Daily Archives: June 3, 2024

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Global anger deepened all the more this week in the wake of yet another deadly Israeli strike on Gaza. The bombardment triggered a blaze that swept through parts of a makeshift tent camp in the environs of Rafah, the territorys southernmost city, killing at least 45 Palestinians and injuring hundreds more. Images of charred bodies and screaming children proliferated in the aftermath, adding to the already considerable pressure on President Biden to change course in its staunch support for Israels campaign.

After the strike, White House officials struggled to explain how the ongoing Israeli offensive in Rafah did not cross Bidens blurry red line. We still dont believe that a major ground operation in Rafah is warranted, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters. We still dont want to see the Israelis, as we say, smash into Rafah with large units over large pieces of territory.

Whatever the criteria surrounding large units and large pieces of territory, the stark reality is that Israel has already driven out hundreds of thousands of people who had been sheltering in Rafah after fleeing other parts of the Gaza Strip. Its capture and closure of the main border crossing into Egypt cratered a struggling humanitarian operation. Aid agencies describe the war-ravaged Gaza Strip as a place where Palestinians have nowhere safe to go. And Israeli officials are adamant that they wont let up anytime soon in their quest to vanquish militant group Hamas.

Summarized stories to quickly stay informed

Tzachi Hanegbi, national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told local radio this week that his government expected to wage its operations in Gaza for at least another seven months. He said the extended mission would be to fortify our achievement and what we define as the destruction of the governmental and military capabilities of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in the territory.

Satellite images taken 22 days apart show the razing of large areas in east Rafah in May. (Video: Planet Labs)

In seven months time, a rather different political dispensation may exist in Washington. Netanyahu reportedly met this month with three foreign policy envoys working with former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump who could yet win the election despite being convicted Thursday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York state hush money case. Though its unclear how he would have handled the crisis differently from Biden, the former president has invoked Bidens friction with Netanyahu as evidence of U.S. failure and expressed little public sympathy for Palestinian suffering. Trump has told donors that if he returns to the White House, he would severely crackdown on pro-Palestinian groups in U.S. universities and even deport foreign students participating in these protests.

Netanyahu, who benefited immensely from Trumps first term, is arguably hoping for a similar dividend in the event of a second. In the interim, he has openly rejected the Biden administrations hopes for the Palestinian Authority to take the lead in the postwar administration of Gaza, and he and his allies have shown no interest in even engaging in the White House on reviving pathways for a Palestinian state. And contrary to the Biden administrations wishes, Netanyahu may soon act on a Republican invitation to address a joint session of Congress.

Standing up to Biden whose favorability among Israelis has dropped in recent months may help shore up the support Netanyahu needs from the Israeli right and curry favor among their counterparts in the United States. It also accelerates a deeper shift in the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Over the past 16 years, Netanyahu has departed sharply from his predecessors studious bipartisanship to embrace Republicans and disdain Democrats, an attitude increasingly mirrored in each partys approach to Israel, my colleagues wrote this week in a piece examining the prime ministers role in widening a growing divide even as Biden remains a staunch supporter of Israel and is reviled by many on the U.S. left for being complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza.

I think the job for Ukraine this year is to hold tight, to consolidate their lines. To use the new ATACMS long-range missiles to strike at Russian targets within occupied Ukraine In terms of a real Ukrainian breakout to push the Russians back, as they tried to do unsuccessfully last year, I think thats going to wait for next year. - David Ignatius (Video: Washington Post Live)

Its not just Netanyahu who is waiting for Trump. The evidence is more clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding out for a Trump victory, which would probably help the Kremlin consolidate its illegal conquests of Ukrainian territory. My colleagues reported last month that Trump and his inner circle have outlined the terms of a potential settlement between Moscow and Kyiv that they would attempt to usher in if in power. Trumps proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential, they reported.

Such a move would fracture the transatlantic coalition built up in support of Ukraines resistance to Russian invasion. It would cement the Republican turn away from Europes security at a time when Western resolve around Ukraine is flagging. And it would be yet another sign of Trumps conspicuous affection the strongman in the Kremlin.

In his eight years as the GOPs standard-bearer, Trump has led a stark shift in the partys prevailing orientation to become more skeptical of foreign intervention such as military aid to Ukraine, my colleagues wrote. Trump has consistently complimented Putin, expressed admiration for his dictatorial rule and gone out of his way to avoid criticizing him, most recently for the death in jail of political opponent Alexei Navalny.

My colleagues reported this week about growing tensions between Kyiv and officials in the Biden administration, with Ukraine pushing its Western allies to loosen rules over the usage of some of their weaponry on targets on Russian soil. Pessimism has set in over what Ukrainian forces can achieve militarily this summer, as Russia launches new offensives.

I think the best we can hope for until the election is a stalemate, John Bolton, Trumps former national security and now vocal critic, recently said. Putin is waiting for Trump.

Trumps team is thinking about this very much in silos, that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing, Hill said. They think of it as a territorial dispute, rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order by extension.

Former president Trumps inexplicable and admiring relationship with Putin, along with his unprecedented hostility to NATO, cannot give Europe or Ukraine any confidence in his dealings with Russia, said Tom Donilon, President Barack Obamas national security adviser. Trumps comments encouraging Russia to do whatever it wants with our European allies are among the most unsettling and dangerous statements made by a major party candidate for president. His position represents a clear and present danger to U.S. and European security.

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Israel's Netanyahu, Russia's Putin are waiting for Trump election win - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

On May 16 and 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a state visit to China, where he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

On the opening day of the 2022 Winter Olympics, just 20 days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the two leaders had met in Beijing and declared a no limits partnership. On March 22, 2023, at the end of a state visit to Russia, as Xi left the Kremlin he told Putin, There are changesthe likes of which we havent seen for 100 yearsand we are the ones driving these changes together. The remarks were filmed and broadcast around the world.

