Category Archives: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via a video conference call in Moscow, Russia, September 9, 2022.

Gavriil Grigorov | Sputnik | Reuters

The world is entering the moment of maximum danger and at the same time of maximum opportunity in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, now in its seventh month.

It is the moment of maximum danger because Putin is so dramatically failing in the pursuit of his delusional obsession which prompted him to launch a major invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 that he could rebuild some modern notion of the Russian empire with Kyiv as its centerpiece and as his legacy.

As Ukrainian courage and resilience transform his hubris into humiliation, the danger is rising that he could turn to weapons of mass destruction, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, to coerce Ukraine and confound its allies at a time when Putin's influence is eroding and he is running out of options.

This presents a moment of maximum opportunity for world leaders at the gathering this week of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the first since Putin launched his war. It's a chance for U.S. President Joe Biden, alongside his European and Asian allies, to openly discuss the dangers Putin's war poses to any country that cares about national sovereignty, to condemn Putin's indisputable war atrocities, and to sway those remaining fence-sitters around the world who have neither condemned Putin nor backed sanctions against him.

It's disheartening that the UN, instead of focusing on how best to stop Russia's despot now and before winter wages, has been wrestling with the technicality of whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should be allowed to speak via video link to this most significant gathering of world leaders. The good news is that UN general assembly members voted 101 to 7, with 19 abstentions, to provide the Ukrainians their stage.

Russia, a member of the UN Security Council, had been doing everything in its power to block the speech. That's no surprise, for when Zelenskyy spoke virtually to the Security Council in April, he told the group that it should act for peace immediately or "dissolve" itself.

"We are dealing with a state that turns the right of veto in the UN Security Council into a right to kill," he warned. Zelenskyy could not have been more prophetic, saying that if the UN failed to stop Putin, then for countries going forward it wouldn't be international law that would define the future but rather the law of the jungle.

There has been some speculation that the chance that Putin will use tactical nukes against Ukraine or order some other escalatory action involving chemical or biological agents has grown in rough proportion to the Russian despot's increasing military setbacks on the ground.

Scenes from Ukraine this week of Russian soldiers who cast aside their rifles, fled the battlefield on bicycles, and ditched their uniforms to disguise themselves as locals were all part of a mosaic of failure

The spectacular implosion of Putin's military in the south and east of Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops have retaken at least 2,320 square miles of territory, has given new life to talk that Putin may have no way out of a losing war except through a self-defeating Hail Mary: nuclear weapons.

For a leader whose claim to leadership has all along focused on his personal masculinity and political invulnerability, this growing perception of his military's ineptness and his own weakness endangers his continued rule.

That, in turn, seems to be prompting a rethink among both the handful of his allies and a larger group of countries India chief among them as Putin learned at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit this week in Samarkand. Modi expressed his concern about the war by telling Putin publicly that "today's era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this."

Putin's meeting this week in Samarkand with Chinese President Xi Jinping also gave Putin no relief. Indeed, Putin perhaps began to see the limits of what the two men had called their "no limits" relationship in a statement just before the Beijing Olympics and before Putin launched his war. "We understand your questions and concern" about the war, Putin told Xi this week.

Personal survival remains the highest priority for autocrats. For Putin, that must be top of mind now. What's less clear is what would ensure it. One possibility is resorting to weapons of mass destruction and particularly tactical nuclear weapons.

While the risk to Putin would be huge, the world must be ready for this contingency. The best way to do that would be to pre-empt him, deter him, and be proactive rather than reactive because the world knows his plot.

"I fear [Putin's Russia] will strike back now in really unpredictable ways, and ways that may even involve weapons of mass destruction," Rose Gottemoeller, a former deputy secretary general of NATO, told BBC this week.

What concerns her is something that has been growing in importance in Kremlin strategy: tactical nuclear weapons that weigh a few kilotons or less some with only one-fiftieth of the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Such weapons aren't designed to reach Washington or Berlin but rather to coerce or, as Gottemoeller puts it, "to get the Ukrainians, in their terror, to capitulate."

In an Atlantic Council "Memo to the President" this week, Matthew Kroenig tries to answer the question of "how to deter Russian nuclear use in Ukraine and respond if deterrence fails."

"Such nuclear use," writes Kroenig, "could advance the Kremlin's military aims, undermine U.S. interests globally, and set off a humanitarian catastrophe unseen since 1945. To deter such a potential disaster, the United States should issue public, deliberately vague threats of serious consequences for any Russian use of nuclear weapons and be prepared to follow through with conventional military strikes on Russian forces if deterrence fails."

It is also essential that the United States convey this message privately at senior levels and accompany it with the movement of relevant conventional forces into the area in a way that underscores the U.S.'s seriousness.

