He has largely proved right about Iraq and the broader Middle East.
Barton Swaim
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Tag: Soviet Union
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Opinion | Dick Cheney and the Fruits of Regime Change
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Opinion | The Brains Behind Ukraine’s Pink Flamingo Cruise Missile
Kyiv, Ukraine
If politics makes strange bedfellows, war sometimes makes strange career paths. In her 20s, Iryna Terekh was a “very artsy” architect who viewed the arms industry as “something destructive.” Now Ms. Terekh, 33, is chief technical officer and the public face of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defense company. She and her team developed the Flamingo, a long-range cruise missile that President Volodymyr Zelensky has called “our most successful missile.”
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Jillian Kay Melchior
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November 7 as Victims of Communism Day – 2025
Bones of tortured prisoners. Kolyma Gulag, USSR (Nikolai Nikitin, Tass). (NA) NOTE: The following post is largely adapted from last year’s November 7 post on the same subject.
Since 2007, I have advocated designating May 1 as an international Victims of Communism Day. The May 1 date was not my original idea. But I have probably devoted more time and effort to it than any other commentator. In my view, May 1 is the best possible date for this purpose because it is the day that communists themselves used to celebrate their ideology, and because it is associated with communism as a global phenomenon, not with any particular communist regime. However, I have also long recognized that it might make sense to adapt another date for Victims of Communism Day, if it turns out that some other date can attract a broader consensus behind it. The best should not be the enemy of the good.
As detailed in my May 1 post from 2019, November 7 is probably the best such alternative, and over time it has begun to attract considerable support. Unlike May 1, this choice is unlikely to be contested by trade unionists and other devotees of the pre-Communist May 1 holiday. While I remain unpersuaded by their objections on substantive grounds, pragmatic considerations suggest that an alternative date is worth considering, if it can avoi such objections, and thereby attract broader support.
The November 7 option is not without its own downsides. From an American standpoint, one obvious one is that it will sometimes fall close to election day, as is the case this year. On such occasions, a November 7 Victims of Communism Day might not attract as much attention as it deserves, because many will – understandably – be focused on electoral politics instead. Nonetheless, November 7 remains the best available alternative to May 1; or at least the best I am aware of.
For that reason, I am – once again – doing a Victims of Communism Day post on November 7, in addition to the one I do on May 1. If November 7 continues to attract more support, I may eventually switch to that date exclusively. But, for now, I reserve the options of returning to an exclusive focus on May 1, doing annual posts on both days, or switching to some third option should a good one arise.
In addition to its growing popularity, November 7 is a worthy alternative because it is the anniversary of the day that the very first communist regime was established in Russia. All subsequent communist regimes were at least in large part inspired by it, and based many of their institutions and policies on the Soviet model.
The Soviet Union did not have the highest death toll of any communist regime. That dubious distinction belongs to the People’s Republic of China. North Korea has probably surpassed the USSR in the sheer extent of totalitarian control over everyday life. Pol Pot’s Cambodia may have surpassed it in terms of the degree of sadistic cruelty and torture practiced by the regime, though this is admittedly very difficult to measure. But all of these tyrannies – and more – were at least to a large extent variations on the Soviet original.
Having explained why November 7 is worthy of consideration as an alternative date, it only remains to remind readers of the more general case for having a Victims of Communism Day. The following is adopted from this year’s May 1 Victims of Communism Day post, and some of its predecessors:
The Black Book of Communism estimates the total number of victims of communist regimes at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny.
Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events promote awareness of the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government domination of the economy and civil society.
While communism is most closely associated with Russia, where the first communist regime was established, it had equally horrendous effects in other nations around the world. The highest death toll for a communist regime was not in Russia, but in China. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward was likely the biggest episode of mass murder in the entire history of the world.
November 7, 2017 was the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the establishment of the first-ever communist regime. On that day, I put up a post outlining some of the lessons to be learned from a century of experience with communism. The post explains why most of the horrors perpetrated by communist regimes were intrinsic elements of the system. For the most part, they cannot be ascribed to circumstantial factors, such as flawed individual leaders, peculiarities of Russian and Chinese culture, or the absence of democracy. The latter probably did make the situation worse than it might have been otherwise. But, for reasons I explained in the same post, some form of dictatorship or oligarchy is probably inevitable in a socialist economic system in which the government controls all or nearly all of the economy.
While the influence of communist ideology has declined greatly since its mid-twentieth century peak, it is far from dead. Largely unreformed communist regimes remain in power in Cuba and North Korea. In Venezuela, the Marxist government’s socialist policies have resulted in severe repression, the starvation of children, and a massive refugee crisis—the biggest in the history of the Western hemisphere. Recent events in Venezuela also highlight the dangers of “democratic socialism.” While most communist regimes have taken power by force, ignorance about the history of communism and socialism could enable such movements to take power by democratic means and then eventually shut down democracy, as has actually happened in Venezuela. “Democratic socialism” – which has many of the same flaws as the authoritarian version is gaining in popularity on the political left in the US, as shown by the recent election of a prominent member of the movement as mayor of New York. Most of his supporters likely have little understanding of the dangers of his ideology. Victims of Communism Day can help combat such ignorance.
In Russia, the authoritarian regime of former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin has embarked on a wholesale whitewashing of communism’s historical record. Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine is primarily based on Russian nationalist ideology, rather than that of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the failure of post-Soviet Russia to fully reckon with its oppressive Soviet past is likely one of the reasons why Putin’s regime came to power, and engaged in its own atrocities.
In China, the Communist Party remains in power (albeit after having abandoned many of its previous socialist economic policies), and has become less and less tolerant of criticism of the mass murders of the Mao era (part of a more general turn towards greater repression). The government’s brutal repression of the Uighur minority, and escalating suppression of dissent, even among Han Chinese, are just two aspects in which it seems bent on repeating some of its previous atrocities. Under the rule of Xi Jinping, the government has also increasingly reinstated socialist state control of the economy.