China has not condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Chinas rhetorical and economic support for Russia has been rock solid. Bilateral trade rose 26.3 percent between 2022 and 2023, hitting a record $240.1 billion, with China buying enormous qualities of Russian fossil fuels, and selling products and commodities that Russia needs.

Putin came to Beijing this month with an entourage of senior officials, including the new Defense Minister Andrei Belousov and the man he replaced, Sergei Shoigu, as well as a host of other officials who have a long history of working with Chinese counterparts.

In 2023, Beijing issued a 12-point Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis that state media called a peace proposal. Before this months trip, Chinas official Xinhua News Agency quoted Putin as saying, We are open to a dialogue on Ukraine, but such negotiations must take into account the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including ours.

The Kremlin released a statement about the visit saying that the leaders of Russia and China will have an extensive discussion of the entire scope of issues pertaining to the Russia-China overarching partnership and strategic cooperation, and that they will outline priorities for further practical cooperation between the two states and have an in-depth exchange of opinions on the most pressing international and regional issues.

Xi has stood closely by Putins side since their announcement of the no limits partnership, and this does not look likely to change. But what has been the outcome of Putins trip? Did the two leaders make a serious attempt to negotiate on Ukraine, or were the optics of bilateral friendship the main aim? How should we expect the two countries trade relationship to change after this visit? What else came out of this trip?

The Editors

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The Future According to Xi and Putin - ChinaFile

PRAGUE When an associate of one of Russian President Vladimir Putins closest allies launched a pro-Kremlin media outlet here in May 2023, Czech counterintelligence officers began keeping careful watch.

For nearly a year, European intelligence officials said, the Czech authorities secretly recorded hours of meetings between several far-right politicians from across Europe and the associate, Artem Marchevsky, who was running the propaganda website, Voice of Europe, including at its offices on a quiet side street in the center of Prague. E.U. and Czech authorities, which have shut down the site, have labeled Voice of Europe a Russian propaganda operation.

The Czech probe rapidly expanded into Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and France, European security and intelligence officials said, as investigators concluded that Voice of Europe represented far more than its official veneer as a pro-Russian website interviewing favored European politicians about ending aid to Ukraine.

The organization was being used to funnel hundreds of thousands of euros up to 1 million a month to dozens of far-right politicians in more than five countries to plant Kremlin propaganda in Western media that would sow division in Europe and bolster the position of pro-Russian candidates in this weeks European Parliament elections, according to interviews with a dozen European intelligence officials from five countries. Most of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing and sensitive investigation.

Officials described the Russian operation as among the most ambitious undertaken by the Kremlin in Europe in its efforts to undermine support for Ukraine and create divisions in the transatlantic alliance. Previous Kremlin-backed covert actions include the attempted union of the far right and far left in Germany, stoking domestic divisions in France and sabotage in Poland, The Washington Post has reported.

Internal Kremlin documents obtained by one of the European intelligence services and reviewed by The Post show for the first time that Voice of Europe was part of an influence campaign established by the Kremlin in close coordination with Viktor Medvedchuk, the Putin ally who until Russias invasion of Ukraine led a pro-Moscow opposition party in Kyiv. It was later managed by a key Medvedchuk lieutenant who, other documents show, worked closely with a unit of Russias Federal Security Service, or FSB, responsible for Ukraine and some former Soviet states, otherwise known as the FSBs Fifth Service.

After the expulsion from Europe of dozens of Russian intelligence officers following the invasion of Ukraine, fronts such as the Voice of Europe became instruments for the Kremlin to regain lost ground, one of the senior European intelligence officials said. The Russian intelligence services had to change their work. The result is, for example, influence networks such as Voice of Europe, the official said.

The websites status as a news organization was designed to provide cover, another of the intelligence officials said, making it easier to approach politicians under the guise of interviewing them about Ukraine, anti-globalism and other issues.

Michal Koudelka, head of the Czech domestic security service, said that the Voice of Europe operation was also an attempt to get more pro-Russian members into the European Parliament and that after the vote that starts this Thursday, there was a plan for the people in the European Parliament to conduct classic espionage on behalf of Russia.

It was an operation that aimed to shape Europe, Koudelka said in an interview.

Far-right parties could end up with 25 percent of the seats in the 720-member European Parliament, according to some opinion polls. And for Russia, increasing influence among those parties could provide a mechanism for threatening aid to Ukraine, as well as fertile ground for espionage, according to Vera Jourova, the European Commissions vice president.

Pro-Russian politicians could really make the financing [of Ukraine] difficult, Jourova told The Post.

The Czech investigation has led to raids on the home and offices of an aide to a far-right Dutch member of the European Parliament and of Petr Bystron, a leading member of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, and the partys No. 2 candidate for the European Parliament. Bystron, the AfDs spokesman for foreign affairs, has been among the most vocal in Germany against sending Western weapons to Ukraine and for lifting sanctions on Russia.

German authorities said in May they have placed Bystron under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering as part of the probe, and police raided his office in the German parliament as well as properties in Germany and Spain. In one recording, three of the senior European intelligence officials told The Post, Bystron can be heard complaining to a Voice of Europe official about the difficulty of transporting tens of thousands in cash to his vacation home in Mallorca.

We knew he was pro-Russian, said one of the senior intelligence officials, noting Bystrons long-standing ties with Russia and pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. The official believes authorities have now gathered evidence supporting the accusation that Bystron received money from Russia and placed propaganda in far-right publications in return.