As world leaders gather at UNGA, one hopes they use the chance they have to fully listen to Zelenskyy.

Ukraine's ability to survive as an independent, sovereign and democratic state has wide-reaching implications for the international community that the UN represents.

There are terrible dangers in the weeks ahead. However, Putin's battlefield failures and the increasing erosion of his international standing provide an opportunity to do the right thing: accelerate and step up all efforts to ensure Putin's defeat and Ukraine's defense.

If not now, when?

Frederick Kempeis the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlantic Council.

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Op-ed: Putin's battlefield failures provide an opportunity for the world to step up efforts to help end the war in Ukraine - CNBC

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated how international efforts to counter Russia are severely hamstrung by an uncomfortable reality: Isolating the Kremlin comes with a cost in the form of massiverisks to global food security.

The sanctions regime against Russia has disrupted the food supply chain. As the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II rages and as it likely will for at least several more months there is an urgency to minimise its effects on the planets nutritional needs.

Moscow is trying to leverage this mounting crisis as a way around the economic pressure designed to compel it to end its assault on Ukraine, which along with Russia, is among the worlds biggest suppliers of grains and edible oils.

In response, Western decision-makers must craft policies that can achieve both imperatives: countering Russian aggression and preventing a global food crisis. It wont be easy, but it can be done.

Russian fertilisers vital to farming operations in different parts of the world could hold the key.

Sure, theres already a Turkish-mediated deal between Russia and Ukraine in place since late July, to allow for grain shipments through the Black Sea. The agreement calls on both Moscow and Kyiv not to attack vessels ferrying much-needed grain supplies out of the war zone. However, with Russia trying to consolidate its hold over eastern and southern Ukraine, and the western-backed government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv determined to force the invaders armies to withdraw from occupied territories, continued access to one of the worlds breadbaskets is at risk.

Russias war in Ukraine has exacerbated a pre-existing situation where the global economy has been impacted by other conflicts, climate change, rising energy costs, and most significantly, the COVID-19 pandemic. High energy prices increased fertiliser costs, and the war and sanctions jeopardised the supply chain.

To avoid a major global conflict and simultaneously prevent Russia from destroying Ukraines sovereignty, the United States and its allies and partners have relied heavily on economic and financial warfare to try and get Moscow to bend.

However, the Kremlin has responded by weaponising its own grain supply and that of Ukraine. While Russia may not achieve its military objectives and will face mounting financial stress, it can still spread that pain across the globe. Food shortages in the developing world and resulting political instability in the Middle East and North Africa could cause millions of migrants to make the perilous journey to Europe as they did during the Arab Spring and the wars in Iraq and Syria. That in turn could destabilise Europe politically, with the far right channeling anti-immigrant sentiment to challenge mainstream parties.

Like energy, food is a loaded gun the Kremlin believes it is holding to the Wests head. Yet, as with oil and gas, a deft balancing act can help the international community sustain the pressure on Moscow without that leading to malnutrition, famine, mass migration and a humanitarian disaster.

Europes dependency on Russian natural gas supplies has meant that the continent has had to gradually wean itself off that addiction over recent months, giving the Kremlin the opportunity to threaten to stop energy exports unless sanctions are withdrawn.

However, while finding alternative sources of energy is a long-term endeavour, securing more grain from other food-producing nations to try and reduce Russias leverage can be relatively easier. Whats critical for that is the continuing flow of Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian fertilisers to increase crop yields around the world.

Russia, a major fertiliser exporter, accounts for 23 percent of the worlds ammonia, 21 percent of potash, 14 percent of urea and 10 percent of phosphate. These chemicals have the potential to increase international grain production manifold; as much as 100 million tonnes of wheat or 400 million tonnes of corn per annum, based on calculations that account for global food consumption levels and the amount that fertilisers contribute to them.

While officially fertilisers are not banned, sanctions on people connected to Russian fertiliser firms, hurdles in getting payments cleared and transportation-related obstacles represent impediments in the path of this strategy.

Adjusting the highly targeted sanctions regime against Russia to allow fertilisers to flow better wont help Moscow much. Russias revenue from fertiliser exports in 2021 was around $12.5bn. Thats just change compared to the Kremlins expected earnings from hydrocarbon exports this year: around $337bn. The world, on the other hand, will gain immensely if farmers around the world can access these fertilisers, produce food and thereby also remove one weapon from the Kremlins armoury.

