Category Archives: Putin

Russia resorting to mass mobilization would be a huge blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence.

"It would mean recognizing that Russia has not been able to fulfill all the tasks it declared, that Putin's so-called 'special operation' has not achieved results, and real war is being fought," Skibitsky told the Kyiv Post in an interview published Monday.

Since Putin declared what he has called a "special military operation" in Ukraine on February 24, he has been hesitant to announce war mobilizationa move that would allow the Russian leader to draft conscripts and mobilize reserve forces under Russian law.

There has been growing discussion about whether Russia should introduce martial law and declare a general mobilization to boost the size of Russia's army.

Skibitsky said declaring a general mobilization in Russia would mean declaring war on Ukraine and recognizing that Russia "is an aggressor."

The general also said that according to Ukrainian intelligence, rhetoric about mobilization has dramatically increased in Russia.

"Russia understands that in order to seize the entire territory of Ukraine, which is the primary goal, sooner or later, it will be necessary to enlist additional resources," he said. "The announcement of general mobilization would only be a positive thing to us because the protest mood in Russia is weak, but young people do not want to go to war."

Skibitsky, citing intelligence, said the main people who support Putin's war are those "who are 50 years old and who will not be going to war."

"Young people in their twenties and thirties are needed on the front. Because of that, this announcement of general mobilization would be an indicator that will show the readiness of the Russian people to continue this bloody war," he added.

Some have suggested however that a potential mobilization of Russia's population would not solve fundamental issues that exist within the Russian army.

Alexander Khodakovsky, a Kremlin-backed commander and former political leader in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, gave a rare bleak assessment of Russia's performance in the ongoing war on his Telegram channel on September 12.

"I am against universal mobilization," he wrote, adding that he believes the reason why Russia is not doing as well as Putin had hoped is not because of a shortage of manpower, but because of their "sloppy use, that is, in the organization of the process."

"If this approach is maintained, the shortage will be constant, no matter how many people you mobilize, and Russia will be overwhelmed by a wave of funeral notices in the absence of the desired result, which will lead to a serious crisis," the commander warned.

"The shortage is precisely caused by a simplified approach, and continuing to cultivate it means simply grinding out resources in the meat grinder of the war," Khodakovsky added.

Echoing Skibitsky's remarks, he warned that if Putin were to eventually announce a general mobilization, the move will serve as a "powerful blow" to the country, "which it will not withstand."

Meanwhile, last week, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov called for every Russian region to "self-mobilize" and send at least 1,000 volunteers to fight in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the initiative "should be assessed by the Ministry of Defense."

Newsweek has reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment.

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Russia Resorting to Mass Mobilization Would be Huge Blow to Putin: General - Newsweek

by Joe Mathews|September20,2022

Want to join the global fight against authoritarianism?

Then participate in your communitys local government.

Because authoritarians do not teleport fully formed from Jupiter into the leadership of nations. They have to learn how to rule anti-democratically here on earth, usually at the local level. Stopping authoritarianism globally requires all of us to identify and defeat our hometown autocrats, and make sure that local governments are as democratic as possible.

Imagine, for example, how much more peaceful the world might be if citizens of St. Petersburg had managed to stall the political career of deputy mayor Vladimir Putin back in the 1990s.

Detecting would-be authoritarians isnt necessarily easy. Oftentimes, they spend too little time in local government to be noticed. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro served just two quiet years on the city council in Rio de Janeirobiographers suggest he sought the post to avoid accountability for his actions in the militarybefore moving into federal office.

But in many circumstances, local authoritarians offer clues to their larger intentions. Some make their tyrannical ambitions explicit.

If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor, then-Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte told crowds while campaigning for the Philippine presidency. All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you. I have no patience, I have no middle ground, either you kill me or I will kill you idiots.

Tragically, he was as good as his wordpresiding over the killing of more than 30,000 people during his drug war, while rolling back the rights of those who dared to dissent from his policies.

Duterte, like many local autocrats, was comfortable with official violence. Reporters found he backed assassinsone group was called the Davao Death Squadwho carried out executions of suspected criminals. As journalist Jonathan Miller recounts in his Duterte biography, the mayornicknamed Duterte Harryalso patrolled the streets, sometimes violently, by motorcycle. In one case, he pulled a gun on a tourist who was smoking against local laws and forced the man to swallow his cigarette butt.

Dutertes defenders trumpet the decline of reported crime in Davaobut dramatic drops in crime can be a sign of an emerging authoritarian. Dutertes case echoes that of El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, who was the crime-fighting mayor of two different citiesNuevo Cuscatln and the capital, San Salvadorbefore rising to national office. Bukeles tactics have included tens of thousands of questionable arrests by security forces and secret collaboration with the MS-13 gang.

Supporters of Bukele point to a mayoral track record of improvements in local services, including the creation of educational scholarship programs and libraries. But governing competence in local office is not a requirement for the successful authoritarian.

Its harder to spot budding authoritarianism when its wrapped in a record of competence and governing in the public interest.

Putin, and his record as the top economic and foreign investment official in St. Petersburg, under a novice mayor, is an example of how incompetence can provide a path to power.

In Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, Russia experts Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy report how St. Petersburg fell behind Moscow and other Russian cities in incomes, profits, and investmentand surged in unemployment, out-migration, and suicidesduring Putins time as deputy mayor.

According to Steven Lee Myers book The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin, Putin arranged contracts for St. Petersburg to buy food and basic goods from state-owned enterprises that never materialized. He also gave away the rights to operate casinos, without getting significant public benefits in return.

Of course, serving St. Petersburgs people wasnt Putins real job. He used licensing authority to target business and investorsboth legal and illicitin service of his own power, and that of his allies. Foreign authorities investigated one company, which he had licensed, for laundering money for the Cali drug cartel.

Putin avoided accountability for his corruption by increasing the mayors power while reducing the oversight power of the city council, which had called for Putins firing for complete incompetence bordering on bad faith, Myers reports. In the process, Putin developed the model of corruption and oligarchy hes used to rule Russia, and enrich himself, ever since.

Putins sins in St. Petersburg were so obvious that he should have been stopped before he ever rose to national office. Its harder to spot budding authoritarianism when its wrapped in a record of competence and governing in the public interest.

Thats the story of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who made his reputation leading the western state of Gujarat. In his underappreciated book, Inside Out India and China: Local Politics Go Global, the American scholar Bill Antholis described how Modi combined the pragmatic and efficient spirit of Gujarats entrepreneurs with charismatic and potentially destructive, divisive and bellicose Hindu nationalism.

Indeed, Modis national leadership has followed his local formula from Gujarataggressive action to improve the economy, efforts to advance electrification and other services in underserved areas, and greater seriousness about climate change. (He even wrote a thoughtful book, Convenient Action: Continuity for Change, about fighting global warming in Gujarat.) But as president, Modi also has nurtured a cult of personality that has punished dissenters (including journalists) and exploited religious nationalism in ways that endanger the lives of Muslims.

Checking such relentless, successful authoritarians requires matching their relentlessness. Even removal from office may not be enough.

Take the case of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who in the 1990s was elected mayor of Istanbul, representing an Islamist party. He successfully addressed difficult problemsfrom water to curbing traffic to garbage collectionbut was removed from office after two-and-a-half years, on charges of inciting religious hatred. His career appeared to be over. Then he made a show of abandoning Islamist politics, returned to public life, and eventually won election as prime minister.

Today, commentators remark on how little Erdogans agenda has changed since he was mayor. He has made significant improvements in government services, but also is centralizing power, attacking secularism, ramping up spending (which fuels hyper-inflation), and building expensive monuments funded through corruption.

Of course, just as corruption is not the exclusive practice of authoritarians, anti-corruption can be a tool of autocracies. Look at Chinese president Xi Jinping, who made the leap to national power in 2007 when he was sent to Shanghai to clean up a corruption scandal.

Before then, as an official in other provinces, Xi tolerated corruption. In Shanghai, he saw firsthand that cleaning up malfeasance can be both good policy and a pretext for purging opponents. Since ascending to the presidency in 2013, his never-ending purges have eliminated all rivals for supremacy- and most limits on his power.

The authoritarians Ive mentioned here are very different people, but they share one common experience: All worked in contexts where everyday people had relatively little power in local government. Because of this, these budding autocrats were able to do mostly as they wished, without being confronted by citizens.