Here in the West, some socialists and others have attempted to whitewash the history of communism, and a few even attribute major accomplishments to the Soviet regime. Cathy Young had an excellent critique of such Soviet “nostalgia” in a 2021 Reason article.
Victims of Communism Day is also a good time to remember our duty to help those victims, or at least avoid impeding their escape from oppression. Among other things, it is unjust to deport migrants fleeing oppressive Marxist dictatorships, like those Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as the Trump Administration seeks to do to hundreds of thousands who entered the US legally under the CHNV program. If some on the left tend to ignore the evils of socialism, many on the nationalist right have been exacerbating the plight of its victims.
In sum, we need Victims of Communism Day because we have never given sufficient recognition to the victims of the modern world’s most murderous ideology or come close to fully appreciating the lessons of this awful era in world history. In addition, that ideology, and variants thereof, still have a substantial number of adherents in many parts of the world, and still retains considerable intellectual respectability even among many who do not actually endorse it. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day serves as a bulwark against the reemergence of fascism, so this day of observance can help guard against the return to favor of the only ideology with an even greater number of victims.
Ilya Somin
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Georgia: The possible birthplace of wine and definite birthplace of Stalin
This is part of Reason‘s 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.
The people of Georgia might well be the first folks who ever got properly wine-drunk.
Straddling the Promethean Caucasus mountains, wedged between both Black and Caspian seas, Georgia is a cultural crossroads between Europe and Asia. Its fertile valleys and slopes yielded the oldest archaeological evidence of wine production currently on record. During my short yet delightfully buzzed visit last fall, it was apparent that they’ve only gotten better at both the making and the drinking. Georgian winemaking traditions are hard won; in the Soviet era, many indigenous grape varieties were lost to brutish demands for quantity, not quality. Some families preserved precious varieties in secret.
Photo: Hunt Beaty I saw this heady spirit in the small town of Kachreti at the Burjanadze family home. At a traditional supra (banquet), my host and tomada (toastmaster) poured glass after glass of his own inky red Saperavi, each after a heartfelt toast, before bursting into a polyphonic song alongside his father. The wine came from a qvevri, a traditional clay pot submerged in his backyard, and the bottle’s label was stamped with his family’s fingerprints, several of whom shared the table and the cherished moment.
Georgia also gave the world one of the 20th century’s worst tyrants, Josef Stalin. Born in Gori, west of capital city Tbilisi, Stalin’s dark shadow lingers. Venture across the Kura River a few miles outside the city center and find yourself down a dank underground museum where a young revolutionary Stalin printed secret pamphlets during the Bolshevik Revolution. A charming yet perhaps contextually overeager docent asks you to sign a guest book scattered among USSR memorabilia.
Soviet-era grisliness aside, it’s an understatement to say Georgian politics have been complicated. Surrounded on all sides by great powers, the seismic situation encompasses many languages, plus the friction of competing political ideas and faiths in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Most notably it shares a contested border with Russia, the bear next door with an appetite.
If geography really is destiny, then the Georgian situation has understandably necessitated a stiff, perpetual drink.
After the Soviet Union’s collapse and at least a decade’s worth of post-Soviet corruption, a young Mikheil Saakashvili climbed Parliament’s stairs with flowers in hand. The Rose Revolution swept Saakashvili into office peacefully; he reduced government corruption and increased economic liberalization, spurred on by his libertarian-leaning minister of economy, Kakha Bendukidze. Georgia’s economy received a jolt, as if the whole country had taken a shot of its beloved brandy chacha (second only to the wine) and raised eyebrows in the Western world with the speed and success of those reforms.
Though Saakashvili left a mixed legacy (he’s now imprisoned on abuse of power charges), the stickiness of those free market ideas and reforms is notable, however fraught the country remains. Girchi, the only official libertarian party in a post-Soviet state outside of Russia, was formed by dissenters from Saakashvili’s United National Movement party after his collapse. It has since advocated both economic and drug liberalization, while staging stunts against conscription and state crackdowns on sex workers, going so far as opening a brothel in its party headquarters.
Georgia remains a swirl of political foment, as I realized by stumbling accidentally onto Rustaveli Avenue before fall parliamentary elections. Thousands of Georgians paraded, draped in Georgian and European Union colors, marching in support of then-President Salome Zourabichvili, as she tried to hold off billionaire and former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party. Ivanishvili’s ties to Russia and presence in politics still loom large, much like his Bond villain–esque mansion perched high above Tbilisi.
Despite the turbulence, pockets of Tbilisi buzz with young entrepreneurs reclaiming and redefining the Georgian trajectory, one pointed decidedly west. Down an unassuming street, there’s Lasha Devdariani selling handcrafted silk robes from his cozy studio, some of which cloaked Tilda Swinton in Only Lovers Left Alive. Walk into Sololaki where traditional meets modern at Iasamani restaurant—bare candles burning over peeling paint, cracked tiles, and khachapuri hint at the history of both the room and the nation. Around the corner the gents at 41 Degrees Art of Drinks sling cocktails from a handwritten book that taste like the throng on Rustaveli Avenue felt: fiery and self–assured.
John Steinbeck heard of Georgia’s magic before arriving in 1947 at the start of the Cold War. In A Russian Journal,he noted: “People who had never been there and possibly never could go there spoke of Georgia with a kind of longing and great admiration. They spoke of Georgians as supermen, as great drinkers, great dancers, great musicians, great workers and lovers. And they spoke of the country in the Caucasus and around the Black Sea as a kind of second heaven.”
