Category Archives: Russia

Regardless of how things play out in Ukraine over the near-term, it appears all but certain that Russia and the West will find themselves locked in a protracted confrontation for years to come. Will that confrontation be global or confined to Europe? All-encompassing or limited? Regulated by some residual rules or totally anarchic? As answers to these questions begin to crystallize, the Middle East will be a key region to watch.

The Syrian civil war and the Iran dossier provide good test cases for assessing how the new Russian-Western confrontation could affect the Middle East. In Syria, Russia and the West have in recent years competed for influence, deconflicted to avoid clashes, while cooperating selectively on counter-terrorism, humanitarian issues, and a political process under U.N. auspices. On Iran, they have managed to insulate cooperation on the nuclear dossier even amid growing tensions surrounding Ukraine, yet failed to join forces in tackling a broader regional arms-control agenda.

Russia will likely seek to avoid coming to blows with NATO forces in Syria while its military remains fully committed inside Ukraine. However, Russias previous nod to U.S. counter-terrorism strikes in Syria, or acquiescence to limited flows of international humanitarian aid into the countrys northwest, could change. Restoration of the Iran nuclear deal might still succeed, but additional efforts on regional arms control could take a backseat amid Russian equivocation and U.S. preoccupations elsewhere. Overall, the Syrian and Iranian dossiers suggest that heightened Russian-Western confrontation will likely manifest in the Middle East through a mix of aversion to direct military confrontation, yet intensified competition and shrinking opportunities for cooperation.

Syria Intensified?

Russias intervention in Syria in September 2015 laid the foundation for a sustained military presence in the Levant. Its anti-access/area-denial deployments at the Tartus naval port and the Khmeimim air base allowed the Russian military to establish a buffer zone on its southern flank and signal that it has the capacity to push back against NATO forces outside of Europe. Russian exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean last summer, which involved Tu-22M3 bombersand MiG-31K interceptorswithKinzhalair-launched ballistic missiles, served as a reminder that Russia canquicklypositionserious naval and aerial assets to Syria. Ten days prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia redeployed the same systems to the area. Such Russian military muscle-flexing has complicated the operations of NATOs navies and air forces, given the potential for unsafe and unprofessional intercepts or aggressive actions by Russian forces. While 2021 saw a reduction in incidents of brinkmanship between Russian and U.S. troops in northeast Syria, the United States complained about increased occurrences of Russian harassment in the weeks prior to the invasion of Ukraine.

Now that Russia has the bulk of its active-duty military committed to Ukraine and faces a war of attrition, the risk of it picking a fight with U.S. forces in Syria in the near future should be lowered. Though Russia technically maintains the capacity to lash out in Syria with existing aerial and naval assets, it is in a weaker position to do so since invading Ukraine, where it now desperately seeks to gain momentum. Reports of Russia recruiting Syrian fighters for urban warfare in Ukraine are indicative of the shortages faced by the Russian military. Against that backdrop, collision with U.S. or Turkish forces in northern Syria would now come with far greater risks to Russia. Recently, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie indicated that Russian forces in Syria have shown no signs of intent to escalate tensions with U.S. troops there since Russia invaded Ukraine.

While we might see such Russian risk aversion in the immediate term, it is not a given that Moscows acquiescence to U.S. counter-terrorism operations will stand the test of time. U.S.-Russian counter-terrorism cooperation was always hindered by stark disagreements over the anti-Assad armed opposition, but Russia usually refrained from challenging U.S. air access for counter-terrorism strikes. Deconfliction channels for air security and ground operations enabled the U.S. military to safely operate within specific boundaries, though the Pentagon was adamant that such mechanisms did not constitute cooperation with Russia.

Just a few weeks prior to Russias invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. military killed Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in an airstrike, reportedly informing its Russian counterpart of the planned operation in advance. As Mackenzie noted, Sustained [counter-terrorism] pressure is what prevents groups from being able to grow, to train, to think about plotting beyond their immediate survival, for example up and down the Euphrates River Valley in Iraq and Syria. Should terrorist cells remain in Syria, and even regain strength, Americas ability to maintain such sustained pressure is not cast in stone. Russia, all-consumed by the Ukraine battlefield, might refrain from challenging U.S. forces in Syria in the near-term given resource constraints, risk aversion, and the fact that it is far from obvious how military action on its southern flank would help it turn the tide in Ukraine. Taking the longer view, however, the U.S.-Russian deconfliction mechanism in Syria could become a victim of their intensified and protracted confrontation.

Heightened Russian-Western friction could also adversely affect the situation in Syria in other ways. Going forward, Western capitals will be eager to further complicate Russias efforts at normalizing Syrias position in the region, since such normalization would enhance Russias own net gains by easing the burden of shouldering reconstruction costs for the war-ravaged country. The West will also be hard-pressed to ease pressure on the Syria dossier at the U.N. Security Council, notwithstanding rumors to the contrary. Further, neither Russia nor Western countries should be inclined to see their Syrian partners yield in negotiations led by the constitutional committee, whose small body is presently convening in Geneva.

