Russian in and of itself, but to ties to Putin, or to a refusal to repudiate him and to funding that comes from the Russian government. Some artists have actively spoken against him and against the invasion, but many have not. It's in opera, it's in classical concerts, but it's affecting other things, too: Russia is not being permitted to participate in Eurovision, where it debuted in 1994. Western musicians have been canceling Russian dates ever since the war started. As Elizabeth Blair has reported, Russian cultural organizations inside the U.S. are anxious about possible effects on their own work.

Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, and Ozzy Osbourne played at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August, 1989. Robert Toning/AP hide caption

Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, and Ozzy Osbourne played at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August, 1989.

These boycotts are perhaps even more jarring if you remember past periods in which pop culture tried to paint a picture of deliberate, optimistic, post-Cold-War thaw. In the 1980s, particularly in the wake of the policies of glasnost and perestroika in the former Soviet Union which encouraged openness and reform artists went to places they wouldn't have gone ten or even five years before. It was in 1987, 35 years ago this July, that Billy Joel brought a big pop-rock show to Leningrad and Moscow; 1989 when Billy Crystal traveled to find his Russian relatives in an HBO special called Midnight Train to Moscow. That year also brought the Moscow Music Peace Festival, with Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, and Bon Jovi among the performers.

At the time, all these things were presented through a lens of, for lack of a better word, a goal of international and intentional friendship. Joel's bond with an enthusiastic fan and circus clown named Viktor became one of the centerpieces of the documentary about his trip and the basis for a later song called "Leningrad." ("We never knew what friends we had until we came to Leningrad.")

After Putin became president in 2000, some of these events continued. Paul McCartney played in Red Square in 2003 and met with Putin personally. Putin came to the show. Even the popularity of the FX drama series The Americans, which portrayed the Cold War through the eyes of KGB spies who felt just as righteous in their cause as Americans did in theirs, arguably continued this tradition of pop culture as pushing back against simplistic and antagonistic narratives of decades past.

And now all this.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Paul McCartney during their meeting at the Kremlin on May 24, 2003 in Moscow. Getty Images hide caption

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Paul McCartney during their meeting at the Kremlin on May 24, 2003 in Moscow.

This severance of sometimes longstanding relationships isn't only happening in the arts. It's happening just as rapidly in sports, both in the real world and virtually. Russian athletes were barred from the Paralympic Games by the International Olympic Committee. FIFA has banned Russian teams from participating in its soccer matches. Russian teams have even been removed from the popular FIFA 22 video game, and may be removed from other games, too. President Vladimir Putin is seeing symbolic ties to sports withdrawn: The International Judo Federation stripped Putin of honorary titles in that sport, and World Taekwondo withdrew an honorary black belt.

Businesses that one might paint into a mural representing American consumerism have been suspending business in Russia: McDonald's, Coke, Pepsi, Starbucks, Disney. Wall Street saw its first big withdrawal when Goldman Sachs stopped operating there, and while that's an economic move, it feels culturally significant, too. Hollywood studios, major music companies, all ceasing business in Russia there are even ramifications for sales of one of the items that has often been referenced as a go-to symbol of American cultural presence in other countries: blue jeans.

Does all this matter? It probably depends on what you mean by "matter." As Yasmeen Serhan wrote in The Atlantic earlier this month:

"It's easy to see cultural boycotts as more of a symbolic act than a serious threat to Moscow's geopolitical standing. But by suspending Russia from the world's largest sporting and cultural arenas, these institutions are sending a clearand, for Putin, potentially damagingmessage: If Russia acts beyond the bounds of the rules-based international order in Ukraine, it will be treated as an outsider by the rest of the world."

The idea of culture and sports as stand-ins for the current political climate is obviously not new. I was an enthusiastic Olympics-watching kid during the boycott by the United States of the Moscow Summer Olympics in 1980 and the Soviet Union's boycott of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984, both of which cost athletes dearly, and both of which carried a heaviness, a sense of a hostile closed door that was consistent with the political rhetoric of the time. And in the last couple of years, the controversies around Russian athletes in the Olympics and the workaround under which sanctions for doping meant they couldn't compete for Russia but only for the "Russian Olympic Committee" brought out some of the grumbling that has soured international competition in the past.

Pianist Van Cliburn performing in the final round of Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958. Cliburn's triumph helped thaw the Cold War. AP hide caption

Pianist Van Cliburn performing in the final round of Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958. Cliburn's triumph helped thaw the Cold War.

And it goes back much farther than that: In the documentary about his trip to Russia, Billy Joel says he was inspired to go partly because he remembered how important it felt to him when he was young and American pianist Van Cliburn won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. Joel says in the film that the event, and Russia's embrace of Cliburn, changed his own sense of the country and its people, whom he felt he'd been taught to fear.

The world has always done this used culture and sports to communicate over and past and through and around politics and aggression and the question of how important that is, and how productive it is, recurs.

These crossovers of diplomacy and art can be fortuitous or commercial, but they can also be fully orchestrated by governments, and they can be complicated for the artists involved: the U.S. State Department sent jazz musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, around the world in the 1950s to present a positive image of the United States, even as the country utterly failed to treat them equally.

The world has always done this used culture and sports to communicate over and past and through and around politics and aggression and the question of how important that is, and how productive it is, recurs.

The efficacy of cultural sanctions certainly remains an open question; Serhan argues that because of the particular shape of his chosen image, Putin will be far more personally bothered and functionally threatened by sports sanctions than by ones in the arts. But she says this, too: "If ordinary Russians can no longer enjoy many of the activities they love, including things as quotidian as watching their soccer teams play in international matches, seeing the latest films, and enjoying live concerts, their tolerance for their government's isolationist policies will diminish."

If that's so, it may turn out that openness not just concerts in the 1980s, but the growing presence of Hollywood films and the vibrancy of international competition in sports is not just a cyclical opposite of this period of retraction we've so rapidly entered, but a logical predecessor to it. The idea of depriving ordinary Russians, as Serhan says, of sports and Hollywood films and live concerts by international performers would not be a potent threat had they not come to expect access to those things in the first place.

In other words, if bands weren't going to Russia, if world sports leagues weren't thriving, if Hollywood movies weren't earning big money from big audiences in Russia, these arts and sports sanctions would be empty. If you're not part of Eurovision, you can't be excluded from Eurovision. If people don't have expectations of a relatively open cultural and sports world, they can't be disappointed.

As a wildly naive teenager, I did find the idea that anyone could rock out at a concert transformative, capable of papering over what remained deep and troubling problems in world affairs that existed in both my own country and others.

But this is not the way this openness was pitched in the pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s, as something that might be withdrawn later as a result of an invasion; it was pitched as hope, as comity, and as perhaps a permanent realignment. And as a wildly naive teenager, I did find the idea that anyone could rock out at a concert transformative, capable of papering over what remained deep and troubling problems in world affairs that existed in both my own country and others. Even in 1987, Joel was asked whether he was afraid that his visit would be used as cover for human rights issues. His response, so familiar to people who have watched artists navigate these issues, was that he was not a politician.

There will likely be there will hopefully be at some time in the future, brought about by different conditions and an end to the war, another newsworthy return to Moscow for an American pop artist. There will be another reopening, another thaw in this cycle. The Gen-X kid in me, the one who remembers being sold hope in that way, anticipates this and will lean toward music and sports for signs of peace, even knowing it's foolish. It isn't that arts or sports are the important ties; it is that they are buoys that bob on the surface of world affairs, and when they move, in response to much greater forces underneath them, we notice.

More:

Once, cultural ties to Russia were deliberate and hopeful. Now, they're eroding - NPR

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Alexander Lukashenko owes a massive debt to the Kremlin, and that check might be coming due.

