Monthly Archives: September 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Story continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Joe Mathews|September20,2022

Want to join the global fight against authoritarianism?

Then participate in your communitys local government.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OPED By Padma Shri KN Pandita

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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