It is also conceivable that Russia might stop cooperation on the humanitarian dossier. Last summer, the U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed to extend the mandate for the transport of aid to Syria through a crossing on the border with Turkey, adopting Resolution 2585. In July, that resolution will be up for renewal and a Russian veto could precipitate a crippling humanitarian crisis for millions of Syrian civilians. Hopefully, Moscow will calculate that the last thing it needs on its hands now is a humanitarian crisis in Syria. Government-controlled parts of the country where intermittent instability has caused headaches for the Russians will likely have to contend with reduced Russian wheat supplies as a result of the war in Ukraine. It is not a given that Russia will want to accelerate a wider food crisis by shutting down cross-border aid, especially if an endgame in Ukraine remains elusive. Still, some observers recommend an overhaul of U.S. Syria policy toward a freeze and build strategy, one that pivots away from tactical emergency assistance toward strategic stabilization across northern Syria. Amid such an overhaul, Western early recovery projects in government-held Syria might appear less politically palatable. Such projects were endorsed as part of a package-deal compromise in Resolution 2585, following years of Western agonizing over the concern that such aid would effectively constitute development assistance to a pariah state. Going forward, any and all forms of humanitarian assistance to Syria could well be looked at again through the lens of competition with Russia.

Iran Inflamed?

In past years, Russian-Western engagement on the Iran nuclear dossier remained remarkably insulated from broader tensions, whether during President Barack Obamas second term, or through 2021. Even as Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, its diplomats and Western counterparts proceeded with talks in Vienna, aimed at restoring the Iran nuclear deal, largely uninterrupted. Whether such insulation can continue was thrown into doubt when Moscow surprised Washington and irritated Iran by demanding written U.S. guarantees that Russias trade, investment, and military-technical cooperation with Tehran would not be hindered by the sanctions imposed against it over Ukraine. Russia appears to have walked back its pushy rhetoric since, yet restoration of the nuclear deal is still hanging in the balance.

Even if Russia and its counterparts can push that deal across the finish line, tensions in Europe could affect all sides desire and bandwidth to prevent further nuclear or missile proliferation in the Middle East. In the past, U.S.-Russian cooperation was instrumental for arms-control gains in the region. Though Moscow and Washington often disagreed on the right balance between carrots and sticks in dealing with nonproliferation-averse players, past initiatives such as the Arms Control and Regional Security working group in the 1990s, or the Glion/Geneva consultations in 2013 and 2014 benefited from U.S. leadership and Russian support. In the absence of U.S. leadership, initiatives usually struggled for relevance. The U.N. conference on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East is a case in point.

Amid new confrontation in Europe, Russia might be less inclined to support Western-led initiatives for arms control in the Middle East. To be sure, its ambivalent stance on the Iranian missile and proxy threats is hardly new and has been rooted in the calculation that those can play into Moscows hands. Tehrans offensive defense strategy has been viewed by the Kremlin as convenient, in that it pins down U.S. attention while allowing Moscow to pose as chief regional intermediary. Iran or its proxies overstepping and inviting outright military escalation would not be in Russias interest now, while its own diplomatic and military resources are consumed by Putins Ukraine gambit. At the same time, Moscow will see preciously little incentive to work with the West toward even the most modest and incremental regional arms-control process anytime soon.

On the back of the Ukraine war, Russias lukewarm disposition toward supporting arms control in the Middle East could be compounded by reduced U.S. bandwidth. Already in recent years, regional states efforts at balancing between the United States, Russia, and China were largely driven by perceptions of limited U.S. attentiveness to, or unpredictable policies in the Middle East. Washingtons perceived handling of the Iran nuclear dossier and insufficient push-back against Iranian proxies, as well as its failure to turn the tide in the Syrian civil war, unnerved the Arab Gulf states and Israel. U.S. military drawdowns from Afghanistan, the Gulf, and Iraq further amplified the perception of an American pivot to the east. Having long sought opportunities for freeing up resources for the Indo-Pacific theatre, the United States might feel even greater compulsion to realize a low-cost posture in the Middle East, now that the war in Ukraine has ignited great-power competition in Europe.

Could the combination of Russian equivocation and U.S. distraction compel regional adversaries to pursue arms control and trust-building more proactively? It was the perception of U.S. disengagement from the region that partially motivated several Arab states to normalize relations with Israel over the past eighteen months. The Baghdad Conference for Cooperation and Partnership last August and Iranian-Saudi talks were further indicators of a growing realization among regional states that they need to talk to their adversaries rather than just shore up deterrent capabilities. Developments since the Ukraine invasion be it the recent Iranian strikes on Israeli targets in Erbil, the suspension of Iranian-Saudi talks, or Fridays Houthi attack on an oil depot in the Saudi city of Jeddah raise doubts over the robustness of that realization, however. Meanwhile, the United States warns that Russia (and China) will seek to capitalize on any opportunities afforded by perceptions of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East amid intensified great-power confrontation.

Dont Be Optimistic

Assuming that Russia and the West have entered a new era of protracted and heightened confrontation, their appetite for taking that contest to the Middle East, insulating cooperation on urgent matters there, and freeing up resources to stay engaged in the region will impact stability for better or worse. In that context, Syria and Iran offer useful test cases for assessing what to expect. In Syria, Russian concerns with overstretching itself should lead its military to refrain from escalating tensions in the foreseeable future. Humanitarian aid flows, U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, and whatever is left of the political process, however, could all suffer as Syria turns into an arena of heightened Russian-Western competition. Regarding Iran, the soon-to-be-decided fate of the nuclear deal will be indicative of a joint Russian-Western ability to insulate regional arms control and nonproliferation in the future. Whether the Middle East can move forward on these issues will also depend on Moscows disposition and Washingtons bandwidth to pay attention.