More people, especially free thinkers and drinkers, should visit. Drink the wine, pet the dogs (tagged strays roam lazily, freely, even into bars and hotel lobbies), shoot the chacha, stare at giant Jesus in Holy Trinity Cathedral, devour khinkali (hands only), and let the hospitality intoxicate you in its distinctly Georgian way.
The Sighnaghi World War II Memorial; Adam Jones/Creative Commons Day 1
Flight to TbilisiIt’s best to have a car to see Georgia at your own pace. Pick up a rental and head to your hotel.
Stay in Tbilisi for three nights.
Day 2
Explore Tbilisi
The Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi; Marcin Konsek/Creative Commons Start your adventure by getting a feel for Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. This is a place where the old meets the new, offering a mix of historic sites and trendy bars and restaurants.
Rustaveli-Mtatsminda Cable Car; Mirko Kuzmanovic/Alamy The Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi is the largest Orthodox church in Georgia and boasts fantastic views of the city. Next, take the Tbilisi Funicular up to Mtatsminda Pantheon, where some of Georgia’s most prominent writers, artists, and national heroes are buried. Up there, you can enjoy Mtatsminda Park and get a view of former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s stunning house. Take the Rustaveli-Mtatsminda Cable Car back down the hill to end the trip.
Day 3
Free day in Tbilisi
Underground Printing House Museum; Hunt Beaty Go where the wind blows today, and be sure to drink some wine along the way.
8000 Vintages wine shop and bar. Sighnaghi; Andrey Khrobostov/Alamy Optional activities: 8000 Vintages wine shop and bar, Cafe Daphna, Dry Bridge Market, Queen Darejan Palace, Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, the National Gallery, Underground Printing House Museum
Day 4
Self-Drive to Sighnaghi
The Sighnaghi World War II Memorial; Adam Jones/Creative Commons Head east for your two-hour drive to Sighnaghi, known as “the city of love” and located in the heart of Georgia’s wine region. Revel in the colorful buildings, the medieval architecture, and the stunning Caucasus mountains on the horizon. And of course, the wine. Visit the Kerovani Winery to sample an assortment of Georgian wines and learn about the traditional Kakhetian method of winemaking in qvevri (clay vessels).
Stay in Sighnaghi for two nights.
Day 5
Free day in SighnaghiEnjoy your final day in Georgia!
Optional activities: Sighnagi National Museum, St. George Church, Marriage Palace, The Sighnaghi World War II Memorial, Sighnaghi Wall
Day 6
Flight HomeDrive back to Tbilisi for your return flight home.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “The Possible Birthplace of Wine and Definite Birthplace of Stalin.”
Hunt Beaty
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Russian disinformation slams Paris and amplifies Khelif debate to undermine the Olympics
WASHINGTON (AP) — The actor in the viral music video denouncing the 2024 Olympics looks a lot like French President Emmanuel Macron. The images of rats, trash and the sewage, however, were dreamed up by artificial intelligence.
Portraying Paris as a crime-ridden cesspool, the video mocking the Games spread quickly on social media platforms like YouTube and X, helped on its way by 30,000 social media bots linked to a notorious Russian disinformation group that has set its sights on France before. Within days, the video was available in 13 languages, thanks to quick translation by AI.
“Paris, Paris, 1-2-3, go to Seine and make a pee,” taunts an AI-enhanced singer as the faux Macron actor dances in the background, seemingly a reference to water quality concerns in the Seine River where some competitions are taking place.
Moscow is making its presence felt during the Paris Games, with groups linked to Russia’s government using online disinformation and state propaganda to spread incendiary claims and attack the host country — showing how global events like the Olympics are now high-profile targets for online disinformation and propaganda.
Over the weekend, disinformation networks linked to the Kremlin seized on a divide over Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who has faced unsubstantiated questions about her gender. Baseless claims that she is a man or transgender surfaced after a controversial boxing association with Russian ties said she failed an opaque eligibility test before last year’s world boxing championships.
Russian networks amplified the debate, which quickly became a trending topic online. British news outlets, author J.K. Rowling and right-wing politicians like Donald Trump added to the deluge. At its height late last week, X users were posting about the boxer tens of thousands of times per hour, according to an analysis by PeakMetrics, a cyber firm that tracks online narratives.
The boxing group at the root of the claims — the International Boxing Association — has been permanently barred from the Olympics, has a Russian president who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and its biggest sponsor is the state energy company Gazprom. Questions also have surfaced about its decision to disqualify Khelif last year after she had beaten a Russian boxer.
Approving only a small number of Russian athletes to compete as neutrals and banning them from team sports following the invasion of Ukraine all but guaranteed the Kremlin’s response, said Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of NewsGuard, a firm that analyzes online misinformation. NewsGuard has tracked dozens of examples of disinformation targeting the Paris Games, including the fake music video.
Russia’s disinformation campaign targeting the Olympics stands out for its technical skill, Crovitz said.
“What’s different now is that they are perhaps the most advanced users of generative AI models for malign purposes: fake videos, fake music, fake websites,” he said.
AI can be used to create lifelike images, audio and video, rapidly translate text and generate culturally specific content that sounds and reads like it was created by a human. The once labor-intensive work of creating fake social media accounts or websites and writing conversational posts can now be done quickly and cheaply.
Another video amplified by accounts based in Russia in recent weeks claimed the CIA and U.S. State Department warned Americans not to use the Paris metro. No such warning was issued.
Russian state media has trumpeted some of the same false and misleading content. Instead of covering the athletic competitions, much of the coverage of the Olympics has focused on crime, immigration, litter and pollution.
One article in the state-run Sputnik news service summed it up: “These Paris ‘games’ sure are going swimmingly. Here’s an idea. Stop awarding the Olympics to the decadent, rotting west.”
