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Diplomacy
Central Asian migrants in the airport

By Sending Migrants to Ukraine, the Kremlin is Damaging Ties With Central Asia

by Sher Khashimov

By continuing to rely on Russia’s ethnic minorities and foreign labor migrants to do its dirty work in Ukraine, the Kremlin is inadvertently damaging ties to its former colonies. A young Uzbek man named Fakhriddin has died in Ukraine after being recruited from a Russian prison, where he had been serving a five-year prison sentence, to work on a construction project in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine. Fakhriddin, who died when a shell hit the site he was working on, is one of the latest casualties of Russia’s push to use Central Asian natives not only on Ukrainian battlefields, but also in the reconstruction of battle-torn occupied territories. Hundreds if not thousands of Central Asian migrants are being hired to work in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, despite dangerous conditions and warnings from their governments not to go to Ukraine. Most of these migrants are used in the reconstruction of war-ravaged cities like Mariupol and Donetsk; others dig trenches and collect dead bodies on the frontlines. Female migrants from Central Asia are also offered jobs in military hospitals, canteens, and factories in occupied eastern Ukraine. Vacancies are posted on major employment websites like Headhunter and the classifieds site Avito, as well as some regional employment websites, and shared via social media and in migrant communities or advertised by construction companies directly. Employers promise to cover travel expenses to Ukraine, accommodation, meals, and uniforms. Salaries range from $2,000 to $3,300 a month: significantly more than laborers can earn in Russia. Yet despite the enticing promises, Central Asian migrants face the same issues in Russia-occupied Ukraine as they do in Russia itself: unsanitary conditions, unheated living quarters, and poor treatment by employers. Multiple reports indicate that migrants are either underpaid or not paid at all. Some disillusioned workers who have tried to leave Ukraine were not permitted by Russian border guards to re-enter Russia, forcing them to continue working in dangerous conditions on the frontlines while facing criminal prosecution from Kyiv and their home governments for participating in the invasion. These hostile conditions in eastern Ukraine put Central Asian labor migrants and their governments in a bind. Central Asia’s population continues to grow rapidly, with around half of the region’s population now under thirty years old. A lack of employment options and underdeveloped education systems combined with economies wrecked by nepotism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and capital flight mean many younger Central Asians are forced to move abroad to find work.  Central Asian governments, particularly those of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, have become accustomed to exporting excess labor capacity in order to generate much-needed revenue for households through remittances, relieve domestic pressure to create jobs, and provide public goods and services. Politically, migration serves as a pressure valve that prevents the buildup of unemployment-fueled social and political frustration and helps undemocratic regimes to stay in power. Russia remains the primary destination for these labor migrants. Familiarity with the Russian language and culture stemming from a shared Soviet past, geographic proximity, and Russia’s acute need for labor migrants continues to keep Central Asia in Moscow’s orbit. Streamlined processes for obtaining citizenship for highly qualified personnel from former Soviet republics, such as doctors and engineers, adds to Russia’s allure, particularly to those from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the most remittance-dependent countries in the region. After a pandemic-induced dip, the number of Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Uzbeks registered to work in Russia is peaking again. According to Russian Interior Ministry data, as many as 978,216 Kyrgyz, 3,528,319 Tajiks, and 5,837,363 Uzbeks entered Russia intending to work in 2022. Some people are likely to have been counted twice in these figures, as they reflect the number of registered border crossings, but they are still at a five-year high. Now the economic downturn in Russia and pressure to work in Russia-occupied Ukraine might contribute to changes in regional labor migration patterns—both at the grassroots level and from the top—that started during the pandemic. While Uzbekistan has become a popular destination for migrants from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan has emerged as a popular alternative destination to Russia for a growing number of Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz (precise numbers are harder to find as many migrants take advantage of the lack of visa requirements to work illegally and avoid paying taxes).  Central Asian governments, facing domestic pressure to keep their nationals from dying in Ukraine, are also looking for ways to reduce their employment dependence on Russia by diversifying migration destinations and providing migrants with more resources. Uzbekistan has been working with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan on the bilateral improvement of migration flows. Last December, the Uzbek and British governments discussed collaboration on labor migration during another round of economic talks. USAID has just opened a second consultation center in Uzbekistan for labor migrants, in Samarkand. In early 2022, Kyrgyzstan’s Labor Ministry created a center for employment abroad; later that year, the governments of Kyrgyzstan and South Korea signed an agreement guaranteeing additional employment opportunities for Kyrgyz nationals in South Korea.  This search for labor migration alternatives is part of Central Asia’s slow realignment away from its all-encompassing dependence on Russia: a nuanced dance the regional governments must perform without directly antagonizing the former metropole.  Central Asian governments refused to side with Russia in condemning the UN resolution to end the war in Ukraine. Russia’s regional integration projects are unlikely to expand, as Uzbekistan continues to decline invitations to join the Eurasian Economic Union, and Russia’s defeats in Ukraine have weakened the reputation of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization. Finally, Central Asian foreign ministers in February welcomed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the first ministerial-level engagement of the C5+1 Diplomatic Platform—which represents U.S. engagement with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—in the region since its 2015 founding. This realignment can also be seen on the cultural front: the popularity of the Russian language is declining, while local languages are seeing growing interest in them since the invasion of Ukraine. Local governments are cutting the number of Russian language lessons in schools and renaming streets. The issue of decolonization and anti-colonial solidarity is as salient as it has ever been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  By continuing to rely on Russia’s ethnic minorities and foreign labor migrants to do its dirty work in Ukraine, the Kremlin is inadvertently damaging ties to its former colonies. The longer the conflict drags on, the more incentive Central Asian republics will have to manage their dependence on Russia in exporting their excess labor. It’s hard to see Central Asia quitting on Russia entirely, but the relationship is sure to grow more nuanced and less lopsided in the months to come.

