Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Thursday the European Commission is blackmailing Hungary by withholding billions in frozen funds over rule-of-law concerns.
Orbán said the blackmail is “a fact,” even admitted by the blackmailers themselves — members of the European Parliament.
“In our view, Hungary fulfils all the qualities of the rule of law, and when the European Commission has specific needs, we implement everything from them, and we are also cooperative,” Orbán told reporters in Budapest during a press conference. “You cannot blame me for doing everything I can to promote Hungary’s interests in such a blackmailed situation.”
Orbán’s government has been embroiled in a long-standing dispute with Brussels, which has frozen billions of EU funds intended for Hungary over concerns about human rights and the rule of law in the country.
Last week, the European Commission unblocked €10.2 billion in frozen EU cohesion funds earmarked for Hungary.
The commission said the timing of the funding release — which came just a day before the European Council, where Orbán was threatening to block the start of Ukraine’s accession talks to the EU and a further aid package to Kyiv — was coincidental. But many EU politicians have warned Brussels not to give in to what they perceive as blackmail from the Hungarian leader.
In the end, Orbán did a U-turn and allowed EU leaders to approve the start of negotiations for Ukraine to join the bloc.
There is more money at stake for Budapest and Orbán is still blocking a €50 billion aid package for Kyiv, which leaders are set to discuss early next year.
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday his ruling coalition would seek to present new budget plans “very quickly” to Parliament, after a constitutional court ruling last week plunged his government and its finances into disarray.
The chancellor is facing mounting criticism that he still hasn’t managed to offer a proposal on how to make up Germany’s yawning budgetary shortfall one week after the bombshell court ruling blew a €60 billion hole in the books.
It’s an accounting mess that now throws into doubt future payments for energy, the green transition of industry and microchip manufacturing.
Crucially, last week’s ruling means not only a delay to next year’s budget — which became evident on Wednesday when a parliament committee postponed a preliminary adoption of spending plans for 2024 — but may also require a supplementary “emergency” budget for this year to deal with the fallout of the court decision.
Speaking at a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Berlin, Scholz evaded specifics on what happens next, arguing the consequences of the ruling must still “be examined very carefully,” which should now be done “very swiftly and promptly.”
The Social Democratic chancellor argued his three-party coalition, which also includes the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), was determined to “very quickly” move forward with new budget plans, and “ensure that what we have set out to do — for good cohesion in Germany, for the further development of our welfare state, for the modernization of our economy — can actually be pursued further.”
Still, he did not say where he could make the spending cuts that appear to be needed to make this possible.
Scholz had already sounded upbeat on Tuesday that, despite budget cuts, Germany could still pay subsidies to chipmakers Intel and TSMC for building new plants in eastern Germany.
A key consequence of last week’s ruling is that it will probably limit the ability of German leaders, both at the federal and state level, to use money from a variety of special funds that have been established to circumvent the debt brake. This mechanism restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP, except in times of emergency.
During a budgetary committee hearing on Tuesday, several legal experts argued Scholz’s government would have to present a supplementary “emergency” budget for this year to account for more than €30 billion of expenses for energy subsidies. These subsidies had been financed via a special fund outside the regular budget — a practice that is likely to be unlawful in the light of last week’s ruling.
Controversially, such a decision would probably require the suspension of the debt brake for this year.
Questioned by POLITICO during an event in Berlin on Tuesday evening, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who has expressed great pride about upholding the debt brake in the past, evaded making a clear reply on potentially relaxing debt rules for this year.
Lindner also argued the 2024 budget would be “a little less moderate and a little more restrictive.”
Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to disable Starlink satellite communications near the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea last year to sabotage a planned Ukrainian drone strike.
Musk was worried the drone submarine attack, which was targeting the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol, would escalate tensions and potentially lead to a nuclear war, according to an extract from historian Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography “Elon Musk.”
Musk on Thursday evening painted a slightly different picture to the one described by Isaacson. He said satellites in those regions were never turned on in the first place and he simply chose not to activate them.
The extract, published by the Washington Post on Thursday, shows Musk’s journey from eager supporter to reluctant ally of Ukraine.
Isaacson writes that Musk reportedly panicked when he heard about the planned Ukrainian attack, which was using Starlink satellites to guide six drones packed with explosives towards the Crimea coast.
After speaking to the Russian ambassador to the United States — who reportedly told him an attack on Crimea would trigger a nuclear response — Musk took matters into his own hands and ordered his engineers to turn off Starlink coverage “within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast.”
This caused the drones to lose connectivity and wash “ashore harmlessly,” effectively sabotaging the offensive mission.
Ukraine’s reaction was immediate: Officials frantically called Musk and asked him to turn the service back on, telling him that the “drone subs were crucial to their fight for freedom.”
But Musk was unwavering. He argued that Ukraine was “going too far and inviting strategic defeat” and that he did not want his satellites used for offensive purposes.
This was the beginning of a well-documented cooling of relationships between Ukrainian forces and the billionaire entrepreneur, who had been helping keep Ukraine online since the beginning of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion through his Starlink satellites, as Ukrainian infrastructure was severely damaged by Russian attacks.
But as Ukraine moved on the offensive, Musk started restricting the Ukrainian military’s use of Starlink in Russian-controlled regions and for drone control, while also warning he would stop financially supporting of the service. His argument was the same: He wanted to prevent the conflict from escalating into a world war.
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk said on X (formerly Twitter). “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday praised Musk’s choice to shut down Starlink during Ukraine’s strike attempt.
“If what Isaacson has written in his book is true, then it looks like Musk is the last adequate mind in North America,” Medvedev wrote on Musk’s X. “Or, at the very least, in gender-neutral America, he is the one with the balls.”
“Elon Musk,” a biography by historian, professor and former Time magazine editor Isaacson, is set to be released on September 12.
This story has been updated with comments from Elon Musk.
Two high-ranking Ukrainian officials have been named as suspects in an embezzlement scheme uncovered by Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities this week, involving the procurement of humanitarian aid.
Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agrarian policy and food and the former deputy minister of economy reportedly misappropriated UAH 62 million (about €1.5 million), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) found.
This is just the latest wave of corruption that has swept Ukraine since the war with Russia started in 2022. In January, two major corruption scandals centered on government procurement of military catering services and electrical generators shook the country.
Rather than sweeping the suspect deals under the carpet, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy launched a major crackdown, in a bid to show allies in the U.S. and EU that Ukraine is making a clean break from the past. Earlier this month, he fired all regional military recruitment bosses amid reports of corruption, replacing them with soldiers who have been on the front lines or who have been hurt in combat.
The most recent scheme involved the purchase of food which was intended as humanitarian aid for regional military administrations and for the populations of Donetsk, Kherson, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Khmelnytsky, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions and the city of Kyiv, SAPO said.
According to the agencies, in one episode the first deputy minister of agrarian policy purchased food at prices two to three times higher than market value through a controlled company, which in turn bought the products at market value from a Polish manufacturer.
This cost Ukraine’s railway company Ukrzaliznytsia about €719,000 between March and August 2022.
“He was aware of the actual market value of the products, as he regularly received relevant data from the state statistical service,” said NABU in a press release. “He also knew about the possibility of purchasing products from Ukrainian manufacturers but deliberately ignored this fact.”
In a separate scheme involving both officials, food was purchased once again at higher prices through an intermediary company which, in turn, bought food at market value from a Turkish manufacturer. The deputy minister of economy hid proof that there were better offers available and pushed officials to illegally approve applications and invoices from the controlled companies.