The Czech-born Bystron wasnt only a passive person who received money, the official said.

He organized things, according to the official, saying that Bystron, who speaks Russian, brought other political figures into Voice of Europes orbit and was the main leading person.

Bystron knew about the plans for the espionage operations in the European Parliament, this person said, adding that there was recorded evidence of this.

Bystron remains a candidate for the European Parliament and has denounced the investigation as a plot by European security services to damage AfDs standing ahead of the elections. Before every election it is the same: defamation with the help of the secret services, he told Deutschland Kurier, an AfD-linked website.

In a brief text exchange with The Post, Bystron said, We already had a house search during an election campaign in 2017, which was subsequently declared to be illegal by the courts. Nobody was interested after the election. He declined to be interviewed further and did not respond to detailed written questions.

AfD is still expected to come second or third in the June 6 poll, behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union, despite the controversy, which has touched other AfD leaders. Prosecutors in Germany have said in a statement that they initiated a preliminary investigation into Maximilian Krah on allegations of accepting payments from Russia and China for his work as an AfD member of the European Parliament. Police searched his office as part of an investigation into allegations that one of his aides was working as a spy for China. On Wednesday, police raided the residence and offices of the Dutch parliamentary assistant who had previously worked for Krah.

Krah said in a statement to The Post that the allegations were part of a disinformation campaign against my party orchestrated by intelligence agencies and called the accusations not only wrong but slandering.

Security services in Europe are still investigating the role of dozens of other far-right politicians in the Voice of Europe network, including from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well up to six more AfD figures, including politicians and parliamentary assistants, people familiar with the investigation said. Belgian authorities have also played a leading investigative role, with key Voice of Europe meetings with politicians taking place in other locations in Europe, including Brussels, senior officials said.

European security officials and Kremlin documents link the creation of Voice of Europe in early 2023 to Russias presidential administration and Medvedchuk, who is so close to Putin that the Russian president is godfather to his daughter. Medvedchuk was turned over to Russia in September 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange between Moscow and Kyiv. He was seen in Moscow as a possible leader of Ukraine if the Russian invasion succeeded and the Kremlin was able to install its allies in power in Kyiv, intelligence officials said.

The Kremlin documents show Voice of Europe was initially connected to a Russian propaganda operation launched in January 2023 by the Kremlins first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko. It was designed to boost support for Medvedchuk in Ukraine and position him among European opinion makers as a viable replacement for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, promoting peace talks as an alternative to possible nuclear war, the documents state. The campaign, dubbed The Other Ukraine, would present Medvedchuk as the head of a government in exile, the documents show.

The aim was to create an organization that could be brought in after Russia demonstrated the illegitimacy of the Zelensky regime and negotiate an end to the war from a position of strength, said one intelligence official familiar with the plans.

Medvedchuk declined to comment.

Kremlin political strategists, including Ilya Gambashidze and Nikolai Tupikin, whom the United States has sanctioned for their roles in disinformation campaigns, were brought in to assist with the launch of the project, which envisioned promoting interviews with Medvedchuk and his Other Ukraine organization through a web of social media and YouTube accounts, and appearances in Western media, the Kremlin documents show.

Voice of Europe was described as a news resource, with Marchevsky, a longtime Medvedchuk associate, at its helm, one of the documents shows. In July, its overall management was taken over by Renat Kuzmin, another key Medvedchuk associate, who, documents show, worked closely with the FSBs Fifth Service.

Neither the Kremlin nor Kuzmin responded to detailed requests for comment.

The Prague news outlet, intelligence officials said, gave Marchevsky a way to engage a network of extremist European politicians, some of whom, including Bystron, had been cultivated by Russias political allies in Ukraine since the Kremlin illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Those relations were often first managed by Oleg Voloshyn, a political operative in charge of foreign relations for Medvedchuks For Life political party before Russias invasion.

In an interview, Voloshyn said he introduced Medvedchuk and Bystron in Berlin in 2020. Voloshyn said he brought Bystron and Krah to Kyiv to celebrate his 40th birthday in April 2021, introducing them to Marchevsky, who at the time headed one of Medvedchuks three television stations in Ukraine.

After Medvedchuk was placed under house arrest by Zelenskys government and accused of treason, Bystron and Krah traveled again to Kyiv to visit Medvedchuk in his home, a trip that raised concerns among European security officials.

Voloshyns ability to travel in Europe was hampered in January 2022, shortly before Russias invasion, when the U.S. Treasury Department placed him on its sanctions list, calling him an FSB pawn in efforts by the Russian security agency to destabilize and take over Ukraine. Voloshyn said the sanctions and allegations that he was connected to Russian intelligence were based on inaccurate information.

When Bystron made a secret trip to Belarus in November 2022 acknowledging the visit only after it was exposed by Lithuanian and German media he met with Voloshyn, who had relocated there following Russias invasion, Voloshyn told The Post.

Voloshyn said he connected Bystron with Medvedchuk by phone during the visit but insisted that the German and the Ukrainian spoke for no more than a few minutes. In a 2023 interview with The Post, Bystron said he met only with Belarusian officials during the trip. Soon after the visit, Bystron presented a peace plan favorable to the Kremlin to the German parliament.

With Voloshyn unable to travel to the European Union, Marchevsky became the face of Voice of Europe in Prague.

Marchevsky did not respond to a detailed request for comment. In earlier comments to the Financial Times, he denied working as a proxy for Medvedchuk and said he was not involved in Voice of Europes management, claiming his company was only a third-party contractor. He declined to reveal his whereabouts after fleeing the Czech Republic.