Defense & Security
President Vladimir Putin with his military personnel

Armies and Autocrats: Why Putin’s Military Failed

by Zoltan Barany

AbstractThis essay analyzes the failure of Vladimir Putin’s military in Ukraine in terms of five key factors. The first of these is Putin’s monopolization of control over the armed forces, which has driven critical voices and honest debates out of military and defense matters. Second is the failure of reform: Efforts to overhaul the bloated, ill-equipped post-Soviet military have not produced a twenty-first century fighting force that can match the world’s best armies or counter their capabilities. Third, Russia’s military has been unable to attract talented young people. Fourth, Russia’s mammoth defense industry produces too few weapons, and those it does turn out cannot match sophisticated Western arms. Finally, the operations in Georgia, Crimea, and Syria were conducted against feeble adversaries and said zero about how Russian forces would perform in a conventional land war against a resolute, well-armed enemy. In short, the Russian military is a reflection of the state that created it: Autocratic, security-obsessed, and teeming with hypercentralized decisionmaking, dysfunctional relations between civilian and military authorities, inefficiency, corruption, and brutality. Before and even shortly after Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, most experts predicted that Russia’s military would make short work of its southwestern neighbor’s defenders. The conventional wisdom held that while Russia’s forces had fallen on hard times after the Cold War, Putin’s more than two decades of rule had transformed them into an effective military machine. In early 2014, Russian troops in unmarked green-camouflage uniforms had taken Crimea from Ukraine with little bloodshed or even exertion. Two years later, one analyst called the intervention of the Russian Air Force on the side of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria “the most spectacular military-political event of our time.” In 2021, another commentator pointed to successful campaigns not only in Ukraine and Syria but also in Georgia (2008) while crediting Putin with having “overseen a thorough transformation of the Russian Armed Forces.” Flawed appraisals such as these are based on a misunderstanding of Russia’s military landscape. The Russian military is a quintessential reflection of the state that created it: Autocratic, security-obsessed, and teeming with hypercentralized decisionmaking, dysfunctional relations between civilian and military authorities, inefficiency, corruption, and brutality. We should note five key points. The first is that Putin’s monopolization of control over the armed forces and refusal to allow an independent legislature have driven critical voices and searching, honest debates out of military and defense matters. Second is the failure of reform—as the world can now see, efforts to overhaul the bloated, ill-equipped post-Soviet military have not produced a twenty-first–century fighting force that can match the world’s best armies or counter their capabilities. Third, Russia’s military has been unable to attract talented young people. Senior officers stubbornly refuse to delegate authority, robbing juniors of chances to develop initiative and leadership qualities, while most noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and their troops are poorly prepared. Fourth, Russia’s mammoth defense industry—largely owned and run by the state—produces too few weapons, and those it does turn out cannot match sophisticated Western arms. Finally, the operations in Georgia, Crimea, and Syria proved nothing: They were conducted against feeble adversaries and said zero about how Russian forces would perform in a conventional land war against a resolute, well-armed enemy. In a constitutional democracy, the legislature and the executive are both involved in controlling the armed forces. The chain of command is codified, as are respective institutional responsibilities vis-`a-vis the military. Laws likewise prescribe the potential uses of the military in various domestic and external scenarios. The national legislature passes the defense budget and supervises its disbursement, the chief executive acts as commander-in-chief, the defense minister is not a serving officer, and civilians—including those in the media and defense-focused NGOs—offer advice and scrutiny. In authoritarian states, the executive directly controls the military while the national legislature (if one exists) and regional authorities have no say. There is no safe place for independent security-policy experts, scholars, or journalists to function. The Kremlin runs the Russian armed forces, and today the Kremlin means Putin. He has few confidants. Since 2012, his principal advisors in the security realm have been Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (who has no military background) and General Valery Gerasimov, the armed forces chief of staff. They serve entirely at the pleasure of the president—who summarily dismissed each man’s predecessor. Putin’s frustration with the Defense Ministry’s handling of the “special military operation” in Ukraine (to say “war” or “invasion” can bring a Russian citizen years in jail) has led to the marginalization of Shoigu, who nonetheless has kept his job despite strident criticism from prominent Russian nationalists. When Putin came to power in 2000, the military and its top brass held considerable sway over foreign and defense policy, military reform included. Since then, Putin has wrestled control of all military and security forces into his own hands. During Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov’s tenure (2007–12), bloodless purges removed from the general staff officers who disagreed with the Kremlin’s ideas about military reform, who were thought too independent-minded and unwilling to give Putin constant support. Serdyukov cut the Central Military Administration staff by more than 30 percent, mostly getting rid of generals and colonels. For the last dozen years, Russian generals have been Putin’s servants. Their careers depend not merely on their professional competence but on their personal loyalty to him. On paper the Defense Ministry answers to parliament and its committees on defense and security, but in practice the ministry answers to the Presidential Administration alone. The president decides whether, when, where, and how to deploy the military, at home or abroad. Putin is a centralizer; while Russia remains nominally federal, local councils have lost capacity to perform even traditional tasks such as calling up reservists, as recent events have shown. Journalists who have dared to write objectively on defense issues have been hit with heavy jail time even for open-source reporting. Membership in NATO—a defensive alliance espousing liberal-democratic principles—may constrain an authoritarian such as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from seeking to “adjust” his country’s borders, but Putin faces no such obstacle. He dominates the Collective Security Treaty Organization (comprising ex-Soviet republics), while the “dictators’ club” that is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in no way constrains his grip on the Russian military. For more than a decade, Russia’s army has been indisputably Putin’s army; no trace of institutionally balanced civilian authority, transparency, or accountability impedes his control over it.Reform InterruptusAt the Cold War’s end, Russian political and military leaders were aware of their forces’ shortcomings. For most of the 1990s, however, little happened beyond a reduction in force size. Generals opposed structural changes, political elites lacked the will to push back, and resources were scarce. The Russian army won the First and Second Chechen Wars (1994–96; 1999–2009) against a tiny breakaway region, but with an operational performance that was embarrassing. The August 2008 defeat of Georgia, another small and underfunded neighbor, also underlined Russia’s military deficiencies. Systems for command, control, communications, and intelligence performed so poorly that at times officers had to borrow war correspondents’ cellphones to reach troops. The air force admitted that it had four aircraft downed during the twelve-day conflict (the Georgians claimed to have shot down 21), losses that would have easily been avoided had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) been on hand to fly reconnaissance. Russian sources acknowledged that tanks and warplanes had seen no overhaul since the Afghan War (1979–89), “smart” weapons and modern communications systems had been unavailable, and the Defense Ministry had relied on “favorite suppliers” known for making obsolete armaments. In response to such weaknesses, the reform program begun in 2008 sought to turn a Soviet-legacy military still based on mass mobilization into a leaner, more professional force ready for combat. Even if Ukraine has laid bare their limits, the changes made since 2008 have been considerable. With carte blanche from Putin, Defense Minister Serdyukov pensioned off or cashiered enough stubborn senior officers to break institutional resistance. The military’s structure was rationalized and streamlined. The number of large units shrank from 1,890 to 172, while 65 military colleges became ten and sixteen Soviet-era military districts became four. A main purpose of the defense reforms was to bridge the deep qualitative gap between Russian and NATO military personnel that the brief Russo-Georgian War had highlighted, or at least to improve the training and combat readiness of the nonelite troops who have always filled most Russian units. Modernizers also wanted to stabilize the army’s troop strength at a million. Russian official data are best treated with skepticism, but it appears that the total personnel strength of the Russian armed forces (land, naval, and air) has been between 700,000 and 900,000 over the past decade. Serdyukov reduced the size of the officer corps, phased out praporshchiki (roughly equivalent to warrant officers), and drastically increased the number of “contract” (professional) soldiers. In a bid to make professional soldiering more attractive, money went to improve the working conditions, housing, welfare, and pensions of servicemen and their families. Shoigu carried on the reform process, raising the number of contract soldiers to 410,00 by 2020, when conscripts in uniform numbered only 260,000. The conscripts are a token of Russia’s limitations: The Kremlin would like to have a fully professional military but cannot afford it, so the draft is needed to fill the ranks. The reform plan called for a half-million contract soldiers by 2019, but only 405,000 were said to have been signed up and that figure is likely inflated. As of 2012, contract soldiers were paid 25 percent more than the average Russian civilian, and military benefits were comparatively generous as well. But inflation has been a key problem. Its erosion of contract soldiers’ pay and benefits has made military careers less enticing and driven down applicant quality: The military has been chasing not only fewer but less desirable recruits. Without able contract recruits, the dream of a high-quality, NCO-enabled Russian military can never come true. A traditional weakness of Soviet or Russian armies going back to czarist days has been the absence of career NCOs. A modern military relies on professional “noncoms”: They enjoy significant autonomy; keep commissioned officers and enlisted personnel working together; and give to the troops training, discipline, and (not least) hands-on leadership “at the sharp end.” Russia’s military reform recognized the need for a professional NCO force; within ten years after the Georgian campaign, contractors predominated in what were considered NCO billets. But questions remained about the depth of their training and the degree of initiative accorded them in an army where the idea of delegating authority downward has long been a foreign concept. In 2009, the Defense Ministry established an NCO academy, but the two-thousand graduates that it produces each year do not seem to have been enough to transform army culture. In 2010, seventy-thousand of the junior officers whom Serdyukov had discharged had to be recommissioned in order to keep doing what in the West would be classed as NCOs’ jobs. The available data suggest, and the war in Ukraine has confirmed, that Russia is a long way from fielding the kind of proficient NCO force that is essential to a modern military, and which Ukraine itself is increasingly displaying through its own performance under arms. Reform never even touched other areas. These include combat medicine, something that Western armies have worked hard on in recent decades. Quickly bringing together wounded soldiers and critical care is key, but the Russian military with its history of tolerating high casualties has focused little on this. Young Russian army doctors who resigned their commissions protested that they had been issued “practically nothing” to work with in terms of equipment and could “provide only first aid.”Generals and SoldiersLack of trust in subordinates and reluctance to delegate mark every command level of the Russian military. The Soviet-era practice of waiting for orders to filter down from headquarters—a custom meant to leave no room for independent thinking and creativity—often results in missed opportunities on the battlefield. Serdyukov dismissed or eased out about a third of senior officers, including the last group of critical thinkers who might have disagreed with Kremlin policy. He made senior generals’ promotion prospects depend on their ability to read the signs emanating from the Presidential Administration. Even at the top of the military hierarchy, generals are wary of taking initiative for fear of angering superiors who now include Putin himself. Nonetheless, it seems that some in the high command did question Putin’s plan going in, especially the idea of a lightning strike to seize Kyiv, warning that Russian troops and equipment were not up to the task. When the doubters turned out to be correct, the Kremlin apparently allowed these generals to draw up a new strategy. They then turned the conflict into a war of attrition based on the old Russian standby of overwhelming firepower. When massed artillery and aerial bombardment failed too, as fighting around the vital southern city of Kherson and Ukrainian breakthroughs in other sectors showed, Putin shook up his roster of senior commanders three times. In April, in June, and again in September, the Kremlin changed generals in search of better combat performance. In early October, Putin gave General Sergei Surovikin the task of turning the war around even as Ukrainian forces carried on with counterstrikes around the flanks and into the rear areas of surprised Russian formations. Surovikin’s qualifications include experience in complex combat environments as well as a reputation for “total ruthlessness,” “corruption and brutality,” and mistreating subordinates. In other words, he promises to be a perfect fit for Putin and his army. We can also see Putin’s distrust of his high command in his ever deeper personal involvement in military decisions. As the Ukrainians counterattacked in September 2022, he told his generals that he himself would now set strategy. His micromanagement of the war extends to making low-level tactical decisions and giving orders to frontline generals from the Kremlin. According to Western intelligence sources, the Russian president “is making operational decisions at the level of a colonel or brigadier,” helping to determine the movements of forces and ordering stands “at all costs” (an approach that leads to troop and equipment losses as units banned from making tactical retreats fall prey to encirclement). Putin’s heightened involvement likely stems from his realization that early in the war his commanders kept him in the dark about how badly Russian forces were faring against unexpectedly nimble and fierce Ukrainian resistance. But should Putin, who has no military background, ever have expected his forces to do well in Ukraine? Starting in 2008, military education and training of all ranks did improve. There were more drills, including large-scale joint exercises featuring tens of thousands of personnel from different Russian services. Beefed-up flight hours for military aviators and improved maintenance routines for their aircraft reduced mechanical failures and combat losses in Georgia and Syria. To put all this in context, however, it must be stressed that outside a few elite units, Russian training and maintenance standards across the board have never been more than modest, and hardly reach the levels that characterize the world’s top militaries. Despite pay raises, the Russian armed forces have been unable to attract the best and brightest of young Russians in the face of competition from the civilian labor market. Housing remains a problem for officers with families, and for years pay has not kept up with inflation. In many units, conditions are poor and junior officers are treated with contempt as superiors play favorites. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many officers with employment opportunities outside the military resign their commissions. The 2018 decision to revive the post of zampolit (political officer) in units as small as infantry companies harks back to the Soviet era and signals that the state doubts its soldiers’ loyalty. Mandatory military service has been unpopular. Many of those who can afford to avoid it (by bribing army doctors to declare them unfit) do so, while the most desperate flee the country or even deliberately injure themselves to evade the draft. The brutal hazing of raw recruits, sometimes with tragic results, remains a problem despite efforts to curtail it. In 2008, the period of mandatory active service was halved to a single year, which means that after training a soldier is available for just six months of duty. Most troops that the army considers combat-ready are not draftees, though (perhaps surprisingly) conscripts make up about a quarter of elite commando units. The army planned to reduce its intake of conscripts to 150,000 by 2021, but missed that goal. As the Ukraine war grinds on, unwilling draftees will become more common, and the army will increasingly have to rely on poorly trained and motivated soldiers. Putin’s 21 September 2022 call-up of 300,000 reservists put new focus on manpower issues just ten days before the beginning of the fall conscription period. Many experts believe that mobilizing hundreds of thousands of reservists will prove exceedingly difficult. So far, the call-up has fallen disproportionately on ethnic minorities. These include nomadic reindeer herders from northeastern Yakutia (5,600 kilometers from Kyiv) as well as the Crimean Tatars, long repressed by Soviet and Russian regimes and vocal opponents of the peninsula’s annexation. Even if those mobilized are actual reservists, it is likely that only a fraction of them have had regular training in the years since they left active duty. It will be months before these troops can add to Moscow’s war effort. In a September 29 video call with advisors, Putin publicly admitted “mistakes” such as call-ups of fathers with children, people with chronic illnesses, and some over military age. Mobilized soldiers, some of them middle-aged, have complained that they were kept in “cattle conditions,” had to buy their own food, and received ill-fitting boots and uniforms as well as old, poorly kept weapons. The president left it to regional governors and officials below them to fix the problems, not mentioning that his own policies have undermined local governments’ capacities. During the first week after the mobilization declaration, at least 200,000 young Russians and their families absconded to neighboring countries including Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, as well as farther afield. The absconders were joining millions of their fellow citizens, many of them young and highly educated, who have voted with their feet against Putin’s war. In recent years, elite troops and private military firms in Moscow’s employ have done much of Russia’s fighting. The best known among the latter is the Wagner Group, a mercenary outfit possibly named for the German composer and established in 2014 by Dmitri Utkin, a former special-forces lieutenant-colonel, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch from Putin’s inner circle with multiple Soviet-era criminal convictions. The unit is allegedly overseen by Russia’s military-intelligence agency, the GRU, in which Utkin served. How Wagner gets paid remains murky, but funds likely come from state sources as well as oligarchs. Wagner operatives in their insignia-free uniforms were the “little green men” who first appeared during Putin’s Crimea takeover, and since then have taken part in armed conflicts in Syria as well as several African states including Libya, Mali, Mozambique, and Sudan. Reportedly, more than a thousand Wagner mercenaries have deployed to Luhansk Oblast in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and have suffered heavy casualties. Wherever they go, human-rights violations and war crimes follow.Failings of a State-Run Defense IndustryThe Russian state is the main owner of the industries that yield most of its income (energy, banking, arms, and transport) and is directly involved in running them. As state-owned corporations, defense companies enjoy cheap credit, debt relief, and freedom from competitive market pressures. Although the state has invested heavily in the defense industry and has seen success in some areas, on balance Russia’s arms makers have failed to narrow the distance—and especially the quality gap—between their wares and those of the world’s leading weapons producers. Starting around 2005, Moscow’s defense reforms and ambitious armaments programs began to demand serious military-spending hikes. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London broadly agree that the Russian military budget swelled from about US$20 billion in the late 1990s to more than four times that amount in 2015, before subsiding to its current official figure of $65.9 billion (or 4.1 percent of Russia’s 2021 Gross Domestic Product). In nominal terms, this is less than a tenth of annual U.S. defense spending, but there is reason to think that these figures grossly understate the real volume of Russian military expenditures. Using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) measures, Moscow’s effective military expenditures may be as high as $200 billion per year. In recent years, only the United States, China, and India have had defense budgets that exceed Russia’s. Russia’s State Armament Program of 2011–20 aimed to breathe new life into the defense industry by commissioning it to manufacture or refurbish 70 percent of the military’s weaponry. Official sources claim that the industry achieved this. It developed new artillery, introduced some highly accurate cruise missiles, delivered several hundred new tanks (including the highly touted T-90M), and updated hundreds more with improved armor and electronics. Almost five-hundred new fighter jets, mainly Su-27s and MiG-31s armed with radar-guided missiles, were to boost Russian airpower to a new level, with hundreds of new combat helicopters and modernized older warplanes securing Moscow’s domination of the skies. The latest State Armament Program, which began in 2020 and is to end in 2027, is more modest and focuses on advancing mobility, logistics, and the optimization and standardization of extant weapons systems. Over the past decade, Russia has become the world’s second-largest arms exporter behind the United States. Russia’s share of sales in this market from 2017 through 2021 was 19 percent while the U.S. share was 39 percent. Seeing the mediocre performance and vulnerability to Western weapons (such as the U.S.-made Javelin antitank missile) of Russian arms in Ukraine, countries that have been buying military hardware from Russia (the top three customers are China, India, and Egypt) may think twice about purchasing from Moscow again. The systemic and structural challenges that beset Russia’s defense industry are not going away. Supply-chain problems delay deliveries. Money to replace outdated machine tools and pay for research and development is lacking, while neglect of quality control is common. A recent analysis concluded: Centralized and inefficient bureaucracies, weak intellectual property rights and rule of law, poor investment climate, pervasive corruption, and insufficient funding are among the problems that hinder swift progress in fields that are particularly dependent on creating a breeding ground for creativity and the free exchange of ideas.Russian arms makers are a long way from producing weapons that can compete with Western weapons in technological sophistication and general quality. Large-scale building of precision-guided munitions, targeting systems, and heavy-strike long-range drones is beyond the reach of Russian industry. The onset of conflict with Ukraine in 2014 cost the Russian military-industrial establishment its longstanding and beneficial ties to Ukrainian weapons producers. Now sanctions have cut off Russia’s access to the Western optics and electronics that are key to advanced modern weapons. Expanding existing factories will be hard, as funds and other requisites are not there. Ambitious plans announced with much fanfare and bluster have often come to little or nothing. In 2008, the first year of military reform, there was a proposal to create autonomous mobile forces teaming airborne, naval-infantry, and special-forces components, but nothing has come of it. The widely publicized program to produce a fifth-generation fighter, the Sukhoi Su-57, is now more than twenty years old and has generated nothing but a few prototypes. The Su-57 is the first stealth aircraft Russia has ever attempted. Meant to be capable of both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, it is supposed to be Russia’s answer to the U.S.-built Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, thousands of which are being produced for the United States and multiple allies around the world, including nine or more NATO countries. Technical setbacks, India’s decision to pull its financing, and a December 2019 crash (the first publicly known) make it doubtful that the Su-57 will be ready for full-scale production anytime soon. Since Soviet times, the security sector has been among the most troubled parts of the economy when it comes to graft and corruption In the twenty-first century, Russia has become, in Karen Dawisha’s fitting formulation, “Putin’s kleptocracy.” Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2021 gave Russia a corruption score of 29, putting it far closer on the 100-point honesty scale to the world’s most corrupt country (South Sudan with an 11) than to its least corrupt (Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand with an 88 each). As defense minister, Serdyukov made it a major goal to root out or at least curb the bribery and fraud often tied to arms procurement, as well as the misuse of funds set aside to improve living conditions for the troops. Putin fired Serdyukov in 2012 because of the latter’s links to a Defense Ministry official charged with embezzlement. Large-scale corruption continues, with often hundreds of millions of dollars disappearing. A Russian military prosecutor recently admitted that about a fifth of the Defense Ministry’s budget was stolen; other officials said that it could be as high as two-fifths. Few experts would disagree with former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev’s recent claim that the corruption—and the fear of telling Putin about it—had left Russia with a “Potemkin military.”Under Arms and UnderwhelmingHow are Russian forces doing in Ukraine? It is impossible to discern precisely because most Western sources are Ukraine-friendly, while both Ukrainian and Russian media have incentives to bend the truth. That said, Russia’s military performance has been far below what most experts expected. Experts have been surprised because their assumptions were faulty. The Russian military’s track record going back to 2008 may have looked impressive on the surface, but it was compiled against weak adversaries. Georgia is very small, and its miniscule army was poorly organized to boot. In Crimea, Moscow’s troops faced little resistance. In Syria, much was made of Russian airpower’s renewed capabilities, but it was up against insurgents whose air-defense capabilities were modest at best. Russia also sent into these lesser-scale operations mostly elite troops and special forces, not average soldiers. In short, the Russian military experienced nothing like the demanding combat environment that it has met with in Ukraine. As of this writing, the war in Ukraine is almost a year old. The course of the fighting has undercut the many experts who claimed that post-2008 Russia had clawed its way into the first class of the world’s military powers. So far, Russian forces from the top down have failed most of the tests facing them in Ukraine. Military planners seldom do well to underestimate an opponent. After seizing Crimea, Putin predicted that Kyiv could be taken in two weeks; in 2022, he shrank that figure to two days. The Russian high command underestimated how many soldiers it would need to attack Ukraine while overestimating the number of locals who would welcome them. Conquering a city such as Kyiv, with its three-million people spread over 839 square kilometers split by a large river and its tributaries, would have required a massive number of collaborators. Once the plan for a quick air-mobile strike at the Ukrainian capital’s downtown collapsed amid firefights with fast-reacting Ukrainian forces at Antonov Airport northwest of the city on February 24 and 25, Russia’s campaign fell apart. Misconceived operational plans, careless logistics, and the lack of combined-arms coordination all suggest deep deficiencies in Russia’s high command. The invaders handled their tanks poorly, trying to drive them forward without proper logistical support or infantry escorts to keep Ukrainian drones and ambush teams at bay. In the skies, overcautious Russian pilots “punched below their weight,” failing to translate their superior airpower into gains on the ground. Russian troops struggled to use their communications systems and failed to disrupt their enemies’ access to satellite signals. Stories of Ukrainian soldiers using smartphones in combat to call their trainers in the United Kingdom for advice, like the ability of those defending the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol to stay in electronic touch with Ukrainian intelligence throughout the five-week siege in April and May, hint at Russian ineptitude. Troops’ general sloppiness—their neglect of small but important tasks such as properly inflating truck tires, for instance—proved costly to Russia’s war effort. As the war drags on, it is unlikely that fresh Russian officers and soldiers dispatched to Ukraine will be better prepared and equipped, or will perform better, than those whom they replace. Nuclear threats could easily backfire: If Russia were to “go atomic,” it might lose its remaining allies, misgauge wind direction and have fallout drift back over Russian territory, or find itself directly at war with a NATO alliance capable (even without nuclear weapons) of inflicting massive destruction on Russian military assets. Further, Russia’s stocks of tactical and medium-range nuclear warheads are, like many Russian weapons, Soviet leftovers. They have been sitting in scattered storage sites for decades. The work of rendering these warheads operational would involve much effort and risk of human error. There is a good chance it would also be detected by Western intelligence given the known locations of stockpiles, the limited number of units even capable (on paper) of handling and firing these warheads, and the travel distances to the theater of conflict that would be involved. The underlying theme of the assault on Ukraine has been the yawning gap between what Putin and his forces want to do, on the one hand, and what they can do, on the other. Ambition is not ability. A Revitalized Ukrainian Army Just a few years ago, Ukraine’s military itself was facing daunting challenges. An ambitious reform program was launched in 2006, but it failed amid political instability, corruption, and inadequate resources eaten by inflation and the 2008 global financial crisis. This top-down overhaul was also poorly conceived: Ukraine was striving to create an all-professional force with cutting-edge technology and advanced command and control in defiance of institutional and funding constraints. Moscow’s 2014 aggression against Crimea and the Donbas shook authorities out of this reverie and into a push for swift change in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Under President Petro Poroshenko (2014–19), naval and defense-industry reform succumbed to infighting and embezzlement, but the creation of an autonomous special-forces command with four-thousand troops was a success. The 2014 events showed that large numbers of soldiers would be needed to defend Ukraine against Russia. The draft, abolished in 2013, was brought back in 2014. More innovatively, the AFU also became a community-based military. The financially strapped government appealed to civil society, the large Ukrainian diaspora around the world, and ordinary people to help fund the AFU and to join its ranks. New organizations cropped up “to equip, uniform, protect, and improve the Ukrainian Army as soon as possible” and to supply much-needed military equipment—their donations made up 4 percent of the Ukrainian defense budget in 2015. Another significant change that partly relieved the AFU’s manpower shortage was the creation of volunteer battalions that already by 2014 comprised more than ten-thousand fighters. While raising some disciplinary concerns, they proved effective in the conflict against separatists in eastern Ukraine and are likely to play a consequential defense role for years to come. Finally, Western countries led by the United States and Britain but also including (remarkably) Germany have sent lethal military aid that makes Kyiv’s forces measurably more effective on the battlefield. As of mid-October 2022, Washington had offered about $66 billion—a sum more than eleven times larger than Ukraine’s entire 2021 defense budget. The help has been high in both quantity and quality, including as it has sophisticated items such as U.S.-made M142 HIMARS mobile precision multiple-rocket launchers, British- and U.S.-made M777 155-millimeter howitzers, various types of UAVs, and more. Between 2015 and February 2022, active-duty British soldiers trained more than 22,000 Ukrainian recruits in western Ukraine through a program called Operation Orbital. As of September 2022, instructors from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden were joining U.K. soldiers to give accelerated training to thousands more Ukrainians at camps in Britain. The programs teach junior officers, NCOs, and soldiers to think critically and make independent frontline decisions without waiting for permission from commanders sitting at distant headquarters. Ukraine’s military has been everything that Putin’s army has not. The smaller country has managed to convert its own recent reforms and massive Western aid into combat advantages. Defending their own soil, Ukrainian volunteer and professional soldiers alike have excelled in drive, courage, and resourcefulness. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been a revelation: Ukrainians are fortunate to have been led by a clear-thinking and uncompromising figure who knows that this is a contest between democracy and tyranny. The war has made Ukrainian nationhood (long denied by Russian nationalists of Putin’s type) undeniable and has underscored the larger but too-easily-forgotten truth that freedom is not free. Opposition to the invasion has also brought Western democracies closer together as members of NATO, which is adding Finland and Sweden to its ranks. If NATO continues to stand united behind Ukraine, David will have very good chances against Goliath.

