Category Archives: Putin

It has become commonplace to perceive Vladimir Putin as reverting to Soviet ways. So it seemed natural, shortly after the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia, that when I ran into a woman Id known in Moscow back in the Soviet days, I lamented that things were more and more as they had been in those bad old days.

No, she said, theyre worse.

She had been a rebel and had left Moscow as soon as she was able to, so I was struck by her response. But Ive heard it from other Russians as well, both those who live inside and outside the country. And the more I look back on my days as a reporter in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, and the longer the terrible savaging of Ukraine continues, the more I understand what they mean.

In light of what their country is inflicting on Ukraine, it is difficult to speak of Russians as victims. That, in fact, may be one major reason many decent Russians feel that Mr. Putins Russia their Russia is worse than the Soviet state whose demise he laments. They had thought their nation free of the horrible tyranny of its past, and Mr. Putin is not only reviving that but also bringing shame and alienation to their nation.

The Soviet Union that these Russians hark back to is the one in its final years, not Stalins hell. In their time, the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union was still a repressive police state that maintained a jealous and iron control on information, art, enterprise and just about every other human endeavor. It was a far more intrusive level of repression than Mr. Putin and his security apparatus could ever replicate, given the reach of the internet and the continuing ability of Russians to travel abroad. No old Soviet dissident would deny that the physical quality of life in Russia is far higher than it was in those spartan times.

Yet the post-Stalin years, and especially the last decades of Soviet rule, however oppressive, at least seemed to be moving toward something better. The random terror of the Stalin era had given way to a more coordinated system of control: still brutally repressive, but more predictable and less arbitrary. The highly personalized dictatorship of Joseph Stalin was replaced by a more collegial system of rule. Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me a Soviet leader probably would not have survived a disastrous decision like the invasion of Ukraine.

And as the Soviet old guard died off in the 1980s, there was a clear sense of change, which finally arrived with Mikhail Gorbachev. For those who were there, it is impossible to forget the thrill of watching people explore long-forbidden ideas, arts, freedoms and pleasures.

We make a distinction between open and closed societies, but there is also a distinction between openings and closings, Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist and one of the foremost chroniclers of the collapse of the Soviet empire, told me. The generation of Soviet people in the 1970s and 1980s lived in a closed society that was opening, discovering that things that had been impossible were becoming possible. Putins is a period of radical closings. People are losing things they felt had finally been granted them. Openings led to hope; this system leads to hopelessness.

Mr. Putin may not have quite the levers his Soviet predecessors had. The commercialized and globally connected society that has evolved in Russia over the three decades since the Soviet Union collapsed cannot be put back in the bottle. Nor does Mr. Putin have the utopian ideology that enabled Soviet leaders to claim they were working for the betterment of humankind, though he has concocted a national narrative of sorts, based on Russian and Soviet history and mythology and his abhorrence of the West. What he has done, at its heart, is create a system in which everything the government, the political police, the legislature, the military depends personally on him.

If the most common charge used to imprison dissidents in the last decades of Soviet rule was anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, an omnibus law that at least made clear that the crime was in opposing Soviet rule, Mr. Putin lashes back at his opponents with random weapons, whether its his governments apparent poisoning of Alexei Navalny or the condemnation of Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison for treason. Accusing Mr. Gershkovich of espionage may well have been motivated at least in part by fury that someone with a Russian background would dare report the truth about Russia.

The repression has redoubled since the invasion of Ukraine, making it difficult to gauge the level of resistance. Ten days into the invasion, the police arrested more than 4,600 demonstrators in Russia, and hundreds of thousands of Russian men have fled the country to avoid being shanghaied into the army.

But those who resist and those who leave do not find themselves accorded the respect that Soviet dissidents were met with. Back then, non-Russian ethnic groups may have identified the Soviet yoke with Russia, but Communist ideology was universalist, and the Russians who opposed it saw themselves as allied with other oppressed nationalities, and with the West, in their struggle. Russians who arrived in New York or Tel Aviv or Berlin felt free of the taint of collusion; and since the ranks of dissidents included many writers, poets, musicians and artists, Russian culture shared in the glow of liberation.

Mr. Putins rule and his invasion of Ukraine have changed that. This is a war waged by Russia against Ukraine in the name of a Russian imperial claim, and it is hard for anyone or anything Russian language, culture, background to fully escape the stigma. It is especially galling for Russians of conscience to hear Mr. Putin using the antifascist language of World War II the one feat of Soviet history that all its people are proud of in the effort to destroy Ukraine.

The impact is broadly evident. Russian restaurants, including ones that reconceived their menus, struggle to stay open. Stolichnaya vodka has now been rebranded as Stoli. A limited-edition bottle wears a label with the blue-and-yellow colors of Ukraine, stamped #LIBERATEUKRAINE. The Metropolitan Opera in New York dropped its Russian diva, Anna Netrebko, for not renouncing Mr. Putin. I have heard academics express regret for focusing so much on Russia in post-Soviet studies. The list goes on, and its hard to argue against the cancellations. Russians can say this is not my regime, but they cannot say this is not my nation, Mr. Krastev said.

It is too early to predict how the Ukraine war will end. What is clear is that Mr. Putin, in the name of an ephemeral Russian greatness, has done great and lasting harm to his people and their culture.

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Opinion | Is Putins Russia Worse Than the Soviet State? - The New York Times

Opinion

Putin once saw advantage in giving writers a degree of freedom, even to be critical. Those days are long gone, and Russias artists are fleeing

As much as Russia is the country of Tolstoy and Rachmaninov, it is also the country of Stalin and the Lubyanka prison a nation built as much on beauty as it is on the blood of its people. Russians cherish their cultural history just as strongly as people cherish ours in Britain. And yet historically, to be creative in Russia is to incur a significant risk, for an act of creation is also an act of freedom.