A series of scandals dogging the AfD including a statement by Krah that not all members of the Nazi SS in World War II were guilty of crimes has dented but not destroyed the partys standing ahead of the European Parliament elections. Krah has withdrawn from the race, and AfD is still expected to get at least 15 percent of the vote, which could allow it a second-place finish in Germany.

Krahs statement about the SS did prompt the far-right National Rally party in France, led by Marine Le Pen, to say it would not sit with the AfD in the European Parliament. But the AfDs membership in such official groupings may not mean much when it comes to voting on issues related to Russia or Ukraine, one of the European intelligence officials said, with parties able to vote in ad hoc blocs.

The Czech intelligence services, for one, are still vigilant. We stopped [the Voice of Europe operation], and I am very proud of my service, Koudelka said. But there are concerns that other networks may be working in other European countries. This fight is never-ending.

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Russia co-opts far-right politicians in Europe with cash, officials say - The Washington Post

Benjamin Harris is vice president and director of the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution. David Wessel is director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings.

Ukraines allies, including the United States, met Russias invasion two years ago with an unprecedented outpouring of sanctions. They put a price cap on Russian oil exports, froze $300 billion worth of Russian foreign exchange reserves, and severed many of the links between Russias financial institutions and the rest of the world.

In congressional testimony on the first anniversary of the invasion, Daleep Singh, a former White House deputy national security adviser, said the restrictions were designed to maximize the costs imposed on Russian President Vladimir Putin, degrade his ability to project power on the world stage and show other autocracies (China, perhaps) that redrawing borders by force would be punished.

The sanctions remain a work in progress. They clearly have reduced Russias oil and gas revenue, weakened its ability to produce nondefense goods, made importing high-tech components harder and shaken the countrys banking system. But the Russian economy has yet to implode (as the chart from our Ukraine Index illustrates).

And although the sanctions have multiplied over the course of the war, they have yet to weaken Putins determination to keep fighting. It is increasingly obvious that the United States and its allies need a better strategy to restrain Russias imperialist behavior.

We asked several experts how the United States might tighten the sanctions noose around Putins neck. The advice they offered boils down to these five strategies. (The Brookings Institution has published fuller versions of the proposals.)

Limit Russias earnings from natural gas. As the West has blocked some trade with Russia and Europe has sharply reduced its imports of Russian natural gas, Russia has turned to China. Now, says German sanctions scholar Janis Kluge, it is important to prevent Russia from exploiting the natural gas in West Siberia, including by sanctioning companies that help Gazprom build the proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline to China via Mongolia. Also, now that world food markets have adjusted to the Ukraine wars disruptions, the United States and the E.U. should stop importing Russian fertilizer (for which gas is a key input).

Allow Russians to send money out of the country. The White House has said that one goal of sanctions is to weaken the rubles foreign exchange value, making Russian imports more costly, pushing up inflation and leading the Russian central bank to raise interest rates. To this same end, the United States, the E.U. and Switzerland should also remove the obstacles they have placed against Russians moving money out of their country in an apparent effort to put pressure on Russian oligarchs. Sergey Aleksashenko, a former deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, estimates that if 100,000 Russian households and small businesses each transferred $10,000 out of the country every month, the annual costs to the economy would be roughly equivalent to a $7 per barrel drop in the price of crude.

Monitor the shadow oil fleet. To avoid the worlds oil-price cap which blocks ships carrying Russian crude from buying essential insurance if the price of the oil exceeds $60 a barrel Russia has assembled a fleet of aging tankers insured by shadowy companies that might not make sure the ships are sound and are unlikely to have the resources to cover the cost of spills. (This risk was underscored a year ago, when an 18-year-old tanker flying the Cook Islands flag lost power in the narrow Danish straits in the Baltic Sea and nearly crashed.) To prevent Russia from using this workaround, Craig Kennedy, a Russia expert at Harvard Universitys Davis Center, proposes that coastal states ask tankers passing by their shores to voluntarily verify the quality of their spill insurance and that the United States penalize any ship that refuses.

Confiscate assets. Last month, Congress passed the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act (REPO), which authorizes President Biden to confiscate Russian sovereign assets held in the United States and use the money to help rebuild Ukraine and stave off the Russian invasion. Economists Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Andrew Kosenko of Marist College argue that Biden should use this power to shrink the Russian central banks balance sheet, potentially devalue the ruble and prompt bank runs within Russia, and weaken the banks ability to extend credit which might ultimately undermine Putins military production capacity.

End all business with Russia. An alternative to expanding the complex set of sanctions and exceptions would be for the United States and Europe to stop doing business with Russia altogether with limited exceptions for humanitarian considerations. In short, treat Russia as the United States treats North Korea. The Russian economy needs to be squeezed from all ends to limit the resources available to wage the war in Ukraine, economists Torbjrn Becker of the Stockholm School of Economics and Yuriy Gorodnichenko of the University of California at Berkeley have written. Even dictators must respect budget constraints, and we should ensure that these constraints are as tight as possible.

Ideally, Russia will soon be forced to retreat from Ukraine and these actions will prove unnecessary. Sadly, its far more likely that sanctions on Russian will need to be intensified.

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Opinion | How to tighten sanctions enough to restrain Putin in Ukraine - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA When he heard that Leonid Volkov, his compatriot in the long-suffering movement to bring liberal democracy back to Russia, had been viciously attacked with a mallet outside his home in Vilnius, Vladimir Milovs response was typically Russian.

Oh, I wouldnt say that this was totally unexpected, Milov told Foreign Policy over a beer in an empty and dimly lit hotel restaurant in the Lithuanian capital.