As a result of this scheme, Ukrzaliznytsia overpaid companies about €841,000.
“Having been received, the funds were transferred to a foreign company with signs of fictitiousness for further legalization,” NABU said. “Draft records outlining the distribution of the ill-gotten gains were discovered during a search at a scheme participant’s place.”
Debris from a large-scale Russian missile attack on Kyiv has killed two people and injured several more, in the largest air strike on the Ukrainian capital since spring.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russia launched 28 missiles and 16 drones, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed all missiles and 15 out of the 16 drones within the regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr.
“Tonight, almost all enemy air targets destroyed,” Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram. “Thanks to all the defenders who joined in repelling the air attack!”
Debris from the downed missiles and drones fell in the Darnytskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts of Kyiv, killing two people and injuring three more. The two victims were security guards, aged 26 and 36 years old. Several fires broke out in the two districts, damaging nonresidential buildings.
This was the largest strike on Kyiv in months, said Kyiv’s City Military Administration.
“Kyiv has not experienced such a powerful attack since spring,” Sergey Popko, head of CMVA, said on Telegram. “The enemy carried out a massive, combined attack using drones and missiles.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Zelenskyy’s office, called the attack on Kyiv an “unquestionably deliberate attack on the civilian population.”
Some fires were reported outside of the city as well, in the wider Kyiv region, where several residential buildings were damaged.
Also in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russia said it shot down multiple attempted air strikes by Ukrainian forces over several regions.
In the Pskov region, located on Russia’s western flank near the borders of Latvia and Estonia, several military transport aircraft caught fire as a result of the attack, reported Russian state-run news agency TASS.
In central Russia, the Russian defense ministry said it shot down all attempted air strikes and no casualties were reported. Alexander Bogomaz, governor of the Bryansk region where seven drones were reportedly shot down, said Ukrainian forces tried to attack a TV tower in the region, without success.
Three airports in Moscow were temporarily closed Wednesday, but the restrictions were later lifted, TASS reported.
Moscow also said it thwarted an attack east of Snake Island in the Black Sea on Wednesday, destroying a Ukrainian high-speed military boat.
Ukraine’s drone attacks have increasingly targeted Russian territory in recent months, including its capital, Moscow. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the attacks or claim responsibility.
The Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk came under fire from across the Ukrainian border in the early hours of Wednesday, according to local governors.
Both officials blamed Ukraine for the attack — claims which have not been independently verified.
Statements from the regions’ governors say one woman was injured in the attack, which targeted the town of Valuyki in Belgorod and the village of Tyotkino in Kursk.
Belgorod’s Governor Viacheslav Gladkov said Valuyki was shelled for more than an hour, and that Russian air defenses shot down three targets and one drone. Another 12 shells from Grad multiple rocket launcher systems (MLRs) were fired at a residential area, according to Gladkov. Eight buildings and a powerline were damaged, and a woman suffered shrapnel injuries.
Kursk’s Governor Roman Starovoit said 12 shells were fired at Tyotkino, damaging a school.
In the last few months, Russian regions on the border with Ukraine and even further east have come under frequent shelling and drone attacks.
Russia claims that Ukraine attacked Moscow with at least five drones on Tuesday. Kyiv rarely claims responsibility for such attacks. Following Tuesday’s events, Andriy Cherniak, a representative of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence, told POLITICO that such attacks “are the consequences of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.”
Moscow took 12 hours to respond after an explosion lit up the dome of the Kremlin complex last Wednesday.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the security services needed time to investigate the incident.
But the Kremlin’s spin doctors worked extra hours too, no doubt.
On the eve of Victory Day — which traditionally celebrates the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany, but which has become emblematic of Russia’s current war against Ukraine — the Kremlin’s line at home is that the country is battling an enemy as powerful as it is evil.
That narrative is meant to account for the absence of success on the battlefront after 14 months of fighting, while offering Russians a sense of security that for them life will continue as usual.
But a series of mysterious incidents — including Wednesday’s early-morning blast — is revealing cracks in Russia’s facade of strength. The cancellation of some of the Victory Day festivities is another sign that appearances are beginning to slip.
The Kremlin eventually described the 2 a.m. incursion of two drones onto the heavily protected Moscow compound as an assassination attempt on President Putin by the “Kyiv regime.” That was in a statement Wednesday afternoon, which also claimed the right to respond “where and when it sees fit.” Putin wasn’t in the complex at the time. A day later, Moscow added the U.S. to its accusation of blame for the blast.
“We know very well that decisions about such actions, such terrorist attacks, are not made in Kyiv, but in Washington,” Peskov said on Thursday.
Both Kyiv and Washington vehemently deny any involvement.
Playing it down
Wednesday’s drone attack was the latest in a number of unexplained incidents on Russian soil in recent months, including a car bomb attack on an ultranationalist writer on Saturday — the third targeting of pro-war figures since the start of the invasion, resulting in two deaths. There also have been a number of crashed drones, the derailing of freight trains, and at least two fires at fuel depots in Crimea.
In allthose cases, the Kremlin downplayed the news or kept its distance.
The Kremlin is one of the best-protected sites in Russia, and it has been widely assumed that piercing its air defenses was next to impossible | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
So the fact that this time, it chose to publish an official statement and pointed the finger at the U.S., its main enemy, suggests the Kremlin wants people to take note. But to what effect?
Predictably, the Kremlin’s main mouthpieces have clamored for revenge. Former Russian president and current head of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has called for the “physical elimination” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Maybe now things will start for real?” wrote Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT.
But other than the usual jingoistic saber-rattling, Russia’s main evening news programs did not air the scenes of the drone explosion.
And still, more questions than answers remain.
The Kremlin is one of the best-protected sites in Russia, and it has been widely assumed that piercing its air defenses was next to impossible. Moreover, it is well-known that Putin spends most of his time at other locations.
That has fed speculation that the drone attack was in fact a false-flag operation staged by one of Russia’s own security services.
Possible motives could be an internal power struggle — as much as the security services are seen as a monolith, they are in fact infamously divided — or an attempt to dissuade the West from further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, since the arms would supposedly be used in strikes on Russian territory.
Symbolic space
But an attack on the heart of power carries a large symbolic, if not physical, price. It was in the domed Kremlin Senate that Putin staged the historic meeting with his security advisers that preceded the February 2022 launch of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its symbolism is undeniable.
Regardless of who is behind the incursion, it is less likely to produce a rally-around-the flag effect than raise eyebrows over the Kremlin’s own defense system.
As yet, the most important military parade, in Moscow — broadcast live on Russian state television — is still on | Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
Comparisons are being made to when the 19-year-old German Mathias Rust landed a Cessna plane near the Kremlin during the Cold War. The fact that he managed to fly across the border unchallenged was a stark humiliation for Mikhail Gorbachev. Heads rolled among his defense staff as a result.
The timing of last week’s incident does not help either, coming right before the country puts on its usual display of military prowess for Victory Day on May 9.
Even before Wednesday’s strike, the situation was tense. Avoiding the use of the word “war,” which has been banned, dozens of Russian cities have canceled their military parades in order to not “provoke the adversary.” The Immortal Regiment, a hugely popular procession of people carrying photos of their relatives who fought in World War II, has been called off. Some places have even nixed their fireworks shows.
On the one hand, such changes to an important national holiday could drive home the message that Russians are at war with, as the Kremlin puts it, “terrorists.” But the knife cuts both directions.