The authoritarian leader of Belarus only survived in power thanks to financial and military support from Russia, which allowed him to ride out massive public protests following 2020s fraudulent presidential election. But now Russian President Vladimir Putin is hunting for more troops as his invasion runs into growing trouble thanks to determined Ukrainian resistance.

Lukashenko has already given a huge amount of help to Russia. He allowed Russian troops to enter his country for military exercises and then attack southward toward Kyiv. The Russians are also using Belarusian roads and rail to supply their invasion forces, launching missiles and airplanes from Belarusian territory, treating wounded soldiers in Belarusian hospitals and using Belarusian morgues for the growing number of Russian dead.

If they come to us with severe injures, we treat them. Whats wrong with that? We will provide treatment and we will support, Lukashenko told journalists in late February.

Lukashenko visited Moscow on Friday, where he was promised updated military equipment. The Belarusian military has also said that it is beefing up its troops along the border. But despite growing alarm from Ukraine that Belarus will join in the Russian attack, so far the 48,000-man-strong Belarusian military is standing pat.

The movement of troops is in no way connected with the preparation, let alone participation of the Belarusian military in a special military operation in Ukraine,saidViktor Gulevich, chief of the General Staff of the Belarusian military and deputy defense minister.

Theres a good reason for that caution. Joining the attack against Ukraine would be hugely unpopular a survey found that only 3 percent of Belarusians support such an idea, according to Ryhor Astapenia, wholeads Belarus initiative at Chatham Houses Russia and Eurasia Program and it could break the military that is one of the key pillars keeping Lukashenko in power.

The Belarusian army has never fought anywhere, the army is not prepared for external conflicts, said Valery Sakhashchyk, a retired army lieutenant colonel and former commander of the 38thAirborneBrigade based in the city of Brest near the border with Ukraine. Lukashenko is far from being a fool. He understands thatthere is a large riskthat the Belarusian army will not succeed,thatit will suffer heavy losses, and then his last supporterscould very wellturn away from himandthatwouldbe a disaster [for Lukashenko].

Ukraines unexpectedly strong resistance has mauled the well-equipped Russian military and would pose a huge problem for the smaller and less war-ready Belarusian army.

The excellent work oftheUkrainian forces isthe most important factor thathadpreventedBelarus from joining with Russia, said Sakhashchyk, now living in exile in Poland. Nobody expected such a rebuff. The actions of the Ukrainian army, territorial defense [forces], and the population have exceeded all expectations.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukrainian defense minister in 2019-2020 and a former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, believes Belarusian troops would not be a serious problem for Ukrainian forces.

They are not going to send a large force, they wont deploy 20,000 troops. They will rather send a few battalions. Belarus is not in a position to send any substantial grouping, he said. Besides, there is no hunger for war not in the army, not among civilians. And propaganda doesnt work there like it does in Russia.

There are increasingly dire warnings from Kyiv that Lukashenko will succumb to Kremlin pressure and join with the Russians. Late last week, the government alleged that Russian jets would attack a Belarusian village to provide a pretext from an invasion something that didnt happen.

On Sunday, Oleksiy Danilov, the chief of Ukraines National Security and Defense Council, said, The Russian Federal Security Service and special services are persuading Belarusians to change into Russian uniforms and to enter our territory under Russian banners.

For now, Lukashenko is limiting himself to logistical and florid verbal support for Putin.

People are beginning to understand what is what, and who is right, he said during his Kremlin visit, denouncing Western sanctions against Belarus and Russia as illegal piggery and accusing Ukraine of planning to attack Belarus before Russia launched its invasion on February 24.

On Thursday, Lukashenkotoldthecountrysmilitary commandthatMinsk is going to limit its actions to protecting Russian forces in Belarus from a Ukrainian attack.. [We need to act] so that they cannot cut off the supply line of the Russian army so that they cannot get to the rear of the Russian army and stab them from behind, he said.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine,hundreds of Belarusian exiles haveformeda battalion to join the Ukrainian defense against Russia.

The opposition is warning of the consequences if Belarus joins with Russia.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition leader who ran against Lukashenko in 2020, called in a BBCinterviewfor any Belarusian troops forced to join Russias invasion to defect, to go on the side of Ukrainian troops and fight for Ukrainian people.

Read more:

Lukashenko dodges and weaves over joining Russia in attacking Ukraine - POLITICO Europe

On day three of Russias invasion of Ukraine, Victoria Gogh realised her mother was slipping away from her.

I noticed on the phone that mum was starting to parrot the governments narrative about this war that this was all the fault of Nato, that Russia had no choice but to defend itself, said Gogh, 28, a fashion consultant originally from a small town in Siberia who moved to Moscow.

It became my mission to change her mind, to show her what was really going on, said Gogh, who has strongly opposed Russias invasion of Ukraine on her social media channels.

Vladimir Putins decision to start a war with Russias neighbour has seen many Ukrainian families torn apart, as their adult men are forced to stay behind and fight while other members of the family flee the violence.

But Russia has also been experiencing its own family rifts between those who back the war and those who oppose it. Often, that divide runs along generational lines.

In broad terms, younger Russians are less likely to have anti-Ukrainian sentiments. We have seen that the anti-war protests have also largely involved younger people, said Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. A lot of how you perceive the war depends on where you get your news, he said. If you watch television, you are simply more likely to toe the official line. And older people tend to watch more TV.

In the past, polling has found that television remains the biggest news source for Russians, with more than 60% of the population relying on it for information. Russians over 65 are 51% more likely to watch television than under-25s.

The full force of Russian state media has been mobilised to portray the war as a special military operation aimed at liberating Ukraine and protecting citizens in Donbas from Ukrainian genocide. Videos of Russian bombs hitting cities have been described as staged by the Ukrainian side.

We see that a majority of Russians appear to support the countrys actions, at least the way these actions are presented to them by the media, Kolesnikov said.

He said it was unsurprising, given the sensitivity of the topic, that the war had created tensions between families and friends: It is very hard for people to accept that their side are actually the bad guys.

Gogh, who decided to leave the country last week after being detained for joining an anti-war protest in Moscow, said she eventually managed to convince her mother, Svetlana, of her countrys devastating role in the war. But now I have to persuade my older cousins and uncles. I have got a whole list, she joked. Her mission is likely to become even harder.

On Friday, Russia announced a block on Instagram, days after doing the same to Facebook and Twitter. The crackdown on social media and Russias few remaining independent media outlets will further restrict access to outside information on the war and boost the influence of state media.

For others, like Dmitry, a tech consultant in Moscow, the war has already had disastrous consequences for his relationship with his family.

After the invasion, I wanted to move in with my parents to try to tell them what is really happening, Dmitry said.

During the first week of the war, he went through a daily ritual of showing his parents video clips of Russian shelling of Ukrainian cities and critical reports by independent bloggers and media outlets.

But none of it had any impact. It actually only made them more convinced that they were right. After a week, I moved back out of the house, and my mother has since texted that I am betraying my country.

The final straw came last Thursday, when his father sent him a news clip that claimed that Wednesdays bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol had been staged by the Ukrainian authorities, with actors posing as injured mothers. This conspiracy theory has also been promoted by Russian officials.

It made me so angry. I am not sure we will ever be able to sit at the same table again, Dmitry said, shrugging. I think they have been zombified by state propaganda, and they truly see me as an enemy of the state. I have given up.

For some, even their own experiences of being shelled have not been enough to convince their loved ones about Russias real activities.

The BBC and the New York Times have spoken to Ukrainians who said that their relatives in Russia simply would not believe that their cities were being bombarded.