When youre in the business of challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin, which Milov is, you come to accept a certain number of occupational hazards. Particularly now, as Moscow faces unprecedented risks from all sidesand particularly from within. Still, the attack on Volkov was particularly brutal.

We sat down during Russias three-day presidential election in March, just days after Volkov was attacked. Milov knew, as the vote approached, that Putin would try to kneecap their shared organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, of which Volkov is the backbonehe just didnt know it would be quite so literal. Volkovs assailant targeted the dissidents limbs, injuring his legs and breaking his arm.

Putin, Milov said, is really looking for some secret button which he can press to shut the movement down. He thought it will be, first, killing off Nemtsov, then killing off Navalny, he continued, referencing his former colleagues Boris Nemtsov, gunned down in 2015 in Moscow; and Alexei Navalny, who died in a Siberian gulag in February.

But Putin is discovering that its not switching off, Milov said.

While the non-Russian world may have a pessimistic view of these anti-Putin dissidents, Milov said that they are not as weak as Moscow would have us believe. Look no further, he argued, than Putins own thuggish behavior.

On the eve of the final day of the presidential election, Milov was thinking about the twilight of the Soviet Union.

I first voted in elections in the Soviet Union, Milov said. Im old enough to remember: Soviet GDP [growth] was positive until the very last year of 91, but food had disappeared from stores. He sees parallels between then and now. Rosy top-line numbers and a command economy can only mask deeper economic rot.

This year, at least according to Moscow, the Russian economy is expected to grow by 3.6 percent, leading many to proclaim that international efforts to marginalize and destabilize Putin have failed. But, Milov said, the fact that the economy is GDP-positive doesnt tell you anything about the real crisis.

Milov has spent time on both sides of the Russian state. In the late 1990s, he joined the Russian Energy Ministry, eventually rising to the level of deputy minister in the early 2000s. He resigned in 2002, in the early years of Putins reign, joining a Moscow think tank before fully signing up for the burgeoning dissident movementfirst under Nemtsov, then Navalny.

Milov described Putins war economy as one that helps a small number of people but fails everyone else. Even if Russias state statistics agency, Rosstat, reports that the economy is hot in nearly every sector, Milov has written that this is the countrys Potemkin GDP.

The military-industrial sector has grown massively since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and now, Milov estimated, about 10 million Russians work directly or indirectly in the defense sector. Those defense workers are benefiting from the wartime economy, he said, but the rest of Russias roughly 75 million workers are facing tough times. Inflation continues to rage near 8 percent, and interest rates sit at a painful 16 percent.

Amid a labor shortage, worsened by the war economy as well as sanctions that hobble imports and advanced manufacturing, Russia has become increasingly reliant on Chinabut that shift comes at a price.

China now occupies about a 95 percent share in Russian car imports. The price of imported cars since December 2021, prewar, has doubled, Milov said.

The staggering price inflation for consumer vehicles proved so obvious that it prompted a response from Putin in his annual end-of-year press conference in December 2023. He claimed that the prices had risen just 40 percent and blamed Western sanctions.

Milov argued that Russia, like many autocratic states, can generally be divided into thirds: A third oppose Putin, a third support Putin no matter what, and in between are the apolitical folks who just want to be left alone, Milov said. The trick for Russias beleaguered opposition is reaching that final slice.

The December press conference, normally a tightly-scripted affair, featured plenty of questions about the cost-of-living crisis and pointed queries about when the war in Ukraine will endclearly prompted by the people from that middle third. Milov said the uncharacteristically dour tone of the broadcast betrayed the real question that Russians have for their president, one that Milovs movement has been trying to put on the table for years:

Why does your reality not correspond to our daily life?

The greatest evidence available that the Russian opposition movement poses a real threat to Putin, Milov believes, is just how much money and effort the Kremlin spends to try to crush the liberal movement.

They spend billions and billions of rubles, Milov said. Even with a weak ruble, billions translates to tens of millions of U.S. dollars. And there are many thousands of people involved in fighting us, he added. The rule is very simple: They would not invest so many resources, they would spend it somewhere else, if we were marginalized and didnt mean anything.

The Lithuanian security service confirmed, in a 2022 threat assessment, that Russian operatives were targeting dissidents in Vilnius. An increase in intimidation as the elections neared mirrored an intense repression campaign inside Russia itself.

In December, a military court initially fined dissident sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky $6,500 for justifying terrorismbut two months later, the same court accepted an appeal from prosecutors, upgrading his sentence to five years in prison. Renowned human rights activist Oleg Orlov was handed a similar legal about-face, and now faces more than two years in prison. They join others who have been convicted and sentenced on trumped up or fabricated charges: Ilya Yashin, Yevgeny Roizman, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, among others.

They want to send a powerful message that Resistance is useless; there is no hope; were gonna kill you all, Milov said.

Milov himself was arrested amid widespread protests in the summer of 2019, after which he was detained for 30 days. This was really lightweight, compared to what Navalny has been through, Milov said. He faced more jail time after the Anti-Corruption Foundation was declared by Moscow to be an extremist organization, so he fled for Lithuania alongside Volkov. After leaving, Milov was tried and convicted, in absentia, to eight years in prison for criticizing Putins war against Ukraine.

Everything about Russias prison system is designed for psychological torture, Milov saidtheres the perpetual lengthening of your sentence, the rats and cockroaches that infest the cells, and sleep deprivation.

Milov said that it is important to understand the not-so-subtle signals being sent from the Kremlin with all of these pressure tactics. He scoffed, for example, at a report that Moscow was considering releasing Navalny in a prisoner swap shortly before his death.

I know Putin, right? Milov said . He would never let Alexei go. Its definitely not a coincidence that he was murdered on the day of the Munich Security Conference.