“In the current context, the cancellation of the parades will be taken as yet another sign that things are going very badly,” Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned analyst, told the Echo Moskvy outlet.
While avoiding mass gatherings in cities close to Russia’s border with Ukraine might seem like a logical precaution, that is less obvious for those thousands of kilometers away in Siberia.
Red Square speech
Some wonder aloud whether certain cities might simply lack the military equipment for a parade. Or whether they might wish to stop people taking to the streets holding photos of their relatives who have died in Ukraine, thereby providing a visual of Russia’s wartime death toll.
As yet, the most important military parade, in Moscow — broadcast live on Russian state television — is still on. But the tension in the capital is palpable.
Red Square has been shut to the public for two weeks and streets have been barricaded.
Following Wednesday’s incident, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin immediately banned the use of drones, and dozens of other regions have since followed suit. Days in advance, Muscovites were already experiencing problems with their GPS signals.
Much will hinge on Putin. His yearly Victory Day speech on Red Square is one of the few moments when his whereabouts are known in advance.
After Wednesday’s security breach, some question whether he might reconsider.
But the optics of his absence would not be good, and chances are slim that the Kremlin would risk the psychological fallout.
And yet, the question of whether it is safe enough for the president to come out in public in central Moscow speaks louder than the sound of 10,000 men marching on Red Square.
LONDON — Joe Biden is not someone known for his subtlety.
His gaffe-prone nature — which saw him last week confuse the New Zealand rugby team with British forces from the Irish War of Independence — leaves little in the way of nuance.
But he is also a sentimental man from a long gone era of Washington, who specializes in a type of homespun, aw-shucks affability that would be seen as naff in a younger president.
His lack of subtlety was on show in Belfast last week as he issued a thinly veiled ultimatum to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — return to Northern Ireland’s power-sharing arrangements or risk losing billions of dollars in U.S. business investment.
The DUP — a unionist party that does not take kindly to lectures from American presidents — is refusing to sit in Stormont, the Northern Ireland Assembly, due to its anger with the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol, which has created trade friction between the region and the rest of the U.K.
The DUP is also refusing to support the U.K.-EU Windsor Framework, which aims to fix the economic problems created by the protocol, despite hopes it would see the party reconvene the Northern Irish Assembly.
The president on Wednesday urged Northern Irish leaders to “unleash this incredible economic opportunity, which is just beginning.”
However, American business groups paint a far more complex and nuanced view of future foreign investment into Northern Ireland than offered up by Biden.
Biden told a Belfast crowd on Wednesday there were “scores of major American corporations wanting to come here” to invest, but that a suspended Stormont was acting as a block on that activity.
One U.S. business figure, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s flighty rhetoric was “exaggerated” and that many businesses would be looking beyond the state of the regional assembly to make their investment decisions.
The president spoke as if Ulster would be rewarded with floods of American greenbacks if the DUP reverses its intransigence, predicting that Northern Ireland’s gross domestic product (GDP) would soon be triple its 1998 level. Its GDP is currently around double the size of when the Good Friday Agreement was struck in 1998.
Emanuel Adam, executive director of BritishAmerican Business, said this sounded like a “magic figure” unless Biden “knows something we don’t know about.”
DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr. told POLITICO that U.S. politicians for “too long” have “promised some economic El Dorado or bonanza if you only do what we say politically … but that bonanza has never arrived and people are not naive enough here to believe it ever will.”
“A presidential visit is always welcome, but the glitter on top is not an economic driver,” he said.
Joe Biden addresses a crowd of thousands on April 14, 2023 in Ballina, Ireland | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Facing both ways
The British government is hoping the Windsor Framework will ease economic tensions in Northern Ireland and create politically stable conditions for inward foreign direct investment.
The framework removes many checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and has begun to slowly create a more collaborative relationship between London and Brussels on a number of fronts — two elements which have been warmly welcomed across the Atlantic.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market, to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, and the U.K.’s internal market.
“That’s like the world’s most exciting economic zone,” Sunak said in February.
Jake Colvin, head of Washington’s National Foreign Trade Council business group, said U.S. firms wanted to see “confidence that the frictions over the protocol have indeed been resolved.”
“Businesses will look to mechanisms like the Windsor Framework to provide stability,” he said.
Marjorie Chorlins, senior vice president for Europe at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Windsor Framework was “very important” for U.S. businesses and that “certainty about the relationship between the U.K. and the EU is critical.”
She said a reconvened Stormont would mean more legislative stability on issues like skills and health care, but added that there were a whole range of other broader U.K. wide economic factors that will play a major part in investment decisions.
This is particularly salient in a week where official figures showed the U.K.’s GDP flatlining and predictions that Britain will be the worst economic performer in the G20 this year.
“We want to see a return to robust growth and prosperity for the U.K. broadly and are eager to work with government at all levels,” Chorlins said.
“Political and economic instability in the U.K. has been a challenge for businesses of all sizes.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market | Pool photo by Paul Faith/Getty Images
Her words underline just how much global reputational damage last year’s carousel of prime ministers caused for the U.K., with Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey recently warning of a “hangover effect” from Liz Truss’ premiership and the broader Westminster psychodrama of 2022.
America’s Northern Ireland envoy Joe Kennedy, grandson of Robert Kennedy, accompanied the president last week and has been charged with drumming up U.S. corporate interest in Northern Ireland.
Kennedy said Northern Ireland is already “the No. 1 foreign investment location for proximity and market access.”
Northern Ireland has been home to £1.5 billion of American investment in the past decade and had the second-most FDI projects per capita out of all U.K. regions in 2021.
Claire Hanna, Westminster MP for the nationalist SDLP, believes reconvening Stormont would “signal a seriousness that there isn’t going to be anymore mucking around.”
“It’s also about the signal that the restoration of Stormont sends — that these are the accepted trading arrangements,” she said.
Hanna says the DUP’s willingness to “demonize the two biggest trading blocs in the world — the U.S. and EU” — was damaging to the country’s future economic prospects.
‘The money goes south’
At a more practical level, Biden’s ultimatum appears to carry zero weight with DUP representatives.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson made it clear last week that he was unmoved by Biden’s economic proclamations and gave no guarantee his party would sit in the regional assembly in the foreseeable future.
“President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson told POLITICO.
“But fundamental to the success of our economy is our ability to trade within our biggest market, which is of course the United Kingdom.”
A DUP official said U.S. governments had been promising extra American billions in exchange “for selling out to Sinn Féin and Dublin” since the 1990s and “when America talks about corporate investment, we get the crumbs and that investment really all ends up in the Republic [of Ireland].”
“President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson said | Behal/Irish Government via Getty Images
“The Americans talk big, but the money goes south,” the DUP official said.
This underscores the stark reality that challenges Northern Ireland any time it pitches for U.S. investment — the competing proposition offered by its southern neighbor with its internationally low 12.5 percent rate on corporate profits.
Emanuel Adam with BritishAmerican Business said there was a noticeable feeling in Washington that firms want to do business in Dublin.
“When [Irish Prime Minister] Leo Varadkar and his team were here recently, I could tell how confident the Irish are these days,” he said. “There are not as many questions for them as there are around the U.K.”
Biden’s economic ultimatum looks toothless from the DUP’s perspective and its resonance may be as short-lived as his trip to Belfast itself.
This story has been updatedto correct a historical reference.
MOSCOW — Every year, during the anniversary of the battle that turned back the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, the city of Volgograd is briefly renamed Stalingrad, its Soviet-era name.