Strategy and policy are about trade-offs. The cost of countering an adversary is not the creation of grave crises far away from the battlefield. We should avoid causing massive food insecurity around the globe. If the world is united on squeezing Russian oil and gas exports, the sand in Moscows hourglasswill run out faster and the end of the Ukrainian tragedy will get closer.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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Heres how to stop Putin and prevent a global food crisis - Al Jazeera English

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LONDON/KYIV, Sept 20 (Reuters) - One of Russian President Vladimir Putin's top allies said on Tuesday he favoured holding referendums in two eastern Ukrainian regions in order to formally make them part of Russia, a move that would seriously escalate Moscow's confrontation with the West.

The statement by Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is currently deputy chairman of the Security Council, marks a hardening of Russian rhetoric on Ukraine and is the strongest sign yet that the Kremlin is considering going ahead with a plan that Ukraine and the West have said would be illegal.

He made his comments as Putin ponders his next steps in a nearly seven-month-old conflict that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and after a battlefield defeat in northeast Ukraine.

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The leaders of the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) a day earlier discussed combining their efforts to hold referendums on joining Russia. read more

Officials in the Russian-controlled southern Kherson region on Tuesday also requested a referendum on joining Russia.

Medvedev suggested that incorporating the LPR and DPR into Russia - collectively known as the Donbas - would be an irreversible step once completed. Anyone then attacking them would be assaulting Russia itself which would, under its own law, be entitled to respond in self-defence.

"Encroachment onto Russian territory is a crime which allows you to use all the forces of selfdefence," Medvedev said in a post on Telegram. "This is why these referendums are so feared in Kyiv and the West."

No future Russian leader be able to constitutionally reverse the outcome of the votes, he wrote.

Washington and the West have so far been careful not to supply Ukraine with weapons that could be used to shell Russian territory, and Medvedev's interpretation of what de facto annexation would legally mean from Moscow's point of view looked like a future warning to the West.

"They (the referendums) would completely change the vector of Russia's development for decades. And not just of our country. The geopolitical transformation of the world would be irreversible once the new territories were incorporated into Russia," he wrote.

It is unclear how the referendums would be held given that Russian and Russian-backed forces control only around 60% of the Donetsk region while Ukrainian forces are trying to retake Luhansk.

Pro-Russian officials have previously said the referendums could be held electronically and that everything was technically ready for them to go ahead.

Ukrainian servicemen ride on Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) and a tank, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, near the town of Izium, recently liberated by Ukrainian Armed Forces, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine September 19, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

Medvedev's comments came as Ukraine said its troops had retaken the village of Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region and were preparing to recapture all of the province which until now had been fully occupied by Russian forces.

Unverified footage on social media showed Ukrainian forces in the village, which is only 10 km (6 miles) west of the city of Lysychansk, which fell to the Russians after weeks of grinding battles in July.

"There will be fighting for every centimetre," Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidai wrote on Telegram. "The enemy is preparing their defence. So we will not simply march in."

Russia named taking full control of Luhansk and the neighbouring province of Donetsk as primary goals of what it called its "special military operation" in Ukraine, alleging that Russian speakers there were being persecuted and even shelled by Ukrainian government forces, something Kyiv denied.

Ukrainian troops started to push into Luhansk after driving Russian forces out of northeastern Kharkiv province in a lightning counter-offensive this month.

"The occupiers are clearly in a panic," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a televised address late on Monday, adding that he was now focused on "speed" in liberated areas.

"The speed at which our troops are moving. The speed in restoring normal life," Zelenskiy said.

The Ukrainian leader also hinted he would use a video address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday to call on countries to accelerate weapons and aid deliveries.

In the south, where another Ukrainian counter-offensive has been making slower progress, Ukraine's armed forces said they had sunk a barge carrying Russian troops and equipment across a river near Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.

"Attempts to build a crossing failed to withstand fire from Ukrainian forces and were halted. The barge ... became an addition to the occupiers' submarine force," the military said in a statement.

Reuters could not independently verify either side's battlefield reports.

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Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Andrew Osborn ; Editing by Angus MacSwan

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Putin ally says he favours formally incorporating Ukrainian regions into Russia - Reuters

The European Union is moving to cut off funds to Hungary after accusing its leader, prime minister Viktor Orbn, of eroding the countrys democracy and ruling as an autocrat, further isolating one of the continents last Putin supporters.

The southeastern European country of Hungary, which has been led since 2010 by Prime Minister Viktor Orbn, may have to forgo as much as 7.5 billion in funds from the European Union, which is accusing the countrys leaders of democratic backpedaling and corruption.

Lawmakers say that Orbns history of anti-democratic governance in Hungary, which EU lawmakers said last week could no longer be considered a full democracy, is concerning enough to cut the country off from the EUs 1.2 trillion ($1.2 trillion) shared budget.