This brutality and showmanship are exactly the point.

He constantly tries to deliver this message: I can do whatever I want, and you fucking Western chicken will have to suck on it, right? Milov said, then laughed at his own crude phrasing. Sorry!

Milov believes that the decision to have Volkov beaten with a hammerdispatching with any kind of plausible deniability that may come from, for example, poisonwas meant to reinforce that message.

This is also a show of horror, he said.

Just before noon on March 17, I followed a procession of Russian citizens in Lithuania as they walked through Boris Nemtsov Square in the leafy Zverynas neighborhood, past a makeshift memorial to Navalny, and up Ukrainian Heroes Street to queue up at the gates of the Russian Embassy to cast their ballots.

Even though participation in the elections was widely agreed by international observers to be rigged, Moscow obsessively tried to gin up the results anyway. The Kremlin went all-out in forcing ordinary Russians to the pollsgoing so far as threatening their employment if they abstained and tracking their cellphones to make sure they visited a polling location.

Milov called these tactics most usual. They show, he added, that a strong mandate is a do-or-die question for Putins regime. In order to get the results that regime wants, it will need to carry out a tightening of the screwseven tighter than they have already been.

This wouldnt be necessary if Putin felt secure in his managed democracy. Milov said that Putins message of absolute power is less convincing when it requires such extraordinary efforts to attain.

Certainly, few ordinary Russians believe in the validity of these elections. Yet even the dissidents called on people to turn out to the polls. Navalny believed that the more people who marked an X next to the other names on the ballots, even if those candidates were Putins controlled opposition, the more anxiety would rise in the Kremlin. Voting for anybody but Putin became one of his last requests before his death. Navalnys team even created an app to help randomly select one of the non-Putin candidates, a recognition of just how interchangeable they are. The team asked people to come out and vote at exactly the same time, 12 p.m., on the final day of the polls.

Putin was reelected, at least according to the official tally, with more than 88 per cent of the vote. It is likely that Navalnys appeal for malicious compliance did prompt some particularly heavy-handed fraud: Disqualified candidate Boris Nadezhdins campaign has uncovered tallies from multiple voting locations showing that Putins results were probably substantially lower. Still, the noon against Putin plan proved to be a bit of a dud.

As a proof of concept, though, these protests may yet prove to be a turning point.

In recent years, Milov and the other dissidents have heavily relied on the few channels that can still reach ordinary RussiansTelegram and YouTube in particular. (Volkov, stubborn, was posting videos taunting Putin in the hours after he was beaten outside his home.) But the dissidents know that real change in Russia will have to come from the streets.

We will try to beef up this new format, so that people can, in fact, show up and show the big numbers without major risk of everybody being jailed, Milov said. He likens the effort to popular demonstrations that began in 1987, during glasnostthe Soviet Unions period of comparatively increased openness and transparency. Outside Moscows Olympic Stadium, small groups of Soviet citizens gathered around major events to express their displeasure at the regime.

Milov and his fellow liberals see a day, perhaps soon, when Putins faux democracy collapses in on itself. Its his job to help bring that day closer and to plan for what happens next.

I have a pretty good understanding of what he would want me to do if he was still alive, Milov said of Navalny. So this will go onit means that the movement will not disappear.

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Putin's Insecurity Drives Attacks on Dissidents - Foreign Policy

A former Russian president on Friday warned that Moscow is not bluffing about its willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine and said Kyivs international backers are making a fatal mistake if they think otherwise.

Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of Vladimir Putin and the deputy chairman of Russias Security Council, made the menacing remarks in reaction to reports that Western countriesincluding the U.S.have given Ukraine permission to use their supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia. The current military conflict with the West is developing according to the worst possible scenario, Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

Russia regards all long-range weapons used by Ukraine as already being directly controlled by servicemen from NATO countries, Medvedev wrote. He claimed that such activity does not constitute military assistance to Ukraine, but rather active participation in a war against us.

Medvedev claimed such actions could well become a casus belli, meaning an action which provokes war.

He went on to claim that NATO countries who control Ukraines long-range weapons or send a contingent of troops to support Kyiv would be committing a serious escalation of the conflict.

Ukraine and its NATO allies will receive a response of such destructive force that the Alliance itself simply will not be able to resist being drawn into the conflict, he said.

Medvedev also said retired NATO farts who claim that Russia would never use a tactical nuclear weaponbombs designed for use on the battlefield which have typically lower yields than strategic nukeshad previously miscalculated by asserting that Russia would not enter into an open military conflict with Ukraine.

A similar error of judgment could also be happening about Russias readiness to use a tactical nuke, Medvedev said. This, he claims, would be a fatal mistake.

After all, as the President of Russia rightly noted, European countries have a very high population density, Medvedev said, referring to Putins threats earlier this week amid reports that European nations would allow Kyiv to attack Russian territory with weapons theyd supplied.

Medvedev said there is also a potential for Russia to strike hostile countries with strategic weapons. This is, alas, neither intimidation nor bluffing, he said.

There is a constant escalation when it comes to the firepower of NATO weapons being used, Medvedev added. Therefore, nobody today can rule out the conflicts transition to its final stage.

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Top Putin Ally Warns the West: Russia's Nuke Threats Are Not a Bluff - The Daily Beast

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday of "serious consequences" if Western countries allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to strike Russia.

Speaking in Uzbekistan, Putin's comments came in response to calls within some NATO member states to allow Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia.

"This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences," Putin said.

"In Europe, especially in small countries, they should be aware of what they are playing with," he added.

The Russian leader said leaders should bear in mind the "small territory" and "dense population" of many European countries.