Hanna Notte, Ph.D. is a senior research associate with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, where she focuses on arms control and security issues involving Russia, the Middle East, their intersection, and implications for U.S. and European policy. She holds a doctorate and M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford University and a B.A. in social and political sciences from Cambridge University. Her contributions have appeared in The Nonproliferation Review,Foreign Policy,The National Interest,andCarnegie,among others.

Image: TASS (Russian Ministry of Defence)

Read the original:

Will Western-Russian Confrontation Shake the Middle East? - War on the Rocks

This week saw the first briefing from the Russian military on their "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Speaking in front of a massive screen showing maps and videos from Russia's Ukraine operations, Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi's short update provided several interesting pieces of information.

Of course, these should not be taken at face value. From long before this war began, the Russians have consistently misled Western observers about their intentions. Several aspects bear scrutiny.

First, Rudskoi noted that "the main tasks of the first stage of the operation have been completed".

This is true. But not because the relative halt in Russian operations was part of their overall operational design. The first phase is over because it is being enforced by the courageous Ukrainian defensive strategy, large amounts of Western military aid, and Russian military incompetence in their ground tactics, air campaign and logisticsupport to their troops.

As I described in my analysis last week, Russia's forces in Ukraine have culminated after just one month of combat operations.

Rudskoi noted in his briefing that "the combat potential of the armed forces of Ukraine has been significantly reduced". I am almost certain that this is true. But, as Obi-Wan Kenobi once explained, this would only be from a certain point of view.

Ukraine has taken combat casualties, and it has had many of its civilians killed and maimed by Russian forces. But in a relative sense, the Ukrainians have not lost the same amount of combat power as the Russians. Indeed, with their superior leadership, strong sense of purpose and vastly better morale, the combat potential of the Ukrainian military has probably grown stronger as the weeks have passed.

The Russian general described how, when it came to Ukraine's cities, "we did not plan to storm them in order to prevent destruction and minimise losses among personnel and civilians". This is very difficult to credit. In Syria and Chechnya, the Russian military playbook has consistently featured attacks on civilians and urban areas. The Russians were also quick to implement this approach in Kharkiv, Mariupol, Sumy and beyond.

Rudskoi's update was a sanitised version of Russia's disastrous Ukrainian campaign so far.

Theinitial plan, to rapidly seize Kyiv and other centres in the hope the Ukrainian government and military (and the West) would acquiesce, failed. They thenhad to implement a Plan Binvasion that was focused on weakening and wearing down the Ukrainian armed forces.

This had some success, but primarily in terrain seized rather than reducing the combat power of the Ukrainians.

The Russian Plan C then became the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian cities, infrastructureand civilians to terrorise the Ukrainian people and their government into a political accommodation.

None of this has worked for the Russians.

Therefore, the Russian military high command, feeling the pressure from a frustrated Putin, is developing a revised plan for their Ukrainian debacle. The new plan (or an evolved Plan C) is likely to have three defining elements.

First, the Russians will continue to bombard the cities with artillery, rockets and dumb bombs delivered by reticent Russian Air Force planes. Despite the assurances of Rudskoi, the Russians will continue to do this because it is easier to lob massed artillery into cities than fight for them and because (in their world view) it places pressure on the Ukrainian government to succumb to Russian pressure in war termination negotiations.

Second, the Russians will continue to broaden the scope of the war to western Ukraine. This has been a desultory effort by the Russians so far. They have lobbed less than a dozen missiles at western Ukrainian cities. But the value in this western campaign is less military than political. Unless there is a ground invasion from Belarus in this region, this will remain the case.

While the Russians may destroy fuel depots or transhipment locations for Western aid, the military impact will be limited. However, it sends a message to Western governments that Russia will not tolerate the inflow of Western lethal aid or foreign recruits. This is why the attack over the weekend was timed to coincide with the visit of US President Joe Biden to Poland.

A final element of Russia's new campaign design for Ukraine featured prominently in Rudskoi's briefing.

He described an important part of the Russian mission as "the liberation of Donbas". He mentioned this at least three times in the briefing.

While this might well be deception for other Russian plans, there is a certain logic to this. Russian operations in Luhansk and Donetsk have made steady progress, although they have been very costly in Russian (and Ukrainian proxy) lives. Given the Russians now control most of Ukraine's southern coast, an offensive in the east might deliver a "victory" that Putin could sell to both domestic and international audiences.

For the last couple of weeks, Russian forces have attempted to advance from areas in the south towards Zaporizhzhia. At the same time, Russian forces have been trying to advance south from Kharkiv. The logical operational goal here would be the capture of the city of Dnipro. This would give Russia control over a large proportion of eastern Ukraine.

If the Russians were to pause their northern and southern operations, and reinforce their ground forces in the east, it is also possible that they might also be able to surround and destroy Ukraine's military forces defending this part of the country.

This would be a major loss for the Ukrainian military, and significant victory for the Russians. To achieve this, the Russians will need to improve their battlefield leadership, combined arms tactics, rear area security, logistics, communications security and a range of other basic military skills. But the Russians have showed the capacity to adapt in some areas of their campaign; we should not discount this possibility.

Therefore, in the coming weeks, look to the eastern theatre of this war. We may see a significant Russian offensive in this region. Not only might this be the military victory Putin has been seeking, but it would provide bargaining power to achieve a political settlement favourable to Russian in any ceasefire negotiations.