In the years since these men were in local government, its only become easier to build anti-democratic local empires. Political scientists blame a decline of political diversity around the world. Too many cities and regions are effectively controlled by one party. Highly polarized countrieslike my nation, the United Statesare full of politically monochromatic localities and states that provide the perfect breeding grounds for authoritarian extremists.

Ironically, local authoritarianism can be a bigger problem in newly democratic nations than in authoritarian ones. As countries democratize nationally, they often decentralize power and authoritycreating stronger regional and municipal governments that can become power bases for aspiring autocrats.

That is why the greatest weapon the world has against authoritarians is you, and your participation in your local government.

To challenge your local leadersor even better, to launch a new opposition party or movementis to defend democracy not just where you live, but also in your nation and our world.

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How You Can Spotand Stopthe Next Putin | Democracy Local - zocalopublicsquare.org

I work at the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, where I lead our project using open-source research methods to monitor the far right across central and eastern Europe. In the Balkans, were seeing how Serbias far-right fringes are bolstering Russias bloody invasion of Ukraine. These groups arent just helping fan the flames in support of Russias war; theyre also receiving Russian help to push their own dangerous agenda in an already fractious part of Europe.

As Russias war in Ukraine drags on, the Kremlin has some of the most disruptive and dangerous far-right forces in the Balkans on its side. In April 2022, thousands of Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade to protest against their governments support for the suspension of Russia from the United Nations Human rights council because of its invasion of Ukraine. At the rally, marchers waved Russian and Serbian flags and chanted slogans such as: Serbs and Russians brothers for ever!

The protest in the Serbian capital was organised by the far-right group Peoples Patrol and its leader, Damnjan Kneevi, who has also organised several other pro-Russian rallies. Just a few weeks later, Kneevi and another Peoples Patrol leader travelled from Serbia to Russia. They spent a week there, at the invitation of several Russian media organisations including one headed by the notorious Putin associateYevgeny Prigozhin.

Many Serbs believe Russia has long acted as a protector of Serbia and its interests; the two countries share Slavic roots, and people in both Russia and Serbia feel they have been demonised by the west. Kneevi has claimed that Russia, along with Serbia in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, has been unfairly framed as an aggressor when they are merely trying to protect their ethnic brethren. Kneevi and his friends have flooded social media with pro-Russian exhortations. They have painted themselves as the most committed defenders of Serbs from all manner of perceived outside threats. This extends to defending those who, they feel, also defend the Serbian people; its why one regional analyst stated that Serbias far right provides the most constant and intensive support for Russias invasion of Ukraine.

This support involves more than just words or rallies. In May of this year, the small neo-fascist group Serbian Action posted a video to their YouTube channel documenting a visit they had made several months before to St Petersburg. Several Serbian Action members travelled there at the invitation of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), which has been officially designated a terrorist group in the United States and Canada. In the video, the RIM leader, Denis Gariev, fires off a handgun and brags that he teaches almost 1,000 Russians a year at the movements training centre.

The day after Serbian Action posted that video, Kneevi appeared at a press conference in St Petersburg. He was accompanied by Aleksandr Lysov, the head of a Serbian-Russian cultural information centre accused of threatening anti-Putin Russians living in Serbia, as well as an activist from the Young Guard, the youth wing of Putins political party, United Russia.

What interested me wasnt so much what Kneevi said at this press conference, but where it was taking place the press centre of Patriot Media Group, a media conglomerate whose board of trustees is headed by Prigozhin. Patriot Media Group was one of the three media organisations Peoples Patrol claimed invited them to Russia (the others included the infamous Russian state media outlet RT for whom Kneevi did a studio interview and the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda).

Prigozhin is a man we at Bellingcat unfortunately know all too well. He is an ex-convict and Putin confidant subject to US sanctions and wanted by the FBI for his alleged role in Russian interference in the 2016 elections. He has earned billions of dollars from Russian state contracts and allegedly controls Wagner, the private military company linked to numerous alleged war crimes in Africa and Ukraine.

It would be a mistake to ignore the relationships between the Serbian far right and Russia as meaningless or unworthy of further attention. Human rights organisations warned earlier this year that far-right extremism in Serbia is on the rise; EuroPride, the international LGBT event scheduled to run in Belgrade this month, faced a series of violent threats from the far right and the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vui, announced it would be cancelled. Neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, where nationalist tensions threaten to tear the country apart, has elections in October.

Montenegro, which separated from Serbia in 2006, could soon also have new elections. The country continues to be plagued by disputes over its national identity, between more independence-minded Montenegrins and self-identified Serbs who want closer relations with neighbouring Serbia. Tensions withKosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and is home to a small Serb minority, remain the biggest flash pointin the region. The timing, unfortunately, is just right for Serbias far right to cause trouble if it wants to and they have friends in Russia to give them a helping hand.

And Russia has already started to help. An English-language documentary recently broadcast on RT gave a platform to Kneevi and other Serbian far-right figures to express their views unchallenged. Just as Russia is freeing the Russian world via denazification and demilitarisation, says Mia Vaci, a far-right figure long alleged to be linked to Vui and his governing Serbian Progressive party, we Serbs also have the right, through special operations, to create our own Serbian world.

We ignore the far right in the Balkans at our peril. Their ideologies are based on the same resentments and grievances that caused the Yugoslav disintegration wars of the 1990s, but theyve now found more people around the world, including Russia, willing to encourage and support them. It wouldnt be the first time the US state department claimed in a recently declassified cable that Russia has spent $300m since 2014 to try to influence politicians and others around the world, including in the Balkans. Russia may not have started this fire, but its more than happy to help stoke it.

Michael Colborne is a journalist and researcher at investigative journalism website Bellingcat. He heads Bellingcat Monitoring, a project researching and analysing the far right in central and eastern Europe.

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Putin is banking on his friends in the Balkans to help sustain his bloody war in Ukraine - The Guardian

OPED By Padma Shri KN Pandita

In an earlier statement, President Putin had said that Russia could not fight the joint resistance by the combined European powers, but Russia enjoyed superior nuclear deterrence.

US Targeted China, Russia & India Right Before SCO Summit; Vows Military Assistance To Their Arch Rivals Taiwan, Ukraine & Pakistan

In other words, he meant that if the NATO members became overwhelmingly strong to punish the Russian fighting force, Moscow would be left with only nuclear options, which meant the Third World War.

It has to be remembered that only recently have Ukrainian troops been able to push back the Russians and recapture large chunks of land in Eastern Ukraine.

The western countries have showered the Ukrainian troops with praises. Additionally, President Biden announced a package of 600 million dollars to Ukraine to refurbish its resistance forces with more sophisticated and lethal weapons.

It will be recalled that only a day or two after the conclusion of the Samarkand Summit, President Biden warned Russia not to think of using chemical and biological weapons in the ongoing war with Ukraine.

Evidently, the American intelligence agencies have made a deep probing into Russias future plans for the war.

If Ukraine can sustain its resistance to the Russian offensive, it is likely to have a bearing on the situation in Taiwan. It will serve as a booster to the US to accelerate the anti-China agenda among the pro-American chapters in Taiwan.

The Third World War scenario would mean the decisive battles in the Indian Ocean or the Chinese Sea. This does not augur well for China in the overall situation prevailing in that part of Asia.

These are genuine and pragmatic concerns for China, and she has conveyed them to Putin at a crucial meeting in Samarkand.

In the second instance, the remarks of PM Modi in the course of his bilateral sideline meeting with Putin in the context of the Ukrainian conflict are also highly significant.

Russia is a close friend of India, and their friendly relations have survived many vicissitudes of history. The west has always associated India with the impact of socialist ideology and closeness to Russia.

But the history of Russian and Indian cooperation notwithstanding, Modi very frankly spoke the meaningful sentence to Putin. He said, This is not the era of war but dialogue.

This one sentence contains a bundle of suggestions in a friendly manner. The US and the EU should understand that India may not have signed the condemnation resolution against Russia, but she has used its goodwill to impress upon Putin that war is no solution to any problem.

He repeated that dialogue, diplomacy, and democracy are the catchwords with the younger society of contemporary times. Indirectly, Modi told Putin that the option of dialogue with the Ukrainian authorities was the right option for tackling the recalcitrant Ukrainian authorities.

Diplomacy would have entailed broaching the issue with primary actors or stakeholders and those in the political landscape who assigned themselves stakes in the conflict.

And as far as democracy is concerned, the idea is a red rag to the bull. The spirit of democracy is imperishable. Putin could not convince Modi that Moscow acted right in Ukraine.