"And this factor, which they should keep in mind before they talk about striking deep into Russian territory, is a serious thing."

He said that while Ukraine would carry out the strikes, the responsibility for them would lie with Western suppliers of the weapons.

"They want a global conflict," he added.

Putin also said that while he believed Western military instructors were already in Ukraine operating undercover as mercenaries, countries such as France sending them officially would be another "escalation."

"It is another step towards a serious conflict in Europe, towards a global conflict," he said.

Ukraine's top commander announced Monday that talks were being held with France on sending military instructors to the country.

"There are specialists there under the guise of mercenaries," Putin said, adding that "this was nothing new."

He said that they would be "defeated" by the Russian army and that "we will do what we think is necessary regardless of who is on the territory of Ukraine."

"They should be aware of this," Putin said.

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Putin Says Western Weapons Striking Russia Would Have Serious Consequences' - The Moscow Times

Russian state-controlled media apparatus closely followed the legal troubles of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump, spicing up most of their coverage with pro-Trump clips from Fox News and Tucker Carlson. Russian propagandists were openly hoping for a hung jury and were visibly disappointed when Trump became a convicted felon on all 34 charges he was facing.

On Friday morning, Dmitry Kulikov, host of Solovyov Live, the self-described most patriotic channel in Russia, said on-air, They wronged our Donald Trump! Malek Dudakov, a political scientist who specializes in America, said that the hope for a miraclemeaning a hung jurywas extinguished. He said, with Russias affectionate middle name usage, The miracle did not happen. Our Donald Fredovych was found guilty on all 34 counts. For that, Dudakov blamed the judge and the jury and baselessly claimed that all of them were prejudiced against Trump. Now, he is a felon, he surmised, while also noting that the former presidents incarceration as a result of this conviction is unlikely.

Dudakov expressed hope that despite his legal troubles, Trump would still win in the upcoming presidential election. Kulikov and Dudakov jointly echoed Tucker Carlsons assertions that their preferred candidate will prevail, unless desperately panicked Democrats will organize an assassination of Donald Fredovych. They expressed hope that Bidennot Trumpwould die before the elections.

Similar reactions reverberated across Russian media outlets. Appearing on a state TV show 60 Minutes Friday morning, State Duma member Aleksei Zhuravlyov opted to discuss Trumps conviction before addressing other bad news Russia is facing, with Western governments broadly signing off on Ukraines right to defend itself by striking Russia on its own turf. Zhuravlyov said he would address this escalation later and started with his rant against America for turning Trump into a felon.

Mischaracterizing the prosecution by describing it as a lawsuit brought by Stormy Daniels, host Olga Skabeeva chimed in and described Trump as a former and potentially future U.S. president. She surmised that the situation is too ridiculous for words and keeps escalating on every front. Skabeeva complained that earlier predictions of a hung jury did not come true, bitterly adding in perfect English, Shit happens.

Zhuravlyov angrily asserted, There are idiots in every country, but this is the only instance where idiots have their own country. This is something new in history. The state lawmaker complained that in supporting Ukraines right to defend itself by striking Russias territory, Americans are not even afraid of retaliatory nuclear strikes by Russia. Skabeeva scornfully added, Our universally beloved Donald Trump thinks they can sit it out across the pond.

Even Trumps alleged suggestion that he would have bombed Moscow in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and attacked Beijing if China invaded Taiwan on his watch was not enough to dampen the support for the former U.S. president by his Russian cheerleaders. Describing Trump as Russias useful idiot, state TV propagandists repeatedly insisted that he remains Moscows preferred candidate.

Appearing on 60 Minutes, State Duma member Oleg Matveychev said that unless Trumps conviction leads to civil war, America should be officially considered a fascist country. The same hope was expressed one night earlier by state TV host Vladimir Solovyov, who urged Republicans and Democrats to take up arms and violently confront each other. Solovyov also volunteered to host the upcoming debate between Trump and U.S. President Joe Biden.

During Thursdays broadcast of 60 Minutes, Dmitry Abzalov, Director of the Center for Strategic Communications, explained that Trumps potential re-election would benefit Russia and assured the viewers that the former American president didnt mean it when he said he would bomb Moscow. Abzalov predicted that if Trump returns to the Oval Office, he would treat Chinanot Russiaas Americas main enemy. Skabeeva surmised, The Chinese are hoping that Americans will fight the Russians and want Biden to remain in power. We are secretly hoping that Americans will start to fight China and want Trump to come to power, because he is more predisposed to confront Beijing.

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Visibly Distressed Putin Pals Shaken Up by Trump Verdict - The Daily Beast

In the past month, Vladimir Putin has had five top generals arrested on corruption charges. More are likely to follow in what looks like a gathering purge by the Federal Security Service (FSB). There is a fierce clean-up under way, a source close to the Kremlin told the Moscow Times last week. There is still a long way to go before the purges are finished. More arrests await us.

Without doubt, the FSB will find plenty of the corruption its looking for. Timur Ivanov, Russias deputy defence minister the first senior general arrested was hardly shy about flaunting his wealth.

If embezzlement and bribery are suddenly impermissible, no official or army general is safe

An investigation by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2022 found ample evidence by looking no further than the social media accounts of Ivanovs wife. They featured a stream of photos of the couple on luxury holidays, as well as a birthday party featuring a three-tiered cake decorated with gold hand grenades, bullets and diamonds.

Several photos show Ivanov drinking with Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov (bizarrely dressed in a bear costume) along with his former boss Sergei Shoigu, the veteran defence minister ousted soon after Ivanovs arrest. Digging a little deeper, the Navalny team found pictures of Ivanovs neoclassical estate outside Moscow, as well as a bank transfer for 90,000 for a week-long charter of a yacht in August 2013 (presumably a celebration of Ivanovs appointment to head the Defence Ministrys construction division, Oboronstroi).