It is a region that is no stranger to war. In the second half of 1943, a massive Soviet Army swept across the eastern parts of Ukraine from their starting points in Western Russia. Part of this campaign was a battle in the Donbas region that saw 1million Soviet soldiers battling 400,000 Germans. Over five weeks, the Soviets lost nearly a quarter of their men killed and wounded.

The Nazis made the Russians pay for every kilometre gained.

The numbers of troops involved in any Russian offensive in the Donbas in the coming weeks will not be as large. Butwe can be assured that it will be an enormously bloody campaign.

As they have elsewhere in this war, the Ukrainians will ensure that any advance by the Russians is paid for in the blood of the young and inexperienced Russian reinforcements that will surely make up a large part of this assault.

Mick Ryan is a strategist and recently retired Australian Army major general. He served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a strategist on the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. His first book, War Transformed, is about 21st-century warfare.

Read more:

Russia's military is under pressure in Ukraine and refocusing on the east is likely to be a bloody campaign - ABC News

Russian troops in Ukraine have been suffering from frostbite because of a lack of cold-weather equipment, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

A Pentagon official told reporters on Tuesday morning that the U.S. had received evidence of frostbite among the Russian servicemen, who lacked appropriate gear.

"Even in terms of personal equipment for some of their troops, they're having trouble and we've picked up indications that some troops have suffered and [have been] taken out of the fight because of frostbite," the senior official said.

Russian troops have faced unexpectedly cold temperatures in Ukraine, which on occasion have dipped below freezing point.

Russian troops, the Pentagon official added, are also suffering food shortages and logistics challenges, including a lack of guided munitions.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon assessed that Russia has lost ten percent of its military force in Ukraine, while U.S. estimates released last week stated that between 6,000 and 7,000 soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the invasion.

An even higher number of casualties was suggested on Monday when newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda put Russia's death toll in Ukraine at almost 10,000. The information was later deleted from the newspaper's website.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has so far admitted to less than 500 service personnel dying in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion.

That the invasion of Ukraine isn't going as smoothly and quickly as the Kremlin might have originally expected is clear from footage and reports emerging from the war zone, showing fallen soldiers and abandoned tanks.

At a briefing on Tuesday, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said there are indications that morale is a growing problem for Russia's military.

On March 18, the UK's Defense Ministry announced that the Russian invasion of Ukraine "has largely stalled on all fronts," while U.S. officials have declared that Ukrainian troops are now going on the offensive and regaining lost territories.

U.S. officials have warned that Russia might resort to using biological and chemical weapons to avoid a stalemate in Ukraine but a Pentagon official, talking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that no evidence that Russia is moving toward using such weapons had been found.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia's campaign is stalling. He said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet achieved his goals in Ukraine, but the "special military operation that is going on, it's going on according to plan."

He said the alleged low morale of the Russian forces is a creation of Western media.

Read the original post:

Russian Soldiers Suffering Frostbite as Ukraine Invasion ...

A menorah monument, located at the entrance of the Drobitsky Yar Holocaust memorial complex on the eastern outskirts of Kharkiv, is pictured on Sunday, a day after it was wrecked in a Russian shelling. Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A menorah monument, located at the entrance of the Drobitsky Yar Holocaust memorial complex on the eastern outskirts of Kharkiv, is pictured on Sunday, a day after it was wrecked in a Russian shelling.

As Sunday draws to an end in Kyiv and in Moscow, here are the key developments of the day:

Ukraine called on the West to send tanks and planes to support the fight against Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy slammed the U.S. and other Western allies for what he called a "ping-pong about who and how should hand over jets" as Ukraine fends off Russia's deadly missile attacks. A day earlier, Russians carried out multiple attacks on the western city of Lviv, reportedly leaving at least five people wounded.

Two humanitarian routes opened, purportedly allowing civilians to flee some of Ukraine's hardest-hit areas, including the besieged city of Mariupol, according to Ukraine's deputy prime minister.

U.S. officials continued to clarify President Biden's words that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power." Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to downplay remarks made by Biden a day earlier, telling reporters in Jerusalem that the U.S. has no plans to unseat the Russian leader.

The Ukraine separatist region of Luhansk will hold a vote to join Russia. The head of the so-called Luhansk People's Republic one of two breakaway Ukrainian regions that Russia has supported militarily since 2014 expects local residents will decide to join Russia in an annexation referendum he says will happen soon.

Russian forces allegedly damaged another Holocaust memorial in Ukraine. Russian invaders fired on Drobitsky Yar, a memorial site outside of Kharkiv, said Ukraine's Ministry of Defense. Some 15,000 Jewish people were killed there during the Holocaust.

Russia's attack on Ukraine has put a focus on the North Atlantic alliance. Here's what to know about NATO.

Social media is shaping and distorting our understanding of the war in Ukraine.

The war has displaced millions in Ukraine. Photos show the reality of the crisis for civilians in the region.

Photographers have been documenting American support for Ukraine over the last month.

Ukrainian women are volunteering to fight. History shows they always have.

You can read more news from Sunday here, as well as more in-depth reporting and daily recaps here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR's State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

Read this article:

Russia-Ukraine war: What happened today (March 27) - NPR

US president Joe Biden has denied he is calling for regime change in Russia, after he said during a visit to Poland that Putin cannot remain in power. When asked by a reporter if he wanted to see Russian president Vladimir Putin removed from office he said no. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had already distanced himself from Bidens comments, while the UK cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi distanced the UK government from his remarks.