Only good and sincere friends would tell Putin of his shortcoming in Ukraine and yet remain the most important Asian ally of Russia. This explains that the relationship between India and Russia has come of age and serenity.

The question that political observers may ask is this: Is Chinas and Indias caution going to impact the future course of the Ukrainian war or not? Well, the honest answer would be that India and, for that matter, China, too, have responded to their inner conscience and conveyed it in subtle yet clear words to President Putin.

The decision rests with him. But we have also noted that in reply to Modis statement, Putin said somewhat helplessly that he is for a dialogue to resolve the deadlock, but they (meaning Ukrainian authorities) want to solve it through the use of force only.

We have often heard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying that he wants talks with the Russian President on the latters calling. He will have to give up the aggressive attitude and observe the established norms of statecraft.

The real spadework in such cases is carried out by the accredited emissaries of respective countries. The one-to-one meeting of the Heads of the Government/State is a recognized formality, and the TV channels just show the handshakes and courtesies exchanged at the highest levels.

We believe that Moscow will most likely revisit its policy and war against Ukraine and propose a ceasefire. The two sides will have to sit down in expectation of a mutually accepted formula to leave the crisis and move forward.

Sufficient clues have fortunately come out of the Summit suggesting that a revisit of the policies, plans, and agreements will be framed, keeping in mind the great threat of the Third World War consuming a large chunk of humanity in the shortest possible time.

Trading nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons as the gift of advanced technology is not the weapons with which their possessors can play. It will be self-destruction.

Yes, two questions are of utmost importance if we want normalcy to prevail in an era of surcharged emotions on regional and global levels. The UN must use its power and influence to impose a ban on proxy wars, which are at the root of regional conflicts, be it Iran and Saudi, Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan, or the US and Russia.

Secondly, a mechanism must be evolved to do away with the sanctions syndrome because it has wreaked havoc not only on the involved country but also on the vast unsuspecting humanity at large.

All sides and all groups have to show great regard for human rights and not pursue their self-made mechanism to wriggle out of the sanctions imposed. Western countries, including the US, should give desired importance to the small indications of a change one met with inSamarkand summit.

The interlocutors have to be identified to take up the mission.

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Tired Putin Hints At Ending The Ukraine War; West-Backed Zelensky Is Not Interested, Can India Be The Interlocutor? - EurAsian Times

Summary

It is 6pm in Kyiv. Here is everything you might have missed:

Four medics have been killed and two patients injured after Russian forces fired at a psychiatric hospital in the village of Strelechya, the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, has said. The facility was in the process of being evacuated and medical staff were removing patients from the hospital while under heavy fire, Syniehubov said. He added on Telegram: During the evacuation, the Russians started a massive shelling. According to preliminary data, unfortunately, 4 medical workers died, 2 patients were injured.

Vladimir Putin is failing on all of his military strategic objectives, the chief of the defence staff has said. Adm Sir Tony Radakin said the conflict was likely to grind on for a long time, despite recent successes by Ukrainian military forces. Asked about the situation in Ukraine, he told the BBCs Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: At the very outset, we said that this was a strategic error by President Putin and strategic errors lead to strategic consequences. And in this instance, its strategic failure. Putin is failing on all of his military strategic objectives. He wanted to subjugate Ukraine, thats not going to happen.

Russia has reacted to its military setbacks in the past week by increasing its missile attacks on civilian infrastructure even if they do not have any military impact, according to the latest intelligence report from the British Ministry of Defence. It says in a post on Twitter that the move is intended to destroy the morale of the Ukrainian people.

Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of provoking fighting in Kherson after a video showed clashes in the centre of the occupied Ukrainian city on Saturday evening. The Ukrainian army is leading a counter-offensive to retake the southern city, which was seized by the Russian army in the first weeks of the invasion. Russian official media Vesti-Crimea broadcast a video on Saturday evening showing an exchange of fire around two armoured vehicles near Kherson train station.

Prosecutors in an area of Ukraine where Russian forces recently retreated in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive are accusing Russia of torturing civilians in one freed village. Prosecutors in the Kharkiv region said, in an online statement, that they had found a basement where Russian forces allegedly tortured prisoners in the village of Kozacha Lopan, near the border with Russia, Associated Press reports. They released images showing a Russian military TA-57 telephone with additional wires and alligator clips attached to it. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of using the Soviet-era radio telephones as a power source to electrocute prisoners during interrogation.

Beloved Russian singer Alla Pugacheva has posted a message on her Instagram account asking the countrys justice ministry to list her as a foreign agent alongside her husband, Maxim Galkin. The post called for an end to the deaths of our boys for illusory aims that make our country a pariah and weigh down the lives of its citizens. Pugachevas message comes a day after Galkin a comedian who has repeatedly spoken out against the war with Ukraine was designated a foreign agent by Russia for political activities. Russias ministry of justice says that his source of foreign funding is from Ukraine.

The US president, Joe Biden, urged his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, not to use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in the wake of setbacks in Ukraine. Asked by CBS what he would say to Putin if he was considering using such weapons, Biden said: Dont. Dont. Dont. It would change the face of war unlike anything since world war two. Biden said the US response would be consequential, but declined to give detail.

A total of 165 ships with 3.7 m tonnes of agricultural products onboard have left Ukraine under a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to unblock Ukrainian sea ports, the Ukrainian infrastructure ministry has said. The ministry said 10 ships with 169,300 tonnes of agricultural products were due to leave Ukrainian Black Sea ports, reports Reuters.

Russias invasion of Ukraine and a global food crisis aggravated by the war will be the focus of world leaders when they convene at the United Nations in New York this week. It would be naive to think that we are close to the possibility of a peace deal, said the UN secretary general, Antnio Guterres, before the high-level meeting of the 193-member UN general assembly, which starts on Tuesday. The chances of a peace deal are minimal, at the present moment.

The Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU presidency, has called for a special international tribunal after a mass grave was discovered in Izium, a town in north-eastern Ukraine. In the 21st century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent, said Jan Lipavsk, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic. Ukrainian officials have discovered more than 440 bodies, some found with their hands tied behind their backs.

Satellite imagery has emerged of the recently discovered mass grave site near Izium. The images, taken from March to August this year and released by Maxar Technologies, show the entrance to the forest cemetery where many bodies have been discovered.

One of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants four main power lines has been repaired and is supplying the plant with electricity from the Ukrainian grid two weeks after it went down, the UN nuclear watchdog has said. Even though the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, Europes biggest nuclear power plant, have been shut down, the plant needs electricity to keep them cool.

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, told Putin on Saturday that todays time is not a time for war when the pair met during a regional Asia summit in Uzbekistan. Putin told Modi he knew of Indias concerns about the conflict, echoing language he had used with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, the day before. We will do our best to end this as soon as possible, Putin said, while accusing Kyiv of rejecting negotiations.

Speaking to reporters later, Putin vowed to continue his attack on Ukraine and warned that Moscow could ramp up its strikes on the countrys vital infrastructure if Ukrainian forces targeted facilities in Russia. Putin said the liberation of Ukraines entire eastern Donbas region remained Russias main military goal and that he saw no need to revise it. We arent in a rush, he said, after the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Samarkand.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, told leaders at the summit that efforts were being made to finalise the conflict in Ukraine through diplomacy as soon as possible. Putin told Erdoan, who has been a key broker in limited deals between Russia and Ukraine, that Moscow was keen to build closer ties with Turkey and was ready to significantly increase all exports to the country.

The security service of Ukraine said Russias federal security service (FSU) officers tortured residents in Kupiansk, a city in Ukraines Kharkiv region. The Kyiv Independent reports that when FSU officers were in then occupied Kupiansk, they tortured residents and threatened to send them to minefields and kill their families.

Updated at 11.23EDT

Key events

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Its 11pm in Kyiv. Heres where things stand:

krainian forces are refusing to discard US-provided arms, with many reverse-engineering spare parts to continue the counteroffensive against Russias invasion. Theyre not willing to scrap it, one soldier said, recalling artillery with shrapnel damage and sometimes completely worn out from firing round after round against Russian troops, Reuters reports.

The Ukrainian military said that Russia has deployed Iranian attack drones, the New York Times reported on Sunday. According to a Ukrainian military official who spoke to the New York Times, remnants of the Shahed-136 attack drones have been discovered on the ground during the counteroffensive that Ukraine launched in the northeastern regions of the country this month.

The Ukrainian military has carried out 20 airstrikes in the last 24 hours against Russian strongholds, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Kyiv Independent reported on Sunday that Ukraines Air Force has successfully targeted 15 Russian strongholds and four sites, as well as seven control points.

Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili levied heavy criticism against Russia on Sunday after the discovery of mass graves in Izium earlier this week. Zourabichvili condemned in the strongest terms the atrocities committed by Russia in Izium, adding that these war crimes must be answered by justice, the Kyiv Independent reports.

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Sunday that the mass graves discovered in Ukraine was evidence of Russias war crimes in the country. Obviously the UK and Canada have been two of the strongest countries in standing up in support of Ukraine and pushing back against Russias illegal actions, Trudeau told reporters in London where he will be attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth.

Ukrainian forces are refusing to discard US-provided arms, with many reverse-engineering spare parts to continue the counteroffensive against Russias invasion.

Reuters reports:

Some members of a roughly 50-member repair team showed reporters images of damaged U.S.-provided arms, including M777 howitzers, that in the West would have long been considered beyond the scope of repair.

Not in Ukraine.

Theyre not willing to scrap it, one soldier said, recalling artillery with shrapnel damage and sometimes completely worn out from firing round after round against Russian troops.

But Ukrainians are managing to bring these weapons back into battle, thanks to guidance from U.S. forces and manufacturing prowess by Kyiv allowing it to reverse-engineer spare parts.

Since the program began in June, more than a dozen teleconference channels have been set up with over 100 Ukrainian contacts.

But priority support is being given to the M777s and to the high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), which have been central to Ukraines counter-offensive nearly seven months since Russian forces invaded.

Combat power for Ukraine is staying at the level it is because of Americas investment in the sustainment, the soldier said.

The Ukrainian military said that Russia has deployed Iranian attack drones, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

According to a Ukrainian military official who spoke to the New York Times, remnants of the Shahed-136 attack drones have been discovered on the ground during the counteroffensive that Ukraine launched in the northeastern regions of the country this month.

The weapon is a kamikaze drone carrying a warhead of about 80 pounds that can be launched from the back of a flatbed truck, the New York Times explained.

According to Colonel Rodion Kulagin, the commander of artillery operations in the Kharkiv operations, the drone drops out from the sky without any warning.

It blew the triple-seven in half, he told the Times, referring to the drone destroying an M777 howitzer supplied by the US to the Ukrainian military. Instead of firing 100 artillery shells, its easier to release one of these drones to search for a target, he added.

The New York Times also reported Kulagin explaining that the drone is accurate enough to target a self-propelled howitzer in an area close to the turret where gunpowder stored. This in turn creates secondary explosions.

Its a very serious problem, he said, adding that without any countermeasures, the drones will destroy all our military.

Updated at 15.37EDT

The Ukrainian military has carried out 20 airstrikes in the last 24 hours against Russian strongholds, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The Kyiv Independent reported on Sunday that Ukraines Air Force has successfully targeted 15 Russian strongholds and four sites, as well as seven control points.

Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili levied heavy criticism against Russia on Sunday after the discovery of mass graves in Izium earlier this week.

Zourabichvili condemned in the strongest terms the atrocities committed by Russia in Izium, adding that these war crimes must be answered by justice, the Kyiv Independent reports.

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Sunday that the mass graves discovered in Ukraine was evidence of Russias war crimes in the country.

Obviously the UK and Canada have been two of the strongest countries in standing up in support of Ukraine and pushing back against Russias illegal actions, Trudeau told reporters in London where he will be attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth.

Those actions increasingly, clearly include war crimes, include absolutely unacceptable crimes, whether we think of what we found in Bucha or the discovery of mass graves in the reclaimed territories by Ukraine, he added.

There needs to be a proper investigation and transparency and Vladimir Putin, his supporters and the Russian military need to be held to account for the atrocities they have and are continuing to commit in Ukraine.

Updated at 13.41EDT

The first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, paid her respects to the Queen lying in state at Westminster Hall on Sunday, before a reception with the Princess of Wales at Buckingham Palace.

Updated at 13.43EDT

The top US general has cautioned that it is still unclear how Russia might react to the latest battlefield setbacks in Ukraine, calling for vigilance among US troops during a visit to a military base in Poland aiding Ukraines war effort.

The war is not going too well for Russia right now. So its incumbent upon all of us to maintain high states of readiness, alert, US army general Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Warsaw following a visit to a base hosting US troops.

Reuters was asked not to publish the name of the base or describe its location.

Milley said he was not suggesting US troops in Europe were at any increased threat, but said they had to be ready.

In the conduct of war, you just dont know with a high degree of certainty what will happen next.

Policy research organisation the Institute for the Study of War has published data suggesting Ukrainian forces are expanding positions east of the Oskil River and north of the Siverskyi Donets River that could allow them to envelop Russian troops holding the city of Lyman.

They say: The Russian defenders in Lyman still appear to consist in large part of Bars (Russian Combat Army Reserve) reservists and the remnants of units badly damaged in the Kharkiv oblast counteroffensive, and the Russians do not appear to be directing reinforcements to this area.

Updated at 12.42EDT

Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, has written an analysis piece for the Guardian on Russias underperforming military capability, and why it could lead to its downfall.

Russias military was designed to fight short, high-intensity wars. Without full national mobilisation, it is too small, its units lack the logistical enablement and its equipment is ill-suited to a protracted war. When the Russian military issued orders to its troops in the autumn of 2021, it estimated a need for them to be deployed for nine months. They are now reaching that limit. The Ukrainians, by contrast, have been organising their military since 2014 for precisely this kind of war.

Updated at 12.11EDT

Our reporters Shaun Walker and Pjotr Sauer have spoken to Ukrainian teachers resisting occupation, who say there is no way they could work for the Russians.

We have neither a moral nor legal right to demand heroism from people living under occupation. Their main goals should be to save lives and not voluntarily collaborate, said Ukraines education ombudsman. Others want to see all who collaborated punished.

Updated at 12.33EDT

It is 6pm in Kyiv. Here is everything you might have missed:

Four medics have been killed and two patients injured after Russian forces fired at a psychiatric hospital in the village of Strelechya, the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, has said. The facility was in the process of being evacuated and medical staff were removing patients from the hospital while under heavy fire, Syniehubov said. He added on Telegram: During the evacuation, the Russians started a massive shelling. According to preliminary data, unfortunately, 4 medical workers died, 2 patients were injured.

Vladimir Putin is failing on all of his military strategic objectives, the chief of the defence staff has said. Adm Sir Tony Radakin said the conflict was likely to grind on for a long time, despite recent successes by Ukrainian military forces. Asked about the situation in Ukraine, he told the BBCs Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: At the very outset, we said that this was a strategic error by President Putin and strategic errors lead to strategic consequences. And in this instance, its strategic failure. Putin is failing on all of his military strategic objectives. He wanted to subjugate Ukraine, thats not going to happen.

Russia has reacted to its military setbacks in the past week by increasing its missile attacks on civilian infrastructure even if they do not have any military impact, according to the latest intelligence report from the British Ministry of Defence. It says in a post on Twitter that the move is intended to destroy the morale of the Ukrainian people.

Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of provoking fighting in Kherson after a video showed clashes in the centre of the occupied Ukrainian city on Saturday evening. The Ukrainian army is leading a counter-offensive to retake the southern city, which was seized by the Russian army in the first weeks of the invasion. Russian official media Vesti-Crimea broadcast a video on Saturday evening showing an exchange of fire around two armoured vehicles near Kherson train station.

Prosecutors in an area of Ukraine where Russian forces recently retreated in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive are accusing Russia of torturing civilians in one freed village. Prosecutors in the Kharkiv region said, in an online statement, that they had found a basement where Russian forces allegedly tortured prisoners in the village of Kozacha Lopan, near the border with Russia, Associated Press reports. They released images showing a Russian military TA-57 telephone with additional wires and alligator clips attached to it. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of using the Soviet-era radio telephones as a power source to electrocute prisoners during interrogation.

Beloved Russian singer Alla Pugacheva has posted a message on her Instagram account asking the countrys justice ministry to list her as a foreign agent alongside her husband, Maxim Galkin. The post called for an end to the deaths of our boys for illusory aims that make our country a pariah and weigh down the lives of its citizens. Pugachevas message comes a day after Galkin a comedian who has repeatedly spoken out against the war with Ukraine was designated a foreign agent by Russia for political activities. Russias ministry of justice says that his source of foreign funding is from Ukraine.

