Category Archives: Russia

Since the beginning of Russias all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Indian government, and large segments of the Indian public, have firmly been on Putins side. Hashtags like #IStandWithPutin and #istandwithrussia trended on Indian social media, and the Indian government demonstrated perhaps most notably by refusing to support UN resolutions condemning the invasion that it is not willing to jeopardise its strong ties with Russia over Putins actions in Ukraine.

Indias approach to the situation in Ukraine is hardly surprising or atypical. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties following Indias independence in 1947, relations between Moscow and New Delhi have been shaped by a high degree of political and strategic trust. Across the years, Russia and India routinely took similar stances and supported each other on contentious international issues.

From the very beginning, Moscow saw its alliance with India as essential for offsetting American and Chinese dominance in Asia. And India always enjoyed the leverage that support from a major power like Russia provided in international politics.

In 1961, after India used its military to end Portuguese colonial sovereignty over Goa, Daman and Diu, for example, the US, the UK, France, and Turkey put forth a resolution condemning India and calling upon its government to withdraw its troops immediately. But the Soviet Union opposed the proposal.

In 1971, India and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation. The treaty formalised Indias alliance with what was then a superpower and arguably ensured its preeminencein South Asia.

The Soviet Union and later Russias support for India on the issue of Kashmir has also been unrelenting and politically significant. In 1955, declaring support for Indian sovereignty over Kashmir, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said, We are so near that if ever you call us from the mountain tops we will appear at your side. Since then, Moscow has been a bulwark against international intervention in Kashmir.

The Soviet Union vetoed UN Security Council resolutions in 1957, 1962 and 1971 that called for international intervention in Kashmir, insisting that it is a bilateral issue that needs to be solved through negotiations between India and Pakistan. And it took a similar stance on the Indo-Pak conflict in general. Such a stance was appreciated across the political spectrum in India.

In 1978, then Foreign Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee a founding member of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who served as Indias prime minister between 1998 and 2004 for example, put aside his ideological differences with the Soviet Union, and greeted a Soviet delegation to India saying, our countryfound the only reliable friendin the Soviet Union alone.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has worked to maintain its special relationship with India.

In 2000, Russias President Vladimir Putin and then Prime Minister Vajpayee signed a Declaration of Strategic Partnership. In 2010, marking a decade of this strategic partnership, both countries signed the Special and Strategic Partnership. As part of this special partnership, Russia reaffirmed its pro-India stance on Kashmir.In 2019, when India scrapped Article 370 of its constitution that gave Jammu and Kashmir special status, the Modi government faced severe criticism in the international arena, but Russia once again deemed this to be an internal matter for India.

In January 2020, following a China-led push for international intervention in Kashmir, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russias first deputy permanent representative to the UN, tweeted, UNSC discussed Kashmir in closed consultations. Russia firmly stands for the normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan. We hope that differences between them will be settled through bilateral efforts.

About the same time, after envoys of several countries announced their intention to visit Kashmir, the Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev refused to do so. He said, I do not feel there is a reason for me to travel. This is an internal matter belonging to the Constitution of India This is not an issue for Russia. Those who believe that this is an issue, those who are concerned about the situation in Kashmir, those who doubt the Indian policies in Kashmir can travel and see for themselves. We never put it in doubt.

New Delhi may not have the political clout that comes with being a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but since entering into a strategic partnership with the Soviet Union soon after independence, it has done everything it can to show its support for Moscow in the international arena.

In 1956, for example, India refrained from publicly condemning the Soviet Unions violent suppression of the Hungarian revolution this despite Indias then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru being critical of Moscows actions in private.

More than a decade later, in 1968, when Soviet forces invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave a disapproving speech in the lower house of the Indian parliament but refrained from criticising Moscow on an international platform. India abstained from a subsequent vote on a resolution condemning the invasion.

When the Soviet Unionentered Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up the new pro-Soviet regime, many in India including Prime Minister Charan Singh strongly opposed the invasion. However, having been the beneficiary of many Soviet vetoes across the decades, India once again abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly resolutioncondemning the Soviet Union. It was the onlynon-aligned country to do so.

Maintaining this pro-Moscow voting record in the 2000s, India voted against a UN Human Rights Commission resolution that condemned Russias disproportionate use of force in the second Chechen war. In 2008, along with North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar, it also voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that declared the right of return of those displaced by Russias campaign in Abkhazia. India also abstained from voting in the 2013 and 2016 UN General Assembly resolutions critical of the Assad regime supported by Russia. Expectedly, in 2014, it also abstained from the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russias invasion of Crimea and, in 2020, it voted against a Ukraine-sponsored UN General Assembly resolution condemning human rights violations in Crimea.

The relationship between Russia and India, however, is not dependent only on UN vetoes and favourable political statements. The decades-old Indo-Russian alliance is also underpinned by a long history of bilateral collaborationon economic and strategic issues.

The Soviet Union was Indias largest trading partner until its collapse. Soviet economic contributions and technical know-how were essential in the establishment of Indias domestic industries, including oil and gas and mining. The Soviet Union also helped ensure Indias energy security. The first Indian citizen to travel to space, Rakesh Sharma, had done so through the Soviet Unions Intekosmos programme.