Representatives from Russia and Ukraine will meet this week for a new round of talks aimed at ending the war. Ukraine said the two sides would meet in Turkey on Monday.

Ukraines president Volodymyr Zelenskiy used a video interview with independent Russian media outlets to signal his willingness to discuss having Ukraine adopt a neutral status, and also make compromises about the status of the eastern Donbas region, in order to secure a peace agreement with Russia. But he said he was not willing to discuss Ukrainian demilitarisation, and that Ukrainians would need to vote in a referendum to approve their country adopting a neutral status.

The UK Ministry of Defence said Russia is effectively isolating Ukraine from international maritime trade, in an update late Sunday. It also said Russian naval forces were continuing to conduct sporadic missile strikes against targets across Ukraine.

Russias communications and internet regulator said in a public statement it would investigate the outlets that interviewed Zelenskiy, and has told them not to distribute the interview.

In a separate late-night video, Zelenskiy promised to work this week for new sanctions against Russia and spoke of the impending new round negotiations, saying we are looking for peace without delay.

Putin is seeking to split Ukraine into two, emulating the postwar division between North and South Korea, Ukraines military intelligence chief has said. In comments that raise the prospect of a long and bitter frozen conflict, General Kyrylo Budanov, warned of bloody guerrilla warfare.

Kyivs mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Telegram that online schooling would restart in the capital this week.

The French foreign minister said on Sunday there would be collective guilt if nothing was done to help civilians in Mariupol, the Ukrainian city besieged by Russian forces.

The UK governments top legal adviser has appointed a war crimes lawyer to advise Ukraine on the Russian invasion. The attorney general, Suella Braverman, announced on Sunday that Sir Howard Morrison QC would act as an independent adviser to the Ukrainian prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, Press Association reported.

Despite reports that Zelenskiy had been pushing to speak on video during the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles tonight, and some statements of support from celebrities in his favour, it was not clear if the Academy had agreed, or if it would opt instead for watered-down references to the conflict and vague statements of support. There were signs of support for Ukraine on the Oscars red carpet, with stars such as Jamie Lee Curtis wearing blue and yellow ribbons.

See more here:

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 33 of the Russian invasion - The Guardian

Despite ongoing peace talks, an end to Russias war on Ukraine appears nowhere in sight.

And as Ukrainian cities are being attacked, a quieter pressure is growing in Russia, which is increasingly isolated on the international stage.

Punishing sanctions are taking effect and dissent which authorities are determined to crush is rising, reportedly even in the Kremlin.

As the war rumbles on, observers are asking: is Vladimir Putins position shaking?

The Russian president enjoys a solid level of support among legislators, as evidenced by a recent vote days before the war began to recognise the separatist, self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Republics of Ukraine.

Of 450 members of the Duma, 351 backed the move, in line with Putins approval.

At the same time, Putins United Russia party has been accused of vote-rigging, keeping him in power for more than 20 years.

However, some observers have suggested that with sanctions hitting the economy hard, a push to remove Putin from power may gather pace.

Volodymyr Ishchenko, a Ukrainian sociologist who has studied revolutions in the post-Soviet arena, disagrees.

I dont think that the revolution is the likeliest outcome of the sanctions, he told Al Jazeera, arguing that increased grievances are not enough to start a revolt.

Rather, a split among the elites, unity of the opposition, coordination and mobilisation structures were needed.

In the early 20th century, the Russian Empire went through two revolutions linked with unpopular wars one in 1905 after the humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, and another in 1917 during World War I.

After the Soviet collapse, other newly-independent republics went through a string of popular uprisings, with governments overthrown in Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova. There were three revolutions in Kyrgyzstan and three more in Ukraine.

Putin has spent a large part of the past two decades preparing himself against a so-called colour revolution such as the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine, which he thought to be planned from Washington.

This includes marginalising opposition figures such as the now-jailed Alexey Navalny, whose political movement has been outlawed but continues to operate and is helping organise the protests.

As for the opposition, its in a bad shape, Ishchenko said. Navalnys movement is repressed. Besides, the opposition is split by the war. The Communists and many other parties who could ally with the opposition strongly support the war now.

Ishchenko told Al Jazeera that the exodus of mostly anti-war Russians estimated to be more than 200,000 people since February has made mass revolt even more unlikely.

Such a scenario would require exiles to keep effective contact with their homeland, which may prove difficult as travel is restricted and Russians without VPNs are blocked from social media.

The palace coup is more likely than a revolution now. Although, I am not sure that a possible elite conspiracy against Putin would make a move before a major defeat in Ukraine.

So, in the end, the balance of forces on Ukrainian battlefields would determine the possibility of either a coup, or revolution, or the survival and consolidation of Putins regime. Not the other way around.

If not a mass uprising, perhaps the oligarchs and officials in Putins inner circle, frustrated at the sanctions and unable to enjoy their yacht cruises off the south of France, may try to unseat the president.

On March 1, the independent Russian journalist Farida Rustamova said sources within the Russian elite close to Putin had told her that they were as shocked at the start of the war as everyone else, with one describing the situation as a clusterf**k.

The sources reportedly claimed that Putin has grown out of touch with reality over the past two years, isolating himself in a bunker and only meeting face-to-face with his closest confidants.

But after that initial shock, Russian elites are accepting the new reality, Rustamova, who has worked for the BBC Russian service and independent outlets TV Rain and Meduza, told Al Jazeera.