Diplomacy
Currencies of US, China, Russia

Can Russia and China unseat the Dollar from its throne?

by Sauradeep Bag

​Although the dollar continues to be the dominant global currency, Russia and China could dent this dominance. In the aftermath of global financial exclusion, Russia has had to make some strategic adaptations. The West’s sanctions had crippling consequences, and the Kremlin scrambled to find alternatives. In light of these developments, China became an important ally, and the Yuan—its currency—has taken on a more prominent role. It is telling that in Russia, the yuan has surpassed the United States Dollar (USD) in trading volume, a feat achieved a year after the Ukraine conflict, which triggered a series of sanctions against Moscow. As Russia and China band together, one wonders what other shifts will take place and how they will shape the future. Change is afoot, and the Russian market bears witness. The month of February saw a watershed moment as the yuan surged past the dollar in monthly trading volume for the first time. The momentum continued into March as the gap between the two currencies widened, showcasing the growing sway of the yuan. It’s an impressive feat, considering that the yuan’s trading volume on the Russian market was once quite insignificant. The winds of change blew through Russia’s financial system as the year progressed. Additional sanctions had taken their toll on the few remaining banks that still held power to make cross-border transactions in the currencies of countries that had been deemed “unfriendly” by the Kremlin. One such bank was Raiffeisen Bank International AG, whose Russian branch played a significant role in facilitating international payments within the country. However, the lender found itself under the watchful eye of both European and US authorities, which only added to the pressure. These events spurred the Kremlin and Russian companies to shift their foreign-trade transactions to currencies of countries that had not imposed sanctions.Converging coalitionsThe bond between Russia and China is growing stronger, with both nations seeking to bolster their positions on the global stage. Their alliance has spread across various spheres: military, economic, and political. With relations between Russia and the West crumbling, China has emerged as a key partner for Russia, providing it with the necessary support to counter economic and political pressure. On the other hand, China is keen on expanding its global reach, especially in the Eurasian region, and sees Russia as an important ally in this regard. President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow and his pledge to expand cooperation are likely to take this partnership to greater heights. Trade and investment ties are set to grow stronger, with both nations seeking to reduce their dependence on Western economies. Russia’s focus on infrastructure development and mega projects is also likely to benefit from China’s expertise in these areas. Energy is another significant area of collaboration, with Russia being a leading exporter of oil and gas and China being the world’s largest importer of these resources. Technology is also an essential domain, with both countries investing heavily in research and development to remain competitive in the global economy. While the alliance between Russia and China will likely have far-reaching geopolitical consequences, it is a complicated relationship with both nations pursuing their interests, even as they work towards common goals. As a result of Western sanctions, Russia has shifted its foreign trade transactions away from the dollar and euro to currencies of non-restricted countries. By doing so, the Kremlin and Russian companies hope to decrease their dependence on the Western financial system and explore new avenues for conducting their trade and economic activities. This shift in strategy reflects Russia’s determination to maintain its economic stability despite restrictions on its access to the global financial system. It also underlines the growing importance of alternative currencies in global trade as countries strive to minimise the impact of sanctions and safeguard their economic interests.Structural overhaulsThe Russian Finance Ministry was not immune to the winds of change either. Earlier this year, it made the switch from the dollar to the yuan for its market operations. It even went a step further by devising a new structure for the national wealth fund, earmarking 60 percent of its assets for the yuan. The Bank of Russia joined the chorus, urging its people and businesses to consider moving their assets to the rouble or other currencies considered “friendly.” This would help mitigate the risk of having their funds blocked or frozen. As the world undergoes a seismic geopolitical shift, it seems Russia is moving in tandem, searching for ways to secure its economic future. However, the dollar still reigns supreme in the Russian market. Even with all the changes taking place, it remains the most widely used currency, ceding its throne only occasionally to the yuan. This underscores the enduring dominance of the dollar, which has played a significant role in Russia’s financial landscape for years. However, as the world continues to evolve, one wonders how long it can hold on to its crown.

Diplomacy
Chinese president Xi Jinping on the phone screen and Volodymyr Zelensky the president of Ukraine

Beijing’s Kyiv outreach is about acquiring a global role for itself

by Harsh V. Pant

It aims to signal its diplomatic ascendance and challenge Washington as the big shaper of outcomes. Late last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping finally made that much hoped-for call to Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky and informed the world that his nation “always stood on the side of peace.” This was the first outreach by Beijing to Ukraine since  the latter’s invasion by Russia last February, and Zelensky was keen on this engagement, especially after Xi’s visit to Moscow in March. Ukraine views China as an important interlocutor that can engage with Russia and seems to have been encouraged by the “long and meaningful” phone call between the two leaders that in its view would “give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations.” Last week, Ukraine’s finance minister also suggested that Kyiv should use its bilateral relationship with China as leverage to bring an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion, though he refused to consider China as a friend. The Chinese President has been reported as saying that China, “as a responsible majority country,” would “neither watch the fire from the other side, nor add fuel to the fire, let alone take advantage of the crisis to profit.” But there was no suggestion that Beijing would be doing anything meaningful going forward. The call and associated choreography had more to do with positioning China as a global power that is willing to engage in resolving problems, as opposed to the US that is creating more trouble by continuing to support Ukraine and prolonging the war. China has already laid out its cards on the table when it comes to the Ukraine crisis. It had released a 12-point position paper on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis earlier this February. In an attempt to present itself as a neutral peace broker, Beijing has enunciated a few standard principles, including respect for the sovereignty of all countries, resumption of peace talks, keeping industrial and supply chains stable and opposition to unilateral sanctions  as well as the use of nuclear weapons. Taking this forward, China has decided to send special representatives to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties in an attempt at peace-making. But beyond these principles, China’s credentials are hardly supportive of a larger role as a peace-maker, as it has long refused to view its ties with Ukraine and Russia at the same level. Russia has shown no inclination to step back from its aggression and Ukraine is seemingly preparing to launch a large-scale counter-offensive against Russian forces in a bid to retake territory in the east and south for which it has been preparing for months now. While Moscow has given no indication of backing down, perhaps assuming that it has time on its side and waiting for the Western consensus on backing Ukraine to collapse, Ukrainian forces feel that the weaponry delivered by the West over the past few months is likely to give them the momentum needed to shape battlefield realities in their favour. China is also unlikely to be viewed as an honest broker, given its ties with Russia that are increasingly becoming tighter. And despite repeated statements that the “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all  countries must be effectively upheld,” Beijing has not only refused to acknowledge Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, but has continued to privilege its partnership with Moscow. Though Xi’s visit to Moscow in March did not result in any concrete help to Russia, it did signal to the West that  the China-Russia entente can shape the global balance of power in ways that can be deleterious to Western interests. More than anything else, Chinese posturing in the Ukraine conflict is aimed at the West. In its position paper, Beijing talks about the need to abandon a “Cold War mentality” and argues that “the legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly,” making it clear that it largely agrees with Moscow’s perspective that it was the West that created the conditions for this war with the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato). China has also been critical of Western sanctions on Russia, arguing that “relevant countries should stop abusing unilateral sanctions and ‘long-arm jurisdiction’ against other countries, so as to do their share in de-escalating the Ukraine crisis.” Both of these issues are germane for the long-term trajectory of China’s role on the global stage amid deepening tensions with the US. For China, clearly, this crisis is more about itself than it is about Russia. As China comes out of its covid- induced isolation, it would like to have a stable international environment for a sustained economic recovery. But it is also using an opportunity to emerge as a key global interlocutor by venturing into diplomatic arenas it has been shy of in the past, taking advantage of the West’s recent inward orientation. This effort was exemplified by its attempt to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia together in the highly volatile Middle East. China’s attempt at emerging as a global peace-maker is about presenting a diplomatic challenge to the US on the global stage. Beijing may not have much of an impact on the eventual outcome of the Ukraine crisis, but it is signalling that it is no longer shy of showcasing its growing diplomatic heft.

Defense & Security
Radiation sign over Ukrainian map, Nuclear powers station in Ukraine

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant: The Looming Specter of Europe’s Most Serious Risk