On Sunday, the European Commission announced that lawmakers had proposed budget protection measures that would severely limit funding to Hungary under the current EU budget regime. If it goes through, it will be the first time the EU enacts a 2020 law designed to protect the blocs budget from being misused by EU governments who bend the rule of law.

But beyond that, it would be the latest effort in democratizing Hungary after years under Orbn, a man who has opposed more aggressive Western sanctions against Russia, has been called Vladimir Putins Trojan Horse within the EU, and has implemented policies ranging from banning the dissemination of LGBTQ-related content in schools to blocking Muslim immigrants at the border.

Moving to cut off Hungary from EU funding is the latest effort by democratic Europe to limit the spread of authoritarianism and democratic erosion on the continent.

The law was implemented in response to criticisms that EU budgets were being used to help support populist and increasingly authoritarian regimes in portions of Eastern Europe.

In 2015, former European Commission President Jean-Claude Junckner jokingly greeted Orbn at a EU summit in a way that dispensed with protocol: Hello dictator! Junckner said.

But after years of right-wing turns by the Hungarian government, what was once a joke is now becoming a growing concern for Europes leaders.

In his 12 years in charge of Hungary, Orbnwho also served as Prime Minister between 1998 and 2002has taken control of the countrys independent media outlets, illegally forced hundreds of judges to retire, changed the countrys voting laws, and openly endorsed discriminatory rhetoric against the LGBTQ community and immigrants.

Orbns behavioras well as rumors of corruption linked to members of Fidesz, his ruling partyhave pushed the EU to consider limiting how much the bloc actually funds his government.

Its about breaches of the rule of law compromising the use and management of EU funds, EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn said of the proposed measures. We cannot conclude that the EU budget is sufficiently protected.

The European Commission now has up to three months to decide on whether to cut Hungary off from the blocs budget. Within that time, Hungary will have to implement reforms that make its legislative process more transparent and set up an effective system of anti-corruption watchdogs if it wants to keep receiving EU money.

In the past 12 years he has been in power, Orbn has remained close with Putin.

Since returning for his second stint as prime minister in 2010, Orbns style of governance has been remarkably similar to how Putin has ruled Russia in the past two decades. Both governments have employed coercive means to censor the media, and both leaders have created support for themselves through oligarchswealthy industry leaders planted in the upper levels of government.

The two leaders have backed each other on multiple occasions. Orbn publicly disapproved of EU sanctions against Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and last April, Putin hailed Orbn victory in Hungarys most recent general elections.

Hungarys economy is deeply tied to the EUs, the destination of nearly 80% of its exports. It also remains highly dependent on Russia for its energy use, importing 65% of its oil and 80% of its natural gas from Russia, significantly more than other European nations. Maintaining Hungarys link with Russian energy has been called central to Orbn and Fideszs hopes of staying in power.

Hungarys reliance on Russian energyand its willingness to buy even moreis partly why Orbn has publicly opposed EU measures to ban Russian oil imports and plans to sanction Russian gas imports.

Orbn has been a useful ally to Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year. The Hungarian leader has been vocal in the EU when Russia-related sanctions have come up, delaying progress on the EUs long-awaited Russian oil ban and repeatedly threatening to derail sanctions packages, with no signs that he will stop doing so anytime soon.

In response to the EUs decision on Sunday, Orbns Fidesz party sought to discredit the bloc for singling Hungary out for blame instead of focusing on the continents mounting energy crisis, caused in large part by Putins willingness to use energy imports as blackmail in an effort to have Western sanctions lifted.

It is astounding that even in the current crisis the leftist majority of the European Parliament keeps busy only with attacking Hungary, Fidesz said in a statement last week.

The left in Brussels want to punish Hungary over and over again and withhold the funds due to our country.

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The EU is trying to cut off billions in funding for one of Putins last remaining European allies - Fortune

A few weeks ago, the Guardians Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth got a call from a man asking to meet him urgently. He tells Michael Safi how he hung up the call, jumped in a cab and hurried to the meeting place. There, he found an ex-paratrooper in the Russian army, Pavel Filatyev, who said he was ready to tell his story about his part in Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine.

Filatyev went on to detail his experiences on his VKontakte social media page and published a 141-page bombshell: a day-by-day description of his paratrooper units activities from the moment it was sent to mainland Ukraine from Crimea. Filatyev described how his unit entered Kherson and captured the seaport, how it dug in under heavy artillery fire for more than a month near Mykolaiv and how he himself was wounded and evacuated from the conflict with an eye infection.