The US president, Joe Biden, urged his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, not to use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in the wake of setbacks in Ukraine. Asked by CBS what he would say to Putin if he was considering using such weapons, Biden said: Dont. Dont. Dont. It would change the face of war unlike anything since world war two. Biden said the US response would be consequential, but declined to give detail.

A total of 165 ships with 3.7 m tonnes of agricultural products onboard have left Ukraine under a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to unblock Ukrainian sea ports, the Ukrainian infrastructure ministry has said. The ministry said 10 ships with 169,300 tonnes of agricultural products were due to leave Ukrainian Black Sea ports, reports Reuters.

Russias invasion of Ukraine and a global food crisis aggravated by the war will be the focus of world leaders when they convene at the United Nations in New York this week. It would be naive to think that we are close to the possibility of a peace deal, said the UN secretary general, Antnio Guterres, before the high-level meeting of the 193-member UN general assembly, which starts on Tuesday. The chances of a peace deal are minimal, at the present moment.

The Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU presidency, has called for a special international tribunal after a mass grave was discovered in Izium, a town in north-eastern Ukraine. In the 21st century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent, said Jan Lipavsk, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic. Ukrainian officials have discovered more than 440 bodies, some found with their hands tied behind their backs.

Satellite imagery has emerged of the recently discovered mass grave site near Izium. The images, taken from March to August this year and released by Maxar Technologies, show the entrance to the forest cemetery where many bodies have been discovered.

One of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants four main power lines has been repaired and is supplying the plant with electricity from the Ukrainian grid two weeks after it went down, the UN nuclear watchdog has said. Even though the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, Europes biggest nuclear power plant, have been shut down, the plant needs electricity to keep them cool.

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, told Putin on Saturday that todays time is not a time for war when the pair met during a regional Asia summit in Uzbekistan. Putin told Modi he knew of Indias concerns about the conflict, echoing language he had used with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, the day before. We will do our best to end this as soon as possible, Putin said, while accusing Kyiv of rejecting negotiations.

Speaking to reporters later, Putin vowed to continue his attack on Ukraine and warned that Moscow could ramp up its strikes on the countrys vital infrastructure if Ukrainian forces targeted facilities in Russia. Putin said the liberation of Ukraines entire eastern Donbas region remained Russias main military goal and that he saw no need to revise it. We arent in a rush, he said, after the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Samarkand.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, told leaders at the summit that efforts were being made to finalise the conflict in Ukraine through diplomacy as soon as possible. Putin told Erdoan, who has been a key broker in limited deals between Russia and Ukraine, that Moscow was keen to build closer ties with Turkey and was ready to significantly increase all exports to the country.

The security service of Ukraine said Russias federal security service (FSU) officers tortured residents in Kupiansk, a city in Ukraines Kharkiv region. The Kyiv Independent reports that when FSU officers were in then occupied Kupiansk, they tortured residents and threatened to send them to minefields and kill their families.

Updated at 11.23EDT

Critical Threats and the Institute for the Study of War have created an interactive map that shows the progress Ukrainian military forces have made in taking back Russian-occupied territory.

Peter Pomerantsev is an author and senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and writes for us today to argue that Despite his defeats, Putin still shapes our perceptions. Lets fight him at his own game:

The Ukrainians have (again) done what nobody believed they could. They have (again) defeated the supposedly mighty Russia on the battlefield, shown up the underlying incompetence and moral rot of the Putin system.

It took them just six days to take back whole swaths of territory in north-eastern Ukraine that it took Russia six months to conquer. The Russian military, political and propaganda elites are all blaming each other: rifts that usually rumble under the surface are now visible to all. Putin looks shaken.

Now its time for us to act as well. Not just by increasing help to Ukraine on the battlefield (which is paramount), but also by advancing along the other fronts in this conflict: energy, information, finance and diplomacy.

Read more: Despite his defeats, Putin still shapes our perceptions. Lets fight him at his own game

Our colleague Luke Harding reports from Izium:

Standing in the gloom, Maksim Maksimov pointed to the spot where he was tortured with electric shocks. Russian soldiers took him from his cell in the basement of Iziums police station.

They sat him on an office chair and attached a zig-zag crocodile clip to his finger. It was connected by cable to an old-fashioned Soviet military field telephone.

And then it began. A soldier cranked the handle, turning it faster and faster. This sent an excruciating pulse through Maksimovs body.

I collapsed. They pulled me upright. There was a hood on my head. I couldnt see anything. My legs went numb. I was unable to hear in my left ear, he recalled. Then they did it again. I passed out. I came round 40 minutes later back in my cell.

Read more here: Izium: after Russian retreat, horrors of Russian occupation are revealed

Read the original post:

Russia-Ukraine war: medics killed by Russian strike during evacuation of hospital, says Kharkiv governor as it happened - The Guardian

On a crisp North Carolina morning, an eastern pine forest is being clear cut in a precisely choreographed hydraulic ballet. Pincers grab 500-pound, 30-foot tree trunks, run them through trimmers and auto-cutters and then stack the nearly uniform logs onto flatbed trucks which take them to mills to be cut into construction boards. Grappling claws scoop up the remains of the harvestbranches, limbs and scrapsand drop them into open-topped dump trucks headed for one of 10 plants run by Enviva, to be chopped, dried, pulverized and pressed into two-inch wood pellets.

Jamel Toppin for Forbes

You could burn those pellets in your backyard grillif you could buy them, which you cant. Were already sold out, boasts John Keppler, Envivas cofounder and CEO. Earlier this year, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company locked in take-or-pay contracts to sell German and other European customers millions of tons of pellets over the next 15 years at upwards of $250 a ton, a record price that now yields gross margins of $43 a ton, up 14% over last year. The pellets fuel plants that might have previously relied on Russian coal or natural gas. In Europe, natural gas prices have jumped ten-fold in two years to the equivalent of $60 per thousand cubic feet (versus $8.25/mcf in America). Theres never been a better time to be in the pellet business, Keppler says.

While Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine has produced a windfall for Enviva, its no overnight success. Keppler, 50, has spent 15 years building it into the worlds largest producer of industrial grade pellets, with $1 billion in annual sales and a current stock market cap of $4.65 billion. The company still runs a net loss after depreciation and interest but expects EBITDA to more than double this year to $250 million. Keppler is aiming to build ten more plants over the next five years, doubling current annual output of 6.2 million tons of pellets. Every ton we produce is a ton of coal that stays in the ground, he says.

Many environmentalists doubt thats a good tradeoff. In fact, burning wood pellets emits more carbon dioxide for the same amount of energy than does coal. The pellets are considered green only because biomass is renewable. The catch? It takes decades for newly planted trees to sequester the carbon dioxide released by burning their predecessors. The best strategy to lower atmospheric CO2 levels is to preserve and expand forests, rather than destroy them and use trees as fuel, says climate change expert Robert Musil, CEO of the Rachel Carson Council.

Theres never been a better time to be in the pellet business.

The European Union Parliament, concerned by the loss of old growth forests amid rampant growth in pellet combustion, voted in September to reduce pellet subsidies and phase down the portion of wood-based fuel counted as renewable. While competing for a bigger piece of a potentially smaller pie in Europe, in America, Enviva is enthused by the new Inflation Reduction Act, which includes tax credits for burning pellets for electricity.

Keppler insists that Enviva never turns whole trees into pelletsexcept those knocked down by hurricanes. Instead, it buys scraps that used to get pulped into newsprint for now dead or shrunken newspapers. Enviva says it only works with landowners who replant treesnot those clearing land for development. If it doesnt go back to forest, we wont buy it, declares Lauren Killian, a 32-year-old sustainability forester at Enviva.

Keppler first became fascinated by renewable resources at 30. His career had been largely on hold for six years as he beat stage 4 Hodgkins lymphoma and he was recharging with an MBA at the University of Virginia. As a class project, he and a couple of B-school pals worked up a business plan for a rice milling plant that wanted to power its operations by burning high-silica husks of rice kernels in a specialized gasifier. After working a few years at other jobs (Keppler at AOL), they decided to give gasifier plants a go. After building plants in the Dominican Republic and Alabama, Keppler and Enviva President Thomas Meth branched into another variety of biomassa project to enable a Belgian lumber mill to power its main operations by pressing sawdust into pellets.