During this year’s commemoration, however, authorities went further. They unveiled a bust of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and paraded soldiers dressed as secret police in a bid to emphasize the parallels between Russia’s past and its present.
“It’s unbelievable but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Volgograd to deliver a speech on February 2. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.”
Putin’s statement was full of factual inaccuracies: Russia is fighting not the West but Ukraine, because it invaded the country; the German Leopards being delivered to Kyiv date back only to the 1960s; there’s no plan for them to enter Russian territory.
But the Russian president’s evocation of former victories was telling — it was a distillation of his approach to justifying an invasion that hasn’t gone to plan. These days in Russia, if the present is hard to explain, appeal to the past.
“The language of history has replaced the language of politics,” said Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg. “It is used to explain what is happening in a simple way that Russians understand.”
Putin has long harkened back to World War II — known in the country as The Great Patriotic War, in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died.
Invoking the fight against Adolf Hitler simultaneously taps into Russian trauma and frames the country as being on the right side of history. “It has been turned into a master narrative through which [Putin] communicates the basic ideas of what is good and bad; who is friend and who foe,” said Kurilla.
Putin’s announcement of his full-scale assault on Ukraine was no exception. On February 24, 2022, Russians awoke to a televised speech announcing the start of “a special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.
“The official narrative was: ‘there are fascists in Ukraine, and we want to help people there. We are fighting for the sake of a great cause,’” said Tamara Eidelman, an expert in Russian propaganda.
On the streets, however, Russians seemed confused.
Asked in the early days of the war what “denazification” meant by the Russian website 7×7, one man suggested: “Respect for people of different ethnicities, respect for different languages, equality before the law and freedom of the press.”
Russia’s laws punish those seen as discrediting the Russian Armed Forces or spreading fake news by using the word “war” | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
Another interviewee ventured a different definition: “Destroy everyone who is not for a normal, peaceful life.”
The term “special military operation” at least was somewhat clearer. It suggested a speedy, professional, targeted offensive.
“There is a certain mundaneness to it — ‘yes, this is going to be unpleasant, but we’ll take care of it quickly,’” said Eidelman, the propaganda expert.
А week after the invasion, Russia’s laws were amended to punish those seen as discrediting the Russian armed forces or spreading fake news, including by using the word “war.”
Historical parallels
As the special military operation turned into a protracted conflict, and the facts on the ground refused to bend to Putin’s narrative, the Kremlin has gradually been forced to change its story.
Images of a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol or corpses littering the streets of Bucha were dismissed by state propaganda as fake or a provocation — and yet by spring the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” had practically disappeared from the public sphere.
New justifications for the invasion were inserted into speeches and broadcasts, such as a claim that the United States had been developing biological weapons in Ukraine. In October, Putin declared that one of the main goals of the war had been to provide Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, with a stable water supply.
But the appeal to history has remained central to Putin’s communication effort.
While World War II remains his favorite leitmotif, the Russian president has been expansive in his historical comparisons. In June, he referenced Peter the Great’s campaign to “return what was Russia’s.” And during an October ceremony to lay claim to four regions in Ukraine, it was Catherine the Great who got a mention.
“Every so many months, another story is put forward as if they’re studying the reaction, looking to see what resonates,” said Kurilla.
The search for historical parallels has also bubbled up from below, as even supporters of the war search for justification. “Especially in spring and early summer, there was an attempt to Sovietize the war, with people waving red flags, trying to make sense of it through that lens.”
In the city of Syzran, students were filmed late last year pushing dummy tanks around in a sports hall in a re-enactment of the World War II Battle of Kursk. More recently, law students in St. Petersburg took part in a supposed restaging of the Nuremberg trials, which the region’s governor praised as “timely” in light of Russia’s current struggle against Nazism.
More recent statement by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin himself have made the idea of “war” less taboo | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Throughout, the Kremlin has sought to depict the conflict as a battle against powerful Western interests bent on using Ukraine to undermine Russia — a narrative that has become increasingly important as the Kremlin demands bigger sacrifices from the Russian population, most notably with a mobilization campaign in September.
“Long before February last year, people were already telling us: We are being dragged into a war by the West which we don’t want but there is no retreating from,” said Denis Volkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Center.
The sentiment, he added, has been widespread since the nineties, fed by disappointment over Russia’s diminished standing after the Cold War. “What we observe today is the culmination of that feeling of resentment, of unrealized illusions, especially among those over 50,” he said.
Long haul
With the war approaching the one-year mark, the narrative is once again having to adapt.
Even as hundreds in Russia are being prosecuted under wartime censorship laws, slips of the tongue by top officials such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and even Putin himself in December have made the idea of “war” less taboo.
“We are moving away from a special military operation towards a holy war … against 50 countries united by Satanism,” the veteran propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his program in January.
According to Levada, Russians are now expecting the war to last another six months or longer. “The majority keep to the sidelines, and passively support the war, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly,” said Volkov, the pollster.
Meanwhile, reports of Western weapons deliveries have been used to reinforce the argument that Russia is battling the West under the umbrella of NATO — no longer in an ideological sense, but in a literal one.
“A year of war has changed not the words that are said themselves but what they stand for in real life,” said Kurilla, the historian. “What started out as a historic metaphor is being fueled by actual spilled blood.”
In newspaper stands, Russians will find magazines such as “The Historian,” full of detailed spreads arguing that the Soviet Union’s Western allies in World War II were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers all along — another recycled trope from Russian history.
“During the Cold War, you would find caricatures depicting Western leaders such as President Eisenhower in fascist dress and a NATO helmet,” said Eidelman, the expert in Russian propaganda.
“This level of hatred and aggressive nationalism has not been seen since the late Stalin period,” she added.
The anti-West sentiment in Russia has been fed by disappointment over the country’s diminished standing after the Cold War | Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
On Tuesday, three days before the one-year anniversary of the invasion, Putin is scheduled to give another speech. He is expected to distract from Russia’s failure to capture any new large settlements in Ukraine by rehearsing old themes such as his gripes with the West and Russia’s past and present heroism.
There may be a limit, however, to how much the Russian president can infuse his subjects with enthusiasm for his country’s past glories.
In Volgograd, proposals to have the city permanently renamed to Stalingrad have been unsuccessful, with polls showing a large majority of the population is against such an initiative.
When it comes to embracing the past, Russians are still one step behind their leaders.
At least 43 migrants drowned on Sunday after the fishing boat on which they were traveling sank off the coast of the Italian region of Calabria.
According to local authorities, some 250 migrants were crammed aboard the ship, which broke in two about 20 kilometers from the city of Crotone. Over 100 passengers have been rescued, but at least 70 of the people who were aboard the ship remain missing.
Over the course of the morning, bodies, including those of children and at least one newborn baby, have washed ashore in the resort town of Steccato di Cutro, according to local reports.
Although the ship’s port of origin was in Turkey, authorities say the majority of the migrants that have been rescued are from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the disaster was “a huge tragedy that demonstrates how necessary it is to oppose the chains of irregular migration,” adding that more needed to be done to clamp down on “unscrupulous smugglers” who, “in order to get rich, organize improvised trips with inadequate boats and in prohibitive conditions.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “deep sorrow” for the shipwreck and pledged to stop irregular sea migration in order to prevent more tragedies. “The government is committed to preventing [migrant] departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies,” she said in a statement.