Cultural exchanges have also been at the centre of Russia and Indias bilateral relations from the very beginning. Russian historians, philosophers and artists have expressed their admiration and respect for revolutionary and literary Indian figures. During the height of the Cold War, Hindi films were dubbed into Russian and were immensely popular among Muscovites. The Soviet Union also went to great lengths to ensure that Russian classic texts were available in India, setting up publishing houses that were solely focused on the Indian market.

As Deepa Bhasthi recounted in a recent essay, For a generation that came of age at the cusp of that very strange period in India when socialism ended and capitalism was becoming wholeheartedly embraced, these books remain a kind of sentimental paraphernalia. The world depicted in the Russian stories was an exotic one different in weather, names, food, and faades. But the affordable books made it a world its readers felt able to touch, to sense and know well.

Of course,the mostenduring aspect of the Indo-Russian ties has been themilitary cooperationbetween the two countries.

The Soviet Union is said to have supplied India during the years with enough military hardware to equip several fleets. This has included aircraft carriers, tanks, guns, fighter jets, and missiles. The Soviet Union was also central to the creation of the Indian navy and, in the 1980s, it even leased a nuclear-powered submarine to India.

This Soviet-era legacy has persisted post-1991. Russian-origin weapons are believed to account for 60 to 85 percent of the hardware of the Indian armed forces today.

According to theStockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia was the second-largest global arms exporter to India between 2016 and 2020. As its largest importer, India received 23 percent of Russian hardware. Admittedly, compared with 2011-2015, exports to India dropped by 53 percent. However, there are several recent deals in the works. This includes a deal to buy state-of-the-art air defence systems, a Russian proposal to build AIP-powered conventional submarines, as well as a plan to lease two Russian nuclear-ballistic submarines.

In light of this long history of strong diplomatic, military, cultural and economic ties, it is hardly surprising that the Indian government and the public at large, chose to stand with Russia as it faced condemnation from the international community.

India wants to maintain a positive relationship with Russia because it needs Moscows support in resolving its territorial conflicts with its neighbours, especially China. It also wants to continue to enjoy economic and military support from Russia. Furthermore, as Russia repeatedly supported India at the UN on issues like Kashmir, many Indians feel as if it is now their turn to return the favour.

Maintaining support for Russia is not going to be easy for India in the coming weeks and months especially as Moscow, facing crippling sanctions, comes closer to officially becoming a pariah state.

India, however, is experienced in maintaining a needs-based partnership with pariah states. It did so with Iran, for example, despite mounting pressure from the US. Furthermore, under Modis leadership, India cultivated strong relationships with other authoritarian leaders like Putin, who had received much criticism from the international community because of their rhetoric and actions, on issues like human rights, democracy and migration, in recent years. Modi famously enjoyed a bromance with populist right-wing US President Donald Trump. Under Israels far-right leader Benjamin Netanyahu,Israel laid the foundations for a robust economic and strategic alliance with India.In 2020, Brazils far-right President Jair Bolsonaro was aguest of honourat Indias annual Republic Day celebration in New Delhi.

But all this does not mean India will maintain its support for Russia whatever it does. In recent years, New Delhi has been rapidly strengthening its ties with the West, and it may soon become too costly for it to maintain its traditional ties with Moscow.

Indeed, if Russia fails to score a decisive victory in Ukraine, or struggles to maintain its economic and military influence in Asia due to sanctions, the Indian government may feel the need to reassess its stance on Putin.

But, at least for now, no one should be at all surprised that India is standing with Russia and supporting Putin.

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

Read the original post:

Why is India standing with Putins Russia? - Al Jazeera English

China risks paying "high reputational costs" should it decide to assist Russia in its war against Ukraine, according to one political analyst.

Even if China wanted to bail out Russia either financially or economically its capacity to do so is verylimited, saidRobert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the U.S.

"Much of Russia's exposure, China's exposure to the international financial system remains in U.S. dollars not in rubles and the Chinese currency RMB. They could make a slight difference at the margin, but [China] would pay a pretty high reputational costs for doing that," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Tuesday.

On Monday, U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan held an "intense" seven-hour meeting with China's top foreign policy advisor Yang Jiechi in Rome.

At the meeting, Sullivan conveyed to Chinese officials that the U.S. is concerned Beijing may attempt to help Russia blunt global sanctions. The trip came amid reports that Moscow asked China to help provide military equipment for its invasion on Ukraine, including surface-to-air missiles, armored vehicles, and drones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a Victory Day military parade marking the 74th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Monday denied such reports of the Russian request and called them malicious "disinformation."

"The top priority at the moment is for all parties to exercise restraint, cool the situation down instead of adding fuel to the fire, and work for diplomatic settlement rather than further escalate the situation," Zhao told a regular briefing in Beijing.

The U.S., together with Ukraine and the Western allies, have "already won the information war" against Russia, said Daly.