My parents understand that some military action is happening here. But they say: Russians came to liberate you. They wont ruin anything. They wont touch you. Theyre only targeting military bases, said Oleksandra from Kyiv, describing to the BBC her attempts to explain to her parents that the Ukrainian capital was under Russian attack.

Ilya Krasilshchik, a popular Russian blogger and former tech executive, asked his 110,000 followers on Instagram to send him their own stories of family infighting.

Krasilshchik said he soon received hundreds of screenshots from young Russians, showing heated and emotional exchanges with their parents. He decided to post some of those conversations to show young Russians that they werent alone.

Clearly, this war has been a very traumatic experience for many families in this country.

Originally posted here:

My mother says I am betraying Russia: Putins invasion divides the generations - The Guardian

As the Russian military began its attack on Ukraine in late February, the Estonian American conductor Paavo Jrvi was in Moscow, leading rehearsals for a long-planned engagement with a Russian youth orchestra.

Jrvi, who was born in 1962 in Tallinn, Estonia, then part of the Soviet Union, had a difficult decision to make. Friends urged him to cancel on the ensemble to protest the invasion. But Jrvi, saying he did not want to disappoint the players of the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, decided to stay in Moscow and lead the group in works by Richard Strauss on Feb. 26, two days after the invasion began, before departing on Feb. 27.

Jrvis appearance drew criticism in some corners of the music industry. The day after the concert, Jrvi, the chief conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich and the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, released a statement decrying the invasion and defending his decision.

These young people should not and cannot be punished for the barbaric actions of their government, Jrvi said in the statement. I cannot turn my back on my young colleagues: Musicians are all brothers and sisters.

In an interview with The New York Times by email from Florida, Jrvi reflected on his visit to Moscow, the scrutiny of Russian artists in wartime, and the future of cultural exchange between Russia and the West. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

As an artist who was born in the former Soviet Union, how do you view Putins invasion of Ukraine?

It is hard even to find any words for whats happening in Ukraine at the moment. It is totally barbaric, horrible, inhuman and shocking, yet ultimately unsurprising: In 1944, the Soviets did the same to Estonia, practically carpet bombing Tallinn to the ground.

How does your Estonian heritage affect how you see this war?

Deep suspicion and distrust (to put it mildly) of Soviets is virtually encoded in our DNA. My family left Estonia when I was 17 years old to escape the Communists. My parents and my grandparents never trusted the Soviets, but life here in the West makes you forget certain realities. Over the years, we of the younger immigrant generation have become more westernized, complacent and slowly accepting of the view that Russians have somehow changed and evolved, that they are no longer dangerous and can be treated as partners.

Many of the older Estonians living abroad are still afraid to go and visit, not to mention move back to Estonia, because of their deep fear and hatred of Soviets. (I deliberately avoid using the word Russians because it is really the hatred of Soviets, Communists and Soviet leaders that we are referring to.)

You were in Moscow just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was getting underway. You have said you initially felt conflicted about your decision to stay to lead a concert. What was going through your mind?

It has always been a part of my mission to give back to the next generation of musicians, which is why I regularly conduct youth orchestras. That was the reason I was in Moscow, but had the war already started, I would obviously not have traveled there.

Everyone was already incredibly nervous and tense at the beginning of the week, and when it actually happened, there was complete shock.

Why not cancel and leave, as some of your friends urged?

I felt a responsibility. I could not turn my back on these young musicians at such a difficult and confusing time. I wanted for them to experience something meaningful. Something that could sustain them during the time of isolation and blockade that clearly was going to be imposed on them for a very long time, maybe decades.

The concert was played in a spirit of defiance of the invasion and solidarity with the young musicians, and in deep solidarity and support of the Ukrainian people.

Will you return to Russia to conduct while the invasion continues?

I will definitely not return to Russia while the war is ongoing, and I find it very difficult to imagine returning even after the war is over, because long after it has finished, the human suffering, wounds, hatred and misery of ordinary people everywhere will continue for generations.

What sort of engagement do you think artists in the West should have with Russia in light of the ongoing war? Is it necessary to isolate Moscow culturally, or should there be a free exchange of the arts?

Artists outside of Russia should not be interacting with Russia at all so long as the war continues and innocent people are being bombed and dying.

How do you think this war will affect the arts in Russia and Ukraine?

The impact to Russian artists is going to be devastating. There will be a boycott for a very long time as a new Iron Curtain will be in effect. In the worst case scenario, there is probably going to be the old Soviet model that will be reinstituted. On every level and culturally, of course, including music life will be isolated from the West, similar to the former Soviet years.

Anna Netrebko. The superstar Russian sopranowill no longer appear at the Metropolitan Operathis season or the next after failing to comply with the companys demand that she distance herself from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Potanin. The Guggenheim Museum said that the Russian businessman and close associate of Mr. Putin would step down as one of its trustees, a position he took on in 2002. While noreason was given for the decision, the museums statement referenced the war in Ukraine.

Alexei Ratmansky. The choreographer, who grew up in Kyiv, was preparing a new ballet at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow when the invasion began, and immediately decided to leave Moscow. The ballet, whose premiere was set for March 30, was postponed indefinitely.

Grard Depardieu. The French actor, who became a Russian citizen in 2013 and is one of the closest Western celebrities to Mr. Putin, tooka surprising stance when he denounced the war during an interview.

Do you worry about the effects of the war on global cultural exchange? Will Russian art and artists be looked at suspiciously?

I dont think that Russian artists will necessarily be seen with suspicion or will have any less respect or admiration from the music-loving public, but Western arts organizations and presenters will be under great pressure to follow a strong party line to boycott Russia or face the consequences.

In recent days, many arts institutions have started vetting artists political views, demanding that some denounce the invasion and Putin as a prerequisite for performing. Do you support these efforts?

I cannot fundamentally agree with the policy of universally demanding performers condemnation of the invasion or of Putin himself in order to be invited to perform. Thats what Soviets would do. That is against the Western principles of freedom of speech and many other fundamental values that we take pride in ourselves.

On the other hand, it makes sense to require a clear position from the artists who have previously and publicly aligned themselves with Putin. Each case has to be judged separately, and common sense and human decency must prevail and be the guiding light in making such decisions, however difficult in the current hostile climate.

Russian stars with ties to Putin, like the soprano Anna Netrebko and the conductor Valery Gergiev, have seen their engagements canceled in the West. But cultural institutions dont seem entirely sure yet where to draw the line with other artists.

The standards of behavior are clearly different during war and peace; right now, it is clearly a time of war. It is absurd to talk about the rights of Russian artists when one sees innocent civilians, children and maternity wards being indiscriminately bombed.

There are no easy answers because many Russian musicians live outside of Russia. My sense is that the majority of them are against Putins war. And many Russians who are living in the West have relatives in Russia and the consequences of saying anything negative about Putin or the war could have dire consequences for their families living back in Russia.

We can never forget that, in the case of Russia, we are not dealing with a democracy. It is a dictatorship, and dissent is dealt with with utmost force and cruelty.

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A Conductor on Why He Stayed in Russia After the Invasion Began - The New York Times

As Russias war in Ukraine looks increasingly disastrous, speculation has mounted that President Vladimir Putins misstep could prove to be his downfall. A litany of pundits and experts have predicted that frustration with the wars costs and crushing economic sanctions could lead to the collapse of his regime.

Vladimir Putins attack on Ukraine will result in the downfall of him and his friends, David Rothkopf declared in the Daily Beast. If history is any guide, his overreach and his miscalculations, his weaknesses as a strategist, and the flaws in his character will undo him.