“It is inhumane to trade the lives of men, women and children for the price of the ‘ticket’ they have paid with the false prospect of a safe journey,” Meloni said.
Calabrian President Roberto Occhiuto slammed EU authorities for their inaction in addressing the migration crisis and asked “what has the European Union been doing all these years?”
“Where is Europe when it comes to guaranteeing security and legality?” he asked, adding that regions like his were left on their own to “manage emergencies and mourn the dead.”
Opposition parties said the tragedy indicated the flaws in Italy’s migration policy. “Condemning only the smugglers, as the center-right is doing now, is hypocrisy,″ said Laura Ferrara, a European Parliament lawmaker from the 5-Star Movement. “The truth is that the EU today does not offer effective alternatives for those who are forced abandon their country of origin; there are no real alternatives to smugglers and traffickers,″ Ferrara said in a statement.
According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, at least 2,366 migrants lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean last year; at least 124 have been reporting missing in its waters since the beginning of this year.
“I am wicked and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin reportedly warned David Cameron when the then-British prime minister pressed him about the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.
According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson — cited in a BBC documentary — Putin went on to explain that to succeed in Syria, one would have to use barbaric methods, as the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. “I am an ex-KGB man,” he expounded.
The remarks were meant, apparently, half in jest but, as ever with Russia’s leader, the menace was clear.
And certainly, Putin has proven he is ready to deploy fear as a weapon in his attempt to subjugate a defiant Ukraine. His troops have targeted civilians and have resorted to torture and rape. But victory has eluded him.
In the next few weeks, he looks set to try to reverse his military failures with a late-winter offensive: very possibly by being even scarier, and fighting tooth and claw, to save Russia — and himself — from further humiliation.
Can the ex-KGB man succeed, however? Can Russia still win the war of Putin’s choice against Ukraine in the face of heroic and united resistance from the Ukrainians?
Catalog of errors
From the start, the war was marked by misjudgments and erroneous calculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overrated the abilities of their own forces, and failed to foresee the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the United States and European nations.
Kyiv didn’t fall in a matter of days — as planned by the Kremlin — and Putin’s forces in the summer and autumn were pushed back, with Ukraine reclaiming by November more than half the territory the Russians captured in the first few weeks of the invasion. Russia has now been forced into a costly and protracted conventional war, one that’s sparked rare dissent within the country’s political-military establishment and led Kremlin infighting to spill into the open.
The only victory Russian forces have recorded in months came in January when the Ukrainians withdrew from the salt-mining town of Soledar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. And the signs are that the Russians are on the brink of another win with Bakhmut, just six miles southwest of Soledar, which is likely to fall into their hands shortly.
But neither of these blood-drenched victories amounts to much more than a symbolic success despite the high casualties likely suffered by both sides. Tactically neither win is significant — and some Western officials privately say Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been better advised to have withdrawn earlier from Soledar and from Bakhmut now, in much the same way the Russians in November beat a retreat from their militarily hopeless position at Kherson.
For a real reversal of Russia’s military fortunes Putin will be banking in the coming weeks on his forces, replenished by mobilized reservists and conscripts, pulling off a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to come in earnest sooner than spring. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov warned in press conferences in the past few days that Russia may well have as many as 500,000 troops amassed in occupied Ukraine and along the borders in reserve ready for an attack. He says it may start in earnest around this month’s first anniversary of the war on February 24.
Other Ukrainian officials think the offensive, when it comes, will be in March — but at least before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians Saturday that the country is entering a “time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break our defenses.”
All eyes on Donbas
The likely focus of the Russians will be on the Donbas region of the East. Andriy Chernyak, an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March. “We’ve observed that the Russian occupation forces are redeploying additional assault groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to the military intelligence of Ukraine, Putin gave the order to seize all of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
Other Ukrainian officials and western military analysts suspect Russia might throw some wildcards to distract and confuse. They have their eyes on a feint coming from Belarus mimicking the northern thrust last February on Kyiv and west of the capital toward Vinnytsia. But Ukrainian defense officials estimate there are only 12,000 Russian soldiers in Belarus currently, ostensibly holding joint training exercises with the Belarusian military, hardly enough to mount a diversion.
“A repeat assault on Kyiv makes little sense,” Michael Kofman, an American expert on the Russian Armed Forces and a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “An operation to sever supply lines in the west, or to seize the nuclear powerplant by Rivne, may be more feasible, but this would require a much larger force than what Russia currently has deployed in Belarus,” he said in an analysis.
But exactly where Russia’s main thrusts will come along the 600-kilometer-long front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region is still unclear. Western military analysts don’t expect Russia to mount a push along the whole snaking front — more likely launching a two or three-pronged assault focusing on some key villages and towns in southern Donetsk, on Kreminna and Lyman in Luhansk, and in the south in Zaporizhzhia, where there have been reports of increased buildup of troops and equipment across the border in Russia.
In the Luhansk region, Russian forces have been removing residents near the Russian-held parts of the front line. And the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, believes the expulsions are aimed at clearing out possible Ukrainian spies and locals spotting for the Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer of (Russian troops) to the region and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front,” Haidai told reporters.
Reznikov has said he expects the Russian offensive will come from the east and the south simultaneously — from Zaporizhzhia in the south and in Donetsk and Luhansk. In the run-up to the main offensives, Russian forces have been testing five points along the front, according to Ukraine’s General Staff in a press briefing Tuesday. They said Russian troops have been regrouping on different parts of the front line and conducting attacks near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka in eastern Donetsk.
Combined arms warfare
Breakthroughs, however, will likely elude the Russians if they can’t correct two major failings that have dogged their military operations so far — poor logistics and a failure to coordinate infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually complementary effects, otherwise known as combined arms warfare.
When announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff — as the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry highlighted “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare.
Kofman assesses that Russia’s logistics problems may have largely been overcome. “There’s been a fair amount of reorganization in Russian logistics, and adaptation. I think the conversation on Russian logistical problems in general suffers from too much anecdotalism and received wisdom,” he said.
Failing that, much will depend for Russia on how much Gerasimov has managed to train his replenished forces in combined arms warfare and on that there are huge doubts he had enough time. Kofman believes Ukrainian forces “would be better served absorbing the Russian attack and exhausting the Russian offensive potential, then taking the initiative later this spring. Having expended ammunition, better troops, and equipment it could leave Russian defense overall weaker.” He suspects the offensive “may prove underwhelming.”
Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They have been clamoring for another mobilization, saying it will be necessary to power the breakouts needed to reverse Russia’s military fortunes. Former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in Crimea’s annexation and later in the Donbas, has argued waves of call-ups will be needed to overcome Ukraine’s defenses by sheer numbers.
And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest necessary for an attacking force to succeed.
Ukrainian officials think Russia’s offensive will be in March, before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western tanks | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images
But others fear that Russia has sufficient forces, if they are concentrated, to make some “shock gains.” Richard Kemp, a former British army infantry commander, is predicting “significant Russian gains in the coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things could be — otherwise the shock risks dislodging Western resolve,” he wrote. The fear being that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbas, then it is more likely pressure from some Western allies will grow for negotiations.
But Gerasimov’s manpower deficiencies have prompted other analysts to say that if Western resolve holds, Putin’s own caution will hamper Russia’s chances to win the war.
“Putin’s hesitant wartime decision-making demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could threaten his rule or international escalation — despite the fact his maximalist and unrealistic objective, the full conquest of Ukraine, likely requires the assumption of further risk to have any hope of success,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an analysis this week.