Russia has used propaganda to disparage past Olympics, as it did when the then-Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. At the time, it distributed printed material to Olympic officials in Africa and Asia suggesting that non-white athletes would be hunted by racists in the U.S., according to an analysis from Microsoft Threat Intelligence, a unit within the technology company that studies malicious online actors.
Russia also has targeted past Olympic Games with cyberattacks.
“If they cannot participate in or win the Games, then they seek to undercut, defame, and degrade the international competition in the minds of participants, spectators, and global audiences,” analysts at Microsoft concluded.
A message left with the Russian government was not immediately returned on Monday.
Authorities in France have been on high alert for sabotage, cyberattacks or disinformation targeting the Games. A 40-year-old Russian man was arrested in France last month and charged with working for a foreign power to destabilize the European country ahead of the Games.
Other nations, criminal groups, extremist organizations and scam artists also are exploiting the Olympics to spread their own disinformation. Any global event like the Olympics — or a climate disaster or big election — that draws a lot of people online is likely to generate similar amounts of false and misleading claims, said Mark Calandra, executive vice president at CSC Digital Brand Services, a firm that tracks fraudulent activity online.
CSC’s researchers noticed a sharp increase in fake website domain names being registered ahead of the Olympics. In many cases, groups set up sites that appear to provide Olympic content, or sell Olympic merchandise.
Instead, they’re designed to collect information on the user. Sometimes it’s a scam artist looking to steal personal financial data. In others, the sites are used by foreign governments to collect information on Americans — or as a way to spread more disinformation.
“Bad actors look for these global events,” Calandra said. “Whether they’re positive events like the Olympics or more concerning ones, these people use everyone’s heightened awareness and interest to try to exploit them.”
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Russian media throw shade at Paris Olympics, which TV won’t show
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Watching the Paris Olympics will be difficult for most people in Russia — and in the view of its media, it’s not really worth the effort.
Only 15 Russian citizens will be competing in the Games and, in principle, they won’t be representing Russia. Because Russia and neighboring Belarus were banned from fielding national teams because of the war in Ukraine, Russian and Belarusian athletes approved to compete will be doing so as neutrals.
Russians have been intense Olympics fans since the days when the Soviet Union’s sports prowess was nicknamed “The Big Red Machine.” But with so few of their countrymen competing, Russia’s state TV channels aren’t broadcasting any of the events. Russians may find feeds online, but could need a virtual private network to circumvent the country’s block of some channels.
The last time the Olympics weren’t on TV in Russia — which has won the second-largest number of medals, counting the Soviet era — was in 1984, when the Soviet Union boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
State news channel Rossiya 24 did broadcast a report from Paris on the opening ceremony Friday night, showing dancing and plumes of colored smoke rising over the Seine River. News agencies Tass and RIA-Novosti gave it glancing attention, with terse stories saying the opening ceremony had begun, but little detail other than noting the rain drove many spectators away.
Newspapers aren’t ignoring the Olympics entirely, but their main approach has been to accentuate the negative, writing at length about crime in Paris, the inconvenience of barricades placed throughout the city and reported food shortages for athletes.
“The Paris Olympics is an amazing event, if not to say a phenomenon: Competitions in individual disciplines have just just started, the opening ceremony has not even taken place, and so many scandals have already accumulated that they will be enough for several Games,” Sovietsky Sport newspaper reporter Alexander Shulgin wrote Thursday.
“I think that this Olympics will go down in history with a completely negative result,” the newspaper Sport-Ekspress quoted Irina Rodnina, a three-time figure skating gold winner and now a member of the Russian parliament, as saying.
A whiff of schadenfreude floats through many of the stories. Writing about the fences and barriers erected in Paris, Sovietsky Sport’s Andrei Tupikov said: “Once upon a time, everyone pointed their finger at the structure of sports competitions in Russia. Many did not like the fact that before any mass events there were too many different fences and barriers around the arenas and stadiums. … In our reality the practice is slowly fading away, but in Europe it is being actively adopted.”
Shulgin, seemingly smarting from criticism about the facilities at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, suggested Paris may face an opening ceremony embarrassment similar to Sochi’s, when a display of the Olympic rings malfunctioned.
“If the ring did not open in Sochi, it’s scary to imagine what could happen in Paris,” he wrote, but did not follow up after the ceremony.
No such disaster occurred, but Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Saturday compared Paris unfavorably to Sochi.
“The Western media did not like (stray) dogs at the Sochi Games. In Paris, they were smiled at by the rats that flooded the city streets,” she said in a statement. She also called the opening ceremony “ridiculous.”
Commentary on the Paris Games also verged into ethical and philosophical questions, such as whether one should root for the few Russians participating despite the national team’s exclusion. To receive approval from the International Olympic Committee, the athletes cannot have demonstrated support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, among other stipulations.
Sport-Ekspress commentator Oleg Shamonaev analyzed the connotations of each word in the Individual Neutral Athlete designation and concluded: “The 15 ‘neutrals’ with a Russian passport who did not change their flag, despite 2 1/2 years of sanctions … are worthy not of condemnation but of respect.”
“It’s stupid to pretend we don’t care about what happens to them at the 2024 Games,” he said.
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For more coverage of the Paris Olympics, visit https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games.
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Remembering Lenin – the First Great Communist Mass Murderer
Vladimir Lenin (Soviet propaganda poster). (NA) Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, the world’s first communist state. While Lenin’s successor Joseph Stalin has few modern Western defenders (even as the current Russian government has tried to rehabilitate him), Lenin still has many admirers among Western leftists. They tend to ignore the great evil he did or blame it on Stalin.
Nothing can be further from the truth. Most of the cruel oppressive features of Soviet totalitarianism actually began under Lenin. Stalin merely perpetuated them on a larger scale.
