Monthly Archives: September 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. (Sergei Bobylev / Associated Press)

Russias imperious president, Vladimir Putin, may have just endured his worst week since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he says was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

His vaunted army, including a tank force once considered one of Russias best, collapsed in the face of a Ukrainian offensive in eastern Ukraine. Some Russian soldiers fled after ditching their uniforms and donning civilian clothes they stole from homes, according to local residents.

In southern Ukraine, Russian units defending the strategic city of Kherson struggled to hold their positions against persistent Ukrainian attacks.

Putin even faced what sounded like tough questioning from his most important ally, Chinas President Xi Jinping.

We understand your questions and concerns about Ukraine, he told Xi at a summit meeting in the central Asian city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

When Putin ordered his army to invade Ukraine in February, he saw a historic opportunity to reassemble the core of the Soviet Union and appeared to anticipate a rapid victory.

That plan failed when Ukraine, bolstered by Western military aid and U.S. intelligence, halted Russias attempt to seize its capital, Kyiv.

Now Putins Plan B, the conquest of eastern and southern Ukraine, is teetering on the edge of failure as well.

Some cheerleaders have hailed Ukraines victory at Izyum, an important railway junction in the east, as the turning point of the war. Thats premature. Russia holds about one-fifth of Ukraines territory and has more troops it can deploy, although their quality is uncertain.

Despite the euphoria, this aint over yet, Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, told me last week. Putin is obviously furious that his commanders have failed but that doesnt mean hell give up. He can still escalate in many ways.

So what can we expect from Putin now? Vershbow offered a forecast.

Putin wont capitulate; that would mean the end of his rule.

He likely will intensify the death and destruction Russia has inflicted on Ukraine's civilians.

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Putin's career has been marked by success in wars waged against weaker opponents. He came to power in 1999 by ordering a midwinter siege of Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, in a savage war to suppress Muslim separatists. In 2008, he sent the army into neighboring Georgia; in 2014, he sent troops into eastern Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula.

In those wars, his forces often inflicted casualties on civilians as a deliberate tactic.

His approach in Ukraine has fit the same pattern. It just hasnt worked as well against a well-led, well-trained and well-equipped opponent.

Were going to see a further escalation of brutality, Vershbow said. Theyve already launched heavy bombing of civilian infrastructure. ... Some [Russian] officials say they want to drive millions of Ukrainians out of the country.

Putin's goal, he said, is to "turn this back into a war of attrition and hope that over time, war weariness drives the Ukrainians to quit.

To accomplish that, some of Putins hawkish supporters have demanded a full mobilization, meaning a draft to replenish the army and a formal declaration of war.

But Putin aides have said conscription is not being considered.

The government has continued to reassure Russians that this is a limited special military operation and has even prohibited describing it as a war.

Hes still desperately trying to avoid mass mobilization, Vershbow said. A draft would send protesters into the streets in Moscow. Even then, it takes months and months to train new troops.

Michael Kofman, a Russia expert at CNA, a defense think tank, suggested that Putin might opt for a partial mobilization, extending current soldiers enlistment contracts and drafting recent veterans with needed skills.

Partial mobilization is possible, but they may be lousy troops, Vershbow said.

As for nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, most military and foreign policy experts say Putin is unlikely to use them unless his survival is directly at stake.

The problem with most of the escalatory options, up to and including nukes, is that they may simply unify Europe, cast Putin himself as a Hitlerian monster and accelerate Western weapons supplies to Ukraine, said Stephen Sestanovich, a former National Security Council official now at Columbia University.

Putin's other hope is to win the war not on the battlefield but in Western Europe, where Moscow has cut the supply of natural gas to squeeze Germany and other consuming countries that have sent weapons to Ukraine.

So far, the energy war has had surprisingly little effect. One recent poll found that 70% of Germans support continued aid to Ukraine, despite climbing gas prices. In the United States, the Gallup Poll found a similar level of support, 76%.

The real test, however, will come this winter, when the need for gas to heat homes will spike.

On both fronts, Putin hopes that inflicting pain on noncombatants can bring him victory. He believes Russians are better fighters than Ukrainians and more resilient in winter than Europeans or Americans. The challenge for the West is to prove him wrong.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Putin's brutality in Ukraine can get worse. Get ready for a chilly winter

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According to everyone featured in Secrets of the Oligarch Wives, Vladimir Putin is a ruthless, greedy, sociopathic monster who cares only about his own power, wealth, and legacy as a titan who united and restored the glory of Mother Russia. The ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as the continued imprisonment and mistreatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, corroborates those claims, although the true hook of the Paramount+ documentary about the Russian president is its insider commentary from the women who were closest to the authoritarians oligarchs. What they have to say isnt particularly shocking, but its certainly further evidence that the world is in peril from a man willing to do anything, to anyone, to achieve his own ends.