In the years of the Soviet Union, speaking ones mind might mean being taken to a windowless room and then to Siberia. Today, Russians can and do face the same kind of danger for speaking out against Vladimir Putins war in Ukraine. In the words of Pyotr Stolypin: In Russia, every 10 years everything changes, and nothing changes in 200 years.

In the west, we might think of Russian writers always facing the same kind of censorship they faced under the Soviet Union. We imagine poets being shot in basements or worked to death in the snows of Siberia for a few lines of transgressive verse. But this has broadly not been the case in my lifetime or at least, until the invasion of Ukraine.

Initially, under Putin, Russian authors were granted a great degree of freedom, even to oppose the state. When he came to power in 1999, he learned from the mistakes of the Soviet Union and had a different relationship with Russias literary culture. Far from seeking to exert control over the nations writers, Putins Kremlin understood their value in political terms. That is, they had a certain utility in the new Russia that Putin wanted to construct for the outside world.

The reason for this softening under Putin was twofold. The first point is that literature was no longer the primary medium consumed in Russia. What was written and published inside the Soviet Union had genuine political power, as did Russian music and film. Stalin was an avid reader and very interested in literature, and the Soviets were deeply involved in the censorship of every kind of Russian culture. The intention of this was to make the population believe the state was reality, and reality was the state.

Putin and the thugs running the Kremlin werent nearly so closely attuned to contemporary Russian literary culture as the Soviets. This is for the simple reason that Putins Kremlin didnt care because it didnt need to. Today, most Russians are primarily influenced by TV and the internet. Putin didnt care about the novels written in Russia, because literature was no longer where people got their news and ideas.

The second reason for Putins historically tolerant stance towards Russias writing community was that, when he came to power, he was trying to create a different kind of dictatorship. Rather than controlling every aspect of peoples lives as the Soviets did, Putin wanted to deceive the world and indeed the Russian people themselves into thinking that the country was a European democracy.

When questions were asked about the legitimacy of Russias democracy, the Kremlin could point to regular, free elections, a free press and a thriving literary culture. It was in fact in Putins interest to allow writers even, and especially, political dissidents to write freely.

I recently spoke to Mikhail Shishkin, a renowned Russian novelist and dissident now living in Switzerland. During the late 90s and early 2000s, the Russian Federation worked to support and export its writers, Shishkin said. This was an official project of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Media ( or Rospechat), and an organisation called Institut Perevoda gave financial support to publishers so Russian books could be translated and read outside the country. The purpose was to create a dignified facade; a human face for what was then a crypto-authoritarian regime. You have to understand that the new hybrid dictatorship pretended to be a free country, and worked with writers in a different way [to the Soviets], said Shishkin.

But by 2013, Shishkin had had it. He refused to represent Russia at an international book fair in New York, and wrote an open letter to Rospechat lambasting the political class of his country. He stated that the Russian government had created a situation in the country that is absolutely unacceptable and demeaning for its people and its great culture, that he was ashamed to be a citizen of Russia.

Of course, everything changed last February. When the tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border, the era of pragmatic tolerance under Putin ended. Rospechat was dissolved in 2021 and its role was absorbed into a different agency: the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor). This is a truly sinister organisation that is responsible for monitoring and policing internet traffic in Russia. A data leak from Roskomnadzor obtained by the Belarusian hacker group known as Cyber Partisans revealed that Roskomnadzor is working to censor undesirable content online in both Russia and in Belarus, as well as compiling a list of individuals who may be designated foreign agents.

Arguably, the danger involved in speaking out against Putin is greater now than it has been in the recent past, but so is the need for people to do so. Writers, of all people in society, have a duty to speak the truth, and to choose silence is to commit creative suicide. This is why so many of Russias greatest cultural figures live in Europe and the United States: exile provides a level of safety and freedom not possible in Russia.

This situation is deeply paradoxical. Part of Putins justification for the invasion of Ukraine was to save the Russian culture and language from a supposed neo-Nazi persecution in Ukraine, but all the war has done is accelerate the flight of the brightest and best from Russian soil. Evgeny Kissin plays the piano in Prague, Vladimir Ashkenazy in Switzerland. Boris Akunin now writes from London, Lyudmila Ulitskaya from Berlin. The more artists leave, the more homogenous Russia will become culturally, leaving only the pro-Putin types behind. A few notable artists and writers still work under Putin on the Presidential Council for Culture and Art. By being on this council, all these figures are overtly expressing support for the Putin regime and, by extension, the war in Ukraine. Taken to its extreme, Russia risks becoming a cultural Potemkin: immaculate plasterwork on the outside, crumbling masonry within.

Many in the west have suggested a boycott of Russian culture in response to the war. But this tactic plays precisely into Putins rhetoric: that the west hates Russia and always has. On the contrary, it is vital that thinking people everywhere support Russian dissidents: by buying their books, going to their concerts and attending their exhibitions. But this said, people must also remember to make the distinction between Russian dissidents and Kremlin royalists. In a sense, the war has split Russia cleanly in two: between those with moral conviction and those without. A war is not just being fought on the steppes of Ukraine, but in the psyche of one of the worlds greatest cultures.