by Najmedin Meshkati , Zhamilya Mussaibekova

Located in southeastern Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station (ZNPP) is Europe’s largest power plant that produced 23% of all Ukrainian electricity before Russia's invasion.  This critical energy source is amidst the chaos and destruction of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, a harrowing struggle that has wrought immeasurable suffering and upheaval upon the region. Following its capture by the Russian forces on March 4th 2022, there have been drastic disruptions to safe energy production and a heightened global concern for nuclear safety in the region. Introduction and backgroundZaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), located in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, was built by Soviet design in the 1980s, with its last reactor being connected to the grid in 1995.  Amongst the ten largest nuclear facilities in the world, the Zaporizhzhia power plant consists of six water-cooling and water-moderating pressurized reactors. A global nuclear scare started on February 24, 2022, when Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that “unidentified armed forces” have taken control of all facilities of Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant located in the Exclusion zone. The IAEA appealed for maximum restraint to avoid any action that may put the country’s nuclear facilities at risk and stressed the IAEA’s 2009 General Conference decision that “any armed attack on and threat against nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes constitutes a violation of the principles of the United Nations Charter, international law and the Statute of the Agency”. Later that week, on March 2nd, Russia stated that its military forces have taken control of the territory around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant. The next day, a large number of Russian tanks and infantry broke through the block-post into the town of Enerhodar, just a few kilometers from the ZNPP. Director General Grossi, appealed for “an immediate halt to the use of force at Enerhodar and called on the military forces operating there to refrain from violence near the nuclear power plant.” By March 4th, Ukraine informed the IAEA that the ZNPP had been shelled overnight, and a fire broke out on site. Although no essential equipment was affected, the first military action      resulted in the activation of the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre in full response. At the end of the day, Ukraine announced that Russian forces had taken control of the ZNPP, but the power plant continued to be operated by its regular staff.  At the time, out of the plant’s six reactor units, two had undergone controlled shut down, two were being held in low power mode, one was shut down for maintenance and one was operating at 60 percent power. ZNPP’s dire situation since March 4, 2022Before the conflict, the ZNPP had access to the grid through four high-voltage power lines, but they have now all fallen victim to the fighting. The back-up power lines connecting the ZNPP to a nearby thermal power station are also down. The plant had also previously temporarily lost direct access to the electricity grid but could then still receive power through available back-up lines, or from one of its reactors that was still operating at the time. The Russian conquest was soon followed by disruptions in the electricity supply to the nuclear power plant, one of the seven indispensable pillars of nuclear safety. Less than two weeks after Russian forces seized the plant, Zaporizhzhia lost one of its three power lines. Since then, mainly as a result of shelling or other military action nearby, the nuclear plant has suffered numerous power cuts, mainly as a result of shelling. Although it has emergency diesel generators that are available to provide backup power, a secure off-site power supply from the grid is integral to ensuring nuclear safety.  Thus, following its first complete external power outage in August, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi set off from the Agency’s headquarters on an IAEA Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia (ISAMZ) to undertake vital safeguards activities at the plant.  That October, Zaporizhzhia lost its last remaining external power source due to renewed shelling, and had to rely on diesel generators again to cool the reactor and support other nuclear safety and security functions. In the next week, Zaporizhzhia lost all external power two more times, receiving electricity from a backup system for the third time in a span of ten days. Similar incidents unfolded in November as well, as the IAEA Director General continued to urge for the critical need to demilitarize the zone.  Based on historical data and industry experience, the nuclear industry aims for an average unplanned outage rate of less than 0.1 per reactor per year which statistically would mean less than one unplanned outage every 10 years. Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant experienced six in the past year alone. Cold shutdown of the ZNPP reactors doesn’t remove the risk – Spent fuel pools need constant coolingThe fission reaction that generates heat in a nuclear power plant is produced by positioning a number of uranium fuel rods in close proximity. Shutting down a nuclear reactor involves inserting control rods between the fuel rods to stop the fission reaction.The reactor is then in cooldown mode as the temperature decreases. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, once the temperature is below 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93 Celsius) and the reactor coolant system is at atmospheric pressure, the reactor is in cold shutdown. When the reactor is operating, it requires cooling to absorb the heat and keep the fuel rods from melting together, which would set off a catastrophic chain reaction. When a reactor is in cold shutdown, it no longer needs the same level of circulation. It was announced on September 11, 2022 by Energoatom, operator of the ZNPP that it was shutting down the last operating reactor of the plant’s six reactors, reactor No. 6. The operators have put the reactor in cold shutdown and this shutdown has mitigated a risk. Spent fuel pools also need constant circulation of water to keep them cool. And they need cooling for several years before being put in dry casks. One of the problems in the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan was the emergency generators, which replaced lost off-site power, got inundated with water and failed. In situations like that you get “station blackout” – and that is one of the worst things that could happen. It means no electricity to run the cooling system. In that circumstance, the spent fuel overheats and its zirconium cladding can cause hydrogen bubbles. If you can’t vent these bubbles they will explode, spreading radiation. If there is a loss of outside power, operators will have to rely on emergency generators. But emergency generators are huge machines – finicky, unreliable gas guzzlers. And you still need cooling waters for the generators themselves. The biggest worry is that Ukraine suffers from a sustained power grid failure. The likelihood of this increases during a conflict, because pylons may come down under shelling or gas power plants might get damaged and cease to operate.  According to one of the IAEA’s latest updates (#154, April 21, 2023):  “As a result of the warmer weather, the operator has started to put reactor Unit 6 in cold shutdown which is expected to be reached by the weekend, leaving only Unit 5 in hot shutdown to produce hot water and steam for the site. The two reactors were in hot shutdown during the winter to provide steam and heating to the ZNPP as well as heating to the nearby city of Enerhodar, where many plant personnel live.” The cooling pumps for the spent fuel pools need much less electricity than the cooling pumps on the reactor’s primary and secondary loops, and the spent fuel cooling system could tolerate a brief electricity outage. Now, at least if the plant loses offsite power, the operators won’t have to worry about cooling an operating reactor with cranky diesel generators. However, the plant still needs a reliable source of electricity to cool the six huge spent fuel pools that are inside the containment structures and to remove residual heat from the shutdown reactors. The serious risk of military actions for spent fuel storage racksOne more important factor is that the spent fuel storage racks in the spent fuel pools at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant were compacted to increase capacity, according to a 2017 Ukrainian government report to the IAEA. The greater number and more compacted the stored spent fuel rods, the more heat they generate and so more power is needed to cool them. There is also a dry spent fuel storage facility at the plant. Dry spent fuel storage involves packing spent fuel rods into massive cylinders, or casks, which require no water or other coolants. The casks are designed to keep the fuel rods contained for at least 50 years. However, the casks are not under the containment structures at the plant, and, though they were designed to withstand being crashed into by an airliner, it’s not clear whether artillery shelling and aerial bombardment, particularly repeated attacks, could crack open the casks and release radiation into the grounds of the plant. The closest analogy to this scenario could be a terrorist attack that, according to a seminal study by the National Research Council, could breach a dry cask and potentially result in the release of radioactive material from the spent fuel. This could happen through the dispersion of fuel particles or fragments or the dispersion of radioactive aerosols.  This would be similar to the detonation of a “dirty bomb,” which, depending on wind direction and dispersion radius, could result in radioactive contamination. This in turn could cause serious problems for access to and work in the plant. According to the IAEA’s latest update at the time of writing this analysis (#155, April 28, 2023): “IAEA experts present at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) were again forced to shelter this week after missile attack warnings, with the sound of continued shelling in the distance as military activity continues in the region. In addition, one landmine exploded near the site, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said today…The increased military presence and activity in the region again underlines the importance and urgency of agreeing on the protection of the plant, Director General Grossi added.”What is going on and what can be doneWe need to begin to realize and emphasize that the need for compromise extends beyond Russia alone. There has been a certain reticence around the acknowledgement that Ukraine, despite being the “aggrieved” country, must also be willing to make concessions.  To designate Russia as the sole provoker of hostilities at the Zaporizhzhia plant is an objective falsity. It would be illogical for Russia to shell the plant once it has already seized control, unless there were provocations from the Ukrainian side. Interestingly, in spite of countless calls to pacify the region from Ukrainian and international diplomatic leaders, The Times of London on April 7, 2023 published a report detailing a failed Ukrainian attack on the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) that took place in October 2022. Ukrainian special forces launched an attack on the ZNPP, deploying US-provided HIMARS rockets at the site — an attempt that ultimately failed because of a stronger Russian counteroffensive. Any sort of projectiles nearing the site of a nuclear power plant is an inherently hazardous and potentially catastrophic assault, regardless of the origin of the launch.   Given the high stakes involved and the potential for irreparable harm, it is imperative for even Ukrainian forces to exercise restraint and refrain from any military action that could escalate the conflict, including airstrikes on Zaporizhzhia, even if it is under Russian control. Taking into account the tumultuous events that have transpired at Zaporizhzhia this past year, for the sake of preventing a global nuclear disaster, it is pertinent to prioritize nuclear safety. Counterintuitive as it may seem, it may be more prudent for Ukraine to strategically withdraw from the ZNPP site and attempt to repatriate it later in the war, when more comprehensive diplomatic negotiations can happen and Russia potentially depletes its resources.  War, in our opinion, is the worst enemy of nuclear safety. This is an unprecedented and volatile situation. Only through active, pragmatic engineering and nuclear diplomacy can an amenable and lasting solution to this vexing problem be found. In the foreword of President John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles of Courage, his brother, Robert Kennedy said, President Kennedy was fond of quoting Dante that “the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality” (December 18, 1963).  The potential catastrophic consequences of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant conflict demand action and a willingness to take a stance.  For Ukraine, taking a stance can mean stepping back and protecting the world from a nuclear calamity. The failure to do so risks being condemned to the “hottest places in Hell,” not in a figurative sense, but in a literal one. As the memory of the Chornobyl Disaster of 1986 still lingers, the potential danger posed by Zaporizhzhia's six reactors far surpasses that of the single reactor that caused the Chornobyl disaster. In the unfortunate event of an explosion, the repercussions would be hexfold that of Chernobyl's catastrophic aftermath, marking a somber moment in the history of nuclear power. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the  Russia-Ukraine conflict, the end of this protracted war is imminent. Even if we are facing problems that, as Robert Kennedy put it, people “fifty, even ten years ago, would not have dreamed would have to be faced,” it is of utmost importance to prioritize humanity above political objectives.  Following Dr. Henry Kissinger’s advice, Ukraine may like to exercise diplomacy, which “is the art of restraining power”, rather than brute force to repatriate its own Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, considering the high risks associated with military action on site. Ukrainians should not shame their military officers if they retreat from Zaporizhzhia, but rather, commend them for their strategic investment into the future prosperity of their country, their continent and possibly, their planet. A true measure of a hero lies not in their victories, but in their willingness to fight for what is right, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Right now, possibly accepting status quo at Zaporizhzhia is, at least in our opinion, what is the most right, but most certainly what is imperative. With Russia’s adamant military politics, Ukraine would be bravely resisting aggression on behalf of the world, on behalf of a future.  We realize that the IAEA has called on Russia and Ukraine to set up a “safety and security protection zone” around the plant. However, the IAEA is a science and engineering inspectorate and technical assistance agency. Negotiating and establishing a protection zone at a nuclear power plant in a war zone is entirely unprecedented and totally different from all past IAEA efforts. Establishing a protection zone requires negotiations and approvals at the highest political and military levels in Kyiv and Moscow.  It could be accomplished through backchannel, Track II-type diplomacy, specifically nuclear safety-focused engineering diplomacy. In the meantime, the IAEA needs strong support from the United Nations Security Council in the form of a resolution, mandate or the creation of a special commission. Admittedly, this is only a stopgap measure. In parallel with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s effort under the leadership of its Director, General Rafael Mariano Grossi, we believe that the U.N. Security Council should immediately empower a special commission to mediate between the warring parties. It could be modeled after the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in 2000, and appoint a prominent, senior international statesman as its head. We believe the person should be of the caliber and in the mold of the legendary former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Hans Blix of Sweden. Blix led the agency at the time of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and commands respect in today’s Russia and Ukraine. The great Prussian military theorist Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz once said: “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.”  These words still resonate today, reminding us that the quest for peace is not just about putting an end to violence, but about forging a path towards progress and prosperity. It is incumbent upon us to recognize that bringing an end to this conflict is not merely a cessation of violence, but a catalyst for the advancement of policy. As we strive towards resolving conflicts and achieving a lasting peace, it is our duty to recognize that this effort is not merely a tactical move, but a transformative one. By embracing a policy-driven approach, we can internalize the true nature of conflict, and use it as a means to move forward and effect real change. So let us be bold, but at the same time be pragmatic, and let us remember the words of Clausewitz as we work towards a brighter future for all. Let us see war not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end – a means to build a world where conflict is a thing of the past, and policy is the key to progress. President John F. Kennedy’s bold vision for political courage and making compromises in his aforementioned book, Profiles of Courage, also beautifully applies to this very context of Ukraine preserving its principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity while tactfully compromising with Russia over safeguarding Zaporizhzhia: “We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not of principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves. We can resolve the clash of interests without conceding our ideas... Compromise does not mean cowardice. Indeed it is frequently the compromisers and conciliators who are faced with the severest tests of political courage as they oppose the extremist views of their constituents.”