Narrated by Ranvir Singh and executive produced by Justine Kershaw, Laura Jones and David McNab, Secrets of the Oligarch Wives (out June 28) is a portrait of Putin as the most dangerous man on the planet, told largely by a collection of women with ties to bigwigs whose lives were deeply affected by him. There are only two nominal oligarch wives spotlighted by this 90-minute documentaryCountess Alexandra Tolstoy (a distant relative of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy), who spent years alongside oligarch Sergei Pugachev; and Tatiana Fokina, the spouse of exiled cellphone oligarch Evgeny Chichvarkinand even then, the former was never formally married to her Russian billionaire partner. In terms of false advertising, this is a moderate case, if not an ultimately disastrous turn of events, given that the speakers do an adequate job providing first-hand accounts of the turmoil and terror wrought by Putin against anyone who dares stand in his way.

Inside Sundances Top-Secret Documentary on Putin Target Alexei Navalny

For its opening third, Secrets of the Oligarch Wives functions as a basic primer on Putins rise to power. When the Soviet Union fell in 1989, Putin was a KGB agent stationed in Dresden, East Germany, and in Russias ensuing wild west of the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, he rose through the countrys political ranks, eventually becoming Yeltsins successor when the leader abruptly resigned from his post on Dec. 31, 1999. According to financier and political activist Bill Browder, Yeltsin had propped up his failing nationracked by pervasive unemployment, food shortages, and crumbling state industriesby selling 40 percent of the country to 22 oligarchs, borrowing money from them and then defaulting on the loans. This created a class of oligarch billionaires with not only untold riches but massive political clout, and this group hand-selected Putin as Russias new president, assuming he was a boring functionary whod do their bidding.

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They were wrong. Though Yeltsin had turned a blind eye to the oligarchs, who basically operated as mafia bosses, Putin decided that hed become Russias chief Godfather, demanding huge cuts of their profits (and their unwavering loyalty), and dishing out severe penalties for anyone who disobeyed his wishes. For critical voices in the FSB like Alexander Litvinenko, that meant fatal poisoning. For his former businessmen allies, it meant criminal prosecution and the seizure of assets. Far from a malleable pawn, Putin revealed himself to be a cagey tyrant with no limits. Yet since hed initially appeared to be a young, vibrant, open-to-the-West breath of fresh air, most were happy to overlook his more dictatorial actions. Even when the mysterious deaths of opponents began piling up, those crimes were carried out with enough plausible deniability to provide others with justification for continuing to do business with him.

All of this is well-trod territory, and Secrets of the Oligarch Wives is hardly thorough enough to be a real non-fiction history lesson. Nonetheless, it gets the general background details right, and embellishes that familiar material with stories from Tolstoy and Fokina. For the former, life with Pugachev was a whirlwind of glamorous yachts and ritzy palaces, which she makes no bones about having lovedat least until Putin decided to turn on his former confidant and send him fleeing to France. Fokina, meanwhile, didnt meet Chichvarkin until after he had escaped Russia following Putins attempts to confiscate his empire and prosecute him for all manner of offenses. In both instances, the women dispense tales about Putins nastiness, little-man complex, and brutality, which are then complemented by similar remarks from Litvinenkos widow Marina as well as Browder, whose colleague was killed after speaking out against Russian corruption, and whoin a stunning archival press-conference clipis singled out as an enemy by Putin, at which point Donald Trump voices his support for the Russian leaders autocratic intentions.

Tolstoy takes viewers on a car-ride tour of some of the many mansions that the oligarchs own (or previously owned) in London, where so many have fled over the past 20 years. Yet just as Secrets of the Oligarch Wives leaves Tolstoys personal details vague, so too does the documentary refuse to pointedly question her about her willingness to get into bed with a shady criminal simply because his affluence and influence were enticing. Even Browder, who speaks harshly about Putin, is barely identified, such that his current position in Putins crosshairs comes across as a fact devoid of meaningful context. Talk about Putins own humble upbringing, and later enthusiasm for living in the lavish Kremlin, are eventually fingered as potential reasons for his merciless tyranny, but that angle also feels thin and underdeveloped.