Then came their Eureka moment: instead of doing one-off projects, they could build a whole pellet business based around more than 50 million acres of pine forests stretching from Virginia through the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

Jamel Toppin for Forbes

But they needed more capital. In 2010, Keppler and Meth turned to private equity shop Riverstone Holdings, which specializes in energy. With the new money, they bought a small pellet-making plant in Amory, Mississippi, which was already selling its output to Europe. They got it running 24/7, and tripled production. They sold and spun off those early gasification plant assets to focus on pellets. They tapped higher-risk capital (from investors like Jeffrey Ubben of Inclusive Capital) to finance new pellet plants and launched a master limited partnership to buy the plants once they were built.

Enviva became a publicly traded MLP in 2015 and this year converted to a traditional corporation in a bid to market itself as a pure environmental play for ESG investors. Riverstone and its investment funds still own 42% of the stock, which now trades at just under $70 and pays a generous dividend of $3.62 a share.

One lesson Keppler says he learned from Riverstone: dont turn a spade of dirt for a new plant until its output is fully contracted. He sees no problem inking enough orders to sell the output of the ten more mills he wants to build or finding a spot for each plant where theres already enough tree harvesting going on within 75 miles to keep it in wood scraps. Were symbiotic to that (harvesting) activity, were not driving any of it, he says.

Competitors are catching on. Last year, private equity giant Apollo Global invested in Estonian pellet maker Granuul (Europes biggest), which has acquired a handful of plants in the east Texas pine forests. Keppler says that with zero excess liquidity in world pellet supply, he welcomes new competition as affirmation that the business has a future. This is a monopsony, he says. Theres thousands of sellers (of wood scrap), very few buyers. For now.

See the original post:

How Putin's Invasion Of Ukraine Produced A Windfall For Enviva's Wood Pellets Business - Forbes

Ukraines major western allies have yet to sign up to establish a tribunal to try Vladimir Putin and his inner circle for the crime of aggression, wanting to leave space for future relations with Russia, according to Ukraines top officials.

Its big politics. On the one hand, countries publicly condemn the aggression but on the other, they are putting their foot in the closing door on relations with Russia so that it doesnt close completely, said Andriy Smyrnov, deputy head of Ukraines presidential administration, who is leading the countrys effort to establish the international tribunal.

They are attempting to keep some space for diplomatic manoeuvres, said Smyrnov. We know that agreements with Russia are not worth the paper they are written on.

His claims come as the US president, Joe Biden, said on Monday that Russia should not be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, something Ukrainian officials and some US politicians had pushed for. Russia had previously said such a designation would mean Washington had crossed the point of no return.

Ukrainian officials say that since April, they have been trying to convince their western allies to establish an ad hoc tribunal which would hold Russias senior leadership responsible for the crime of aggression for invading Ukraine. Aggression is viewed as the supreme crime under international law because without the transgression of borders during an invasion, subsequent war crimes would not have been committed.

So far only the Baltic states and Poland have pledged support for the tribunal, said Ukraines officials. We are expecting broader support, said Ukraines prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin. For us, the support of the UK and the US is very important as well as the rest of the civilised world, said Smyrnov.

The UKs newly elected prime minister, Liz Truss, told Times Radio in May, when she was foreign secretary, that she would consider supporting the tribunal. The Council of Europe is due to discuss support for such a measure on 13 September.

At an event in Brussels on Monday, Andriy Yermak chief adviser to Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked why there was a delay in creating the tribunal and said some European officials seemed convinced the international criminal court (ICC) was enough.

At the same event, the European commissioner for justice, Didier Reynders, said he was open to the idea, but talked mainly about help the EU is giving to compile war crimes which can be referred to the ICC.

Ukraine favours a one-off international tribunal to try the Russian leadership for aggression, which is not within the ICCs jurisdiction. The court is set to bring cases of war crimes which require prosecutors to identify the direct perpetrators of a crime and then trace the command structure upwards, making it difficult to reach the top echelons of the Russian regime.

Western allies have, however, been reluctant to move to try Putin and other senior figures, an act that would probably end all relations. Ukraine believes this is an indication that, despite the scale of atrocities and public declarations against Russia, some of its allies envisage possible negotiations with Russias current leadership.

It will be like trying the concentration camp directors and letting Hitler and his team walk free, said Oleh Gavrysh, part of Smyrnovs team in the presidential office. During the Nuremberg trials after the second world war, Nazi leaders were tried for the crime of aggression, which was then known as the crime against peace.

Ukraines officials say the case would not need much investigation and would act as a straightforward mechanism to ensure the Kremlins decision makers face responsibility since the fact that the act of aggression took place was overwhelmingly accepted by a vote at the UN general assembly and has been supported by a resolution of the European parliament. It has also been repeatedly admitted by Putin and his circle.

The legal arm of the Open Society Foundations has drawn up a preliminary indictment of Putin and seven of his closest allies for the crime of aggression. It said it hoped the document can demonstrate the feasibility of such a tribunal.

When you help the ICC, you donate to the independent judicial authority and you are not linked somehow to the result, said Kostin, Ukraines chief prosecutor. When you support [a] tribunal, you act as a state, its a political act and not all of them, at the moment, are ready to politically support this.

He added: Russia is like terra incognita (unexplored territory) for many of them and some of them want to keep some room to, if not be friends again, but to have some relations, which I dont understand and no Ukrainians will understand.

Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning

Some states have viewed the idea of the tribunal with scepticism because Putin and his men would probably be tried in absentia, said Smyrnov.

The main thing I want to say to the sceptic countries is that the creation of this tribunal is not a question of symbolism, said Smyrnov.

It makes no difference if Putin is personally present at this tribunal. [If] the majority of civilised countries in the world sign this international agreement to establish the tribunal we will narrow down and limit the international allies of Putin.

If Putins circle is narrowed down to North Korea and Syria that will be very good and if [Putin] dies in his own country labelled as an international criminal, that will be concrete punishment.

See the original post:

West reluctant to put Putin on trial, say Ukrainian officials - The Guardian

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled Russian businessman, has called on Russians still inside the country to launch a wave of sabotage against state structures, with the aim of derailing Vladimir Putins war in Ukraine and destabilising his government.

Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in jail between 2003 and 2013 and now lives in London, said Putins invasion had completely changed the agenda for Russias political opposition, and claimed that armed resistance may play a role at some point in the future.

We need to explain to people what they can do, persuade them that they should do it, and also help people if as a result they end up in a dangerous situation, Khodorkovsky told the Guardian.

He said potential actions should depend on each persons tolerance for risk, and could range from painting anti-war graffiti in the streets to sabotaging railway deliveries linked to the war or burning down conscription offices.

But we are very clearly against terrorist methods that harm unarmed people, he said, criticising the killing of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Russian imperialist ideologue, last month, which was claimed without any evidence by a hitherto unknown group of Russian partisans.

Khodorkovsky was speaking in his first interview about his new book, The Russia Conundrum, which is out later this week. Part memoir and part analysis of Putins years in office, the book lays out a template for western states on how to deal with Moscow.

Khodorkovsky has one of the most remarkable personal stories of post-Soviet Russia, rising from economic beginnings in the Youth Communist League during Mikhail Gorbachevs reforms in the late 1980s to become Russias richest businessperson through his chairmanship of Yukos oil company.

In the book, Khodorkovsky describes his early meetings with Putin, which he left convinced that the new Russian president was an ideological ally. His technique is to look at you and mirror what you are saying Hes a chameleon who leaves everyone thinking hes on their side, he writes.

Looking back, he admits he completely misread Putin. I wasnt sharp enough to see it. He has that professional KGB skill of adapting to his interlocutor, but he also just has a personal talent for it Back then, he didnt feel stable in his position and he didnt want to create enemies who would unite against him. Of course he never had any liberal views.

In 2003, Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges widely seen as political, after he publicly criticised government corruption during a meeting with Putin, and promised to fund opposition parties. His arrest was seen as one of the first milestones in Putins gradual tightening of the screws over the past two decades.

Khodorkovsky said Putins decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine had shocked him anew, and completely changed his views on how best to oppose the regime.

Of course, [the invasion] was an absolutely fundamental moment. My impressions and feelings before and after 24 February are completely different, he said.

All four of Khodorkovskys grandparents were either Ukrainian or spent time living in Ukraine, and as a young child, he used to spend summers at his great-grandmothers house near Kharkiv. Nevertheless, he always identified as Russian.

It always felt normal, nothing to be ashamed of to be Russian. Now every time you say youre Russian, there is an internal discomfort, he said.

Like many Russians, Khodorkovsky has had arguments in recent months that have ended longstanding friendships. He said even among friends who supported him through his years of imprisonment, some had turned out to be fans of the Ukraine invasion.