The paratrooper describes his units lack of equipment and the unhappiness of his fellow soldiers but denies he witnessed any abuse of civilians. His account is extremely rare: by speaking out he risks prison. He has since left Russia and is claiming asylum in the European Union, but his future is uncertain. For myself, he said, this is a personal tragedy. Because what have we become? And how can it get any worse?

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The Russian soldier exposing what life is really like in Putin's invading army - podcast - The Guardian

Moscow has dismissed suggestions it would opt for tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war, but things on the battlefield are going so badly for Russia that many observers increasingly worry about how President Vladimir Putin will react.

Among them is Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who warned on Sunday, The war is not going too well for Russia right now. So its incumbent upon all of us to maintain high states of readiness.

His remarks followed a visit to a military base in Poland, where he urged increased vigilance among U.S. troops, according to Reuters. In the conduct of war, you just dont know with a high degree of certainty what will happen next, he added.

President Joe Biden, asked on a Sunday 60 Minutes segment what hed say to Putin if he did consider nuclear (or chemical) weapons, replied, Dont. Dont. Dont. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War II.

Meanwhile Russias battlefield savvy was questioned this weekend by the Institute for the Study of War, a prominent think tank. Instead of defending against Ukraines counteroffensives in the eastern Kharkiv region, the think tank noted, Putins troops were prioritizing meaningless offensive operations in various villages that were of emotional significance to pro-war residents of the Donetsk Peoples Republic [but of] little other importance.

Ukrainian forces recently drove back Russian troops in a lightning counteroffensive in the northeast of the country. Russias defense ministry portrayed it as a regrouping, but one military expert called it a rout.

It looks like the last few days have been the most consequential of the Ukraine War, military expert Mike Martin wrote in a Twitter thread last weekend. After what weve seen over the last 72 hours the collapse of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine doesnt seem a long way away.

The setback came amid signs of crumbling support at home for Putin, whos under pressure from nationalists to regain the initiative.

Hes also felt pressure from relatively friendly leaders abroad. When meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Putin said Russia understood Chinas questions and concerns about the Ukraine invasion and promised to explain its position to Beijing, hinting at Sino-Russian tensions. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, told Putin that now is not an era of war.

Other observers also warned this week about Putins possible reactions to Ukraines battlefield success. Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy general of NATO, told BBC Radios Today she fears Russian forces will strike back now in really unpredictable ways that may even involve weapons of mass destruction.

A nuclear hit could come as a a single strike over the Black Sea or perhaps a strike at a Ukrainian military facility, she said. The goal would be to get the Ukrainians in their terror to capitulate.

I do worry about that kind of scenario at the moment, she added.

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General warns of Putins reaction as Ukraine war not going too well, Russia increasingly divorced from battlefield realities - Fortune

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

A leading expert in Russias prison system, Olga Romanova, says the Kremlins latest recruitment tactic in the war on Ukraine is something out of her worst nightmares.

Yevgeny Prigozhinthe head of Vladimir Putins shadowy private army, Wagner Grouphas been taking trips to Russian prison camps in order to enlist convicted criminals to fight in Ukraine, according to accounts from military analysts and videos that have emerged on Telegram from Russian prisons.

And according to Romanova, who has dedicated the past 15 years of her life to monitoring Russias prison population as the head of the organization Russia Behind Bars, the recruitment campaign is targeting some of Russias worst criminals.

Putins plan is to recruit at least 50,000 convicts and Prigozhin, who is an ex-convict himself, has already sent more than 3,000 inmates to Ukraine, including serial murderers, robbers and at least one cannibal, Romanova told The Daily Beast.

As part of their work, Russia Behind Bars provides legal and charitable aid to Russias half a million prison population, and are often in touch with the families of inmates. Romanova told The Daily Beast that they started hearing reports about prison recruits being deployed to Ukraine as early as June. If in July and August they were brushing through jails in the central part of Russia, yesterday they traveled to the Urals, [which] has more than 35 prison camps and jails.

On Sept. 3 Romanovas team said they were horrified to recognize one prisoner they had worked with in a video released by Ukrainian officials of a captured Russian fighter. According to Romanova, he was still wearing some of the undergarments the organization had provided to him as part of an aid package.

Beaten and bloodied with his hands tied, the man was recorded saying there were ashniksfree civilian recruitsand kashniksRussian convictsfighting in Ukraine. We are not a battalion, we are just a bunch of people. Wagner took us showed us what to do but you cannot learn in one week, the inmate, who Ramonova said had been sentenced to nine years in prison before getting sent to fight in Ukraine, said in the video.

Story continues

An attorney for Russia Behind Bars, Ruslan Vakhapov, said Wagner Group has visited at least three prisons in Russias Yaroslavl region. Originally, Wagner grabbed mostly those convicted for homicideCriminal Code Article #105and robberyArticle 162. But now, their fishing net takes everybody in, including man-eaters. So far we know of one case of recruitment among Russian cannibals, Vakhapov told The Daily Beast.