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As the Ukraine war grinds on, Russia is becoming a cultural wasteland - The Guardian

My homily for the Journal is heartfelt, but I probably wouldnt bother with it were it not for the fact that one of the Journals best reporters, Evan Gershkovich, is sitting right now in a Russian jail on trumped-up espionage charges. Gershkovichs true offense may be that his last published Journal piece before his arrest, co-authored with Berlin-based Journal reporter Georgi Kantchev, was headlined, Russias Economy Is Starting to Come Undone. Economic growth has diminished, likely for the long term, Kantchev and Gershkovich reported. State revenue shortfalls are putting guns in conflict with butter. Perhaps worst of all, long-simmering fears in Moscow that Russia will become an economic colony of China are starting to be realized as Western sanctions make Moscow more dependent on Beijing to supply microchips and semiconductors.

On Friday, the Journals Zumbrun furnished additional evidence of Russias economic decline. The source was a surprising one: air pollution detected by the European Space Agencys Sentinel-5P satellite, which was launched into outer space in 2017. The satellites purpose is to monitor the emission of specific pollutants harmful to the atmosphere. But incidental to this mission, the satellite can tell when countries that arent knocking themselves out to go green, like Russia, are reducing energy output and factory production.

The findings are fascinating. Rosstat says that industrial production rose 1.2 percent in March over the previous year. But Sentinel-5P recorded that industrial regions produced 6.2 percent less pollution over the previous year. Its possible that the Urals were blanketed with solar panels while nobody was looking, but is it likely? After Western car companies pulled out after the Ukraine invasion, Russia said it would reopen these factories under Russian ownership. But Sentinel-5P recorded a 16 percent drop in emissions from these sites, suggesting Russias efforts to continue car production faltered.

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Putin Can't Afford to Lose in Ukrainebut He Can't Afford to Win, Either - The New Republic

Updates with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko's arrival in Moscow on Monday evening.

The leaders of six former Soviet republics are now expected to attend Russias annual Victory Day parade in Moscow on Tuesday, afterBelarus President Alexander Lukashenko arrived unannounced in Moscow on Monday evening for what his press service said would be a "working visit."

The President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Monday both confirmed their participation in the flagship event on Red Square, while Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Uzbek leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev both commenced two-day visits to Russia on the same day.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also be joined on Red Square by Kyrgyzstans President Sadyr Japarov the only foreign leader to have given advance confirmation of his participation in the flagship parade.

The six foreign leaders will join Russian President Vladimir Putin on the tribune above Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square from where they will watch a procession of as many as 125 military vehicles and 10,000 personnel through Moscow's central square.

Russias Victory Day celebrations on Tuesday will mark the 78th anniversary of the Soviet Unions defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Though Victory Day celebrations have long been used by the Kremlin to showcase Russias military might and to boost patriotic feelings among its citizens, this years celebrations which will take place against a background of increased aerial attacks on Russian territory may see some of the most modestVictory celebrations to date.

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Leaders of Six Former Soviet Republics to Join Putin on Victory Day - The Moscow Times

Russia

Paranoia following the drone attacks on the Kremlin and a weakened military dog the event Putin views as deeply symbolic

When Vladimir Putin takes to the stage on Tuesday to commemorate the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, his speech on Red Square will have been preceded by a turbulent week in which drones attacked the Kremlin and one of his top war leaders threatened mutiny.

The dramatic footage early last Wednesday of two drones flying over the walls of the Kremlin, its historical seat of power, exposed vulnerabilities in the heart of the Russian capital, putting Moscow on edge.

The authorities have banned the use of drones and started jamming GPS signals, leading to taxis appearing to be in the Moscow River on ride-hailing apps. Binoculars have hastily been handed out to police to spot incoming drones.

There is a nervousness that I have never seen before, said one official at the Moscow mayors office. But Victory Day has to go ahead, there is no other option, he added, speaking on conditions of anonymity.

Tellingly, on Friday, Putin took the unusual step to discuss the preparations for the 9 May Victory Day parade in a meeting with his security council, composed of Russias top state officials and heads of defence and security agencies.

Even before the drone attack on the Kremlin, there were signs of unease among the Russian leadership over the celebrations amid fears of Ukrainian strikes.

At least six Russian regions had scrapped the celebrations, with one region 400 miles from the border being the latest to cancel.

Victory Day, when Russians celebrate the 1945 endpoint of what they call the great patriotic war, has gradually emerged as the centrepiece of Vladimir Putins vision of Russian identity over his 23 years in charge.

The carefully orchestrated victory parades that take place across the country traditionally present the Kremlin with an opportunity to flaunt modern Russian military might.

For Putin, it is by far the most important event of the year, said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, based in Moscow.

Putin derives his whole legitimacy from the parade, framing himself as the direct successor of the army that defeated Nazi Germany.

Given this importance to the Kremlin, the parade in Moscow will go ahead, Kolesnikov said.

This is also Putins chance to show to the nation that he is still strong and in control of the so-called special military operation in Ukraine, Kolesnikov added.

But on the eve of 9 May, Russia looks far from triumphing in a war it initially expected to last a few weeks.

Moscows winter and spring offensive across a 160-mile arc in eastern Ukraine, which started in February, has brought the country minimal gains at staggering costs.

Western officials have estimated that more than 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in fighting in Ukraine since December alone.

Ukraine, backed by modern western weapons, will soon launch its own much anticipated counteroffensive to recapture lost territory.

To add to the worries in the Kremlin, mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on Thursday recorded a remarkable expletive-ridden video personally blaming the top defence chiefs for losses suffered by fighters in Ukraine. In a separate message, Prigozhin also said his Wagner troops will leave the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on 10 May, the day after the Victory Parade takes place.