Imagine, you know people since you were both seven years old, and now youre both nearly 60 and you just cant speak to them, he said.

Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning

However, he also said it was important for the west to focus on the many Russians who did not support Putins regime or the war in Ukraine. He is strongly against the policy being floated in some European capitals of a full ban on tourist visas for Russians.

The west has ideological allies inside Russia, who think that Russia should develop on a European path, he said.

If Putin lives another 10 or 15 years it would really lower the number of European oriented Russians, and I dont think this is good for anyone except Putin.

During his decade in London, Khodorkovsky has remained an active commentator on issues inside Russia, and funded various civil society movements through his Open Russia foundation, which was ruled an undesirable organisation by Russian courts back in 2017 and ceased operations.

He was one of many opposition figures to address the so-called Congress of Free Russia, which took place in Lithuania last week and aimed to come up with a coordinated platform for opposition to Putin. But critics say much of the opposition is now disconnected from life inside the country. Associates of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny declined to take part in the Lithuania congress, dismissing it as a meaningless talking shop. For now, it is hard to see a mass opposition movement being possible inside Russia.

Khodorkovsky said that, sooner or later, Putins regime would fall. One key element in this will be Ukraine winning the war, he hopes. Then, Russia should be reformatted as a loose parliamentary federation. There was a path to this outcome that did not involve bloodshed, he claimed, but its rather unlikely.

The most important thing, he said, was for the west not to write Russia off completely, so that when the crunch moment did come, there would be more chance of post-Putin Russia being liberal and pro-western.

This is a nightmare, but this nightmare does not mean that Russia and Europe have separated for ever. Its extremely important that in this difficult emotional background, we keep a sound mind, pragmatism and a vision of the future, of a democratic, European Russia, he said.

The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell for Putins Power Gambit and How to Fix It by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, with Martin Sixsmith, will be published on 8 September by WH Allen, 20

View post:

Exiled Russian calls on those still in country to sabotage Putins war - The Guardian

Declarations

In the early morning of the first day of the war on Feb. 24, President Vladimir Putin defined the objectives of the countrys "special operation" as "protecting the inhabitants of Donbas, demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine," and "bringing to justice those who have committed innumerable bloody crimes."

Continuing a Soviet tradition the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and Afghanistan in December 1979 Putin said that he had "decided on a special military operation" in response to a request from the leaders of Donbas. And he stressed that "Russia has no plans to occupy Ukrainian territories.

Two and a half months later, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complimented his boss, saying that the special military operation was designed to put an end to the reckless expansion and the reckless course of total U.S. domination." Four months later he corrected Putin: "the geographical objectives of the 'special operation' have changed. Now it is not only the DNR and LNR [Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Republics], but also a number of other territories." And one of the generals even issued the enigmatic statement that "control over the South of Ukraine is another path to Transnistria [a Moldovan break-away state supported by Russia], where facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population are also being observed."

Ultimate goals multiplied in the statements of various Russian officials, from security chief Nikolai Patrushev and parliament chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, Sergei Lavrov and presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, and Putin himself. Now they included "preventing war from starting on the territory of Ukraine"; "restoring the statehood of the LNR and DNR within the borders of 2014; and "achieving a guarantee of Ukraine's real neutral status."

The "demilitarization" of Ukraine? In the six months of war Ukraine has received the most modern Western-made weapons worth tens of billions of dollars that it did not have before. Just the latest tranche for weapons, air defense systems, surface-to-air missiles, radars and artillery from the U.S. government was valued at $2.98 billion.

Denazification of Ukraine? It seems that no one except the Russian Chekists doing reconnaissance has seen them, and if someone else did see some Nazis, there were about as many of them in Ukraine as there are on Moscows Pushkin Square on Adolf Hitler's birthday. None of the dozens of journalists from around the world who broadcast their reports from Ukraine have met any Nazis or fascists. But the rhetoric from various Russian official and quasi-official speakers makes us think that some of the thousands of recordings of Hitlers speeches were put to good use.

Protecting the Russian-speaking population of the eastern and southern regions? Where were they protected in the almost completely destroyed city of Mariupol, where more than 89% of the population considered Russian their spoken language? Or in Kharkiv, which has been mercilessly bombed for week after week, killing civilians, and where 95% of the population speak (spoke?) Russian? Or Mykolaiv, where over 50% of the population, according to the census, speak Russian as their mother tongue, and which is being destroyed by cluster bombs, according to a Philadelphia Inquire reporter who was just there? A curious defense strategy: pile up the corpses of the people youre defending.

Putin, and Peskov after him, called the goal of the military operation the restoration of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics to their 2014 borders. Today Russian troops control almost all of the Luhansk region and less than 60 percent of the Donetsk. Judging by reports from the fronts, this situation is not going to change any time soon.

It certainly doesnt look like it. A year before the war, in February 2021, there were 4,650 soldiers and officers under NATO command, and now there are almost ten times as many 40,000. In the near future, the number of NATO troops will increase to 300,000. This, military analysts say, is the largest increase in NATO strength since the end of the Cold War. The border between Russia and NATO countries also doubled after Finland and Sweden joined the alliance from 1,207 to 2,575 km.

And now the cost. According to American intelligence, the irrecoverable losses of the Russian Armed Forces in the six months of the war amounted to 70-80,000: 15-20,000 dead (during the 9 years and 2 months of the Afghan war about 15,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed), and 60,000 wounded and captured (in Afghanistan over 110 months about 35,000).

Over the six months of war, the Russian army has lost 3-4,000 tanks and armored personnel carriers. Almost all the countrys high-precision weapons have been used, and the production of new missiles is held up because they cant get microchips and semiconductors, which are under sanctions. Anti-ship missiles and Soviet Grads, which have a range of several hundred meters, are being used for strikes.

The shortage of hardware has forced the Russian army to scavenge for weapons, transfer them by quasi-trade ships from the military base in Syria, buy drones from Iran, and even consider North Korea's offer to buy artillery from them.

The situation with manpower is even worse. Due to their heavy losses, Russia is carrying out voluntary mobilization. According to various estimates, 30-35,000 volunteers have been sent to training camps with subsequent deployment in the active army. Soldiers are also being recruited from high-security prisons and deployed in private security companies. Battalions that carried out peacekeeping duties in Nagorno-Karabakh and troops from de facto annexed South Ossetia are also being sent to the front.

Each day of the war costs taxpayers about $500 million. In July, Finance Ministry statistics showed a federal budget deficit of 892 billion rubles, a drop of 22.5% in oil and gas revenues despite high energy prices, and a nearly 30% drop in revenue from tax collection. The expected loss of GDP by the end of the year is 8%, with a further contraction of the economy over the course of a year and a half or two years. These are the calculations for the summer of 2022, when many private Russian banks can still to conduct transactions with the rest of the world and the country is not cut off from SWIFT. But there can be no doubt that the West will choke the Russian economy before it begins to be choked by its own declining level of technological development, and the Russian military-industrial complex will no longer a threat to Europe and the world.

An investigation by Washington Post journalists indicates that Putins initial goal was to totally occupy all of Ukraine.

This seems strange, given that Stratfor military analysts played out five or six scenarios for Russia's war with Ukraine back in 2015 and concluded that the Russian Armed Forces would need between 91,000 and 135,000 troops just to seize the so-called left bank of Ukraine and an equal number to hold the occupied territories. The total is 182,000 to 270,000 troops needed. Military analyst Alexander Goltz wrote in a 2014 article for The New Times that Russia would need at least 100,000 troops to hold southeastern Ukraine alone. Note that both analyses came out before the Ukrainian Armed Forces were reformed and equipped with the most modern weapons.

Today there are approximately 170,000 Russian soldiers and officers on the Ukrainian fronts, and 20% of Ukrainian territory is occupied. A simple extrapolation shows that Russia would need about a million men to occupy and hold the entire country. Meanwhile, Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin signed an order to increase the army by 137,000 starting on January 1, 2023.

My Moscow sources who met with Putin on the eve of the military operation do not believe that the Federal Security Service deceived the Russian president by convincing him that everything was ready by Feb. 24 for a quick capture of Kyiv or a blitzkrieg. This was much discussed in the first months of the war and recently covered by the Washington Post.

First of all, they said that in the week before operation began, Putin listened to a variety of people, both those who supported the war and those who opposed it. It is highly unlikely that Chekists or army officers gave him false information, but they probably gave him the information that he wanted to see.