Many have now made their peace with it, she said. Theres a sense that theres nothing that can be done, and until this ends they need to survive somehow. They cant leave, because if you resign or refuse to work during wartime, youll be a traitor, and everyone knows what Putin does to traitors.

After coming to power, Putin quickly reined in the oligarchs, who had dominated Russian business, media and politics in the 1990s. He called the countrys top tycoons to a meeting and warned them to stay out of politics.

Those who did not comply, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, were either imprisoned, forced to leave, or both. Those who made their fortunes in the 1990s and were allowed to stay largely accepted the status quo. They have little sway over the Kremlin.

While its logical to expect an anti-war position from the liberal side of the Russian elite, Putin has thoroughly cleansed them over the years and keeps them on a tight leash, and they certainly wont step forward, Rustamova said.

Putin, an ex-KGB officer, instead surrounded himself with security officials and installed loyalists in key positions, such as Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard tasked with domestic security. But he has made sure none of these so-called siloviki, or men of force, gets too powerful: the Federal Security Service (FSB) and military directorate (GRU) handle intelligence, while the Federal Protection Service are the presidents bodyguards.

According to political scientist and Russian armed forces expert Pavel Luzin, There is a kind of political sect that consists of some generals and other high-ranking officers around Putin and they believe in the restoration of the Russian Empire it is a type of religion for them.

Then, there are acting and former law enforcement officers who were engaged in mid-level business within the state-owned and formally private corporations before the Russian aggression, and they are losing almost everything today; there are the armed forces, who were not happy about the aggression because they understood the awful consequences; and the police, who do not have much influence.

He said that the Kremlin was scared of the army and the police, and does not trust either one.

In this way, I dont wait for Putins forced departure within the current circumstances. The situation may change in case of a further escalation.

The siloviki may also be afraid of catching the blame if the war goes horribly wrong.

There have been unconfirmed reports that Colonel General Sergei Beseda of the FSB has been placed under house arrest after apparently telling Putin that the war in Ukraine would be a quick victory. Speculation was also rising over Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who had not been seen in public for almost two weeks. As rumours swelled, he was shown on state media again on Thursday attending a video meeting of officials, including Putin.

But aside from people power, a businessmans revolt or a military coup detat, Luzin suggested a fourth possibility: as Russias social and fiscal woes grow as a result of the war, local government and bureaucrats, previously sidelined, will be left to pick up the slack while Putin allegedly sits in his bunker, detached from the world.

Briefly speaking, Putin has distanced himself from the governance. In this way, the bureaucracy may start to act without Putin, just ignoring him, Luzin said. If this type of action will be realised, the results will change the Russian political regime even without any coup.

See the rest here:

Is the Ukraine war weakening Putins position in Russia? - Al Jazeera English

At the bustling tea stands and roadside eateries of Delhi, European politics is not a regular topic of conversation. But with wall-to-wall coverage of the war in Ukraine on television and in the newspapers, petrol prices rising and pressure growing on the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to denounce Russia, Indians are starting to grapple with the consequences of the conflict 2,800 miles away.

Ram Agarwal, a shopkeeper, does not condone the loss of civilian life but nor can he bring himself to criticise Russia. He grew up in the 1950s and 60s when India and the Soviet Union were such close allies that Nikita Khrushchev coined the slogan Hindi Rusi bhai bhai (Indians and Russians are brothers).

I am 74 and my generation grew up with Hindi Rusi bhai bhai. Its like attacking a dear old friend, he said.

Arvind Maurya, an electrician, also expressed the even-handedness that has marked much of the public response. I hear that Ukraine used to be a part of Russia, but instead of respecting that, Nato is pulling Ukraine into its own orbit. But war is never good for anyone and the Russian bombing of civilians is not the way to solve these differences. They must sit down and talk, he said.

But away from the street, feelings are stronger. Indians from the right and left have converged on the war, the former because of their antipathy towards western culture and the latter because of their anti-Americanism, particularly in relation to foreign policy.

For these two groups, the war has exposed what they see as the wests double standards and hypocrisy. Its interventions in other countries and campaigns of regime change are acceptable, but not Russias.

In a column, Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, contrasted western support for sanctions against Iraq before 2003, which he said had killed hundreds of thousands of children, with the indignation over Ukraine.

Compare the outrage over bombs falling on Ukraine, which have resulted in around 200 civilian deaths (as of February 22) not even a fraction of the deaths caused by the US invasions, occupations and attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, he wrote.

There is considerable support for the claim that Ukraine and Nato provoked Russia to the point where it had no choice but to invade. These views, expressed by analysts, politicians and retired military officers, have featured prominently in television debates.

Vinod Bhatia, a former air marshal, said Nato had promised Soviet leaders and later Putin that it would not keep expanding eastwards, but had reneged on its promise, a claim that has been pushed by the Kremlin. Nato denies it ever made such an agreement.

The west is equally responsible, with Putin, for this totally avoidable and unnecessary war, Bhatia said.

The claims of hypocrisy also extend to how European countries continue to buy Russian oil and gas while expecting India to impose sanctions on Russia. Why should India pay for US folly in drawing Ukraine into Nato? US sanctions are hurting us and we should support them? the former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal asked in the Times of India.

Given the mood, Modi is under little public pressure at home to get off the fence, though some editorials have called Indias position tragic and untenable. India has abstained from condemning Russia at the UN while trying to keep the west happy with talk of peace. It is a balancing act with which Joe Biden may be losing patience. Last week, Biden described Indias stance as shaky.