In the cities where the parades will go ahead, experts say a close read of the celebrations is likely to show the strain and damage the war has afflicted on the military.

Most of the military parades will only have conscripts marching because all the contract soldiers are in Ukraine, said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation.

With so much of the ground forces engaged in Ukraine, some regions will be forced to get creative and have military instructors and other personnel play a more prominent role to give the appearance of normality, Massicot added.

One of 9 Mays most recognisable events, the Immortal Regiment march a solemn procession of people with portraits of their second world war veteran relatives has also been scrapped this year.

One explanation for such a move, Massicot said, is that the authorities worry the procession could end up highlighting the real number of Russian losses in Ukraine, with relatives bringing the portraits of those killed in the current war.

Kolesnikov said that on Tuesday, Putin is likely to draw historical parallels between the two wars, falsely framing Ukraine as a successor to Nazi Germany.

During last years Victory Parade speech, he claimed the Russian army was fighting in Ukraine so that there is no place in the world for butchers, murderers and Nazis.

Victory will be ours, like in 1945, Putin proclaimed at the time.

A museum in central Moscow dedicated to the second world war has since opened an immersive exhibition that portrays the war in Ukraine alongside the victory over Nazi Germany.

But despite the Kremlins efforts to frame the war as an existential battle for the countrys survival, there are signs that some in the country remain unwilling to sacrifice their own wellbeing for what the Kremlin claims to be the greater cause.

According to the latest survey by the independent Levada pollster,most Russians are unwilling to contribute 1,000-2,000 rubles per month (10-20) to help the needs of soldiers in Ukraine.

The same poll showed that anxiety and fear were emotions most often listed when respondents were asked about the new electronic conscription law that makes it harder for young men to dodge the draft by automatically banning registered conscripts from leaving the country.

The nation has adapted to the realities of the war, Kolesnikov said.

But that does not mean people are willing to sacrifice everything. If there is an opportunity to stay on the sidelines, they will happily take it.

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A nervousness never seen before hits Moscow before Victory Day parades - The Guardian

Opinion

With even nationalist pro-war bloggers criticising Putins actions in Ukraine, his desperation and paranoia are growing

May is traditionally a month for public celebration in Russia, with massive public processions on 1 May for Labour Day and military parades on 9 May for Victory Day, a holiday commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Not so in 2023. Russias biggest trade union cancelled its traditional Labour Day demonstrations because of the heightened risk of terrorist activity, while regions near the Ukrainian border called off Victory Day parades so as to not provoke the Ukrainian army.

The Russian government has warned people across the country to stay away from military installations on Victory Day, while the hugely popular Immortal Regiment, an event during which ordinary citizens all over Russia march with portraits of relatives who died in the second world war, has been moved online.

Allegedly the terrorist threat comes from Ukraine Russian media reported on 24 April that a downed Ukrainian drone was found 30km (20 miles) from Moscow but it seems difficult to accept that Russias air defences cannot guarantee the safety of Moscows skies during the countrys biggest patriotic celebration of the year, particularly at a time when Putin has been stoking Russian nationalist feelings to garner support for his war in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian drone attack on Red Square during the Victory Day military parade would be humiliating for Putin, but it seems more likely that hes worried about the potential humiliation of thousands of civilians marching with the portraits of sons and husbands fallen in Ukraine. While official Russian figures have pointed to fewer than 6,000 military casualties in Ukraine, Ukraine claims approximately 150,000 Russian military personnel have been killed. Even conservative western estimates hover around the 60,000 mark more than triple the 15,000 Soviet troops killed in the 10-year Afghan war.

Labour Day parades come with their own risk. In spite of the cancellation of official events, on 1 May a few small sporadic gatherings took place in cities all over Russia, to which some people turned up with anti-war banners. In St Petersburg a man was arrested for carrying a board with the traditional May Day slogan of Peace, Work, May, with an added Z symbol with a red mark across it. In Ekaterinburg a woman was reportedly detained with a banner inscribed with another traditional May Day slogan, Peace to the World.

The banning of public events during the May holidays is less likely to be out of concern for citizens safety, and more to do with Putins paranoid obsession with shutting down any channel for criticism of his war, even if open support for Ukraine is tiny and the threat of a popular uprising very remote.

At the same time that public protest is being pre-emptively suppressed, dissent and conflict continues to grow in military circles. In a 90-minute interview with a military blogger on 29 April, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the de facto leader of the Wagner private military company, bemoaned the catastrophic state of the Russian army, and said that the time has come when we have to stop lying to the population of the Russian Federation saying that everything is OK. He sarcastically called the war in Ukraine the so-called special military operation, in a veiled criticism of Putins ban on the use of the word war to describe events in Ukraine. Prigozhin also criticised the defence ministry for withholding ammunition and threatened to withdraw his men from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which Russia has been trying to take for nine months.

Conflicts are not only surfacing between Russias private armies and the defence ministry, but among private armies themselves. On 25 April, soldiers from Gazproms private army, Potok, sent a video to Putin complaining that they had been transferred to a different private army (Redut) and then threatened by soldiers of the Wagner group, who said they would shoot them if they retreated from their positions. In early April, mobilised soldiers from the regular army in the Luhansk region (in Russian-occupied Ukraine) disappeared, after telling relatives that they had been sold to the Wagner group by their commander. When Prigozhin denounces the catastrophic state of the Russian army, he knows what he is talking about.