Wicked and scary Putin may be but, as far as ISW sees it, he “has remained reluctant to order the difficult changes to the Russian military and society that are likely necessary to salvage his war.”
KYIV — Russia has launched extensive missile raids across Ukraine and is building up troops near the northeastern city of Kupyansk to test Ukrainian defenses, just as Kyiv is warning that Moscow is gearing up to launch a new offensive.
Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, said in a statement that two Kalibr cruise missiles entered the airspace of Moldova and NATO member Romania, before veering into Ukrainian territory. Romania, however, cautioned that radar only detected a missile launched from a Russian ship in the Black Sea traveling close to its airspace — some 35 kilometers away — but not inside its territory.
“At approximately 10:33 a.m., these missiles crossed Romanian airspace. After that, they again entered the airspace of Ukraine at the crossing point of the borders of the three states. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea,” Zaluzhnyy said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added, “Several Russian missiles flew through the airspace of Moldova and Romania. Today’s missiles are a challenge to NATO, collective security. This is terror that can and must be stopped. Stopped by the world.”
Governors in Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Khmelnytskyi reported power cuts due to the barrage.
The attack started before dawn in the eastern region of Kharkiv, according to the governor, Oleg Synegubov.
“Today, at 4:00 a.m., about 12 rockets hit critical infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv and the region. Currently, emergency and stabilizing light shutdowns are being employed. About 150,000 people in Kharkiv remain without electricity,” Synegubov said.
Synegubov said the barrage came the same morning as Russian invasion forces increased their attacks near Kupyansk, a city in the Kharkiv region that Ukrainian forces liberated last fall. “The enemy has increased its presence on the front line and is testing our defense lines for weak points. Our defenders reliably hold their positions and are ready for any possible actions of the enemy,” Synegubov said in a statement.
He also reported that about eight people were injured in one of the latest Russian missiles strikes in Kharkiv. Two of the victims are in critical condition.
Meanwhile, in the west of the country, Ukrainian air defense units are firing back at multiple cruise missile attacks. “That is Russian revenge for the fact that the whole world supports us,” Khmelnitskyi Governor Serhiy Hamaliy said in a statement. He also reported a missile strike in the city, saying that part of Khmelnitsky was without power.
Ukrainian Air Force Command reported the destruction of five cruise missiles and five of seven Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones Russia launched from the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Russians also launched six Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles from a Russian frigate in the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian Air Force added that air defense units shot down 61 of 71 cruise missiles that Russia launched.
“The occupiers also launched a massive attack with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from the districts of Belgorod (Russia) and Tokmak (occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region),” the air force said in a statement. “Up to 35 anti-aircraft guided missiles (S-300) were launched in the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, which cannot be destroyed in the air by means of air defense. Around 8:30 a.m. cruise missiles were launched from Tu-95 MS strategic bombers.”
Russia’s General Sergei Surovikin is no stranger to mass murder and spreading terror.
In Chechnya, the shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler and an expression to match, vowed to “destroy three Chechen fighters for every Russian soldier killed.” And he’s remembered bitterly in northern Syria for reducing much of the city of Aleppo to ruins.
The 56-year-old air force general also oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and send refugees fleeing to Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign “showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,” noted Human Rights Watch in a scathing report.
Now he is repeating his Syrian playbook in Ukraine.
Two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin appointed Surovikin as the overall commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation, to the delight of Moscow’s hawks. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov praised Surovikin as “a real general and a warrior.” He will “improve the situation,” Kadyrov added in a social media post.
But reversing a series of stunning battlefield Ukrainian victories and shifting the tide of the war may be beyond even the ruthless Surovikin. Ukrainians have shown throughout the year they’re made of stern stuff and aren’t going to be intimidated by war crimes — and they’ve endured bombing and bombardments before by equally unscrupulous Russian generals.
But Western military officials and analysts note there are already signs of more tactical coherence than was seen under his predecessor General Alexander Dvornikov. “His war tactics totally breach the rules of war but unfortunately they proved effective in Syria,” a senior British military intelligence officer told POLITICO. “As a war strategist he has a record of effectiveness — however vicious,” the officer added.
Surovikin and other officials point to the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a massive wave of attacks the past week. Strikes at the weekend resulted in power outages across the country leaving more than a million households without electricity, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said Saturday.
“These are vile strikes on critical objects,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “The world can and must stop this terror,” he said. “The geography of this latest mass strike is very wide,” Zelenskyy added. “Of course we don’t have the technical ability to knock down 100 percent of the Russian missiles and strike drones. I am sure that, gradually, we will achieve that, with help from our partners. Already now, we are downing a majority of cruise missiles, a majority of drones.”
Intercepting a majority of what’s being fired by the Russians at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, though, isn’t enough to halt the disruption Surovikin is endeavoring to provoke with the strikes. The scale of the damage caused to Ukraine’s power system at the weekend exceeded what was inflicted in the first wave of strikes on energy infrastructure on October 10, according to a Telegram post by Ukrenergo, the state grid operator.
Cheap shots
Around a third of the country’s power stations have been destroyed since the attacks started, Ukrainian authorities say.
And for Russia the cost of the aerial assault is cheap, relying as it does on Iran’s Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles, basically flying bombs nicknamed “kamikaze drones” because they are destroyed on impact.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with then-PM Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Surovikin in 2017 | Pool photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
The drones, which have a flying range of 2,500 kilometers, loiter over a target until ordered to attack. With a wingspan of 2.5 meters they can be difficult to identify on radar and cost only an estimated €20,000 to make, compared, say, to cruise missiles costing up to €2 million to produce.
Last week the White House said Iranian drone experts — trainers and tech support workers — have been deployed on the ground in Russia-annexed Crimea to help launch attacks on Ukraine. “Tehran is now directly engaged on the ground, and through the provision of weapons that are impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine,” said national security spokesman John Kirby.
But turning to Iran for assistance also demonstrates a Russian weakness, says a Pentagon adviser. That they are using Iranian drones suggests they really are running out of missiles. “I don’t think their capabilities are anyway as good as they claim. I’ve always thought that the Russians were a bit of a hollow force. They don’t have depth in range with capabilities and they can’t really apply them very effectively. The fact that they’re going to Iranians for drone technology, that’s a pretty sad statement about the once vaunted Russian military-industrial or Soviet military-industrial complex,” the adviser told POLITICO.
And while the drones are helping to cause considerable damage, their light explosive payloads at 36 kilograms present the Russians with a problem – they are not powerful enough to cause “decommissioning” damage to big power stations and so are being aimed at smaller sub-stations instead. Eventually, too, Western and Ukrainian experts will find ways to jam the GPS system the drones depend on to shift them off target. So, they may have a short shelf life of effectiveness, say Western officials.
Not having sufficient depth in terms of capabilities isn’t the only problem facing Russian generals. One of the most debilitating problems for the Russians has been the lack of small-unit leadership and competent supervision on the battlefield.
Ukrainian servicemen and police officers stand guard in a street after a drone attack in Kyiv on October 17, 2022 | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
The Ukrainians since 2014 have been steeped in U.S. military doctrine and training, which focuses on building a professional corps of corporals and sergeants who understand the big picture and are given the delegated authority to make decisions on the battlefield as they lead their units, according to John Barranco, an analyst at the Atlantic Council who oversaw the U.S. Marines’ initial operations in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks and served in Iraq.