Let’s take a little history quiz. Which of the following features of the Soviet state were first introduced under Lenin, and which by Stalin:
1. The Gulag system of slave labor camps
2. The Cheka (secret police agency eventually known as the KGB)
3. Collectivization of agriculture leading to mass famines
4. Mass executions with little or no due process
5. A one-party state, with bans on all opposition parties (including socialist ones)
6. Suppression of freedom of speech and religion
7. Confiscation of private businesses, including even small businesses
8. Invading other nations in order to spread communism there
9. State control of the media for purposes of promoting regime propaganda, and preventing distribution of opposition speech
If you answered Lenin, you were correct in every case! And virtually every one of these measures was also supported by Trotsky, Bukharin, and other Bolshevik leaders whom some Western leftists like to trumpet as potentially superior alternatives to Stalin. Had Trotsky rather than Stalin come to power after Lenin’s death, he would have happily continued all of the above, and in some cases doubled down on it.
Policies 3 and 7 on this list were partially suspended or reversed under Lenin’s New Economic Policy, beginning in 1921. But Lenin and other Soviet leaders were always clear that this was just a temporary expedient they intended to reverse as soon as possible.
The late Harvard historian Richard Pipes has an excellent overview of Lenin’s oppressive policies and their consequences in his book Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.
It’s also worth noting that Lenin was the one who elevated Stalin to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party, thereby greatly increasing the likelihood that Stalin would ultimately succeed him. It’s unlikely Lenin would have done that if the two men had major disagreements on ideology and policy.
Did Stalin engage in any new forms of repression? Yes, as a matter of fact, he did:
1. Deportation of entire ethnic groups (most notably the Crimean Tatars). I doubt Lenin would have had scruples about this if he thought it might be useful. But he didn’t actually do it, at least not on a large scale.
2. State-sponsored anti-Semitism. There was no shortage of anti-Semitism in Lenin’s USSR. But Lenin didn’t actively promote it and probably wasn’t an anti-Semite himself. He even occasionally condemned anti-Semitism. On this issue, Stalin was much worse.
3. Large-scale purges of loyal communists. Lenin never did this, and Trotsky probably would not have had he come to power. This is the Stalinist policy that most alienated many Western leftists. How dare Stalin kill communist heroes like Trotsky, Bukharin, and others? But it was among the least of Stalin’s crimes. Many of Stalin’s communist victims were actually brutal oppressors themselves, and arguably got what they deserved (albeit, for the wrong reasons, and without due process). In fairness, Stalin also purged a lot of communists who weren’t actively involved in repression, but just joined the Party to advance their careers (you can say the same thing about many Germans who joined the Nazi Party after it came to power).
If you add it all up, Lenin was the one who initiated the policies that caused about 90% of the repression and death in the Soviet Union. And these ideas weren’t idiosyncratic to Lenin. They were backed by the vast majority of other communist leaders, as well, which is why later communist regimes tended to adopt similar policies to those of the Soviet Union and got similar results. Mao Zedong managed to exceed the Soviet Union in sheer numbers of victims (he had a much larger population to work with). Cambodia’s Pol Pot killed a higher percentage of his population in a shorter period of time, and arguably managed to exceed both the Soviets and Chinese in sheer torture and cruelty. But these mass murderers were, on major issues, still largely following the model first established by Lenin.
With a few notable exceptions listed above, Stalin mostly just continued and expanded Lenin’s evil policies. Ultimately, the root of the evil here wasn’t the personality of any one leader, but the ideology Lenin, Stalin, and their comrades all sought to implement. But Lenin was nonetheless notable for being the first to lead a regime that pursued these policies, and set an example for all that followed. That is how we should remember him.
Ilya Somin
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How British libel law lets bad people get away with bad things
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Voiced by artificial intelligence.
LONDON — In May last year, my phone buzzed with a message from a contact in the British parliament whom I know well.
We meet every so often for coffee in a cafe far away enough from Westminster to be discreet, where he tells me what’s unfolding in the depths of parliament’s dingy corridors.
That day, his message read: “Has an MP been arrested today? Who can say?”
His first question was a news tip for me to follow up on. I began ringing and texting everyone I knew who might be able to tell me about the possible detention of a member of parliament.
Sure enough, the police soon confirmed that a 56-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of rape and other offenses.
My contact’s second question — “Who can say?” — was more complicated.
In the hours after the arrest, pretty much every British political media organization prominently reported the man’s arrest, together with his age, his position as an MP, and his alleged crimes.
But while every reporter in Westminster knew exactly who he was, it took more than a year before anybody dared publish his name.
As with many other matters of the public interest, Britain’s restrictive libel and privacy laws put any publication that reported his identity at risk of a lengthy legal battle and crippling financial penalties.
In July, London’s Sunday Times took the decision to name him, reporting that he had been absent from parliament since his arrest. With the exception of a single mention in the Mirror newspaper, no other mainstream publication followed suit.
POLITICO can now join in reporting that the man arrested is Andrew Rosindell, a member of the Conservative party who has served as MP for the constituency of Romford in Essex, east of London, since 2001.
Rosindell has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing. He, like every British citizen, is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He has been released by police while they look into his case.
While every reporter in Westminster knew exactly who he was, it took more than a year before anybody dared publish his name | Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images But POLITICO believes there is a clear public interest in naming him, given the obvious impact upon his ability to represent his constituents — and because of further information we publish today about his activities since May 2021.
During the time he has been absent from parliament, he has continued to claim expenses for his work there and accepted foreign trips worth £8,548 (nearly $11,000) to Bahrain, India, Italy and Poland. He has also continued to receive donations from his supporters.
Rosindell declined to comment for this article.
These might seem like obvious and easy facts to report. But doing so has required extensive discussions with my editors and with a lawyer, even after the courage shown by the Sunday Times.