Russian nationalist pro-war military bloggers also criticise Putin. The most well-known of these is Igor Girkin (AKA Strelkov), who openly condemns Putins lack of resolve to use Russias full military might in Ukraine, and wages a simultaneous battle of words for now with Prigozhin. On 2 April, when another notorious military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was assassinated in a bomb attack in a St Petersburg cafe formerly owned by Prigozhin, the Russian government blamed Ukrainian terrorists. Prigozhin stated that the attack was probably caused by infighting among what he calls Russian radicals.

Putin has not reacted publicly to any of the military bloggers or private armies all armed and violent men who criticise the way the war is being fought. But walking around with a cardboard sign calling for peace can lead to temporary arrest, and being an anti-war intellectual carries the risk of a 25-year prison sentence.

Russia is not on the verge of a popular revolution, but Putin still feels threatened enough by public anti-war protests to crack down at the first sign of peaceful civil dissent. This betrays a fundamental fear of showing any weakness that his armed critics could exploit. The main message here is clear: if you want to be safe in todays Russia, carry a gun. Better still, create a private army. This will increase your chances of survival the day the strongman falls.

This article was amended on 2 and 3 May 2023. Due to a translation error, an earlier version said that a woman was reportedly detained with a banner inscribed with a traditional May Day slogan, Peace to Peace. This should have said Peace to the World. The man arrested in St Petersburg was not 76 but taken to police station No 76.

Samantha de Bendern is an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and a political commentator on LCI television in France

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Putin claims hes cancelling public celebrations over safety fears. The truth is more humiliating - The Guardian

Both armies have tanks, artillery and tens of thousands of soldiers ready to face off on the battlefields of Ukraine in a long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia. But one thing clearly sets the two sides apart: time.

Ukraine is feeling immense short-term pressures from its Western backers, as the United States and its allies treat the counteroffensive as a critical test of whether the weapons, training and ammunition they have rushed to the country in recent months can translate into significant gains.

If the Ukrainians fall short of expectations, they risk an erosion of Western support. It is a source of anxiety for top officials in Kyiv, who know that beyond battlefield muscle and ingenuity, victory may ultimately come down to a test of wills between the Kremlin and the West and which side can muster more political, economic and industrial staying power, possibly for years.

As a result, there is a sense in Ukraine that its war effort faces a ticking clock.

In countries that are our partners, our friends, the expectation of the counteroffensive is overestimated, overheated, I would say, Ukraines defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said in an interview this past week in Kyiv, the capital. That is my main concern.

The expectations of military success are only one pressure point for Ukraine. A presidential election in the United States looms next year, with the potential for a new, less supportive Republican administration.

In Russia, President Vladimir V. Putin faces his own challenges but is showing signs of operating on a much longer timeline, encumbered by economic and military limitations but free from the domestic political pressures that make continuing Western support for Ukraine so uncertain.

Having already mobilized some 300,000 recruits last September, Mr. Putin is laying the groundwork for a possible new round of conscription, having changed the law so Russian authorities can draft men by serving them with a digital summons online.

In private conversations, his defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, has professed a willingness to dig in for the long haul, vowing to carry out more mobilizations if necessary and emphasizing that Russia is capable of conscripting as many as 25 million fighting-age men, a senior European official said.

Russias economy is under increasing strain, and its defense sector, like the Wests, is struggling to provide enough matriel for the front. There are signs of simmering anxiety over the Ukrainian counteroffensive. On Friday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, castigated Russian military leadership over a lack of ammunition and threatened to pull his forces from the fighting in the embattled city of Bakhmut within days.

But Mr. Putin has defined the war effort as a top priority and vital national interest, telling Russians in a New Years address that we must only fight, only keep going against Western democracies intent on Russias destruction.

Certainly I think there is a calculation in the Kremlin that Russia is more resilient than the West, said Thomas E. Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as senior director for Russia on the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007.

They do think about these electoral cycles, Mr. Graham said. Who knows what is going to happen in 2024 in the United States? Its not clear where the American people are on this over the long run. I think the Kremlin and Putin do believe that in that sense, time is on their side.

Ukraines leaders, on the jittery doorstep of the counteroffensive, have been making a point of projecting confidence but not too much.

If they appear too ambitious, they could stir fears that Russia could respond with a tactical nuclear strike. Appear too modest, in contrast, and criticism arises that billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine has been spent in vain.

Ukrainian officials point to the considerable successes they have already achieved: forcing the Russian military to retreat from Kyiv last year; sinking the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva; and recapturing thousands of square miles of territory in two counterattacks last fall.

After that, the world is ready to see the next stage of this competition, if we can use a sports metaphor, Mr. Reznikov said.

We have a lot of supporters of Ukraine cheering for us, he said. That is why they are waiting for the next match. But for us, its not a sports game. For us, its a serious challenge. For us, its the lives of our soldiers.

He said the operation must be viewed as part of a larger whole.

For me, every success during this war becomes a new stage, a new step, on the road to victory, Mr. Reznikov said. The counteroffensive, he said, will be just one story in the war.

Military analysts have pointed to a likely period of probing assaults, feints and long-range strikes in the opening phase of the attack. Degrading the Russian militarys combat abilities will be as important as liberating territory, Mr. Reznikov said.

The Ukrainians see their enemy as having expended its offensive ability and as eager for a pause in fighting that could buy time to rearm and attack again.

Despite Ukraines worries about waning Western support, its allies have so far remained resolute, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons and aid, training Ukrainian soldiers, imposing sanctions and, to varying degrees, weaning their economies off Russian energy. NATOs secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said the alliance must brace itself to back Ukraine over a long war, and has singled out a summit planned for July in Lithuania as a moment to formalize that commitment.