The ongoing siege of Ukraine is briefly addressed toward the close of Secrets of the Oligarch Wives, and it serves as the latest and most heartbreaking example of Putins viciousness. Fokina surmises that Putin is willing to do anything because hes secretly ill, while Browder suggests that hes a mentally unwell madman who lacks empathy, a conscience, and normal human emotionsand has for his entire life. A wealth of old clips cast Putin in an unflattering light, depicting him as a stone-faced creep. Unfortunately, just about any nightly news broadcast could tell you the same thing, and without the pretenses of this rather shallow documentary, which purports to deliver untold secrets about Russias elite from the women who were once a part of it, and yet mostly mixes well-publicized facts and scattered anecdotes to produce unenlightening results.

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Russias Oligarch Wives Claim Putin Is Suffering From a Secret Illness

As he wages war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin will be welcoming a baby girl with his ex-gymnast lover and is grumbling that he already has enough daughters, according to a report.

Putin, 69, is rumored to have four children with girlfriend Alina Kabaeva, a former champion Olympic rhythmic gymnast who is 30 years younger than the Russian strongman.

The news of Putins latest bundle of joy was reported by the General SVR Telegram channel, which is reportedly run by Kremlin insiders.

Putin did not appear to be very excited.

The news did not at all please the future father and the president of Russia in one person, who expressed the opinion that there were already enough children, and even more so, daughters, which upset Alina Maratovna very much, the anonymous post stated, using Kabaevas first and middle names.

Kabaeva is believed to have two boys and twin girls with the Russian president, all of whom were born in Switzerland, sources told Page Six earlier this year. She and the children had been holed up in a secret location in the country, sources said.

In May, the same Telegram account reported Kabaeva was once again pregnant, posting: Putin found out his mistress is yet again pregnant and by the looks of it this wasnt planned, the Sun reported.

Putin also has two daughters from his previous marriage to Russian flight attendant Lyudmila Shkrebneva: 36-year-old Maria Putina, who uses the surname Vorontsova and is the co-owner of Nomenko, a health care investment firm, and Katerina Tikhonova, 35, a former competitive dancer who runs an artificial intelligence initiative at Moscow State University.

The oligarch is also additionally reported to have a secret daughter, Luiza Rozova, also known as Elizaveta Krivonogikh, whom he had with her mother, Svetlana Krivonogikh Putins alleged lover in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Putin and Kabaeva, who was born in Uzbekistan, first met after she notched a gold medal for Russia at the Athens Olympics in 2004, which thrust her into the national spotlight. By 2008, she became Russias rumored secret first lady.

Her strength, flexibility and skill with the ball and ribbons of rhythmic gymnastics earned her praise as the most supple woman in Russia.

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Putin unhappy lover Alina Kabaeva pregnant with another daughter: repor

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YEREVAN, Armenia When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, he was hoping to restore the glory days of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, when it was at the peak of its power. Instead, hes ushered in chaos on a scale not seen since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

All across the ragged fringes of Russias sphere of influence, from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia, former parts of Moscows once-vast empire are in outright rebellion or being left to fend for themselves while the Kremlin focuses on its increasingly catastrophic war.

As it loses sway among its former subjects, new conflicts are breaking out, alliances are being forged and old rifts opening up.

On Tuesday, Azerbaijan beganshellingtowns and villages deep inside Armenia in what marks the most serious escalation in the South Caucasus since the two former Soviet republics fought a bloody war two years ago.

A Moscow-brokeredcease-fire paused the 2020 conflict, and saw Russian troops deployed to the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, reports indicate that the Kremlin has pulled out its best and most experienced soldiers to send to Ukraine, and in recent weeks Azerbaijani forces have pushed past the contact line and captured a series of strategic heights, with the Russians unwilling or unable to turn them back.

Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military alliance and the countrys Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesdayurgedthe bloc to send military aid for restoring the territorial integrity of the country. However, other members of the alliance have proven reluctant to intervene, with Kazakhstanruling out deploying troops and Moscow hesitant to get embroiled in another conflict.

Russias failures in the war in Ukraine means its capabilities are more limited and has created a power vacuum in the region, said Armenian political analyst Tigran Grigoryan, after the CSTOfailedto send help. At this point, Russia is neither willing nor capable of restraining Azerbaijan.

Baku has been steadily replacing its post-Soviet ties to Moscow with closer relations to Turkey, which provides it with advanced military hardware and trains its troops.