Defense & Security
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak greets Volodymyr Zelensky

Zelensky’s European tour has won critical support for Ukraine’s counter-offensive

by Stefan Wolff

Zelensky’s European tour has won critical support for Ukraine’s counter-offensiveAs the war in Ukraine intensifies, President Volodymyr Zelensky has concluded a series of successful visits to Rome, Berlin, Paris and London to shore up support from key allies. The timing of Zelensky’s visit is critical for Ukraine’s efforts on the battlefield and beyond. It has allowed the Ukrainian presidenta and his main European allies to coordinate their approach on the economic and diplomatic fronts of the war as well, which will be equally decisive in determining how this war will end, and when. Military support from his allies has been on top of Zelensky’s agenda during his whistle-stop tour of Europe. And finally, it seems that Ukraine’s European allies are following in Washington’s footsteps and moving beyond their earlier hesitation to provide Kyiv with more equipment for its upcoming counter-offensive in Bakhmut. On Saturday, May 13, ahead of Zelenskiy’s arrival in Berlin, Germany announced a further €2.7 billion (£2.35 billion) of support, including much-needed quantities of artillery ammunition. In addition, German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall confirmed a joint venture with Ukraine’s Ukroboronprom to build and repair tanks in Ukraine. On Sunday, May 14, Zelensky secured promises in Paris from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for new armoured vehicles and air defence systems. On Monday, May 15, British prime minister Rishi Sunak agreed to provide Ukraine with hundred of attack drones, in addition to the Storm Shadow cruise missiles that have already been delivered to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences. These commitments are important for providing Ukraine with the ammunition, equipment, training and repairs the country needs against a Russian adversary that has significant manpower advantages. This does not guarantee a sweeping success of the anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive, but it will make serious gains on the battlefield more likely for Kyiv. And it signals a commitment by its western partners to back this offensive with more than encouraging noises.The sanctions gameThe war in Ukraine is not only fought, and can not only be won, on the battlefield. From the beginning, the western approach was twofold: strengthen Ukraine and weaken Russia. The latter was achieved through unprecedented sanctions, with the EU now on its tenth sanctions package since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. The EU is now discussing the eleventh sanctions package, this time with a focus on enforcing existing sanctions and closing loopholes by imposing secondary sanctions against countries, companies and individuals deliberately circumventing the existing sanctions against Russia. Sanctions will also be discussed at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, from May 19 to 21. Further measures are expected to target the Russian energy sector and place more limitations on exports to Russia. The four European countries Zelensky visited in the past few days – France, Germany, Italy and the UK – are all members of the G7, while the EU attends as an observer. Including other members the US, Japan and Canada, the G7 represents some of Ukraine’s most powerful partners who will send an unambiguous message to Russia concerning sanctions and their enforcement. This will not break the Russian war machine, but it will make it more costly, including for Russia’s few remaining allies, to sustain the war effort in Ukraine at the current level. Seen from this longer-term perspective, it also makes Ukrainian gains in any counter-offensive more sustainable by limiting Russia’s capabilities to mount any offensives in the future.The third front: diplomacyMeanwhile, Chinese envoy Li Hui is beginning his tour of European capitals, including Moscow and Kyiv, to explore a political settlement for the war in Ukraine. This made it important for Zelensky to be sure that his red lines are clearly understood, accepted and communicated by Rome, Berlin, Paris and London. The support from these European capitals is no longer in doubt. And neither is support from Brussels. Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg was clear in his message at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on May 15: he expects the alliance to commit to a multi-year support programme to help Ukraine move towards Nato military standards. This will be discussed at the Nato summit in Vilnius in July. The EU is considering a new China strategy, including how it can engage with China on the war in Ukraine. The union is open to such an engagement and has cautiously welcomed China’s position paper in this respect. But it is a major win for Zelensky that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, backed Zelensky’s peace plan which, among other things, rules out any territorial compromises. Zelensky’s visits to Rome, Berlin, Paris and London are part of an ongoing positioning of the major allies in this war. For the Ukrainian president, it was critical to make sure that he keeps the west united behind his efforts to defeat Russia. His apparent success in doing so indicates that he presented his European counterparts with a credible plan and realistic requirements for support. Yet it is also clear that Kyiv and its partners in Europe and beyond realise that there will eventually come a point at which they will have to negotiate an end to the war with Russia. The evident strength of western unity and commitment that has transpired over the past few days is as much a message of support to Ukraine as it is one of deterrence for Russia and caution to China. The way it will be received there will determine how soon a negotiated settlement will be possible that restores Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Defense & Security
President Xi Jinping shaking hands with Vladimir Putin

The Chinese are not “tolerant”: they are preparing a global counteroffensive

by Yuri Tavrovsky

Moscow-Beijing: combat coordination is growing. Powerful cold currents from the West determine the political atmosphere of the planet. Efforts are being made to counter them with warm currents from the East. Only the synergy of actions between Russia and China prevents the the consolidated camp of hegemony from entering the "final and decisive battle" against each of these recalcitrant powers individually. We are well aware of the situation on the western front of the global Cold War. However, on the eastern front, where there is no Ukrainian-scale conflict yet, tensions are approaching critical levels. Defense-related Chinese trade publications have published some very disturbing material in recent weeks. ... To destroy the latest American nuclear aircraft carrier Gerald Ford and the battle group accompanying it from a cruiser and 5 missile frigates, 24 hypersonic missiles without nuclear warheads were enough. In a computer simulation, rocket launches were carried out from 6 different areas, including even the Gobi Desert in Northwest China. Considered unsinkable, the carrier group was completely destroyed by a series of launches of distracting and damaging missiles. The Chinese took into account the capabilities of both the standard set of anti-aircraft weapons and the latest American SM-3 anti-missiles. According to the scenario described in the Chinese-language Journal of Test and Measurement, the American armada entered the waters of the South China Sea and continued to move in a menacing course, despite warnings. Similar scenarios play out regularly near Chinese shores. Another Chinese publication spoke about the mortal danger of such actions. The South China Morning Post, published in Hong Kong in English, reported that the war between China and the United States could begin in the South China Sea. On January 5, 2021, three US Navy anti-submarine aircraft searched for Chinese submarines near the Dongsha Qundao (Pratas) archipelago. Reconnaissance aircraft, as always, dropped electronic buoys and tracked the routes of Chinese submarines that were participating in major exercises. However, one plane flew too close to China, and Chinese fighters flew in from there. The Chinese regarded the situation as a huge threat to national security. There was a possibility of an armed conflict, and the Americans, taking into account the unfolding actions of the PRC Air Force and Navy, began to prepare for the worst and even destroyed expensive buoys with top-secret equipment. The description of the conflict in the Chinese specialized magazine Shipboard Electronic Countermeasures does not give details of the confrontation. However, everything was very, very serious. No wonder the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, General Mark Milley, made a phone call to the Chinese Minister of Defense a couple of days later, assuring him that the Pentagon had no intention of provoking a real war. He even promised to inform his counterparts in Beijing in advance about the intentions of policymakers in the event of a critical situation. These two sensational publications did not appear by accident. One can only guess how many dangerous situations arise on the line of contact between the military of China and America in the Asia-Pacific basin. But, as the Chinese proverb says, “Heaven proposes, Xi Jinping disposes.” The Supreme Commander, acting at the strategic level of planning and decision-making, is responding to Washington's growing aggressiveness by demonstrating readiness for retaliatory actions on the battlefield and intensifying combat coordination with Russia. Planned for April, Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow was postponed to the end of March, and negotiations with Vladimir Putin lasted a total of 8 hours. Even not so much the published documents as the subsequent events showed qualitative changes in the partnership between Moscow and Beijing. The time has come for all-round combat coordination. It began with hours of face-to-face talks between the two supreme commanders. Soon, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu came to Moscow. After the visit of an experienced and energetic military commander, Chen Wenqing, curator of internal and external intelligence services, arrived in Moscow. Reports of his meetings with the secretary of our Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, showed the resolute attitude of the chief intelligence officer of the Celestial Empire towards the West. For its part, the Kremlin decided to reinforce the dynamics of combat coordination with a "volley of the main guns." A delegation of high-ranking officials and business leaders headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin headed to Beijing, unprecedented in size and level. The visit was prepared in a hurry and took place under the vigilant eye of the Western intelligence services. Therefore, the number and quality of signed agreements disappointed the optimists. But the bilateral meetings of officials, bankers and experts of the two countries that took place on the sidelines advanced the ongoing negotiations on strategic areas of cooperation and prepared serious deals. During the visit, influential publications noted the mutual interest of both countries in the accelerated growth of trade. Thus, the Global Times, which is close to the CCP Central Committee, noted the synergy of the two trends. Russia needs to increase the export of raw materials, especially energy. Against the backdrop of a rapid economic recovery, China needs to expand imports of the same oil and gas, agricultural products and other types of raw materials. The development of China's relations with the West repeats the history of the deterioration of Russia's relations with the West. The sanctions already imposed on China will be tightened. Access to sources of raw materials and markets will become a priority for Beijing for the foreseeable future. We should not turn a blind eye to the reaction of some Chinese experts and blogosphere activists to the arrival in Beijing of Mikhail Mishustin at the head of a thousandth army of the Russian elite. The emphasis is not even so much on the vital need for Moscow to receive income from trade with China as on the desirability of not offending the West, leaving the door open for relations with America. However, after 40 years of Chinese-American marriage of convenience, it would be naive to expect a quick change of shoes. There does not seem to be any improvement in relations between America and China, despite Biden's hints and the visit of Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao to the United States. Overcoming the pathological hatred of politicians for China, business people in Washington continue to do business even in the most adverse conditions. In 2022, bilateral trade reached an all-time high of $691 billion. At the same time, the Americans were able to sell their goods to the Chinese for less than 154 billion. The reduction or abolition of duties, which President Trump began to introduce back in 2018 and President Biden is increasing, could help improve the quality and further increase trade. They cost each American family $1,000 a year. However, the prospects for curtailing the trade war are very illusory. The White House and both houses of the US Congress are on the warpath. Any attempt to improve US-China relations ends in scandal—Pelosi's scandalous trip, the big white ball... The same fate awaits current hopes. The visit of Pelosi's heir, Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy to Taiwan is being prepared. At the G7 summit in Tokyo, there was a military coordination between NATO and Japan. China, along with Russia, is designated in the final documents as the main enemy. The bloc's regional headquarters is to be opened in Tokyo. It is impossible to get rid of historical parallels. Similarly, in 1936, Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany, directed against the Soviet Union. A few months later, the emboldened Japanese began an all-out war against the Celestial Empire, capturing Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Nanjing in 1937. Only the diplomatic, military and financial assistance of the Soviet Union prevented the capitulation of the Republic of China along the lines of France. Stubbornly resisting China, in turn, prevented Tokyo from attacking the USSR at the already appointed time - August 29, 1941. Then there were two fronts - Soviet and Chinese. Now the situation is repeating itself. The Chinese were not patient. They were defending then. Now, relying on a reliable Russian rear, they launched a counteroffensive. Thanks to Beijing's 12-point peace plan for Ukraine and Xi Jinping's phone call with Zelensky, China is destroying the Yellow Threat stereotype at minimal cost in the European theater and strengthening its image as a peacemaker. There is competition with America. The first study trip to Kyiv, Paris, Berlin, Brussels and Moscow of Special Representative Xi Jinping, Ambassador Li Hui, has just ended. It was preceded by trips of "heavyweights" - Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, foreign policy curator on the party line Wang Yi, Foreign Minister Qin Gang. Another area of China's global counteroffensive is to prevent the West from filling the strategic vacuum in Central Asia. That was the task of the summit of the five countries of this region and China in Xi'an, the ancient capital of several Chinese dynasties. This also meets the strategic interests of Moscow. The combat coordination of the two mighty powers of the Eurasian continent is gaining momentum and taking on new forms. How can one not recall that in March, Xi Jinping, when saying goodbye to Vladimir Putin on the steps of the Grand Kremlin Palace, said: “Now there are changes that have not happened in 100 years, and we are driving these changes.” Putin's answer was short but meaningful: "I agree."