But what events could actually bring down Putin? And how likely might they be in the foreseeable future?

The best research on how authoritarians fall points to two possible scenarios: a military coup or a popular uprising. During the Cold War, coups were the more common way for dictators to be forced out of office think the toppling of Argentinas Juan Pern in 1955. But since the 1990s, there has been a shift in the way that authoritarians are removed. Coups have been on the decline while popular revolts, like the Arab Spring uprisings and color revolutions in the former Soviet Union, have been on the rise.

For all the speculation about Putin losing power, neither of these eventualities seems particularly likely in Russia even after the disastrous initial invasion of Ukraine. This is in no small part because Putin has done about as good a job preparing for them as any dictator could.

Over the past two decades, the Russian leader and his allies have structured nearly every core element of the Russian state with an eye toward limiting threats to the regime. Putin has arrested or killed leading dissidents, instilled fear in the general public, and made the countrys leadership class dependent on his goodwill for their continued prosperity. His ability to rapidly ramp up repression during the current crisis in response to antiwar protests using tactics ranging from mass arrests at protests to shutting down opposition media to cutting off social media platforms is a demonstration of the regimes strengths.

Putin has prepared for this eventuality for a long time, and has taken a lot of concerted actions to make sure hes not vulnerable, says Adam Casey, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan who studies the history of coups in Russia and the former communist bloc.

Yet at the same time, scholars of authoritarianism and Russian politics are not fully ready to rule out Putins fall. Unlikely is not impossible; the experts I spoke with generally believe the Ukraine invasion to have been a strategic blunder that raised the risks of both a coup and a revolution, even if their probability remains low in absolute terms.

Before [the war], the risk from either of those threats was close to zero. And now the risk in both of those respects is certainly higher, says Brian Taylor, a professor at Syracuse University and author of The Code of Putinism.

Ukrainians and their Western sympathizers cannot bank on Putins downfall. But if the war proves even more disastrous for Russias president than it already seems, history tells us there are pathways for even the most entrenched autocrats to lose their grip on power.

In a recent appearance on Fox News, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) hit upon what he saw as a solution to the Ukraine war for someone, perhaps in the Russian military, to remove Vladimir Putin by assassination or a coup. The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out, the senator argued.

He shouldnt get his hopes up. A military revolt against Putin is more possible now than it was before the invasion of Ukraine, but the odds against it remain long.

Naunihal Singh is one of the worlds leading scholars of military coups. His 2017 book Seizing Power uses statistical analysis, game theory, and historical case studies to try to figure out what causes coups and what makes them likely to succeed.

Singh finds that militaries are most likely to attempt coups in low-income countries, regimes that are neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, and nations where coups have recently happened. None of these conditions apply very well to modern Russia, a firmly authoritarian middle-income country that hasnt seen a coup attempt since the early 90s.

But at the same time, wars like Putins can breed resentment and fear in the ranks, precisely the conditions under which weve seen coups in other countries. There are reasons why Putin might be increasingly concerned here, Singh says, pointing to coups in Mali in 2012 and Burkina Faso earlier this year as precedent. Indeed, a 2017 study of civil wars found that coups are more likely to happen during conflicts when governments face stronger opponents suggesting that wartime deaths and defeat really do raise the odds of military mutinies.

In Singhs view, the Ukraine conflict raises the odds of a coup in Russia for two reasons: It could weaken the military leaderships allegiance to Putin, and it could provide an unusual opportunity to plan a move against him.

The motive for Russian officers to launch a coup would be fairly straightforward: The costly Ukraine campaign becomes unpopular among, and even personally threatening to, key members of the military.

Leading Russian journalists and experts have warned that Putin is surrounded by a shrinking bubble of hawkish yes-men who feed his nationalist obsessions and tell him only what he wants to hear. This very small group drew up an invasion plan that assumed the Ukrainian military would put up minimal resistance, allowing Russia to rapidly seize Kyiv and install a puppet regime.

This plan both underestimated Ukraines resolve and overestimated the competence of the Russian military, leading to significant Russian casualties and a failed early push toward the Ukrainian capital. Since then, Russian forces have been bogged down in a slow and costly conflict defined by horrific bombardments of populated areas. International sanctions have been far harsher than the Kremlin expected, sending the Russian economy into a tailspin and specifically punishing its elites ability to engage in commerce abroad.

According to Farida Rustamova, a Russian reporter well-sourced in the Kremlin, high-ranking civilian officials in the Russian government are already unhappy about the war and its economic consequences. One can only imagine the sentiment among military officers, few of whom appear to have been informed of the war plans beforehand and many of whom are now tasked with killing Ukrainians en masse.

Layered on top of that is something that often can precipitate coups: personal insecurity among high-ranking generals and intelligence officers. According to Andrei Soldatov, a Russia expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank, Putin is punishing high-ranking officials in the FSB the successor agency to the KGB for the wars early failures. Soldatovs sources say that Putin has placed Sergei Beseda, the leader of the FSBs foreign intelligence branch, under house arrest (as well as his deputy).

Reports like this are hard to verify. But they track with Singhs predictions that poor performance in wars generally leads autocrats to find someone to blame and that fear of punishment could convince some among Russias security elite that the best way to protect themselves is to get rid of Putin.

I dont think Putin will assassinate them, but they may still have to live in fear and humiliation, Singh says. Theyll be afraid for their own futures.

The conflict also provides disgruntled officials with an opening. In authoritarian countries like Russia, generals dont always have many opportunities to speak with one another without fear of surveillance or informants. Wars change that, at least somewhat.

There are now lots of good reasons for generals to be in a room with key players and even to evade surveillance by the state, since they will want to evade NATO and US surveillance, Singh explains.

That said, coups are famously difficult to pull off. And the Russian security state in particular is organized around a frustrating one.

Contrary to most peoples expectations, successful military coups are generally pretty bloodless; smart plotters typically dont launch if they believe theres a real chance itll come down to a gun battle in the presidential palace. Instead, they ensure they have overwhelming support from the armed forces in the capital or at least can convince everyone that they do before they make their move.

And on that front, Russia experts say Putin has done a bang-up job of what political scientists call coup-proofing his government. He has seeded the military with counterintelligence officers, making it hard for potential mutineers to know whom to trust. He has delegated primary responsibility for repression at home to security agencies other than the regular military, which both physically distances troops from Moscow and reduces an incentive to rebel (orders to kill ones own people being quite unpopular in the ranks).

He has also intensified the coup coordination problem by splitting up the state security services into different groups led by trusted allies. In 2016, Putin created the Russian National Guard also called the Rosgvardiya as an entity separate from the military. Under the command of thuggish Putin loyalist Viktor Zolotov, it performs internal security tasks like border security and counterterrorism in conjunction with Russias intelligence services.

These services are split into four federal branches. Three of these the FSB, GRU, and SVR have their own elite special operations forces. The fourth, the Federal Protection Services, is Russias Secret Service equivalent with a twist: It has in the range of 20,000 officers, according to a 2013 estimate. By contrast, the Secret Service has about 4,500, in a country with a population roughly three times Russias. This allows the Federal Protection Services to function as a kind of Praetorian Guard that can protect Putin from assassins and coups alike.

The result is that the regular military, the most powerful of Russias armed factions, does not necessarily dominate Russias internal security landscape. Any successful plot would likely require complex coordination among members of different agencies who may not know each other well or trust each other very much. In a government known to be shot through with potential informers, thats a powerful disincentive against a coup.

The coordination dilemma ... is especially severe when you have multiple different intelligence agencies and ways of monitoring the military effectively, which the Russians do, Casey explains. Theres just a lot of different failsafe measures that Putin has built over the years that are oriented toward preventing a coup.