Secondly, they say that there was no plan for the army to occupy the entire country. The goal was to eliminate President Vladimir Zelensky (or force him to leave the country), and then, the KGB officers thought, there would be a domino effect: mayors and regional leaders would either run or swear allegiance to Russia in droves. The logic was as follows: Yanukovich, a "tough guy" with experience of prison and gangster capitalism, was so frightened by the Maidan demonstrations away in 2014 that he fled the country. So what could anyone expect from "that clown Zelensky"? The fact that Zelensky did not leave, did not surrender, did not ask for peace came as a great surprise to Putin: the habit of thinking that the world is run like it is in Russia and that politicians everywhere are a priori greedy and opportunistic has once again let the Kremlin down.

Then what does Putin want? "To tear Ukraine to pieces," said a source at the top of the Russian political elite. "But now I think the Kremlin is ready to codify the status quo," said another. That is, Putin is ready for peace talks concerning a map in which 20% of Ukrainian territory is controlled by Russian troops.

I am often asked why there is no widespread anti-war protest in Russia. My answer is to cite the figures quoted by OVD-Info. More than 16,000 people have been detained and over 20,000 cases were opened under Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences ("Violation of the established order of organizing or holding meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches or pickets").

Almost every day the few surviving regional websites report that in one place a man with a "No to War" T-shirt came outside and was immediately handcuffed; and in another place a woman held up a "Putin is a war criminal" banner and was, of course, taken away; or even that in a third place a person held up a Mir (Peace) state credit card and was taken in for protesting.

In recent months 3003 people were convicted of committing misdemeanors under laws of military censorship for "discrediting the army" and hundreds have been charged with "intentionally spreading deliberately false information. What false information did The New Times, for example, disseminate, for which it received four administrative penalties? We wrote about the bombing of Kharkiv, Odesa and Mykolaiv. But since the information the outlet published had not been published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the judge concluded that it hadn't happened. Besides, according to the prosecution, as early as Feb. 24, the Commander-in-Chief said that a special military operation was being conducted in order to protect Russia from an invasion ... from the territory of Ukraine.

According to lawyer and human rights activist Pavel Chikov, 85 criminal cases have been opened to date for "discrediting the army. A certain unspoken rule has been established for well-known people: first, the authorities provide three "administrative cases," followed by a window of 3-4 weeks for the person to leave, and if he/she does not leave, there is a search just before 6 a.m. and then arrest.

This was the case, for example, with Ilya Yashin, Marina Ovsyannikova, and Evgeny Roizman. Alexei Gorinov, a municipal deputy in the Krasnoselsky District, did not get an administrative conviction. He was immediately sentenced to a criminal offense for "military fakes" and sentenced to seven years in prison.

So, the first and foremost reason for the lack of large-scale anti-war protest is fear, which had been the main tool of the KGB during the long years of Soviet power.

When I asked people at a market in Tver, What do you think of the special military operation, only unequivocal supporters replied. Everyone else either declined to answer or slipped behind phrases like, we don't know everything" or "who knows who started it? People who agree to speak in a pre-arranged place asked not to specify their profession or place of work since "the town is small and theyll figure it out.

In Pskov, Pskovskaya Guberniya journalists and Yabloko activists were beaten up as early as March 5. After that, many well-known people in the city left for the neighboring Baltic states. The ones who stayed behind dont even post on social networks, leave alone take part in any street actions.

In Novgorod, in front of the hotel where I was staying which I had intentionally not booked in advance there was a large black SUV from which photographs were very obviously taken of all the people Id arranged to meet. They don't talk to strangers about the war there, and if they do agree to answer questions, its because they have a relative in, say, Kharkiv, and they speak with horror about what is happening.

In Serpukhov, none of the people interviewed agreed to speak under their real name. They are afraid of losing their jobs, although one said confidentially that he and a friend agreed that if they are forcibly mobilized, they will immediately surrender to the Ukrainian armed forces.

The second reason for civil passivity is the lack of leaders.

Some like Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza are already in jail, while others many tens of thousands went into exile in the early weeks of the war. People live by example: if celebrities and well-known people have left, I was told, then it means "we will be trampled. They try to find Polish, Baltic, or Jewish roots and leave.

Finally, the restriction on access to information plays an important role. Since the beginning of the war the General Prosecutor's Office and the courts have blocked about 7,000 websites on the basis of laws about military censorship; all independent mass media, central and regional, agencies, foundations are blocked without exception; entire editorial boards have emigrated from the country. Hundreds of politicians, journalists, and public figures have been given the vile label of "foreign agent" in my case, for the money earned from a YouTube channel. At the same time, the number of VPN downloads has risen sharply by 25 times! since the beginning of the war. In July 25 million Russians were using VPNs. In other words, Russians dont only have access to propaganda television channels; they can find alternative information on the Internet.

This does not make life any easier: a whole range of websites, services and banks, from state services to Yandex cards to Kommersant and RBC sites, do not work if the VPN is turned on, phones heat up and their batteries drain at an alarming rate. But the main problem is something else.

During the six months of the war, I did not meet a single person who was more or less well-known, or high-ranking, or rich, who openly supported the war. I was told, however, that one former deputy prime minister and now head of a state corporation came to the offices of the Presidential Administration wearing a black T-shirt with a defiant "Z" on his chest. Whether this person was trolling the administration or wearing the T-shirt as a sign of eternal loyalty remains unknown.

Another source began his conversation with a statement: "The election of a retired KGB officer as president was a mistake, it should never happen again. I didnt argue the point, of course, but it would have been better if this realization had come 22 years ago. A third source insisted we talk on a balcony and stand so close that we were practically embracing. The fourth was so afraid that the Chekists would tap our conversation that he suggested we meet in a restaurant a couple of dozen kilometers from Moscow. The fifth repeated several times that "society has completely failed to thoroughly consider the implications of using Novichok against opponents." Apparently the terror that the door handle of your luxury palace or car might be smeared with a military nerve agent never leaves many of the top Russian ruling elite for a moment. That fifth source also complained bitterly that he could not use his private plane. "All planes immediately stopped getting software updates. Of course, we could ask a young man with a black briefcase to come in and hack the software. But I asked the pilot of my plane, Could there be a glitch with the system when we're in the air? Of course, he replied. We have to fly Aeroflot, although even their software was probably updated by the same young man with the same briefcase."

I asked a variety of people what percentage of the top Russian ruling class supported the war. The answers ranged from a low of 10% to a high of 30%. Hundreds if not thousands of people at the top have lost millions and billions of dollars, expensive real estate in delightful European countries and the United States because of sanctions and/or the collapse of the stock market. All they get for their loss is endless lamentations from wives and mistresses that "living in this Russia" was not part of the deal. Children studying at Western universities and boarding schools in Britain, Switzerland, and the United States were forced to return to Russia when their educational institutions refused to accept their parents' toxic money.

That said, people mentioned the names of a couple of billionaires who, despite the sanctions and huge personal losses, called for "striking" Ukraine with nuclear weapons. There is also grumbling in the middle stratum of power brokers, who have lost a lot in mutual funds and especially in cryptocurrency.

No one can predict how the political situation in Russia will develop now. Some give the regime until the spring of 2023, others predict a further intensification of repression in the coming months and are confident that the regime has enough strength to survive another ten years. They insist that the upcoming 2024 elections and the next round wont change a thing.

I'm not so sure. I'm not sure that Putin's ruling class, which is made up of dollar millionaires and billionaires and is used to making money in Russia and spending it all over the world, will agree to live and die in a cage.

But we shall see.

This article was first published in Russian in The New Times.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

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Six Months of War: What Putin Wanted; What Putin Got - The Moscow Times

Vladimir Putin is "utterly deluded" if he thinks he can succeed "by blackmailing or bullying" Britain, Boris Johnson said in his farewell speech.

Speaking outside Downing Street in his last hours as Prime Minister he credited the Government for its response to the war in Ukraine.

He said: "People who organised those prompt, early supplies of weapons to the heroic Ukrainian armed forces, an action that may very well have helped change the course of the biggest European war for 80 years.

"And because of the speed and urgency of what you did, everybody involved in this government, to get this economy moving again from July last year despite all the opposition, all the naysayers. We have and will continue to have that economic strength to give people the cash they need to get through this energy crisis that has been caused by Putin's vicious war.

"And I know that Liz Truss and this compassionate Conservative Government will do everything we can to get people through this crisis. And this country will endure it and we will win."

Originally posted here:

Liberation of key checkpoint shows Putin's forces are being pushed back - Express