Defense & Security
Crimea crisis 2014, Minesweeper U311 Cherkasy of Ukrainian Naval Forces on Donuzlav Lake few hours before it was taken by Russian troops

What goals drove Russia in 2014 and 2015 during the escalation and ongoing conflict in Ukraine?

by Beqa Bochorishvili

In this article we will talk about Russia's goals in 2014 and 2015, it will be analyzed from the categories of diplomacy, economy, and military directions. Throughout various periods in history, the leaders of the Russian state have consistently exhibited a profound fascination with the Black Sea region, particularly the Crimean peninsula and its strategically vital port of Sevastopol. Following Russia's defeat in the Crimean War in 1856, when it was compelled to comply with conditions imposed by France and England, including the relinquishment of its military base in Sevastopol, Russia has persistently pursued routes to gain control over Crimea and exploit its potential for dominating the Black Sea region. This pursuit remains ongoing to this day. During the era of Catherine the Great, Russia seized this strategically significant territory. However, in a later period, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Social Republic, transferred this region to the Socialist Republic of Ukraine, where it remained under Ukrainian control even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Notably, for official Moscow, the port of Sevastopol retained immense importance for its geopolitical interests, as it was controlled through an agreement signed with Ukraine in 1997. This port plays a crucial role in supporting Russia's Black Sea Fleet, enabling it to project power in the region. Its significance was underscored during the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, as well as earlier conflicts like the Abkhazia war, during which Russia deployed its armed forces from the port of Sevastopol. On the Crimean Peninsula before its annexation, there were two separate armies representing Ukraine and Russia respectively. Both sides were perceived as legitimate by the local population, and there was no doubt regarding their legitimacy. As mentioned earlier, in the 20th century, Khrushchev transferred the Crimean Peninsula to the Ukrainian Socialist Republic. However, since both territories were integral parts of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the transfer held more symbolic significance than strategic implications. At that time, nobody foresaw the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent struggle for a new balance of power in the region. Given the substantial Russian population residing in Crimea, fostering active cooperation with the Russian Federation held great importance. Exploiting this situation, Russia employed covert operations, including the infiltration of Kremlin operatives disguised as local militia personnel, to gather information and influence the local climate. Furthermore, the Kremlin carried out a propaganda campaign aimed at stoking skepticism towards both local and central authorities, thereby making the population more receptive to the Kremlin's policies. Undoubtedly, the Russian military played a substantial role in the annexation of Crimea. However, it is crucial to acknowledge the significant impact of Russian propaganda and agitation mentioned earlier. The events of 2014 served as a stark reminder that Russia's relations and attitudes towards the Western world and post-Soviet countries are not isolated or independent matters. Simultaneously, the expansion of the European Union and NATO towards the eastern borders, nearing Russia's vicinity, was perceived by the Kremlin as both a challenge and a threat, seen as encroaching upon Russian interests. Throughout history, Russia has consistently viewed Ukraine as an intrinsic part of the Slavic world, particularly the Russian sphere of influence. It has regarded Ukraine's role as that of a buffer state positioned between Europe and Russia. To impede Ukraine's inclination towards the West, Russia made considerable efforts to redirect its trajectory away from the European Union, utilizing figures like Viktor Yanukovych. Subsequently, following the notable events of the Maidan Revolution in 2014, Russia initiated an active military campaign. These actions underscored Ukraine's pivotal position within the Kremlin's interests, highlighting its significance to Russian geopolitical objectives. The events that unfolded in the heart of Kyiv in 2013, along with the preceding wave of protests, were sparked by the pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign Ukraine's Association Agreement with the European Union. These incidents escalated into violent clashes between protesters and state security forces, serving as a stark reminder of Russia's unwavering determination to extend its influence over the country. Consequently, by "recruiting" Ukraine into its fold, Russia aimed to establish an axis of absolute power within its leadership, leveraging the collaboration between the two states. Indeed, events unfolded in a manner that resulted in Russia experiencing a significant geopolitical setback. However, this setback did not deter Russia from pursuing its goals. Instead, it deliberately executed a two-fold campaign. The first objective was the annexation of Crimea, while the second involved fomenting a series of protests in eastern Ukraine, which eventually escalated into a full-fledged rebellion. By adopting this approach, Russia aimed to assert its control over Crimea and fuel unrest in eastern Ukraine, furthering its strategic interests in the region. All this was very easy for Russia and it achieved its goals practically without resistance because, at the local level, the local population received the Russian military forces as friendly and considered them saviors. While Putin's actions may appear contradictory to the goal of restoring the Soviet Union, it is evident that his primary objective is to maintain the current political system under his leadership. The ongoing events in Ukraine serve as a demonstration of how crucial internal stability is, particularly for Russian-speaking communities. Preserving his power and leadership within the existing political framework is of utmost importance to Putin. It is worth noting that the Russian economy has faced degradation in recent years, particularly following the 2008 financial crisis. Previously, Putin enjoyed an 80 percent popularity rating with the country experiencing a seven percent annual economic growth. However, the current situation has seen a slight decline in his popularity, now standing at around 60 percent. This decline coincided with a slowdown in economic growth, with the economy shrinking to 1.4 percent per year in 2013. Consequently, Russia, and specifically Putin, feared that this economic stagnation would not be temporary but rather become a systemic and irreversible issue. Russia feels threatened by the West. It is particularly unacceptable for it to expand the European Union, and especially NATO, closer to its borders. The Ukraine crisis has turned into a zero-sum game where the winner gets everything and the loser gets nothing. In 2010, Ukrainian President Yanukovych and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the Kharkiv Agreement, which entailed a lease agreement for Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Crimea. This agreement extended from 2017 to 2042 and included provisions such as discounted gas imports worth around 40 billion dollars for Ukraine. The primary objective of this strategic move was to safeguard the sovereignty of the Russian fleet in the region, particularly if Ukraine aligned itself with the Western world. However, it is important to note that Russia's motivations in the Ukrainian and Crimean conflicts were not solely focused on stabilization and de-escalation. Rather, it aimed to secure its naval power in the Black Sea region and maintain dominance over the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. This was done to mitigate potential threats that could undermine Russia's influence in the region. The Black Sea region holds significant economic influence for Russia, serving as a crucial transit route for its energy exports to Europe. Before the 2022 war, Russia accounted for over 25 percent of Europe's total oil exports, with approximately one-third being transported via oil tankers through the Black Sea. Moreover, the region acts as a gateway to the Middle East, facilitating partnerships between Russia and numerous countries. Consequently, the Black Sea region represents a vital economic asset for Russia. By annexing Crimea, Russia was able to secure its naval power and dominance in the area. It had further plans to develop Novorossiysk, one of its largest and most important shipping ports. Additionally, Russia had ambitious aspirations for the renewal of its Navy, which would be considered one of the most significant developments in the future. The implementation of these plans would bolster Russia's provision of navigation and enhance its control of sea lines and communication in the Black Sea. Russia would also increase its military and political exercises to exert control and prevent potential internal conflicts that could pose a threat. By safeguarding its economic and security interests in the Mediterranean, Russia aimed to improve economic dynamics and protect its economy. Overall, these actions aimed to strengthen Russia's position and influence in the Black Sea region. Following the annexation of Crimea, Russia gained the ability to construct and upgrade its bases in the Black Sea region, thereby bolstering its military power without interference from the West or Ukraine. The reconstruction of the Black Sea Fleet enables Russia to maintain sovereignty over Sevastopol and the broader Black Sea region. This provides an opportunity for Russia to enhance and modernize its military equipment, including coastal missiles, ground forces, aircraft, and transit routes. While the annexation of Crimea has granted Russia certain advantages, it has also created new risks of tensions and confrontations in the Black Sea region. Regional and external actors have mobilized against Russia in response to these developments, posing challenges and potential conflicts in the area. It is important to recognize that the annexation of Crimea has not only altered the geopolitical landscape but has also sparked concerns and opposition from various stakeholders in the region. The annexation of Crimea indeed served to bolster Russia's sovereignty and strengthen its control over the Black Sea Fleet, particularly in Sevastopol, as outlined in the Kharkiv Agreement. By gaining control over Crimea, Russia was able to secure and enhance its transit routes for energy exports to both Europe and Asia. Moreover, the inclusion of Crimea within the Russian Federation has reduced the pressure and influence exerted by external actors, most notably the United States and NATO. This has allowed Russia to exert greater control and diminish the influence of these external forces in the region. It is indeed possible to argue that Russia's involvement and motivations in Ukraine and Crimea were not primarily driven by a desire to reduce unrest or protect the pro-Russian population within Ukraine. Instead, the situation with pro-Russians provided a convenient justification for Putin to intervene. By portraying itself as the protector of the pro-Russian population and defending them against perceived Western forces, Putin was able to boost his popularity among the Russian population. Simultaneously, Russia aimed to establish itself as a dominant state in the diplomatic arena, showcasing its ability to assert its interests and challenge Western influence. Therefore, Putin's Russia seemed to have pursued dual objectives, leveraging the situation to both consolidate domestic support and enhance its position on the global stage. It is accurate to recognize that great powers strive to secure wealth and resources, as a strong economy leads to enhanced military power and defense capabilities. In this context, Russia's approach to the Black Sea region can be attributed to its pursuit of rich natural resources and strategic dominance, as well as the potential for profitable transit routes to Europe and Central Asia. The annexation of Crimea has presented opportunities for Russia to strengthen its economy and expand its influence in the region. One of Russia's key economic goals in the Black Sea region is to control important transit routes and energy exports to Europe, given its significant contribution to Europe's oil consumption, accounting for over 25 percent. Additionally, Ukraine plays a notable role in the global grain market, ranking seventh in grain exports in 2014-2015, with 37.9 million tons of wheat. By gaining control over these resources, Russia could secure substantial profits from the wheat trade, exert influence over market prices, and leverage this resource as a mechanism for influencing other states. The economic considerations associated with the Black Sea region align with Russia's aim to strengthen its economy, expand its market reach, and exert greater geopolitical influence. These factors highlight the economic motivations behind Russia's approach and engagement in the Black Sea region. Considering that Crimea now belongs to Russia, it becomes clear that one of the reasons why the annexation of the peninsula was carried out; Economic benefits and a window of opportunity that involves adjusting the role of the main player in the Black Sea region and excluding Western influences. Great powers also seek to gain land power through military means, as this is the best possible way to gain maximum control over the region. This means that the most important military assets for states are land forces, reinforced by strong air and naval forces. In other words, states try to strengthen their military potential to compete with the rest of the world, which consists of territorial hegemons. Before and during the Cold War era, the Black Sea region practically belonged to Russia, but after the collapse of the USSR, it became a more or less vulnerable region. However, in recent years, the actions of the United States and the West have forced Russia to strengthen its power in the region in order not to lose control and influence. In addition, another advantage of the Black Sea region from the Russian perspective is that this area is the way to the Middle East, where Russia has partnerships with many countries. Therefore, the Black Sea is a very important economic asset for Russia. Crimea, especially Sevastopol, plays a very important role for Russia since the Russian Black Sea Fleet is stationed there. After Ukraine's independence, it became Russia's goal to maintain its navy and bases in Crimea. However, the problem, arising in the context of the Ukraine crisis, was the fear that if Ukraine were to be admitted to the EU under the 2013 agreement, it would affect Russia's influence and dominance in the Black Sea in the long term. The Kharkiv agreement would have given Russia the opportunity until 2042 to modernize and expand the Black Sea fleet. The annexation of Crimea, as well as the agreement signed in Kharkiv, increased the presence of the Russian fleet in the region and allowed it to begin the development of the Black Sea Fleet, which is assessed as one of the most ambitious military naval reforms in the region. This would further increase Russia's naval power in the long run. In conclusion, Russia has managed to secure the region for its good and thereby created a wider and better coastline for itself, which will strengthen Russia's military power in the future and thus reduce the influence of external actors on the Black Sea. Russia can improve the provision of navigation and maritime communication lines in the Black Sea. This will further increase military, economic, and political influence and prevent domestic conflicts, as well as eliminate the possibility of external pressures that could undermine Russia's security. Therefore, it can be argued from a futuristic perspective that if Russia's actions like this continue successfully, it will be able to protect its economy as well as its security interests in the Mediterranean.