In an interview on the New York Timess Sway podcast, former FBI special agent Clint Watts warned of casualties in the Ukraine war leading to another Russian revolution.

The mothers in Russia have always been the pushback against Putin during these conflicts. This is going to be next-level scale, he argued. Were worried about Kyiv falling today. Im worried about Moscow falling between day 30 and six months from now.

A revolution against Putin has become likelier since the war began; in fact, its probably more plausible than a coup. In the 21st century, we have seen more popular uprisings in post-Soviet countries like Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine itself than we have coups. Despite that, the best evidence suggests the odds of one erupting in Russia are still fairly low.

Few scholars are more influential in this field than Harvards Erica Chenoweth. Their finding, in work with fellow political scientist Maria Stephan, that nonviolent protest is more likely to topple regimes than an armed uprising is one of the rare political science claims to have transcended academia, becoming a staple of op-eds and activist rhetoric.

When Chenoweth looks at the situation in Russia today, they note that the longstanding appearance of stability in Putins Russia might be deceiving.

Russia has a long and storied legacy of civil resistance [movements], Chenoweth tells me. Unpopular wars have precipitated two of them.

Here, Chenoweth is referring to two early-20th-century uprisings against the czars: the 1905 uprising that led to the creation of the Duma, Russias legislature; and the more famous 1917 revolution that gave us the Soviet Union. Both events were triggered in significant part by Russian wartime losses (in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, respectively). And indeed, we have seen notable dissent already during the current conflict, including demonstrations in nearly 70 Russian cities on March 6 alone.

Its conceivable that these protests grow if the war continues to go poorly, especially if it produces significant Russian casualties, clear evidence of mass atrocities against civilians, and continued deep economic pain from sanctions. But we are still very far from a mass uprising.

Chenoweths research suggests you need to get about 3.5 percent of the population involved in protests to guarantee some kind of government concession. In Russia, that translates to about 5 million people. The antiwar protests havent reached anything even close to that scale, and Chenoweth is not willing to predict that its likely for them to approach it.

It is hard to organize sustained collective protest in Russia, they note. Putins government has criminalized many forms of protests, and has shut down or restricted the activities of groups, movements, and media outlets perceived to be in opposition or associated with the West.

A mass revolution, like a coup, is something that Putin has been preparing to confront for years. By some accounts, it has been his number one fear since the Arab Spring and especially the 2013 Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine. The repressive barriers Chenoweth points out are significant, making it unlikely though, again, not impossible that the antiwar protests evolve into a movement that topples Putin, even during a time of heightened stress for the regime.

In an authoritarian society like Russia, the governments willingness to arrest, torture, and kill dissidents creates a similar coordination problem as the one coup plotters experience just on a grander scale. Instead of needing to get a small cabal of military and intelligence officers to risk death, leaders need to convince thousands of ordinary citizens to do the same.

In past revolutions, opposition-controlled media outlets and social media platforms have helped solve this difficulty. But during the war, Putin has shut down notable independent media outlets and cracked down on social media, restricting Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram access. He has also introduced emergency measures that punish the spread of fake information about the war by up to 15 years in jail, leading even international media outlets like the New York Times to pull their local staff. Antiwar protesters have been arrested en masse.

Most Russians get their news from government-run media, which have been serving up a steady diet of pro-war propaganda. Many of them appear to genuinely believe it: An independent opinion poll found that 58 percent of Russians supported the war to at least some degree.

What these polls reflect is how many people actually tune in to state media, which tells them what to think and what to say, Russian journalist Alexey Kovalyov tells my colleague Sean Illing.

The brave protesters in Russian cities prove that the government grip on the information environment isnt airtight. But for this dissent to evolve into something bigger, Russian activists will need to figure out a broader way to get around censorship, government agitprop, and repression. Thats not easy to do, and requires skilled activists. Chenoweths research, and the literature on civil resistance more broadly, finds that the tactical choices of opposition activists have a tremendous impact on whether the protesters ultimately succeed in their aims.

Organizers need to give people a range of tactics they can participate in, because not everyone is going to want to protest given the circumstances. But people may be willing to boycott or do other things that appear to have lower risk but still have a significant impact, says Hardy Merriman, a senior advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

You can already see some tactical creativity at work. Alexis Lerner, a scholar of dissent in Russia at the US Naval Academy, tells me that Russians are using unconventional methods like graffiti and TikTok videos to get around the states censorship and coercive apparatus. She also notes that an unusual amount of criticism of the government has come from high-profile Russians, ranging from oligarchs to social media stars.

But at the same time, you can also see the effect of the past decades of repression at work. During his time in power, Putin has systematically worked to marginalize and repress anyone he identifies as a potential threat. At the highest level, this means attacking and imprisoning prominent dissenters like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny.

But the repression also extends down the social food chain, from journalists to activists on down to ordinary Russians who may have dabbled too much in politics. The result is that anti-Putin forces are extremely depleted, with many Putin opponents operating in exile even before the Ukraine conflict began.

Moreover, revolutions dont generally succeed without elite action. The prototypical success of a revolutionary protest movement is not the storming of the Bastille but the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. In that case, Mubaraks security forces refused to repress the protesters and pressured him to resign as they continued.

Symbolic protest is usually not enough to bring about change, Chenoweth explains. What makes such movements succeed is the ability to create, facilitate, or precipitate shifts in the loyalty of the pillars of support, including military and security elites, state media, oligarchs, and Putins inner circle of political associates.

Given the Russian presidents level of control over his security establishment, it will take a truly massive protest movement to wedge them apart.

It can be difficult to talk about low-probability events like the collapse of the Putin regime. Suggesting that its possible can come across as suggesting its likely; suggesting its unlikely can come across as suggesting its impossible.

But its important to see a gray area here: accepting that Putins end is more likely than it was on February 23, the day before Russia launched its offensive, but still significantly less likely than his government continuing to muddle through. The war has put new pressure on the regime, at both the elite and the mass public level, but the fact remains that Putins Russia is an extremely effective autocracy with strong guardrails against coups and revolutions.

So how should we think about the odds? Is it closer to 20 percent or 1 percent?

This kind of question is impossible to answer with anything like precision. The information environment is so murky, due to both Russian censorship and the fog of war, that its difficult to discern basic facts like the actual number of Russian war dead. We dont really have a good sense of how key members of the Russian security establishment are feeling about the war or whether the people trying to organize mass protests are talented enough to get around aggressive repression.

And the near-future effects of key policies are similarly unclear. Take international sanctions. We know that these measures have had a devastating effect on the Russian economy. What we dont know is who the Russian public will blame for their immiseration: Putin for launching the war or America and its allies for imposing the sanctions? Can reality pierce through Putins control of the information environment? The answers to these questions will make a huge difference.

Putin built his legitimacy around the idea of restoring Russias stability, prosperity, and global standing. By threatening all three, the war in Ukraine is shaping up to be the greatest test of his regime to date.

Correction, March 13, 9:55 am: An earlier version of this piece mistakenly included the toppling of Irans Mohammed Mossadegh on a list of a dictatorships brought down by a coup rather than Cold War coups in general. He was a democratically elected prime minister who governed from 1951 to 1953, before he was ousted by a coup, with support from US and British intelligence.

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Could Putin actually fall from power in Russia? - Vox.com

Her story is familiar to 2.8 million other Ukrainians who have been forced to flee following Russias brutal invasion, but Slava Soloviova, now safe in the German city of Stuttgart, remains hopeful she can return home.