In Washington, President Biden has pledged to support Kyiv for as long as it takes, and could request an additional supplemental aid package for Ukraine later this year, regardless of the counteroffensives outcome. Administration officials expect to retain bipartisan congressional support.

But Mr. Biden is heading into a presidential election cycle that could upend U.S. backing for Ukraine, particularly if Americans elect former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner. Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. Bidens support for Ukrainian forces, saying in an interview this year with Fox News that ultimately, Mr. Putin is going to take over all of Ukraine.

In Ukraine, we understand we have a shortage of time as well as ammunition, Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament in the European Solidarity Party, said in an interview. Financial aid of the European Union and G7 seems not to be endless.

In countries like Syria and Libya, Mr. Putin for years has exploited the tendency of Western governments to lose focus or shift priorities when it comes to foreign affairs.

Russias hope right now is that the peak of Western military support is going to be around the summer, and then will dissipate, said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute in Virginia.

Already, the war has stretched for more than 14 months, making a yearslong protracted conflict more likely. Once wars have gone on for more than a year, they tend to last for more than a decade on average, the Center for Strategic and International Studies found in an analysis that used data on conflicts since 1946.

Mr. Putin has little incentive to end the war now, unless his hand is forced, because its continuation helps him retain power, said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia. Any negotiations after a military defeat would look like capitulation and make him more vulnerable at home, she said.

Even if Ukraine is wildly successful in its upcoming counteroffensive, he is not going to be forced into some negotiated settlement, Ms. Kendall-Taylor said. Instead, he has every incentive to fight through the challenges.

The only exception is if Mr. Putin can come away from negotiations with something he can sell back home as enough of a victory, she said.

Only 7 percent of authoritarian leaders with governments like Russias have found themselves unseated during a conflict that began on their watch, Ms. Kendall-Taylor found in an analysis of conflicts since 1919, which she conducted with the political scientist Erica Frantz.

Leaders, when they initiate the war, they are rarely ousted so long as the war continues, Ms. Kendall-Taylor said.

Some analysts believe Mr. Putins calculation could change if the Ukrainian counteroffensive manages to threaten Crimea.

In polls, the only thing the Russian public was not willing to negotiate over was the status of Crimea, said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. If Crimea is being bombarded, then its a failure. I think that would change things, potentially.

Mr. Putin is also likely facing pressures that remain opaque to the outside world. In an authoritarian system, threats to the stability of a government often prove unpredictable.

Mr. Graham, the Council on Foreign Relations distinguished fellow, said Mr. Putin has security, business and political elites he still must keep on his side, noting that its wrong to assume that Putin can just do anything he wants to at this point.

There are institutions of power and centers of power, he added, that you have to manage, control and dominate in some way if youre going to stay in the game.

Adam Entous contributed reporting.

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Ukraine Faces Pressure Over Counteroffensive, as Putin Bides His Time - The New York Times

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa A U.S.-sanctioned Russian oligarch is accused of making shady deals under sunny skies with South African politicians, the reported real reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin could evade arrest should he make a planned trip to South Africa in August.

OligarchViktor Vekselberg, said to be close to Putin, has been accused of repeatedly bankrolling South Africas ruling ANC political party. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, also president of the ANC, has so far failed to undertake efforts to arrest the Russian leader should he make the planned trip. Ramaphosas government has repeatedly refrained at the U.N. from criticizing Russias invasion of Ukraine, saying it is "friends" with Moscow.

U.S. relations with South Africa are hanging by a thread. Its a diplomatic mess of epic proportions. The International Criminal Court (ICC) sparked fury by demanding that countries who are signatories to the court, including South Africa,arrest Putin should he touch their soil, accusing him of war crimes against Ukrainian children.

South Africa has invited Putin to attend a summit here of the BRICS group of nations Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. So far, the government has not canceled the invite but has given reasons why it believes it doesn't need to arrest him, suggesting there is a loophole in the ICCs rules.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a welcoming ceremony at the Russia-Africa Summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Oct. 23, 2019. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT ISSUES PUTIN ARREST WARRANT OVER CHILD DEPORTATIONS FROM UKRAINE

And precedent shows that, if its left to the government alone, Putin can extend his middle finger to the West by walking about in South Africa as free as a bird. Its happened before here in disturbingly similar circumstances. In 2015, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. But he was allowed to visit South Africa for several days and even given a large motorcade escort by the very police who, according to the law, shouldreportedly have arrested him.

Fox News Digital asked the U.S. State Department whether Putin should be arrested in Africa.

"There is no doubt that members of Russias forces and other Russian officials are committing war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine, and we have been clear that those responsible must be held accountable," a State Department spokesperson said. "We support accountability for perpetrators of war crimes."

The view outside the International Criminal Court March 29, 2022, in Den Haag, Netherlands. (Alex Gottschalk/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

South Africas Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told the local Business Day his police may not arrest Putin. Instead, they are exploring "the option to look at extending customary diplomatic immunity to visiting heads of state in our country."

Officially, South Africa has still not committed to an arrest.

"Cabinet has appointed an inter-ministerial committee chaired by the deputy president to discuss the legal opinion provided on the matter and propose a way forward," Clayson Monyela, the Department of International Relations head of public diplomacy told Fox News Digital.

Monyela further said reports in some international media that South Africa is quietly trying to persuade Putin not to visit are not the correct "line."

Chinese President Xi Jinping hosts the 14th BRICS Summit via video link in Beijing June 23, 2022. (Rao Aimin/Xinhua via Getty Images)

NEW WORLD DISORDER: CHINA, RUSSIA BLOC SHORES UP INFLUENCE AS COUNTRIES EAGER TO JOIN, INCLUDING US ALLIES

"There is absolutely no legal basis (currently or in the near future) for the South African government tonotarrest Putin," Priyal Singh, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), told Fox News Digital from Pretoria.