The Rosindell case is a clear-cut example — one among many — of how Britain’s media laws sometimes place individual privacy over the public interest, putting obstacles in the way of accountability journalism.
Given the work involved in reporting something like the allegations against Rosindell, it’s easy to see how many editors and reporters — battling for readers while grinding out the news — might look at the facts involved and conclude writing about it is simply not worth the risk.
For journalists trying to keep public figures honest, this can be a serious problem — and it’s one the United Kingdom is exporting around the world.
Burden of proof
The heart of the challenge lies in England’s incredibly tough defamation laws — which penalize statements that could damage someone’s public image among “right-thinking members of society” or cause “serious harm” to their reputation.
In the United States, journalists are not only shielded by the First Amendment, but for a defamation claim to succeed, the claimant must prove the allegations are false and were disseminated with malicious intent.
In English courts, the burden of proof lies on the publisher of the potentially libelous statement. Truth can be a defense, but you need to have the actual goods; simply pointing to another press report or even relying on allegations in a police arrest warrant, for example, is not enough.
In recent years, these defamation laws have combined with court rulings on the privacy of individuals under arrest or investigation to hinder reporting on potential abuses of power and other matters of the public interest.
This has contributed to the prevalence of “open secrets” in British public life: individuals known within their circles for alleged wrongdoing who cannot be named due to the onerously high burden of legal proof.
When the Sunday Times published an investigation into claims of sexual abuse against Russell Brand, many in the television industry responded that this had been known for as long as he had been famous | Jeff Spicer/Getty Images A recent example of this is the allegations against the comedian Russell Brand. When the Sunday Times published an investigation into claims of sexual abuse against him, many in the television industry responded that this had been known for as long as he had been famous.
The trouble was, as the Daily Mail detailed, that for years Brand had deployed lawyers to use legal threats to shoot down stories or rumblings of stories that might crop up about his behavior.
SLAPP in the face
Scratch a high-profile scandal, and you’re likely to find a host of lawyers looking to block reporting about it, or seeking damages for what’s already been published.
The actor and producer Noel Clarke is suing the Guardian over a series of articles reporting allegations of sexual assault and harassment, which, even if unsuccessful, is likely to cost the newspaper hundreds of thousands of pounds.
A well-known British business is suing a broadcaster over an investigation into their working practices that has not yet been aired.
Complainants don’t even have to win for their lawsuits to have a chilling effect. Successfully fending off a claim can eat up months or years of a journalist’s time, if they have the resources at all to fight it.
Even the threat of a lawsuit can be enough to give many journalists pause.
When Ben De Pear was editor of Channel 4 News, the broadcaster worked with the Guardian and New York Times to expose the collection of Facebook users’ personal data by the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for use in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign.
After the journalists reached out for comment from Facebook, they were met with a barrage of different tactics, he said. “They didn’t answer till the last possible minute. Their response was published and sent to news organizations before it was sent to us. They prevaricated. Their lawyers sometimes sent 30 or 40 pages of legalese.”
“Normally, the longer the response, the less there is in it,” he added. “Good lawyers, journalists and editors will be able to cut through that, but it still sucks up time and causes an inordinate amount of stress.”
So common have efforts by rich individuals and companies to squash stories become that the practice has been endowed with an acronym: SLAPPs, or strategic lawsuits against public participation.
The English model
The problem isn’t constrained to local shores; England’s libel laws are increasingly being deployed against reporting in foreign countries about foreign individuals — a practice detractors describe as “libel tourism.”
Journalists Tom Burgis and Catherine Belton were both sued over books they wrote about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and corruption in the former Soviet Union | Pool photo by Mikhail Metzel via AFP/Getty Images Claimants have to establish jurisdiction to bring their action in the U.K., but the threshold is “not a very onerous one,” said Padraig Hughes, legal director at the Media Legal Defense Initiative, a London nonprofit offering advice and financial support to journalists facing defamation claims.
Journalists Tom Burgis and Catherine Belton were both sued over books they wrote about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and corruption in the former Soviet Union.
Burgis and Belton both won, but their experiences don’t tell the whole story, said Clare Rewcastle Brown, a British journalist who helped expose one of the largest ever corruption scandals: the looting of billions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
“For every showcase where publishers can boast that they stuck with the author — and well done them — the fact of the matter is, they’ll have killed numerous other books,” she said.
My call with Rewcastle Brown was arranged around her schedule of getting up at 3 a.m. to appear via Zoom as a defendant in a defamation action brought against her by a member of the Malaysian royal family — one of dozens of similar actions she has faced.
She tells me she has survived through sheer bloody-mindedness, and by “frankly, having nothing to lose.”
She acknowledged that for many media outlets, especially smaller ones, these types of attacks could cause them to re-evaluate whether the efforts are worth it.
“As the money starts to ebb, the courage likewise ebbs away,” she said.
Devastating effect
England’s media laws do have their defenders, and there are examples where the system has made a positive difference. It “serves to make journalism in this country very rigorous, so it does have a good effect,” is how De Pear, of Channel 4 News, put it.
Gavin Phillipson, a professor of law at Bristol University, pointed out that the U.S. is not a model but an exception, with English law “completely in line with the vast majority of liberal democracies in both Europe and the Commonwealth.”
He has written about the “devastating effect” of stories such as the Mail Online’s decision to name a young Muslim man arrested in connection with the 2017 Manchester arena bombing. He was innocent and released without charge, but his name had already spread across the world in connection with the atrocity.
Phillipson notes that while the courts have established that everyone should have a reasonable expectation of privacy, “it doesn’t cover the underlying conduct itself.”
“If the press do their own investigative journalism and find out what actually has happened, then the law of privacy doesn’t stop them publishing that,” he said.