American prodding of India to toe the western line and denounce Russia can evoke an irascible response. Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst, asked why India should line up with the west when no one, least of all America, speaks up for India over Chinese aggression on the border with India, where a standoff has lasted almost two years.

At a time when India confronts Chinas border aggression, including its threat of a full-scale war, Biden wont open his mouth on that but he calls Indias response shaky to a distant war he helped to provoke, Chellaney tweeted.

The war rhetoric has alarmed some commentators who have flinched at the portrayal of Putin and Russia as evil. For one, the epithet does not resonate among Indians, where China that is seen as the biggest threat.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr, a columnist, has been dismayed at how the United States is turning Putin into a Saddam Hussein and how, when Biden calls Putin a war criminal, it leaves no space for negotiation. It is deeply alarming, the American rhetoric, because unlike Saddam, who had no weapons of mass destruction, Putin does. The whole pitch borders on hysterical.

Up to a point, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, one of Indias foremost commentators, agrees with these criticisms. Europe, he says, is caught between its desire to send a strong message to Russia and sanctimonious moralising. Its credibility is impugned because it is simply not willing to pay even the minimal economic price for a strong stand.

Yet for Indians to expose western hypocrisy is not enough for Mehta because it fails to answer the wider question of what kind of world order Indians want to build.

Writing in the Indian Express, he said: An America losing capital outside the west because of its hypocrisy, a Europe still speaking in forked tongues, a Russia that would rather see the world and its own citizens suffer, and India and China using western hypocrisy as a cover for displaying an outright cynicism, is not a good portent for a world order.

See more here:

Indians reluctant to denounce Russian brothers over Ukraine - The Guardian

Russias invasion of Ukraine continues to disrupt life well outside the active fighting areas. In the automotive world, European automakers have been forced to reduce production or even delay new models because, as weve all learned so well in the past two years, functioning supply chains are not exactly a given.

Oliver Killig/VW

When the invasion started, the fact that Ukraine supplies a large amount of wiring harnesses to European automakers suddenly became important. Volkswagen said this week that it will push back the launch of the ID.5 by a month because it cannot get enough harnesses to send demonstration vehicles to dealers in Germany. The ID.5 is an SUV "coupe" version of the ID.4 and was supposed to launch in Europe in April. The launch is now scheduled to happen in the first week of May, a VW spokesperson told Automotive News. That's if enough wiring harnesses can be acquired.

Automakers with partnerships or assets in Russia are being massively affected as well, most notably Renault. AvtoVaz is the largest automaker in Russia, but its controlled by French carmaker Renault, which has a 69 percent stake. This week, after plenty of outside pressure, Renault decided to suspend its operations in Russia, saying on Twitter that it is acting responsibly towards our 45,000 employees in the country and that the company has already implemented the necessary measures to comply with international sanctions before the suspension started.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Lada was forced to stop building cars earlier this month, a big step for a brand that sold 21 percent of all new vehicles in Russia in 2021. With Renault having taken at least the first step towards exiting the company, it brings up a larger question of what happens next. President Vladimir Putin is considering nationalizing the manufacturing plants and other assets global automakers have in Russia, as Automotive News and others have reported. Aside from Renault, Volkswagen, Stellantis, Ford and Mercedes-Benz would be the automakers most affected by any move to nationalize assets, a move sometimes described by Russian government officials as external administration.

"If foreign owners close the company unreasonably, then in such cases the government proposes to introduce external administration," Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told CNN earlier this month. "Depending on the decision of the owner, it will determine the future fate of the enterprise."

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

See more here:

Russia May Nationalize Carmakers' Assets amid Ukraine Invasion - Car and Driver

The Kremlin again raised the spectre of the use of nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine as Russian forces struggled to hold a key city in the south of the country.

Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is deputy chairman of the countrys security council, said Moscow could strike against an enemy that only used conventional weapons while Vladimir Putins defence minister claimed nuclear readiness was a priority.

The comments on Saturday prompted Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an appearance by video link at Qatars Doha Forum to warn that Moscow was a direct threat to the world.

Russia is deliberating bragging they can destroy with nuclear weapons, not only a certain country but the entire planet, Zelenskiy said.

Putin established the nuclear threat at the start of the war, warning that western intervention would reap consequences you have never seen.

Western officials have said the threats may be simply an attempt to divert attention from the failure of Putins forces to secure a swift occupation of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and to make advances in other key areas of the country.

An adviser to Ukraines defence ministry, Markian Lubkivskyi, claimed on Saturday that Russia would soon lose control of the southern city of Kherson, the first major centre to fall to the Kremlin since the war began on 24 February.

He said: I believe that today the city will be fully under the control of Ukrainian armed forces. We have finished in the last two days the operation in the Kyiv region so other armed forces are now focused on the southern part trying to get free Kherson and some other Ukrainian cities.

Russia has approximately 6,000 nuclear warheads the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In an interview on Saturday, Medvedev said Russias nuclear doctrine did not require an enemy state to use such weapons first.

He said: We have a special document on nuclear deterrence. This document clearly indicates the grounds on which the Russian Federation is entitled to use nuclear weapons. There are a few of them, let me remind them to you: number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile. The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies.

The third is an attack on a critical infrastructure that will have paralysed our nuclear deterrent forces. And the fourth case is when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardised the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons.