"As a party to the Rome Statute, Pretoria has a clear-cut international obligation to abide by its commitments and to effect the arrest," Singh added. "Moreover, as a country that has domesticated these obligations in terms of our national legislation, the government would effectively be breaking its own laws if it did not follow through with the arrest."

South Africas main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, or DA, is considering looking to the courts to force the issue. Itis "in the process of exploring all potential legal options to ensure South Africas compliance with the ICC Implementation Act, should Putin physically visit the country in August," Emma Louise Powell, the DAs shadow minister for international relations, told Fox News Digital.

Displaced Ukrainians on a Poland-bound train bid farewell in Lviv, western Ukraine, March 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

In addition, Alan Winde, premier of the DA-controlled Western Cape plans to use the regional police under his control to arrest Putin at Cape Town International Airport should he arrive there.

"If the Russian leader sets foot in the Western Cape, we as the provincial government will have him arrested by our own Western Cape government-funded Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) officers," Winde saidin a statement late last month. "If the South African Police Service is not instructed to act, we will."

This fighting talk has drawn the admiration ofSen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, the leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"Its good to see some leaders in South Africa speaking openly and without ambiguity about Putins visit to their country," Risch tweeted. "This kind of honest government leadership is desperately needed to build the U.S.-South Africa relationship."

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa answers questions about the BRICS partnership during a media briefing in Cape Town, South Africa, June 10, 2022. (Xabiso Mkhabela/Xinhua via Getty Images)

RUSSIA 'CHIEF BENEFICIARY' IN DEADLY SUDAN CONFLICT AS ATTEMPTED CEASEFIRE FALLS APART

But this enthusiasm is not shared bySouth Africa International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor. She ridiculed any attempt to carry out an arrest, suggesting it could spark conflict.

"Heads of state do not come to any country without security support," she told Newzroom Afrika. "The notion that security forces would let South African police pop up and take their president, I think we mustnt make ourselves laughable".

So why is South Africa clearly reluctant to act over Putin?

"To understand South Africas relationship with Russia, you have to understand its Cold War history. Russia was anti-apartheid before it was fashionable in the United States,"Cameron Hudson told Fox News Digital.

Hudson is formerly a CIA officer and director of African affairs at the National Security Council during President George W. Bush's administration. He is now a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Africa Program.

"Moscow hosted leading figures in the African National Congress for training and education and supported them with funds," Hudson added.

"But those ties are fraying. The previous presidency of Jacob Zuma moved South Africa much closer to Moscow and, in the process, also weakened democratic institutions in South Africa and saw a corruption spike. Given the countrys economic slide, corrupt deals of the kind Moscow has become associated with in South Africa are of decidedly bad odor."

The DAs Powell added, "The African National Congress and its senior members have long been suspected of having financial interests with the Russian oligarchy that they may now be seeking to protect at the expense of the countrys domestic interests and obligations under international law."

Cemetery workers work at a mass grave in Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, to identify civilians killed during the war against Russia April 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

TWO CHARGED WITH EVADING US SANCTIONS TO HELP RUSSIAN OLIGARCH PROTECT $90 MILLION YACHT

Sanctioned Russian oligarchs mysteriously have Ramaphosas support, at least when it comes to allowing their megayachts to dock at South African ports despite U.S. requests to seize them.

"South Africa has no legal obligation to abide by sanctions imposed by the U.S. and E.U.," Ramaphosas spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told reporters, referring to a proposal to dockRussian oligarch Alexey Mordashovs $500 million megayacht "Nord" in Cape Town.

The Nord superyacht in Hong Kong Oct. 14, 2022. (Lam Yik/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Another sanctioned oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, helped out Ramaphosas cash-strapped ANC by funding its party conference late last year through his company to the tune of some $826,000, according to recently released information from South Africas electoral commission, the IEC.

Its not the first time Vekselberg has reportedly channeled funds to South Africas ruling party. United Manganese, the local mine he owns 49% of, donated over $400,000 to the ANC in 2020, according to James Lorimer, the DAs shadow minister of mineral resources.

Economically, the DAs Powell believes South Africas position on Russia makes no sense.

"Despite Russia accounting for as little as 0.3% of South Africas trade ties, the ANC is willing to disregard South Africas crucial domestic interests in order to protect an alleged war criminal and shore up further political patronage with Moscow" she told Fox News Digital.

"To put this into perspective, South Africa does less trade with Russia than it does with one of its most under-developed neighboring countries."

The U.S.'s biggest trading partner in Africa is South Africa. Sources say the U.S. is frustrated, particularly by the Putin arrest saga, and may choose to drop South Africa from the AGOA trade agreement, where Washington gives products ranging from oranges to cars duty-free status on sale into the U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, speaks with Skolkovo Foundation President Viktor Vekselberg during his visit to the National Children's Sports and Health Centre in Sochi Oct. 11, 2014. (Alexy Nikolsky/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

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"South Africa-U.S. trade relations could be seriously undermined if Pretoria does not carefully manage its relations with Washington and Moscow," said the ISSs Singh.

Gustavo de Carvalho, senior researcher, African governance and diplomacy, at the South African Institute of International Affairs, told Fox News Digital he is concerned about the countrys current position over Russia.

"As national elections approach in 2024, this delicate matter could significantly impact the nation's political trajectory and its relationships with key international partners," Carvalho said.