Defense & Security
Undersea cables

Ukraine war: Kremlin’s threat to interfere with undersea data cables may be bluster, but must be taken seriously

by Christian Bueger

In what is more than likely to turn out to be an attempt at escalation in the confrontation between Nato and Russia over the war in Ukraine, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev argued recently on his Telegram channel that Russia should have the right to attack submarine data cables.  Medvedev claimed such rights against the background of recent media reports on the mysterious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline last year. He wrote: If we proceed from the proven complicity of western countries in blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints – even moral – left to prevent us from destroying the ocean-floor cable communications of our enemies. The question of who was behind the attacks on the pipelines in the Baltic Sea on September 26 2022, however, remains unresolved. Several reports, rumours and conspiracy theories circulate. There’s some agreement that the time, location and level of sophistication of the attack indicate the involvement or support from a government. But the speculation stretches from western special forces or Ukrainian groups being behind the attack to it being a well-orchestrated Russian operation. In the meantime, none of the official investigations have been concluded and solid evidence that could support any of the narratives remains sparse. The Swedish prosecutor leading one of the investigations announced on June 14 that he hopes to have completed the investigation by autumn. Vulnerable undersea cables For all his characteristic bluster, which have included threats involving Russia’s nuclear arsenal, Medvedev’s threat should be taken seriously. As we have shown in a report to the European parliament of last year, subsea cables are the backbone of the contemporary digital economy. Almost all of our internet connections depend on them. According to SubTelForum’s Submarine Cable Almanac as of the beginning of 2023, there were 380 cables in Europe on the ocean floor, mostly the size of a garden hose. They use fibre optic technology to convey information at large distances. Yet they are easy to cut and get damaged quite frequently. The industry reports up to 100 cable failures annually, mainly caused by fishing activities or the anchors of ships. This rarely causes serious disruptions. As already established above, there are hundreds of cables on the sea floor and in the case of failure, traffic is swiftly rerouted and a repair ship is sent on its way to fix the damage. If Russia is serious about its threats to cut cables, the main economic cost would be for repair work. Major disruptions are unlikely. There are, however, places that are more vulnerable and where the impact would be more extensive. This includes sites where several crucial cables could be attacked at the same time. These are known as “chokepoints”. For instance, several important cables surface in the port of Marseilles – and the English channel and the Red Sea have a high density of cables. Also, island states, such as Ireland, are more vulnerable because they do not have terrestrial connections as backup. So Medvedev’s threat should be taken seriously, but should not be blown out of proportion. What’s behind the threat? Once thought of as a reasonable politician, who took over as president when Putin was having his “break” from 2008 to 2012 after two terms of presidency, Medvedev has become ever more of a Kremlin stooge. His threat is a continuation of Russia’s strategy of disinformation – an attempt to distract western leaders from events in Ukraine and force security policymakers to worry about their vulnerabilities at home. Probably, this is also a message to two security events happening in the coming days and weeks and meant to increase the feeling of vulnerability and uncertainty. At the end of May, Ireland commenced a national consultative forum on security – online and on four separate days at the end of June. Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheál Martin, said the aim was to build public understanding and generate discussions on our foreign, security and defence policies. The particular focus would be on how Ireland wants to respond to the new security environment and whether to seek Nato membership. As an island with open seas, Ireland is one of the most vulnerable places in Europe in terms of potential internet cable sabotage. A bit further down the line is the Nato summit taking place in Vilnius, Lithuania, in early July. Subsea cable protection is one of the priority issues on the agenda, and the organization’s new infrastructure protection coordination cell is expected to make recommendations for how the alliance can protect cables better and deter any sabotage. But a military approach to protection on its own won’t suffice. Close collaboration between the military, civil maritime agencies, communication regulators and the industry is needed. The European Maritime Security Strategy expected to be issued by the European Council this summer will be an important step in this direction. The strategy lays out plans for risk analyses, improved surveillance and inter-agency exercises. Overall, and beyond the immediate Russian threat, the protection of critical maritime infrastructures, which also includes wind farms, power cables, hydrogen pipelines and carbon storage projects, needs to become a defining feature in the global ocean governance agenda.

Defense & Security
Aleksandr Lukashenko with Vladimir Putin

Ukraine war: Russia’s threat to station nuclear warheads in Belarus – what you need to know

by Natalya Chernyshova

The threat of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine is “real” and “absolutely irresponsible”, according to the US president, Joe Biden. He was reacting to questioning from journalists as to whether he believed Belarus had been taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. If true, it’s the first time Russia has deployed nuclear warheads outside its borders since the end of the cold war. This does not immediately mean a nuclear escalation with Nato, since Russian nuclear missiles stationed in the Kaliningrad region already put Poland and the Baltic states within range. Experts are sceptical about Russia’s intentions to use these weapons in Ukraine. But the presence of tactical nuclear arms in Belarus has, nevertheless, important implications for European security. It would change the nature of the relationship between Russia and Belarus and bring Belarus deeper under Russian control. The two countries are already in what is known as a “union state” after longtime Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko and Boris Yeltsin signed a series of treaties in the mid-1990s. These made for “deeper economic integration” and the “formation of a single economic space” as well as the coordination of foreign policy and military activities between the two countries. The “union” was relatively loose until the 2020 mass protests in Belarus pushed the desperate Lukashenko to agree to a much closer economic and military integration with Russia. The real target Noting that this is “not an escalation from Putin’s prior nuclear weapons rhetoric”, the Institute for the Study of War says this is more about increasing Moscow’s military grip over Belarus: “The Kremlin likely intends to use these requirements to further subordinate the Belarusian security sphere under Russia.” The warheads will be under Russian control. Storage facilities are reported to be under construction for completion in early July. This will require a significant Russian military presence and permanent military bases in Belarus. Belarusians do not want to have Russian nuclear weapons on their soil. Researchers from Chatham House who regularly conduct surveys in Belarus have found that 74% of respondents in their March 2023 survey objected to deployment. The rejection of nukes is even more dramatic when analysed by which media the respondents are consuming. Belarus state media beats a relentlessly pro-Moscow drum. Among those who do not consume state media between 97% and 98% are opposed. The prospect of Russian military bases is hardly more popular, with only 24% of respondents supporting it in an earlier Chatham House survey in June 2022. The idea of a single foreign policy and army with Russia was backed by a mere 9% in the March 2023 survey. This is yet another indicator of the chasm between the regime and the people, which was made evident by the 2020 protests, the largest in recent Belarusian history. Belarusians are traditionally wary of having to choose sides when it comes to political alliances. And, despite a “vote” ratifying an amendment to the country’s constitution to allow Russia to station nuclear weapons on its soil, the country is increasingly divided between those who look to Russia and those who are in favour of closer relations with western Europe. After Russia went into Ukraine, a Chatham House survey found that 47% were against the invasion, while only 33% were in favour. Another poll found 93% would not support Belarus entering the war. Fallout from Chornobyl And Belarusians also have a good reason to be strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. The memory of the Chornobyl disaster in 1986. About 70% of the radioactive fallout landed on its territory, and there is evidence that Moscow deliberately seeded clouds so that radioactive rain fell over Belarus rather than drift towards Moscow. The political fallout was slower but no less significant: over the years, Chornobyl commemorations have become an annual rallying point for anti-Lukashenko opposition. It also helped ensure that independent Belarus was the first among post-Soviet nations to abandon its Soviet nuclear arsenal. These points seem lost on Lukashenko, who has publicly declared that he will not consider the opinion of the Belarusian people about using nuclear weapons. Opposition opinions are dangerous in Belarus, and state terror against all criticism of the regime has only intensified since Russia invaded Ukraine. The number of those arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms has been steadily growing. As of June 21, Belarus had 1,492 political prisoners. This is just the tip of the iceberg of repression. Not only opposition activists, NGO workers, and independent journalists, but anyone who can be linked to the 2020 protests or who ever spoke out against the regime on social media is at risk of arrest. The recent UN Human Rights Office report decried “the unacceptable picture of impunity and the near-total destruction of civic space and fundamental freedoms in Belarus”, including the systematic use of unlawful detention, violence and torture. Consequences for Belarus and beyond Lukashenko is playing a dangerous game. Belarus’s economic dependence on Moscow, already heavy, has been deepened further by western sanctions and the war in Ukraine. Russia’s share in Belarus’ trade grew from 49% in 2021 to 60% in late 2022. Recently, a joint tax agreement with Russia, previously resisted by Minsk, reduced Belarusian control over taxation. According to the independent Belarusian monitoring organisation, the Hajun Project, there is no evidence that any warheads have arrived. But deploying Russian nuclear warheads would lead to Moscow’s permanent military presence. It would mean further loss of authority for Lukashenko and his generals. And worse, if Putin did decide to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, it would be an easier decision to launch them from Belarus and let them reap the whirlwind of retaliation. Consolidating his control over Belarus would be a significant strategic victory for Putin’s imperial ambitions. Preoccupied with fighting in Ukraine and lacking a clear and decisive policy on Belarus, the west has no obvious immediate response. But if Moscow follows through with its threat it would be a dangerous moment – not just for Belarus but for Europe as a whole.