The murkiest characters go to Ukraine, he added. I just spoke with the wife of a serial killer convicted in Kostroma. He was supposed to spend five more years behind bars, but Wagner had freed him, so the wife was terrified he might [come back] and attack her for filing for divorce.

Vakhapova and Romanova told The Daily Beast that since late June, Russia Behind Bars has received a flurry of panicked phone calls from convicts in remote prison camps and their relatives to discuss war recruitment. According to them, Prigozhin, whos known as Putins chef, has promised convicts freedom after serving six months on the front lines.

Pretty much all murderers we have on our watch have been recruited and they die like flies in Ukraine. Out of the first 42 convicts recruited in the first group, only three survived, out of the second group of 66 convicts, only six returned, including one who had lost his arm, Romanova told The Daily Beast.

Putins Chef Is Personally Touring Russian Prisons for Wagner Recruits to Fight in Ukraine, Reports Say

In Ukraine, Prigozins army is often referred to as an army of orcs and goblins, a reference to Lord of the Rings.

By arming these goblins and sending psychos and maniacs to the front, Putin shows the weakness of his army, which has been badly losing, Anton Naumlyuk, founder of Ukraines Graty media group, told The Daily Beast.

Officially, Russian law bans private military campaigns, but Putin regularly decorates private Wagner Group mercenaries for their secret operations in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine. Wagner Group conducted its first operations in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in 2015.

This phenomenon should be broadly discussed, since it illustrates the core of Russian power, a Wagner Group veteran, Marat Gabidullin, told The Daily Beast. Prigozhin has unlimited authority, he can kick a door to any prison colony open. Its time to look into this phenomenon now, before they start recruiting in orphanages.

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Putin Accused of Sending Serial Killers and a Cannibal to Fight His War - Yahoo News

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LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters) - One of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies sought on Monday to deepen a strategic partnership with China, expanding defence cooperation and strengthening coordination between Moscow and Beijing on major geopolitical issues.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has tilted more strongly towards China as the war and severe Western sanctions torpedoed Russia's relationship with the United States and its European allies.

Just before the invasion, Putin and Xi Jinping declared a "no limits" partnership, though at a meeting last week in Uzbekistan Putin said he understood that the Chinese president had concerns and questions about the conflict. read more

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Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, a close Putin ally, met China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Nanping to discuss the implementation of agreements Putin and Xi reached at their meeting.

"The development of a strategic partnership with China is an unconditional priority of Russian foreign policy," the security council said in a statement.

Patrushev and Yang also discussed the Korean peninsular, Taiwan and Ukraine.

"The sides agreed on further military cooperation with a focus on joint exercises and patrols, as well as on strengthening contacts between the General Staffs," the security council said.

Patrushev, a former Soviet spy who has known Putin since the 1970s, is a hardline ally and seen as one of the few people able to influence the Russian president.

The deepening partnership between the rising superpower of China and the natural resources titan of Russia has raised alarm in some Western capitals.

In recent years China has participated in a number of Russian war games - joint military exercises designed to simulate how the countries would defend themselves against an attack.

Moscow has repeatedly backed Beijing over Taiwan and criticised what it casts as "provocations" by the United States.

China has refrained from condemning Russia's military operation against Ukraine or calling it an "invasion".

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Reporting by Caleb Davis; Writing by Felix Light and Jake Cordell; editing by Guy Faulconbridge

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Putin ally deepens Russia's 'strategic partnership' with China - Reuters

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PARIS, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin's chief envoy on Ukraine told the Russian leader as the war began that he had struck a provisional deal with Kyiv that would satisfy Russia's demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO, but Putin rejected it and pressed ahead with his military campaign, according to three people close to the Russian leadership.

The Ukrainian-born envoy, Dmitry Kozak, told Putin that he believed the deal he had hammered out removed the need for Russia to pursue a large-scale occupation of Ukraine, according to these sources. Kozak's recommendation to Putin to adopt the deal is being reported by Reuters for the first time.

Putin had repeatedly asserted prior to the war that NATO and its military infrastructure were creeping closer to Russia's borders by accepting new members from eastern Europe, and that the alliance was now preparing to bring Ukraine into its orbit too. Putin publicly said that represented an existential threat to Russia, forcing him to react.

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But, despite earlier backing the negotiations, Putin made it clear when presented with Kozak's deal that the concessions negotiated by his aide did not go far enough and that he had expanded his objectives to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory, the sources said. The upshot: the deal was dropped.