"The United States should exercise caution in addressing this situation, as stringent measures could push South Africa further away and create a ripple effect among other Global South nations."

Fox News Digital reached out to the ANC for comment but has not received a response.

Read more:

Putin poses arrest dilemma as South African opposition says if Russian-friendly government won't act, it will - Fox News

Ukraine wants to see Russian dictator Putin on the dock in The Hague for war crimes committed by the Russian army

The poll, conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives foundation and the Razumkov Center think tank at the end of March found that 82.2% of respondents strongly agreed that Putin was todays Hitler, while 11.8% rather agree.

Read also: Over 60% of Ukrainians think Ukraine should try to liberate all territories, including Crimea poll

Only slightly more than 1% of Ukrainians do not consider Putin a modern-day Hitler at all.

The respondents also named the war crimes committed by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale war that were most memorable. Among them are the shootings and torture of Bucha residents by the Russian military, the massacre of civilians in Mariupol and the airstrike on the Drama Theater, as well as the killing of captured Ukrainian soldiers in Olenivka.

Read also: Poll reveals 65% of Europeans support sanctions against Russia and arms supply to Ukraine

Sociologists note that many other war crimes of the Russian troops that will forever remain in the collective memory of Ukrainians are also associated with the deliberate killing of civilians as a result of missile attacks, indiscriminate shelling of frontline cities, and torture of residents of the occupied territories.

When asked which events the respondents associate with grief and despair, most people mentioned the consequences of Russia's war crimes.

Some 24% of Ukrainians called the death of people the most traumatic event during the war. Another 22% also associate despair and grief with bombings and missile attacks, and 16% mention massacres and mass murders of the population in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

The survey was conducted from March 23-30. A total of 2,017 people were interviewed in person in all oblasts of Ukraine, except for the occupied territories of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, and those where active hostilities are taking place.

Read also: Poll reveals over 80% of Ukrainians support joining NATO

Story continues

The polls margin of statistical error does not exceed 2.3%.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

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Poll reveals over 90% of Ukrainians view Russian dictator Putin as modern Hitler - Yahoo News

Russian President Vladimir Putins brutal invasion of Ukraine has passed the 14-month mark, with no resolution in sight. It also has come with a potent, unintended consequence.

It has made the world forget about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Western powers have been justifiably preoccupied with Ukraines eastern Donbas region, where Russian and Ukrainian troops have been locked in a war of attrition reminiscent of World War I trench warfare. In the meantime, however, the North Korean Communist regime has been hard at work stepping up its nuclear arsenal in both technological advancement and inventory.

North Korea launched at least 95 ballistic and other missiles in 2022, the most Pyongyang has tested in the countrys history, according to The New York Times. This year, the pace hasnt let up. As of April 13, North Korea had conducted at least 12 missile tests, Time magazine reported.

Kims nuclear arsenal includes short-range capability that can threaten the assets of the U.S. and its allies in the region. North Korea also has successfully tested a long-range, intercontinental ballistic missile with solid fuel technology. Those missiles do not have to go through an hourslong fueling process before the launch, and thus can be fired within minutes. That makes the weapon harder to detect and bring down preemptively.

North Korea and Kims regime were foremost on the minds of President Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, as they met in Washington last week. That meeting yielded an agreement between the two countries in which South Korea will play an integral part in U.S. strategic planning for deployment of nuclear weapons against North Korea in any conflict with Pyongyang, while Seoul also agrees to not develop its own nuclear weapons capability.

To put an exclamation point on the pact, the U.S. is dispatching a nuclear ballistic missile submarine to South Korea for a visit.

Given how much headway Kim has made in beefing up his nuclear weapons capability, the agreement, dubbed Washington Declaration, should have happened sooner. Nevertheless, its an important step toward firewalling South Korea and other U.S. allies in the region from the reckless belligerence of the North Korean regime.

Moving forward, the lesson for Biden and other Western leaders: Do not treat North Korea as some back-burner priority.

For decades, American presidents have floundered in crafting the right foreign policy approach toward Pyongyang. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush tried bargaining with North Korea but failed to steer it away from nuclear weapons pursuit. President Barack Obama took the tack of strategic patience, a policy of imposing isolation and sanctions on Pyongyang until it acquiesced. That didnt work isolation is a defining characteristic of North Koreas existence.

Donald Trump turned American foreign policy toward North Korea into a global laughingstock. He swooned over Kim, becoming the first U.S. president to ever meet a North Korean head of state, afterward proclaiming nonsensically in a tweet, There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Two more meetings between Trump and Kim followed, and all the while, North Korea kept testing and ramping up its nuclear and missile capabilities.

Biden hasnt had any success either. But accepting the reality that Kim has tied his regimes survival to nuclear weapons expansion and that the North Korean leaders arsenal is fast becoming a pressing, worrisome threat is crucial for the Biden administration. The agreements made with Yoon reflect that understanding.

That realization should have happened years ago. After John Bolton departed as Trumps national security adviser, he told NPR that any policy aimed at cajoling Pyongyang into relinquishing its nuclear program amounted to wishful thinking.

Putin and Kim are very different leaders, but they have similarities even beyond their bellicosity and nuclear arsenals. They understand the value of playing for time, and they rely heavily on brinkmanship to achieve their aims. Putin remains an urgent, dangerous foe for the U.S. and its allies.

But it would be a grave mistake for the West to underestimate the threat Kim poses.

Ukraine is and must be a top-shelf priority for U.S. foreign policy. But so should North Korea.

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Another View: Focus on Putin, but don't forget the danger of Kim ... - Press Herald