Ms Soloviova, who fled her comfortable life in Kyiv after the shelling began, was captured in a viral video expressing her bewilderment, shock and sorrow at the reality of her new life.

Speaking to PMs Nick Grimm, she said she now feared for those who remained back in her country and her life changed literally overnight after the invasion began.

I was so scared, I didn't have much time to think of it, she said adding she tried to pack an emergency bag.

But then I understood I dont have time for this, I just need to run to save my life.

She said most of her colleagues have left, but her mum was in Ukraine because she didnt want to leave.

We just need help, we are trying out best we don't want to surrender, we also don't want to die and thats not the easiest thing to explain, Ms Soloviova said.

Two weeks ago I wasn't understanding war as well and I now don't feel like I can expect from others, especially like people in Australia and people far away from it, to understand the situation we are dealing with right now in Ukraine.The Russian army just kills civilians, it just bombs civilian objects, schools, kindergartens I absolutely want it to stop and this close the sky thing would help, I believe there is no other option, otherwise, the whole world would witness the destruction, the mass killing of the whole nation a whole independent country.

Ms Soloviova said she and others had a right to live in their own country without Russians, and warned if Ukraine wasnt safe, nowhere was.

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Ukraine-Russia war live updates: Ukrainians claim Russian strikes have hit apartment building in Kyiv, China denies claims Russia asked for military...

Daniil Medvedevs reign as the No. 1 mens tennis player will not last long at least, not this time.

The 26-year-old Russian took over the top spot for the first time in his career last week from Novak Djokovic, but his third-round loss to Gael Monfils on Monday will allow Djokovic to reclaim the No. 1 ranking next week.

Daniil Medvedev has lost his world No.1 ranking.Getty Images

Djokovic will ascend even though he was unable to play in the BNP Paribas Open because of the vaccination requirement for non-American visitors to the United States.

Medvedev, who is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, did make the journey to California, although some of his peers believe he also should not have been allowed to compete at Indian Wells because of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Russian athletes have been banned from most international team competitions and some individual events, including World Cup competitions in biathlon and skiing and the recently concluded Beijing Winter Paralympics.

Marta Kostyuk, a rising Ukrainian star, said at Indian Wells that she did not think Russian tennis players such as Medvedev should be allowed to compete. But after a lengthy debate, tennis governing bodies have decided to preserve players rights to compete individually as neutrals while banning Russia and Belarus, its ally, from team events such as the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup.

Medvedev is grateful to keep his job, but is all too aware that these are fluid, deeply sensitive circumstances. First of all, its definitely not for me to decide, he said. I follow the rules. I cannot do anything else. Right now, the rule is that we can play under our neutral flag.

But the war certainly changes the optics of matches like Mondays.

Monfils, a Frenchman, recently married Elina Svitolina, Ukraines biggest tennis star, who was watching from his player box on Monday as the Ukrainian flag flapped in the breeze in its new place of honour on top of the main stadium at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. The flag was installed there this year next to the American one in a show of support for Ukraine.

Monfils, ranked No. 28 at age 35, said he did not view Mondays match or his surprising 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory through a political lens, but a personal one.

Im not very political in general, he said in French. Im a support for my wife. A sad thing has come to her country. I try to do the maximum to support her in whatever she chooses to do, but today we were here for playing. Im simply happy to have won my match.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Russia-Ukraine war LIVE UPDATES: Zelensky calls on Russian troops to surrender - The Australian Financial Review

March 14 (Reuters) - Ukraine and Russia began another round of talks after negotiators said some form of agreement might be in sight, even as fierce Russian bombardments continued, with a shelling of an apartment block in Kyiv killing at least one. read more

DIPLOMACY

* Speaking ahead of a new round of talks, Russian and Ukrainian officials suggested there could be positive results within days. Ukraine said it wanted to discuss a ceasefire, troop withdrawal and security guarantees, and a negotiator described the talks as "hard" soon after they started. read more read more

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* Kremlin denied U.S. officials' reports that Russia asked China for military equipment after invading Ukraine. Beijing called the reports "disinformation".

* U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Rome. Sullivan earlier said Beijing would "absolutely" face consequences if it helped Moscow evade sanctions. read more

CIVILIAN TOLL

* At least one person when an apartment block in Kyiv was hit by a Russian shell, local authorities said. read more

* Russia said 20 civilians were killed and 28 wounded by an Ukrainian missile in the eastern city of Donetsk controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Ukraine denied the report and Reuters was unable to independently verify it.

* More than 2,500 residents of the besieged port of Mariupol have been killed during the invasion and aid kept failing to reach the city because of Russian shelling, according to Ukrainian officials.

FIGHTING

* Kremlin said its campaign was going according to plan after one of Putin's allies made the strongest public acknowledgement yet that it was slower than hoped. read more

* A weekend strike at an army base in western Ukraine brought the fighting close to neighbouring NATO member Poland, though a British minister said it was "very unlikely" Russian missiles would land on NATO territory. read more

* Ukraine reported more air strikes on an airport in the west, heavy shelling on Chernihiv northeast of Kyiv and attacks on the southern town of Mykolayiv, where officials said nine people were killed. Ukraine's forces counter-attacked in Mykolayiv and the eastern Kharkiv region, an Interior Ministry official said.

REFUGEES

* About 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine, more than 1.7 million of them to Poland, according to the latest tally from the UN refugee agency. read more

ECONOMY AND MARKETS

* Stock markets firmed and oil prices eased on hopes for progress in Russian-Ukraine peace talks.

* The war in Ukraine must be stopped to prevent a global food crisis, Russia's coal and fertiliser billionaire Andrei Melnichenko said. read more * Russia's finance ministry approved foreign currency debt repayments, but warned they would be made in roubles if sanctions prevent banks from honouring debts in the issue currency. read more

COMING UP

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will virtually address the U.S. Congress at 9 a.m (1300 GMT) on Wednesday read more

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Compiled by Lincoln Feast and Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Nick Macfie

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now - Reuters

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), and in particular, the emirate of Dubai, has a reputation for being a playground for the rich, and one that does not ask too many questions about how wealth has been obtained. That looks likely to continue, despite increasing Western pressure to squeeze Russia financially, turning the UAE into an even more attractive proposition for rich Russians seeking a safe haven for their wealth, and undermining the effort to force Russia to pull back from its invasion of Ukraine.

Abu Dhabi has signalled that it is trying to pursue a balancing act between the United States and its European partners on one side, and Russia on the other.

The UAE, which was already home to 40,000 Russian nationals before the outbreak of war, abstained from a US-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Russias actions in Ukraine, an indication that the UAE is prioritising good ties with Vladimir Putins government above catering to Western interests in Ukraine. It has also reportedly assured Russia that it will not enforce sanctions against it unless required to do so by the UN, a scenario that is unlikely considering Russias veto on the Security Council.

As financial warfare against Russia intensifies, Putins administration has articulated its stance that the sanctions against it are tantamount to declaring war. Moscow is taking note of which countries are backing the Wests financial fight against Russia, and which countries have not.

Ultimately, the UAE and some other Arab states do not want to burn bridges with Moscow in response to the war in Ukraine. These countries see their national interests best served by maintaining close partnerships with Russia long after the war ends.

If Washington becomes increasingly convinced that the UAE is an enabler of Moscows foreign policy agenda, helping Russia to bypass sanctions, the Biden administration will consider what actions it can take.

To pressure the UAE into sanctioning those in Putins circle, the US could warn banks and other financial institutions in the Gulf country that they might face sanctions or penalties if they continue doing business with them. Yet with the White House seeking Emirati cooperation in terms of oil production and other areas, it is not clear that the Biden administration would do so at this delicate time.