Asked about Reuters findings, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "That has absolutely no relation to reality. No such thing ever happened. It is absolutely incorrect information."

Kozak did not respond to requests for comment sent via the Kremlin.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said Russia had used the negotiations as a smokescreen to prepare for its invasion, but he did not respond to questions about the substance of the talks nor confirm that a preliminary deal was reached. "Today, we clearly understand that the Russian side has never been interested in a peaceful settlement," Podolyak said.

Two of the three sources said a push to get the deal finalized occurred immediately after Russia's Feb. 24 invasion. Within days, Kozak believed he had Ukraine's agreement to the main terms Russia had been seeking and recommended to Putin that he sign an agreement, the sources said.

"After Feb. 24, Kozak was given carte blanche: they gave him the green light; he got the deal. He brought it back and they told him to clear off. Everything was cancelled. Putin simply changed the plan as he went along," said one of the sources close to the Russian leadership.

The third source - who was told about the events by people who were briefed on the discussions between Kozak and Putin - differed on the timing, saying Kozak had proposed the deal to Putin, and had it rejected, just before the invasion. The sources all requested anonymity to share sensitive internal information.

Moscow's offensive in Ukraine is the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II. It prompted sweeping economic sanctions against Russia and military support for Ukraine from Washington and its Western allies.

Even if Putin had acquiesced to Kozak's plan, it remains uncertain if the war would have ended. Reuters was unable to verify independently that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy or senior officials in his government were committed to the deal.

Kozak, who is 63, has been a loyal lieutenant to Putin since working with him in the 1990s in the St. Petersburg mayor's office.

Kozak was well-placed to negotiate a peace deal because since 2020 Putin had tasked him with conducting talks with Ukrainian counterparts about the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russian-backed separatists following an uprising in 2014. After leading the Russian delegation in talks with Ukrainian officials in Berlin on Feb. 10 brokered by France and Germany Kozak told a late-night news conference that the latest round of those negotiations had ended without a breakthrough.

Kozak also was one of those present when, three days before the invasion, Putin gathered his military and security chiefs and key aides in the Kremlin's Yekaterinsky hall for a meeting of Russia's Security Council.

State television cameras recorded part of the meeting, where Putin laid out plans to give formal recognition to separatist entities in eastern Ukraine.

Once the cameras were ushered out of the vast room with its neo-classical columns and domed ceiling, Kozak spoke out against Russia taking any steps to escalate the situation with Ukraine, said two of the three people close to the Russian leadership, as well as a third person who learned about what happened from people who took part in the meeting.

Another individual interviewed by Reuters, who helped in the post-invasion talks, said discussions fell apart in early March when Ukrainian officials understood Putin was committed to pressing ahead with the large-scale invasion.

Six months on from the start of the war, Kozak remains in his post as Kremlin deputy chief of staff. But he is no longer handling the Ukraine dossier, according to six of the sources who spoke to Reuters.

"From what I can see, Kozak is nowhere to be seen," said one of the six, a source close to the separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine.

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Editing by Daniel Flynn

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Exclusive: As war began, Putin rejected a Ukraine peace deal recommended by aide - Reuters

Commentary

Vladimir Putin is in grave danger of a complete flame-out.

Following the bloodless Western victory in the Cold War and the collapse of international communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Putin emerged from the infighting that surged through the Kremlin in the aftermath of the crumbling of the Soviet Union. As he took over control of the truncated Russian state, he faced a clear choice: He could attempt to give Russia a soft landing in its descent from co-superpower of the world with the United States to a prominent place in the second tier of the worlds most powerful countries, or he could decline to recognize the legitimacy of the former Soviet Republics that had seceded and set out to rebuild Russia, attempting to retrace the steps of Peter the Great and Joseph Stalin.

In choosing the second, the reconstruction of greater Russia and the Soviet Union, he has produced the worst failure in modern times of the first option: the descent from the top to the next rank.

The supreme example of an elegant demotion from the first to the second level of world powers was Churchillian and Thatcherite Britain: a Gloriana to celebrate the British Empires immense services to Allied victory in the World Wars and the more or less voluntary handing over of independence to scores of former colonies including the six countries of the immense British Indian Empire.

Churchill the magnificent romantic, Elizabeth II the practical builder of the Commonwealth, and Thatcher by being such an invigorating, supportive, and influential ally of the United States and asserting the prerogatives of the British Empire in the Falkland Islands, enabled Britain to climb down with unimpaired dignity and even a note of triumphalism. Putin, in seeking to reverse history, has produced a terrible fiasco, Russias worst disaster since the war with Japan in 1905.