The failure of the Russians to build up such a cadre has plagued them in Ukraine and it isn’t a deficiency Surovikin has time to rectify. In fact, the situation is likely to worsen with the Kremlin now throwing into inadequately battle-trained conscripts from Putin’s partial mobilization order.
Russian retreat
After just a handful of days’ training, conscripts are already dying. And draftees are being sent to what is now the crucial front in this stage of the war — the southern port city of Kherson — where Russian authorities have ordered all residents to leave ahead of a closing advance by Ukrainian troops.
Kherson city is the only regional capital Russia has managed to seize since the invasion began. It was a key prize in establishing a land bridge between Crimea and Ukraine’s south, as well as opening the way for a potential assault on the major Black Sea port of Odesa.
But a Ukrainian counteroffensive that started in the summer is now bearing down on Kherson city. Russia’s tactical position in the area is highly compromised, with units of paratroopers dug in on the west bank of the Dnieper River, where they are highly vulnerable. “From a battlefield geometry point of view, it is a terrible position for the Russians,” Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, told POLITICO.
Watling, who’s been conducting operational analysis with Ukraine’s general staff, says the Russians on the west bank are among their most capable troops but can’t be resupplied reliably “at the scale needed to make them competitive” and they won’t be able to counterattack.
“The Ukrainians have the initiative and can dictate the tempo,” Watling said. “From a purely military point of view, the Russians would be much better off withdrawing from Kherson city and focusing on holding the river [from the east bank] and then putting the bulk of their forces on the Zaporizhzhia axis, but for political reasons they have been slow to do that and seem to ready to fight a delaying action.”
A view taken on October 19, 2022 shows a road sign reading “Kherson” in the town of Armyansk in the north of Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula bordering the Russian-controlled Kherson region in southern Ukraine | AFP via Getty Images
That seems in line with what Ukraine’s general staff reported at the weekend. Russian troop movements have been occurring in the Kherson region with some units preparing for urban combat, while others have been withdrawing.
In short, Surovikin is being forced to try to pull off one of the most difficult of military maneuvers — an orderly retreat to reposition forces, including draftees with scant training and units that have no cohesion. When more experienced Russian troops tried the same move near Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine last month, they suffered a rout.
Thuggery alone won’t save Russian conscripts from motivated and agile Ukrainian forces. Whether Surovikin has the tactical skills to navigate a dangerous retreat will be what counts.
Elon Musk said on Friday he’s “just following the recommendation” of a Ukrainian diplomat who told the SpaceX founder to “fuck off,” by seeking to offload responsibility for funding his Starlink internet terminals in Ukraine.
Musk’s trolling came after Ukraine’s former Ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk and the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted with hostility to Musk last week tweeting a series of Kremlin talking points, which he presented as a plan for peace in Russia’s war on Ukraine. This raised concerns in Kyiv and among its allies as to whether Musk was still on Ukraine’s side in the war.
Musk’s tweet came in response to a CNN report that SpaceX had warned in a letter, dated September 8 and sent to the U.S. Department of Defense, that it can no longer afford to provide its Starlink terminals, which are crucial for Ukraine’s military communication.
“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX said in the letter, which was signed by the company’s director of government sales, adding that the Pentagon should take over the funding.
The Starlink satellite communication system has been crucial not only for Ukraine’s military communication, but also for the government to maintain contact with commanders, for Zelenskyy to conduct interviews with journalists, and for civilian communications, connecting loved ones via the encrypted satellites.
Funding the systems would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and the price tag could reach almost $400 million for the next 12 months, according to SpaceX.
Ukraine has received around 20,000 Starlink satellite units. Musk said last week that the “operation has cost SpaceX $80 million and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year.”
Musk was initially lauded for providing the Starlink terminals to Ukraine, but according to the SpaceX letter, the vast majority were partially or fully funded by other parties, including the U.S. government, the U.K. and Poland. Poland is the largest single contributor and has paid for almost 9,000 terminals, which cost $1,500 and $2,500 for the two models sent to Ukraine, according to the documents.
Those governments also paid for a third of the internet connectivity while SpaceX funded the rest, making up the more expensive part of the bill, according to SpaceX.
Among the documents seen by CNN is also a request from Ukrainian General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi to SpaceX for almost 8,000 more Starlink terminals. SpaceX reportedly responded by recommending the request be sent to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The spat comes shortly after recent reports of Starlink outages, which have disrupted crucial Ukrainian military communication on the front lines.
Russian President Vladimir Putin turned back to his bloody, destructive playbook from Syria with a barrage of rocket attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine on Monday, ramping up pressure on Western allies to supply Kyiv with the air defenses it has long sought.
Monday’s rush-hour bombardment on the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and other regions came as little surprise, given that Putin had already signaled his willingness to switch to ever more brutal tactics by appointing Sergey Surovikin, the general who oversaw Russian forces in Syria on-and-off from 2017 to 2020, as commander of his struggling war effort in Ukraine.
In a speech at an emergency meeting of his National Security Council on Monday, Putin claimed the strikes came in response to this weekend’s attack on the Kerch Bridge linking illegally occupied Crimea to Russia. Putin said Russia had deployed “high-precision, long-range weapons from the air, sea and land” to deliver “massive attacks on targets of Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities.” He added that Russia would continue to dole out retribution if Ukraine continued to strike so-called “Russian” territory.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said 75 missiles were launched, 41 of which were shot down.
Moscow’s claims to precision attacks on strategic targets seemed to mask the fact that the aim was clearly to kill civilians, as the missiles struck the Shevchenkivskyi district in the heart of Kyiv during peak morning traffic. Pictures and footage taken by reporters and from security cameras show cars on fire; a crater beside a children’s playground in the Shevchenko Park and a pedestrian bridge destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Russia appeared to have two targets in its assault: energy facilities throughout the country — and Ukrainians going about their daily lives.
“They want panic and chaos,” Zelenskyy said, in a video that appeared to have been shot on his cell phone on the streets of Kyiv. Monday’s attacks came at a time “especially chosen to cause as much damage as possible … Why such strikes exactly? The enemy wants us to be afraid, wants to make people run. But we can only run forward — and we demonstrate this on the battlefield. It will continue to be so.”
Zelenskyy also renewed his appeals to the West to provide Ukraine with additional air defenses. Kyiv has been seeking this additional firepower for weeks, arguing that Russia is likely to try to knock out Ukraine’s energy and industrial infrastructure over the winter, and it has been disappointed by the slow response.
In tweets, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the strikes on the capital and other cities. With Macron, Zelenskyy said: “We discussed the strengthening of our air defense, the need for a tough European and international reaction, as well as increased pressure on the Russian Federation.”
Those discussions on air defense batteries are now likely to loom large at the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group — also known as the Ramstein format — where senior defense officials from across the globe will gather in Brussels later this week.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Monday: “The best response to Russian missile terror is the supply of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Ukraine — protect the sky over Ukraine! This will protect our cities and our people. This will protect the future of Europe. Evil must be punished.”
The butcher of Syria takes over
Surovikin was only announced as the new Russian commander for Ukraine on Saturday.
The 55-year-old general, who before his promotion had been charged with leading Russia’s Southern Military District and Russian troops in Syria, has long been an infamous figure with a reputation for being ruthless.