The Emirati government has gotten away with quite a few things, such as serious human rights abuses, atrocities in Yemen, and dubious financial activities, which have apparently not phased successive US administrations, Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told Al Jazeera.

However, UAE relations with the [US amid Bidens presidency] are not as cozy as they were during the Trump years, said Zunes. Countering Russian aggression has become the top foreign policy issue for the US government, so it could indeed lead to some unprecedented tensions.

Not lost in the equation are the deep economic ties between the UAE and the US, which go beyond oil.

In addition to the close relationship between the US and Emirati armed forces, the UAE has played an important role in helping the United States trade balance, providing lucrative contracts with American arms manufacturers and other investors, added Zunes.

As a result, if Biden was inclined to put pressure on the UAE, he could be faced with strong resistance from both the Pentagon and powerful corporate interests [in the US].

The UAE may already be paying a price for not aligning with the West against Moscow vis--vis Ukraine.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)s decision earlier in March to add the UAE to a global watch list for money laundering and terrorism financing has forced foreign banks to contend with heavier compliance burdens, which threatens to undermine the UAEs reputation as a regional financial centre and investment haven. To some extent, this might also weaken the countrys ability to compete with Saudi Arabia for foreign investment and regional trade.

There is good reason to believe that the designation was at least partly connected to Abu Dhabis neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war. Following the March 4 meeting when the FATF added the UAE to the list, the Paris-based intergovernmental organisation warned jurisdictions of the need to remain vigilant in the face of money laundering associated with Russias invasion of Ukraine.

In response to the FATFs designation, Emirati state media stressed the UAEs commitment to combatting money laundering and terrorist financing.

Ultimately, it is safe to bet that the UAE will remain a country that Russian oligarchs can count on to keep their bank accounts unfrozen, and their assets in their hands.

Pressure from the US and other Western governments will not necessarily be enough to fundamentally change how the UAE deals with sanctions-hit Russians and the money that they are parking in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Put simply, the UAE will likely feel that it can carry on with its current policies, notwithstanding pressure that might come from Western powers should the war continue.

It is important to remember that, in an increasingly multipolar world, the UAE has weakened its reliance on the West, underscored by growing economic ties between Asian countries and the UAE.

The UAE is is Chinas largest Arab trade partner and accounts for 28 percent of Chinas total non-oil trade with the region. Two years ago, China surpassed the European Union as the GCCs top trading partner with the UAE serving as a focal point for the re-export of Chinese goods to the wider Middle East and Africa. Chinas trade with Dubai alone rose 30.7 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2021.

In the greater scheme of things, the UAE is not a country that is following a liberal, Western rules-based system, Andreas Krieg, an assistant professor at the Defence Studies Department of Kings College London, told Al Jazeera. They are operating outside it. They are more aligned towards the east. Their business future, also the future of financial networks is not in the West, but in the east.

The UAEs soft power throughout the east and the global south has in no small part relied on money streamsincluding illicit ones, or at least ones in the grey zone going into the Gulf country. There is ample documentation of entities and individuals from countries such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela using the UAE as a hub for sanctions evasion. This has enabled the UAE to gain influence in these non-Western states and build networks with them.

There is an alternative system being built as we speak, and that alternative financial system is one where [the FATFs] greylisting doesnt matter much, said Krieg. I think thats where the UAE is pivoting towards their pivot to the east is also pivoting away from the rules-based system.

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Analysis: Can the UAE be a safe haven for Russian oligarchs? - Al Jazeera English

Allies of the Ukrainian president, Voldymyr Zelenskiy, say Vladimir Putin will only accept a compromise on Ukraines future neutrality if he is facing a credible threat to his economic power base by a rapid and permanent exclusion of Russias oil and gas exports from its lucrative European markets. The Russian government receives 40% of its budget revenues from energy exports.

But Ukraine is meeting stubborn resistance from Germany, which insists its economy would be plunged into recession if it suddenly lost access to Russian gas and oil.

In an interview reflecting the moral pressure Germany is under to do more, the countrys Green economics minister, Robert Habeck, admitted Europe in the past had fed Ukraine false promises, but said Germany could not afford the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs that a full energy embargo would require. He said Germany at best could be freed of Russian coal by the autumn, of its oil by the end of the year, but could set no date for ending German reliance on gas.

The impasse is leaving senior allies of Zelenskiy feeling frustrated, and appealing to the UK and the US to use the G7 to try to persuade the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to sign up to a western timetable to end dependence on Russian energy.

Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, spoke with Putin again at the weekend. Zelenskiys chief negotiator, Mykhailo Podolyak, has said the talks between Ukraine and Russia are now virtually continuous, and have got past the stage of trading ultimatums. But the French sound less optimistic. Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said: We are in front of a wall. The worst is ahead of us. This war will be long.

The frustration with the German position is such that Zelenskiy is willing to turn to one of Scholzs predecessors, Gerhard Schrder, to act as a mediator with Putin. The former chancellor has accepted the role, possibly to salvage something from the ruins of his reputation, and reportedly had talks with Putin last week.

Some of Zelenskiys team are also uneasy at the intermediary role of the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, questioning the depth of Israels support.

Zelenskiy has repeatedly stressed he is willing to meet Putin to discuss new security guarantees for Ukraine in return for his countrys future neutrality, either as an alternative to membership of Nato, or as an interim measure prior to joining the defence pact.

Speaking last week after his largely inconclusive talks with Sergei Lavrov in Turkey, Ukraines foreign minister, Dymtro Kubela, said the real issue for Ukraine is security guarantees and hard security guarantees, similar to the ones that members of Nato have. We need these guarantees primarily from Russia since it is the country that committed an act of aggression against us, but also from other countries including permanent members of the UN security council. The idea is that we have a treaty, an agreement where countries would oblige themselves not to commit aggression or put economic, or any other, pressure on us.

He confirmed the president had cooled down on Ukraines Nato application because, despite our best efforts, Nato is not ready to integrate us. The reaction to the aggression by Nato has been to delegate to member states to deal with us on a bilateral basis. But he added that until Ukraine knew the strength and reliability of the guarantees it was not yet ready to say the guarantees could be a substitute for Nato membership. We are not yet in a position to abandon Nato membership, he said.

The idea is for a legally binding treaty signed by numerous countries that guarantees the security of Ukraine in a way that the Budapest Memorandum signed in 1994 failed to do. The memorandum was supposed to guarantee Ukraines independence in return for the country abandoning its nuclear stockpile. Britain, in the form of John Major, was one of the co-signatories. The memorandum in effect became a dead letter. Zelenskiy insists the talks are serious and no longer merely an exchange of ultimatums.

The US, reflecting what it has been briefed to them by Israeli, French and Turkish intermediaries, all whom have spoken to Putin, say they have not heard any willingness by the Russian leader to compromise.

Its hard to offer an overture when the Kremlins position continues to be that well continue to pummel Ukraine until it bows to maximalist demands, a senior US official said last week. Putins public position is still to demand the demilitarisation and de-nazification of Ukraine, in effect regime change, as well as Ukrainian recognition of Crimea and of the Donbas. He thinks he is winning, the White House judges.

That leads the US and UK to argue the economic endurance test between the west and Russia must continue, and be intensified, until what Putins spokesperson Dmitry Peskov oddly describes as the hostile bacchanalia becomes so intense that Putin finds his inner circle desert him, or even assassinate him.

But Zelenskiys allies feel Scholz, a fortnight after Germanys great turning point on defence spending, has reverted to cautious type. A delegation has been in Europe this week arguing the EU, now on its fourth sanction package, has still not taken the decisive step a total embargo on Russian energy.