The blue and yellow Ukrainian flag is impossible to miss in Tbilisi, hanging from offices and government buildings. Graffiti daubed on the walls blasts obscenities about Putin, while one trendy bardemandsvisiting Russians sign declarations of opposition to their countrys aggression before being allowed in.

Around a fifth of Georgias territory is occupied by Russian troops and their proxies in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Having lost a war against Moscow and its unrecognized client states in 2008, Georgia has long left Russias political orbit, but the country is still third on its list of top trading partners.

Although the government loudly protested the invasion of Ukraine, it hasnt implemented economic sanctions against Russia which doesnt mean there isnt pressure to do more. More than 60 percent of Georgianspolledin the weeks after the start of the war said ruling politicians werent taking a tough enough stance.

The rhetoric is becoming more heated. Earlier this week, Irakli Kobakhidze, chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party,claimedthe state should let the people say whether they want to open a second front in Georgia against Russia by attacking Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Kobakhidze has sincesaidhe was joking.

In January, Russian troops touched down in Kazakhstan as part of a CSTO peacekeeping missiontaskedwith quashing mass protests that threatened to topple the government. That doesnt mean the Kremlin has gained a reliable ally.

Appearing on stage alongside Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June, Putin received an unexpected snub after announcing the war in Ukraine was necessary to protect the two Moscow-backed proxy administrations in the Donbas. Kazakhstan, Tokayevreplied, does not recognize quasi-state territories which, in our view, is what Luhansk and Donetsk are. So much for gratitude.

Just weeks later, TokayevtoldEuropean Council President Charles Michel that his country is concerned about the risks to global energy security created by the war, and offered to use its hydrocarbon potential to stabilize the situation in the world and European markets.

Moscow retaliated two days later by shutting down of the Novorossiysk oil terminal, preventing Kazakhstan from exporting its sizable oil and gas reserves through the Caspian Sea. Antique World War II naval mines were blamed for an urgent threat to the facility, but analysts suspect the timing was no accident.

Kazakhstan is formally adhering to Western sanctions against Russia, and relations only appear to be getting worse.

Earlier in August, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev posted on social mediasayingthat Kazakhstan is an artificial state, and argued that its wild lands had been originally colonized by Russians a chilling echo of the Kremlins rhetoric about Ukraine. The post was later deleted and Medvedev, who also serves as the deputy chairman of Russias Security Council and has made a series of increasingly nationalist and aggressive comments about the war and the West, said he was hacked.

Home to fewer than 3 million people, Moldova has been unable to shake off Moscows influence; its eastern region of Transnistria is a breakaway republic propped up by 1,500 Russian troops.

But Moldovan President Maia Sandu wants them to go, and strongly backs Ukraine.

Russias unjust war against Ukraine clearly shows us the price of freedom, Sandusaid.

Both Moldova and Ukraine were granted candidate status in June to join the EU, and Brussels is helping the country wean itself off its dependence on Russian energy.

Theres one person who deserves all the medals for putting Moldova on the road to European integration, Veaceslav Ioni, an economist and former MP,said earlier this year, and thats Vladimir Putin.

On Wednesday, border guards from the two countries exchanged fire in clashes that reportedlykilledtwo people.

Reportsof artillery, armor and other heavy weapons have now led to villages being evacuated on both sides.

The long and winding frontier they share is poorly demarcated, and both accuse each other of sparking the firefight. In the days of the USSR, the border was immaterial but in recent years Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have repeatedly approached the brink of war.

Russias foreign ministry has expressed readiness to assist the parties in reaching a long-term, mutually acceptable solution to border issues and offered to share its rich experience in border demarcation.

However, Russias military power in the region is eroding. Russia pulled 1,500 troops out of bases in Tajikistan,RFE/RL reported. There are also reports that Russian soldiers stationed in Kyrgyzstan have been rotated out.

This weeks Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan showed the scale of the shift in power.

Putin met in Samarkand with Chinese President Xi Jinping and later admitted his Chinese counterpart had questions and concerns about the war in Ukraine.

Xi issued a carefully worded statement: In the face of a changing world, changing times and historic changes, China is willing to work with Russia to demonstrate the responsibilities of big powers and lead, to instill stability and positive energy in a world of chaos.

Thats a far cry from the no limits partnership the pair announced just before Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Xi also saidthat China would resolutely support Kazakhstan in the defense of its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Its clear theres a new power player in the region.

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Putins push for a new USSR reawakens the bloody chaos of Soviet collapse - POLITICO Europe

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

Gavriil Grigorov | Sputnik | Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If not now, when?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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