He was linked to the violent suppression of the anti-Soviet 1990 Dushanbe riots in Tajikistan, and was reportedly imprisoned (before being freed without charge) after soldiers under his command killed three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. In 1995, Surovikin received a suspended sentence (which was later overturned) for participating in the illegal arms trade. Surovikin also played a role in Russia’s second Chechen war, commanding the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
But Surovikin is best known — and most feared — for his command of Russian forces in Syria, where Moscow intervened to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, listed Surovikin as one of the commanders “who may bear command responsibility” for human rights violations during the 2019-2020 offensive in Syria’s Idlib province, when Syrian and Russian forces launched dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, striking homes, schools, health care facilities and markets.
It was not the first time Russian forces were accused of war crimes in Syria. The Kremlin’s troops, working with Syrians, undertook a month-long bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in 2016, killing hundreds of civilians, including 90 children, with indiscriminate airstrikes, cluster munitions and incendiary weapons hitting civilian targets including medical facilities.
Now, with Russian forces on the back foot in Ukraine and Putin’s full-throated rhetoric out of step with the situation on the ground in his war, Surovikin appears to be turning to his old tactic of inflicting massive damage on civilians in an attempt to turn the tide of the war.
The presidents of nine NATO countries in central and eastern Europe declared on Sunday that they would never recognize the annexation by Russia of several Ukrainian regions. Hungary and Bulgaria were conspicuously absent from the signatories.
In a joint statement, the leaders also supported a path to NATO membership for Ukraine.
The nine leaders demanded that “Russia immediately withdraw from all occupied territories” and encouraged “all allies to substantially increase their military aid to Ukraine,” according to the statement.
“We reiterate our support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” they wrote.
The statement comes two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared he was annexing four Ukrainian regions, a move the West has described as an illegal land-grab. It was signed by the presidents of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
The signatories also wrote that they “firmly stand behind” a NATO decision in 2008 over Ukraine’s future membership to the alliance. At the time, NATO allies pledged that Ukraine would eventually become a member. But as that process stalled over the years, it seemed increasingly unlikely that Ukraine’s bid would become a reality.
In the wake of the annexations, Ukraine formally applied for a fast-track accession to NATO, with hopes to jump-start its membership bid.
On Sunday, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that 10 NATO countries supported Ukraine’s membership to the alliance — including many countries that used to belong to the former Soviet bloc.
NATO countries however have hesitated at including a new member that is at war — and by treaty they would be forced to defend. In recent months, NATO has also welcomed the application of two new countries in Europe – Finland and Sweden, spurred by security concerns after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to recapture more territory in eastern Ukraine after Kyiv’s forces pushed Russia out of the key city of Lyman.
“Now a Ukrainian flag is there” in Lyman, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Saturday. “During this week, there were more Ukrainian flags in Donbas. It will be even more in a week.”
Ukraine pushed Moscow’s forces out of Lyman on Saturday, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the annexation of Donetsk, which includes the strategic city. The Defense Ministry in Moscow on Saturday cited “a threat of encirclement” in withdrawing its troops from Lyman “to more advantageous lines,” it said in a Telegram post.
The retreat from Lyman represents a big setback for Putin, as Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion makes further advances in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian push has seen the recapture of a vast amount of Russian-occupied territory as Moscow’s soldiers have abandoned the front lines.
“Operationally, Lyman is important because it commands a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.
“Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman also represents a significant political setback” after Putin’s proclamation of the annexation of the region on Friday, the ministry said. Putin hailed the annexation of Donetsk and three other regions following referendums that Western countries declared a “sham.”
“Russia has staged a farce in Donbas. An absolute farce, which it wanted to present as an alleged referendum,” Zelenskyy said late Saturday.
“Ukraine will return its own,” the president pledged. “Both in the east and in the south. And what they tried to annex now, and Crimea, which has been called annexed since 2014.”
“Our flag will be everywhere,” he said.
Lyman has been a key supply and logistics hub for Russian troops fighting in eastern Ukraine. The loss of the city will further hamper Moscow’s supply lines and impede Russia’s ability to maneuver against a stepped-up Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east that also has pushed Russian forces from the Kharkiv area.
The recapture of Lyman is “significant” for Ukraine, as it creates more problems for Russia’s military on its supply routes, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. “And without those routes, it will be more difficult. So it presents a sort of a dilemma for the Russians going forward,” Austin told reporters in Hawaii on Saturday, Reuters reported.
“And we think the Ukrainians have done great work to get there and to begin to occupy the city,” Austin said.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas,” Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, said on Saturday. “It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” he said.
KYIV — Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, announced by President Vladimir Putin on Friday, will not affect Kyiv’s resolve to free them with military force, said an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“For our plans, [Russia’s annexation] doesn’t matter,” Mykhailo Podolyak told POLITICO, speaking before the signing ceremony in Moscow orchestrated by Putin. The Russian leader railed at the United States and the West, denounced the Ukrainian government, and warned: “We will protect our land using all our forces.”
The annexation comes on a day when Ukrainian soldiers have reportedly encircled thousands of Russian troops near the city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, and a couple of weeks after a successful counteroffensive that pushed Russian forces from the region near Kharkiv — the country’s second city.
The nation “should liberate all its territories,” Podolyak said.
Ukrainian troops have “likely nearly completed” the encirclement of Russian troops in Lyman in the Donetsk region, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
“Virtually all approaches, logistics routes of the enemy, through which it delivered ammunition and manpower, are already under our fire control,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the Ukrainian eastern military grouping, told Ukrainian television.
Moscow has not commented on the situation.
Podolyak also shrugged off Putin’s announcement of a “partial” mobilization of reservists last week, with thousands called up and thousands more fleeing the country.
“The mobilization shows that Russia has run out of a professional army,” Podolyak said, adding: “This army is being replaced by absolutely untrained people. A living resource has been thrown onto the front lines, and it will simply be exterminated.”
“This may sound paradoxical, but it’s actually to our advantage that Russia has announced this mobilization,” he said. “This shows the people of Russia that the country really is at war, that it’s not doing very well in this war, and that the Russians themselves will be the ones to pay the price.”
The mobilization is prompting Kyiv to call for more weapons from its Western allies.
“For example, 100 more 155mm-caliber missiles would solve the problem, if you will excuse me for putting it that way, of additional human resources being utilized by Russia on the field of battle,” Podolyak said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed four Ukrainian territories after holding sham referendums | Kay Nietfeld/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
On Wednesday, U.S. authorities announced a $1.1 billion arms package for Ukraine, including 18 additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).
“Russia now has one card left to play in this war: nuclear weapons. Against a non-nuclear nation. That’s absurd,” Podolyak said.
The worry is how Putin will react to Ukraine’s efforts to liberate the territories seized by Russia, and if the Kremlin will see that as an attack on Russia itself. However, Ukrainian attacks on Crimea and even strikes into Russia proper over the course of the seven-month war have not led to such a retaliation.
Last week, Putin warned: “We doubtlessly will use all weapons resources at our disposal … This is not a bluff.”
U.S. President Biden has warned Putin of the consequences of using nuclear or chemical weapons. Podolyak wants those warnings to be “clearly communicated” to Moscow and for “very tough retaliation measures aimed at the destruction of Russia’s defense infrastructure” to follow.
“For instance, Russia’s naval forces in the Black Sea could be completely destroyed,” he said. “This would be a proportionate response to Russia’s attempt to launch a tactical nuclear strike against the combat positions of the Ukrainian army.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine “will keep doing its job” to liberate its territory, he said.
“We have no other options when it comes to ending the war properly. We can’t leave some enclave [under Russian occupation] or create a new dividing line,” he said, referring to the frozen conflict that followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Donbas war in 2014-2015.