The epic scale of the theft by Russias government officials and the vulgarity and shamelessness of how they show off their ill-gotten gains is beyond parody. Massive graft has also long been considered standard operating procedure for the Kremlins kleptocratic elite. Corruption is the glue that holds Putins so-called power vertical together. Whats unusual is for the Russian President to turn on his underlings so publicly. Ivanov and his fellow accused face jail terms of up to 15 years, and their perp-walks and arraignment hearings have been widely publicised on state TV. If embezzlement and bribery are suddenly impermissible, no government official or army general is safe.

Putin has no intention of dissolving the pyramid of graft on which his regime is built. That would be political suicidal. Rather, his purge of the army will be highly selective, and aimed at eradicating the most egregious offenders pour encourager les autres.

Corruption was a major factor in the armys failure to seize and hold northern Ukraine in February and March 2022. Over the previous five years Shoigu was given vast resources up to 6 per cent of Russias GDP to build up and reform the Russian army into a (regionally, at least) invincible fighting force. Shoigus big innovation was the Battalion Tactical Group (BTG), a small and integrated force that combined motorised infantry and artillery. The problem was that while hardware was not in short supply, soldiers were. But rather than admit failure to full the Kremlins orders, generals solved the problem by simply reducing the strength of units. Motorised rie battalions shrank from up to 539 personnel in 2017 to around 345 on the eve of the Ukraine invasion.

The estimated 120 BTGs that attacked Ukraine all went in at far from full combat strength. And that shortfall told, especially in the wooded countryside and city suburbs of Ukraine. Each infantry ghting vehicle needed a commander, a driver and a gunner, leaving four men to dismount and act as actual boots and, more importantly, eyes, ears and ries on the ground.

Without conscripts, each platoon was left with perhaps two ghting infantrymen per vehicle. Ukrainian forces reported attacking Russian armoured vehicles manned by their three-man crew alone. With no dismountable men youve got a motorised infantry unit that doesnt have infantry, said a senior British military source I interviewed in Kyiv in spring 2022. Everyones stuck in their vehicles. Youre not going to have situational awareness. You dont have the numbers to do common infantry tasks like stacking up [advancing to contact in single le], clearing buildings or providing security for an element.

Corruption has continued to plague the Russian army as the war grinds on as evidenced by regular video complaints by troops posted on social media revealing a lack of food, basic equipment and logistical support which they typically blame on corrupt senior officers. Collecting bribes from citizens for avoiding conscription has become a major cash-cow for officers across Russia. Massive state funds allocated to post-war reconstruction of occupied areas have reportedly gone astray including into the pockets of Ivanov, who was responsible for the restoration of devastated Mariupol.

Army corruption is nothing, however, compared with the corruption of the FSB in the lead-up to the war. FSB Colonel-General Sergei Beseda was given his own brand-new directorate with the purpose of softening up Ukraine for invasion by distributing bribes in the hundreds of millions of dollars to Kyivs military, government and security elite an operation that offered vast scope for skimming and embezzlement. On the eve of the war, Beseda confidently passed on his agents predictions that the fix was in and that Kyiv would fall in three days. Beseda was reportedly arrested in May 2022, though later released. If the FSB was truly looking for men guilty of misleading the Kremlin with rosy predictions and of stealing state money, they should first look to themselves. But the FSB is Putins parish, his power base and his chief enforcer. And they have chosen the army as their scapegoat.

Clearly, a less corrupt army is a more effective army. But could Putins purge hinder the war effort by throwing the military leadership into disarray at a time when Russia is seeking to take advantage of Kyivs munitions shortages? Its worth looking at the last major purge of Russian military top brass, undertaken by Stalin between 1937 and 1940. During the Great Purge nearly 80 per cent of general officers were arrested, confessed to outlandish crimes, and shot. The practical result of Stalins paranoia was that the Red Army was gravely weakened and was beaten by the Finns in the Winter War of 1939-40 and again by Hitler in 1941.

Putins purge will of course be less dramatic. But with half the top brass covering their backsides and the other half seeking to denounce their way to the top, there is potential for much disruption in Putins war plans. On the other hand, if he succeeds in scaring the military into stealing less money allocated for the war effort, the Russian army could very well end up leaner and if its possible even meaner.

Continued here:

Putin's purge of his top generals - The Spectator

President Vladimir Putins former personal security guard and newly appointed presidential aide Alexei Dyumin was tappedto head Russias State Council on Wednesday.

Aide to the president Alexei Dyumin has been appointed Secretary of the State Council of the Russian Federation by presidential executive order, an announcement on the Kremlins website read.

Russias State Council is a constitutional body composed of top federal officials and regional governors who advise and coordinate with the president on matters of national importance.

Putin elevated the State Councils role from a largely ceremonial low-profile advisory body in 2020 constitutional reforms.

Dyumin, an ex-deputy defense minister and deputy head of Russias GRU military intelligence service, has been rumored to be a potential successor to Putin.

He previously served as governor of the Tula region south of Moscow, a key hub for the military industry, before his appointment as presidential aide earlier this month.

Dyumins return to federal politics in Moscow where he will advise Putin on issues related to the military-industrial complex coincided with Sergei Shoigus firing as defense minister and appointment as head of Russias Security Council.

[Dyumin] will look after the Defense Ministry on the one hand and balance Shoigu [and limit his influence] on the other, an anonymous government official told The Moscow Times earlier this month.

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Putin Taps Ex-Bodyguard Dyumin to Head Russias State Council - The Moscow Times