This factored into POLITICO’s decision to publish sexual harassment allegations against Julian Knight, a senior member of parliament, early this year.
Our story relied on our reporting, not just the fact that he’s being investigated by police. (Knight strongly denies all the allegations against him.)
Testing limits
Some in the U.K. have recognized the problem and made efforts to stamp down on libel tourism.
The Defamation Act 2013 raised the bar so that claimants would have to show they had suffered “serious” harm to their reputation, and introduced tighter rules for litigants not domiciled in the U.K.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act attempted to give extra protection to defendants in litigation related to economic crimes. And this year the government announced legislation to scrap a rule forcing media companies to pay the legal bills of people who sue them.
But the pendulum has also swung the other way.
There was until recently a rule that the police had to notify the House of Commons Speaker of the arrest of any member of parliament and their name would be published.
If this measure had still been in place, it would have made the debate about publishing Rosindell’s name moot. But MPs opted to scrap it with very little fanfare in 2016.
Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall editor for the Sunday Times, wrote the newspaper’s story naming Rosindell. He also reported on an accusation of rape against the former MP Charlie Elphicke, over which Elphicke sued the paper. (Elphicke was later convicted of sexual assault and dropped his claim.)
Pogrund argues that his job has gotten harder as a string of recent legal defeats for publications has diminished the appetite for testing where the line is.
The result, when it comes to public figures and organizations suspected of serious wrongdoing, he said, has been “an informal conspiracy of silence.”
Dan Bloom contributed reporting.
Esther Webber
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Russia warns US that Ukraine will be its ‘second Vietnam’
The Kremlin’s spy chief Sergei Naryshkin warned the U.S. that Ukraine will turn into its “second Vietnam,” amid disagreement in Congress over funding for Kyiv.
“Ukraine will turn into a ‘black hole’ absorbing more and more resources and people,” Russian foreign intelligence chief Naryshkin said Thursday in a written statement published by his agency’s house journal, the Intelligence Operative.
“Ultimately, the U.S. risks creating a ‘second Vietnam’ for itself, and every new American administration will have to deal with it,” he added.
The warning comes after U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday urged Congress to further support Ukraine with funding. “We can’t let Putin win,” Biden said.
Biden is trying to push through a $61.4 billion emergency funding request for Kyiv, but opposition against further aid to Ukraine has grown among Republicans in the House of Representatives.
The U.S. was engaged in the Vietnam War — fought between South Vietnam and the U.S. on one side and communist North Vietnam backed by the Soviet Union and China on the other — for nearly two decades. The conflict claimed more than a million lives, including tens of thousands from the U.S., and ended with a comprehensive victory for the North Vietnamese forces.
According to a recent poll, 59 percent of Americans still support sending military aid to Ukraine.
Laura Hülsemann
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Ukraine says Israel-Hamas war shows West must ramp up arms production
BERLIN — Facing war on two fronts — in Ukraine and in the Middle East — Kyiv is calling on Western democracies to ramp up investment in weapons, saying that arms factory output worldwide is falling miles short of what is needed.
In an interview, Ukraine’s Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin told POLITICO Western countries needed to accelerate production of missiles, shells and military drones as close to frontlines as possible.
“The free world should be producing enough to protect itself,” Kamyshin said, on a mission to the German capital to persuade arms producers to invest in war-ravaged Ukraine. “That’s why we have to produce more and better weapons to stay safe.”
Current factory capacity was woeful, he argued. “If you get together all the worldwide capacities for weapons production, for ammunition production, that will be not enough for this war,” said Kamyshin of the state of play along Ukraine’s more than 1,000 kilometers of active frontline.
As the Israel Defense Forces continue to pummel Gaza and fighting gathers pace along the contact line in Ukraine, armies are burning through ammunition at a rate not seen in decades. Policymakers are asking whether Western allies can support both countries with air defense systems and artillery at once.
The answer, says Kamyshin, is to start building out production facilities now. “What happens in Israel now shows and proves that the defense industry globally is a destination for investments for decades,” he said.
Since Russia’s war on Ukraine started in February 2022, western governments have been funneling arms to Kyiv. That includes hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other equipment.
But as the grind of war continues, Kyiv has changed tack — appointing Kamyshin, the former boss of Ukraine’s state railway — to the post of minister for strategic industries. Ukraine, formerly a major military hub in the Soviet Union, is now trying to increase output of armored vehicles, ammunition and air defense systems, he said, and wants Western partners to invest.
A key step is expected on Tuesday, when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will announce a new joint venture between Rheinmetall and Ukroboronprom, a Ukrainian defense company, Kamyshin said.
In late September, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office gave the green light to the cooperation agreement after a review that found the proposed venture “does not result in any overlaps in terms of competition in Germany.”
Building local
Last March, EU countries pledged to send a million artillery rounds to Ukraine over the following year as part of a program to lift production. Ukraine may need as much as 1.5 million shells annually to sustain its war effort, a daunting task that Kamyshin hopes he can help, at least partially, with domestic output.
In total, Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia. Combined with Soviet-era pieces in Ukrainian stocks prior to the Russian invasion, Kyiv has approximately 1,600 pieces of artillery in service — but must cover a massive front.
Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images And although the deepening of the German-Ukrainian defense relationship is a boon for Kyiv’s war effort, the enemy on the battlefield — Russia — can also leverage its own international relationships for war materiel, and has been quick to agree military hardware deals with the likes of Iran and North Korea.
Earlier this month, reports pointed out Pyongyang likely transferred a sizable shipment of artillery ammunition to Russia. The details of the deal are secret, but the shipment came on the heels of a visit to Pyongyang by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in turn made a trip to Russia by rail and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia previously struck a deal with Tehran for Iranian loitering munitions that hammered cities across Ukraine last winter in an intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure.