"Valdimir Putin is the bad guy in the eyes of the world," and Moscow is fast becoming a "pariah state," he said. China needs to "ask itself if that's the side that it wants to be on," Daly added.

"China had declared on February 4th that it had stood with Russia. But Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran this isn't really the international club that most Chinese people aspire to be part of. And circumstances are pushing China further in that direction. So there's a reputational risk," he noted.

The most shocking development would be Chinese agreement to provide military hardware or even lethal weapons to Russia...

Given the lack of evidence at this point that China actually provided military aid to Russia, this issue will likely raise further questions, said Yun Sun, a senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the China Program at the Stimson Center.

"There's very little information as to what we're actually talking about in terms of military assistance," she told CNBC on Tuesday. "There's also the question as to whether Beijing actually provided those assistance or Beijing just expressed a willingness," to provide some kind of military support, she added.

Still, political observers believe China's move to provide any kind of military or economic assistance to Russia could be a gamechanger and lead to far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group said Monday it "still believes with only moderate conviction that China is unlikely to directly assist Russia's invasion to this degree, as it is attempting toprojectneutrality in the conflict."

One key point to watch in the coming days is whether China fulfills Russia's request for help in its invasion of Ukraine, the analysts said in a note.

"The most shocking development would be Chinese agreement to provide military hardware or even lethal weapons to Russia, which would amount to Beijing actively taking Moscow's side in the conflict for the first time," they said.

"This development would soon elicit US and EU sanctions and would produce a long-term geopolitical fracture between China and the West, including pressures for more extensive economic decoupling."

Continue reading here:

China's reputation is at risk if Beijing were to help Russia in its war on Ukraine - CNBC

American intelligence officials have discovered that the barrage of ballistic missiles Russia has fired into Ukraine contain a surprise: decoys that trick air-defense radars and fool heat-seeking missiles.

The devices are each about a foot long, shaped like a dart and white with an orange tail, according to an American intelligence official. They are released by the Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles that Russia is firing from mobile launchers across the border, the official said, when the missile senses that it has been targeted by air defense systems.

Each is packed with electronics and produces radio signals to jam or spoof enemy radars attempting to locate the Iskander-M, and contains a heat source to attract incoming missiles. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters, described the devices on the condition of anonymity.

The use of the decoys may help explain why Ukrainian air-defense weapons have had difficulty intercepting Russias Iskander missiles.

Powered by a solid-fuel rocket motor, the Iskander can reach targets more than 200 miles away, according to U.S. government documents. Each mobile launcher can fire two Iskanders before it must be reloaded.

Photographs of the dart-shaped munitions began circulating on social media two weeks ago. They had stumped experts and open-source intelligence analysts many of whom mistook them for bomblets from cluster weapons based on their size and shape.

Richard Stevens, who spent 22 years in the British Army as an explosive ordnance disposal soldier, and later worked as a civilian bomb technician for 10 years in southern Iraq, Africa and other regions, said he had been exposed to plenty of Chinese and Russian munitions, but I had never seen this.

Mr. Stevens posted photos of the munitions to a site for military and civilian bomb disposal experts that he started in 2011, and found that no one else seemed to have seen these mystery munitions before either.

That Russia is using that size of weapon the Iskander-M and quite a few of them I believe, thats why were seeing this now, Mr. Stevens added. Its just that, post-conflict in the past 10 to 15 years, no one has had the opportunity to see this.

The devices are similar to Cold War decoys called penetration aids, the intelligence official said, that have accompanied nuclear warheads since the 1970s and were designed to evade antimissile systems and allow individual warheads to reach their targets. The incorporation of the devices into weapons like the Iskander-M that have conventional warheads has not been previously documented in military arsenals.

March 15, 2022, 5:21 a.m. ET

The minute people came up with missiles, people started trying to shoot them down, and the minute people started trying to shoot them down, people started thinking about penetration aids, Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., said in an interview. But we never see them because theyre highly secret if you know how they work, you can counteract them.

The use of the decoys may point to some level of carelessness or urgency by Russian military leadership, Mr. Lewis said, given that Russia knows they will inevitably be collected and studied by Western intelligence services so that NATO air defenses can be programmed to defeat the Iskanders countermeasures.

American journalist killed. Brent Renaud, an award-winning American filmmaker and journalist who drew attention to human suffering, was fatally shot while reporting in a suburb of Kyiv. Mr. Renaud, 50, had contributed to The New York Times in previous years, most recently in 2015.

And it is highly unlikely, he said, that the version of the Iskander that Russia has sold to other countries would contain these decoys.

That suggests to me that the Russians place some value on keeping that technology close to home and that this war is important enough to them to give that up, Mr. Lewis said. Theyre digging deep, and maybe they no longer care, but I would care if I were them.

I think that there are some very excited people in the U.S. intelligence community right now, he added.

William J. Broad contributed reporting.

Follow this link:

Russia Deploys a Mystery Munition in Ukraine - The New York Times

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

Billy Joel plays in Moscow in 1987.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now all this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More:

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

Press play to listen to this article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally posted here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View original post here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the original:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Link:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

View original post here:

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