Putin seemed for a time to be doing a capable job of establishing Russia in the front rank of the second tier of the worlds great powers, like all other countries in the world, behind the United States. But there was continuous ambiguity about what was known as the near abroad, the other republics apart from Russia that seceded from the rule of the Kremlin: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and the three Baltic, three Caucasus, and five Asian republics. These seceded states had a total population of approximately 150 million, about the same as Russia itself, and they had gradually been acquired by Russia by the efforts of the more ambitious czars and by Stalins seizure of the Baltic states under the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, which the Western allies didnt seriously attempt to persuade Stalin to disgorge, given the immense sacrifices and contribution the USSR made on the Eastern front in World War II.

The West invited Russia to join the G-7 making it the G-8, and there was even some discussion of Russia joining NATO. President George H.W. Bush had famously advised the parliament of Ukraine to consider the merits of continuing in association with Russia. This was reviled as the Chicken Kiev speech of August 1991, but by the time of George W. Bush, the United States was leaning toward inviting Ukraine into NATO.

Putin had publicly mused about the tragedy of the breakup of the old Russia and Soviet Union and felt that to be unjust in itself and a factor of great destabilization in the Eurasian landmass. He seized two provinces from Georgia in 2008 when that country was also making noises about joining NATO, and Putin was able to invoke the old Hitler complaint of the mistreatment of, in this case, Russian minorities in the former republics.

Where Western placation of the Kremlin ceased and Putin moved toward an attempted outright reassertion of some of Russias credentials to be considered still a rival to the United States was when Russia intervened in Ukrainian elections to promote the elevation as president of Viktor Yanukovych in 2010, a result that rejected the previous increasing intimacy of Ukraine with the European Union under pro-Western president Viktor Yushchenko. The West intervened and infiltrated Ukraine and helped to incite a political upheaval that defeated Yanukovych and brought in Petro Poroshenko. This was the effective cause for Putins seizure of Crimea in 2014 and Russias resulting expulsion from the G-8, which reverted to the G-7.

All of the major powers had joined in guaranteeing Ukraines independence and its borders when it surrendered the nuclear weapons that it, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, had inherited from the Soviet Union, but the guarantees of the signatory powers including Russia and the United States were conspicuously worthless.

From this point onward, the die was cast, and Putin was aiming to recover the power and position of the Soviet Union. He stopped seeking better relations with the West, and began paying court to Beijing. Theres an element of surmise in this, but it seems likely that he was motivated to make his move on Ukraine after the horrifying fiasco of the American desertion of Afghanistan, leaving thousands of their own operatives and billions of dollars of military hardware in the hands of their Taliban enemy, while putting great and completely avoidable strain on the Western alliance.

Putins assault on Ukraine was bizarre: American aerial reconnaissance made public to the whole world the buildup of the Russian supply train and large numbers of tanks and armored personnel carriers. With this daily spectacle, I was one of those commentators who wrote that this was such an insane method of preparing for war, and, as the visible Russian forces were only about 150,000 combat trigger-pullers with scores of thousands of support people, Putin could not possibly be serious about attempting to occupy a country of over 40 million people with such an inadequate attack force.

We now know that his military commanders assumed that their former faithful supporters in the Yanukovych government could stage a coup in Kyiv delivering the capital of Ukraine over to the Russian invader within a few days, and that resistance would fade away as quickly in the balance of the country as it did in Crimea in 2014. Russian intelligence should have known that a number of NATO countries had been diligently training up a full army of 200,000 Ukrainians and a well-trained militia reserve of another 300,000, and they might have anticipated that NATO would heavily assist Ukraine with arms and munitions.

The Americans probably deserve some credit for only slowly ratcheting up the level and sophistication of their support for the Zelinskyy government in Ukraine, and avoiding sudden drastic escalation. Russia has now reached the extremity of buying weapons from North Korea. If Putin escalates his attack on the Ukrainian civil population, and particularly if he employs small nuclear weapons, it will be an invitation to a drastic escalation of the air and artillery war against Russia. And the current Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelinskyy, cannot be allowed to drag the West into a reenactment of the Crimean war of 165 years ago (without a light brigade or Tennyson to describe it).

Putin can have a referendum in the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, including Crimea. But thats all he will have to show for this clumsy and failed effort to revive Russian glory. The invasion of Ukraine is a failure, and Russias attempt to regain the first rank of world powers dies with it. The best Putin or any Russian leader can do now is to liquidate this war, hope that it wins some referendums in the Georgian and Ukrainian border states, and replace the present program of almost weekly murders of oligarchs with a serious effort to give Russia something it has not had one day of in its entire history: good government.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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The Failure of Putin's Attempt to Restore Russia as a Great Power - The Epoch Times