Andriy Kobolyev, the former boss of Ukraines energy firm Naftogaz, and now spearheading an international push for comprehensive western energy sanctions on behalf of Zelenskiy, finds the German caution frustrating.

He said: Until European leaders understand Putin sees them as a weak and easy victims in his geopolitical strategy, he will continue doing what he is doing. That is why the only way to prove Putin wrong is to put on a full-scale energy embargo. Europe has to play a different game and say we know we can cope without Russia. It has to say we are large economies, and with a different energy mix we can cope because for us it is a matter of principle. It has to say we are putting an end to this right now and you Russians will lose our market forever. That poses an existential threat for Russia.

Kobolyev has negotiated with Putin and his energy barons, and insists he knows their mindset. He believes the Russian president will face their wrath, and that of the FSB security service, if they feel Putin totally miscalculated not only Ukrainian resistance, but the wests willingness to make the sacrifices to wean themselves off Russian energy, and so blow a massive long-term hole in the Russian budget.

It would also upend all the assumptions of the Russian energy elite around Putin, such as Igor Sechin, the boss of Rosneft. Sechin, like Putin, is highly conservative on issues such as climate change. He remains convinced absolute oil consumption will increase by 10% by 2040 and by 20% in Asia. Kobolyev says it would be a complete shock to Sechin if his most profitable market just disappeared overnight. Their sacred cash cow would have been killed.

So far only the US has said it will end oil imports, but since the US imported an average of only 209,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and 500,000 bpd of other petroleum products from Russia in 2021, it is hardly a great sacrifice. The UK has said it will join the embargo by the end of the year.

But Scholz has set his face against the move. He said last week: At the moment, Europes supply of energy for heat generation, mobility, power supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way. It is therefore of essential importance for the provision of public services and the daily lives of our citizens, he added.

Annalena Baerbock, the Green foreign minister, has said much the same. If we end up in a situation where nurses and teachers are not coming to work, where we have no electricity for several days. Putin will have won part of the battle, because he will have plunged other countries into chaos. Scholz was one of a group of leaders who insisted on the removal in an EU council statement of any reference to the proposed target date of 2027 for the EU to end its dependence on Russian gas.

His concern is understandable. Oil accounts for 32% of German energy input, and one-third of that comes from Russia.

Yet oil is central to Putins war machine. Thane Gustafson, the chronicler of Russias energy sector, points out in his latest book, Klimat, that in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, income from oil worth $188bn accounted for 44% of Russian exports in value, and gas only 12%. Hydrocarbons generate 56% of Russias export income and 39% of the federal budget.

Kobolyev is convinced that if the EU banned Russian oil, other sources could be found. There is a Russian proverb: a sacred place is never empty for long, he explains.

In a game of geopolitical chess with Russia, Biden is already working to find alternative oil supplies. For now he is trying to fill the shortfall through drawing on the US reserves, oil from Venezuela, the world largest oil producer, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

White House officials were in Caracas for the first such talks in 20 years. Venezuelas Nicols Maduro government has signalled its willingness to cooperate with the White House by releasing two political prisoners in a goodwill gesture. Venezuelas oil output could rise by at least 400,000 bpd, the countrys petroleum chamber said on Friday. But Biden has to tread carefully since the idea of reconciliation with Maduro is leading to a reaction in Congress.

Difficult talks about Saudi Arabia boosting output are continuing, according to Kobolyev. But Saudis weekend execution of 81 criminals and terrorists hardly suggests the kingdom is desperately seeking the wests approval. The executions hardly makes a mooted visit to Riyadh by Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, more likely.

In the case of Iran, Russia has stepped in at the last minute to try to block Irans nuclear deal, fearing that an agreement, and the lifting of oil sanctions on Iran, would result in Tehran being able to unleash as much as 2m barrels of oil a day on to the global market.

To turn to the autocrats of Venezuela, Iran and to Saudi Arabia, or the indeed the UAE, to save the west from Putin has its ironies, but some say needs must. If Paris was worth a mass, oil, it seems, is seen as worth some diplomatic humble pie.

The more complex issue is gas. As a compromise between those that favour a ban, such as Poland and the Baltic states, the EU has produced a plan by which the EU cuts its consumption of Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of 2022. The EU would then become independent from all Russian fossil fuels by 2027 or well before 2030. By the end of this year, we can replace 100bn cubic metres [bcm] of gas imports from Russia. That is two-thirds of what we import from them, the EU commission said in a statement.

The EU argued it can receive about 10bcm more gas from alternative pipeline suppliers such as Norway and Azerbaijan. The main bulk of this replacement would, however, come from imported liquid natural gas, which officials estimate would need to reach 50bcm of additional imports by the end of 2022, possibly via a joint, strategic EU contract, although legal details remain to be resolved. Federico Santi, a gas specialist at the consultancy Eurasia Group, said: That is a huge figure, equivalent to around 10% of global LNG consumption in 2021.

Even so, Kobolyev is unimpressed by the lack of ambition and the lack of specific measures.

He insists the EU should at least cut off sales of Russian LNG, which hits the Yamal project, with ties to the Kremlins siloviki mafia. He has also proposed that the revenues from Gazproms pipelines go into an Iran-style escrow account that will be released only once Russia calls off the invasion. Sums might be deducted to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. He claims Russia could not physically turn off the gas taps immediately, taking Europe through to next winter.

Kobolyev is no longer a lonely voice, but is finding influential support in Germany in a way that is starting to discomfort the traffic light-coalition government. Norbert Rottgen the CDU former chair of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee, is calling for a full ban, and says he is not sure what happened to Germanys turning point. He says polls show voters are ahead of their leaders in being prepared to make economic sacrifices to stop funding Putins war machine.

On 8 March, the Leopoldina National Academy of Science, and separately a group of nine international economists, mapped out how Germany could absorb an embargo, with the worst scenario a 3% fall in GDP less than 4% impact of Covid or probably something like a cost of 1,200 per German citizen.

This figure is contested, including by Habeck, who says the impact is more likely to be 5%. Various economists, lobbyists and gas intensive industries, such as chemicals, are staking out their ground in a heated debate that blends morality, politics and economic modelling.

Scholz has moved under pressure in this war once, over arms sales, Nord Stream 2 and defence spending, and there is no guarantee he will not again.

But if frozen out of European markets, would Putin simply turn to China? Kobolyev says no. The option of shifting gas sales to Chinese markets is not possible, he says. In the case of China it might take 10 to 15 years to build the infrastructure. The existing pipeline to China is small and is not connected to the areas currently supplying Europe.

Although exporting LNG and oil will be easier, China will know they are his last market, meaning he will lose 80% of his revenues and that is a devastating blow.

This is about more than cents and dollars. Putin is paranoid and he would hate to become dependent on China because he is afraid China will eat them alive. Russians perceive China as their smaller brother. Russians brought communism to China, but this will be a humiliation.

So when Putin goes back to his crony friends and this is the close KGB circle and he tells them Look guys, we have been thrown out of Europe completely, but I am trying to negotiate with China, they are not going to appreciate that. To lose your biggest most lucrative market, to lose 80% of your revenues and become fully dependent on China, that does not look like a very smart or strategic move. That does not look like a victory.

The Russians and Putin, he explains, have always believed Europe can never survive without Russian oil. He thinks if he wins in Ukraine, the Kremlin will be forgiven because there is no alternative and the west is weak. That is how he thinks, its how Gazprom thinks and its how Rosneft thinks. That is how they see the world. That is why Putin personally controls the energy trade. It is his sacred cash cow.

Read the rest here:

Can the west slaughter Putin's sacred cash cow? - The Guardian