Medvedev added that there was a determination to defend the independence, sovereignty of our country, not to give anyone a reason to doubt even the slightest that we are ready to give a worthy response to any infringement on our country, on its independence.

Russias defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, who had not been seen for 12 days before a brief appearance on Friday and an address to his generals on Saturday, also spoke about the nuclear threat contained within Russias arsenal.

In a video, uploaded on social media by the Russian defence ministry, Shoigu said he had discussed issues related to the military budget and defence orders with the finance ministry.

He said: We continue ahead-of-schedule delivery of weaponry and equipment by means of credits. The priorities are long-range, high-precision weapons, aircraft equipment and maintenance of engagement readiness of strategic nuclear forces.

See the original post:

Russia reasserts right to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine - The Guardian

WARSAW The symbolism was striking. On March 12, two weeks into Russias brutal bombardment of Ukraine, the leaders of France and Germany held a joint call with President Vladimir Putin. Just days later, three prime ministers from post-Communist Europe Polish, Czech and Slovenian traveled to Kyiv by train, despite the danger.

This divergence exposed a sharp divide in how Eastern and Western NATO member states view the war in Ukraine. For Western countries, not least the United States, the conflict is a disaster for the people of Ukraine but one whose biggest danger is that it might spill over the Ukrainian border, setting off a global conflict.

For Central and Eastern European countries, its rather different. These neighbors of Russia tend to see the war not as a singular event but as a process. To these post-Soviet states, the invasion of Ukraine appears as a next step in a whole series of Russias nightmarish assaults on other countries, dating back to the ruthless attacks on Chechnya and the war with Georgia. To them, it seems foolhardy to assume Mr. Putin will stop at Ukraine. The danger is pressing and immediate.

While the West believes it must prevent World War III, the East thinks that, whatever the name given to the conflict, the war against liberal democratic values, institutions and lifestyles has already started. Both positions have merit. But Mr. Bidens visit to Poland on Friday, a day after an emergency NATO summit, is a vital opportunity to forge a common understanding. Both sides, West and East, must present a united front against Russian aggression. The alternative is disarray and destruction.

At the root of the divide is history. Across centuries, Central and Eastern Europe have experienced the chilling effects of Russian imperialism. From czarist Russia to the Soviet Union, many countries through the region had their independence stamped out, their societies oppressed and their cultures marginalized. The trauma caused by the cyclical loss of territory and statehood is one of the most important elements of collective identity across the region.

Many Central and Eastern Europeans share an anxious sense of themselves, a nervous sovereignty. Their independence, restored with such great effort after 1989, could easily be lost again, as the 20th century proved all too painfully. In the tragic fate of Ukraine, and earlier of Chechnya and Georgia, they see not only their own traumatic past but also their possible future. We will be next is the phrase on many lips.

In this febrile atmosphere, NATOs cautious steps look to many Central and Eastern Europeans like an echo of the phony war of 1939, when France and Britain undertook only limited military actions and did not save their eastern ally, Poland. At that time, too, horrible stories from bombed Warsaw and other cities filled the media. Yet the allies were determined not to be drawn in too deeply. Their military inaction temporarily delayed the spread of the war across the globe, but did not stop it.

Whether the analogy is apt matters less than the fact that it expresses a deeply felt intuition about what might come next. Thats been visible in the way East and West have approached the war. Throughout, those geographically closer to Russia have urged a tough response. Now that Russias full brutality has been revealed, Western countries are weighing whether to impose more sanctions on Russia, send more weapons to Ukraine and intensify diplomatic efforts to end the war.

But Eastern countries would prefer to go further still. Suggested measures in the region include imposing a no-fly zone as President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly urged or sending NATO troops across the Ukrainian border, even if only as a peace mission. The Polish government recently offered its MIG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, something Western allies considered a move too far.

Yet Central and Eastern Europeans are convinced that they are right and have the moral high ground. They believe that they were correct all along with their warnings about the Nord Stream pipelines and Russias other geostrategic designs on Ukraine and former Soviet states. For a long time, such opinions were dismissed as Russophobic, irrelevant in comparison with the fruits of economic cooperation with Russia. Today these warnings seem horribly prescient.

That doesnt mean the regions leaders ought to lapse into self-congratulation or even damn the stupidity of the West as Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish migr writer, called it for its failures of foresight. The aim instead should be to communicate better with Western partners, something Mr. Zelensky, in his addresses across the world, has shown how to do.

This is of utmost importance. One thing Mr. Putin wants is for NATO partners to be divided and at cross purposes, as the alliance was in its response to the Kremlins aggressive military actions in 2008 and 2014. Those acts returned partitions to the region, along with pro-Moscow puppet leaders, political kidnapping and forged elections. The invasion of Ukraine, as Eastern countries see it, is just the next attempt by Russia to upend the geopolitical order through territorial acquisition.

Leaders in the region are in a unique position to spell out the stakes of Mr. Putins aggression and so help the West to better understand the level of risk. Yet the fact remains that Central and Eastern European countries would like to involve NATO in the conflict on a broader scale, while the West continues to prioritize global peace.

It is a tragic dilemma. And far from approaching resolution, it seems to be just beginning.

Karolina Wigura (@KarolinaWigura) is a board member of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation in Warsaw and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Jaroslaw Kuisz is the editor in chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and a policy fellow at the University of Cambridge. They are both assistant professors at the University of Warsaw.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Read more here:

Opinion | Russias Neighbors Are Worried That, After Ukraine, Theyll Be Next - The New York Times