The increasingly international scope of sourcing for the war in Ukraine is not limited to non-NATO countries. Poland recently started taking delivery of tanks, howitzers, rocket launchers and light attack aircraft from South Korea, a nod to how quickly Seoul can ramp up production affordably.
For Kamyshin, the key was to make plans for the long term.
“This war can be for decades,” he said. “[The] Russians can come back always.”
Joshua Posaner and Caleb Larson
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EU, Russia and US held secret talks days before Nagorno-Karabakh blitz
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Top officials from the United States and the EU met with their Russian counterparts for undisclosed emergency talks in Turkey designed to resolve the standoff over Nagorno-Karabakh, just days before Azerbaijan launched a military offensive last month to seize the breakaway territory from ethnic Armenian control.
The off-diary meeting marks a rare — if ultimately unsuccessful — contact between Moscow and the West on a major security concern, after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 upended regular diplomacy.
A senior diplomat with knowledge of the discussions told POLITICO the meeting took place on September 17 in Istanbul as part of efforts to pressure Azerbaijan to end its nine-month blockade of the enclave and allow in humanitarian aid convoys from Armenia. According to the envoy, the meeting focused on “how to get the bloody trucks moving” and ensure supplies of food and fuel could reach its estimated 100,000 residents.
The U.S. was represented by Louis Bono, Washington’s senior adviser for Caucasus negotiations, while the EU dispatched Toivo Klaar, its representative for the region. Russia, meanwhile, sent Igor Khovaev, who serves as Putin’s special envoy on relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Such high-level diplomatic interaction is rare. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came face to face on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in India — but Moscow insisted the exchange happened “on the move” and no negotiations were held.
In a statement provided to POLITICO, an EU official said “we believe it is important to maintain channels of communications with relevant interlocutors to avoid misunderstandings.” The official also observed Klaar had sought to keep lines open on numerous fronts over the “past years,” including in talks with Khovaev and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department declined to comment on the meeting, saying only that “we do not comment on private diplomatic discussions.”
However, a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters explained the discussions came out of an understanding that the Kremlin still holds sway in the region. “We need to be able to work with the Russians on this because they do have influence over the parties, especially as we’re at a precarious moment right now,” the American official said.
Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19, sending tanks and troops into the region under the cover of heavy artillery bombardment. Karabakh Armenian leaders were forced to surrender following 24 hours of fierce fighting that killed hundreds on both sides. Since then, the Armenian government says more than 100,000 people have fled their homes and crossed the border, fearing for their lives.
Azerbaijan insists it has the right to take action against “illegal armed formations” on its internationally recognized territory, and has pledged to “reintegrate” those who have stayed behind. European Council President Charles Michel described the military operation as “devastating,” while Blinken has joined calls for Azerbaijan “to refrain from further hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh and provide unhindered humanitarian access.”
Nahal Toosi, Gabriel Gavin and Eric Bazail-Eimil
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Deal ‘with the devil’: Meet the Cubans who’ve joined Russia’s war on Ukraine
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What César really wanted was to get out of Cuba. A bartender struggling to make ends meet in Havana, he tried last year to reach Miami in a rickety boat but was forced to abandon the attempt when he was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard.
He’s now preparing a second escape attempt: with a direct flight to Moscow. His ticket has been paid for by a Russian recruiter but it comes with a hefty price tag nonetheless: As part of the deal, he will have to join the Russian army and fight in Ukraine.
“If this is the sacrifice I have to make for my family to get ahead, I’ll do it,” said César, who turned 19 this year and whose name has been changed to protect his identity.
“You can be a nuclear physicist and still die of hunger here,” he said. “With my current salary I can barely buy basic things like toilet paper or milk.” He said he hoped he would be allowed to work as a paramedic.
The news of Cuban fighters in Ukraine splashed across global headlines earlier this month when Havana announced it had arrested 17 people for involvement in a human trafficking ring recruiting young men to fight for Russia.
The news raised questions about the extent of cooperation between the two Cold War allies, and whether cracks were beginning to show in Havana’s support for Russia’s invasion.
Conversations with Cubans in Cuba and Russia reveal a different side of the story: of desperate young men who see enlistment in the Russian army as their best shot at a better life — even if not all of them seem to know what they were getting themselves into.
One recruit in his late 40s in the Russian city of Tula, whom we will call Pedro, said he was promised a job as a driver “for workers and construction material” but on arrival in Russia was being prepared for combat, weapon in hand.
“We signed a contract with the devil,” he said, recalling the moment he enlisted. “And the devil does not hand out sweets.”
Cold-war allies
Until recently, Havana — though formally neutral on Ukraine — made no secret of siding with Moscow in what it called its clash with the “Yankee empire.” The Castro regime is dependent on Russia for cheap fuel and other aid. But unlike, say, North Korea, it has little to offer in return other than diplomatic loyalty.
Since the Kremlin launched its full-scale assault last year, the countries have exchanged visits by top brass.
Critics have warned that, keeping with Soviet tradition, Cuba could send troops to help fight Moscow’s cause. They point to a May visit to Belarus by Cuba’s military attaché, where the “training of Cuban military personnel” was top of the agenda, and a trip to Moscow by Cuba’s defense minister several weeks later to discuss “a number of technical military projects.” But there has been no evidence of direct involvement.
Havana’s crackdown on the recruitment network followed the publication of an interview on YouTube in late August, in which two 19-year-old Cubans claimed they had been lured to Russia for lucrative construction jobs, only to be sent to the trenches in Ukraine. They said they had suffered beatings, been scammed out of their money and were being kept captive.
Cuba’s foreign ministry vowed to act “energetically” against efforts to entice Cubans to join Russia’s war effort, adding: “Cuba is not part of the conflict in Ukraine.”
The change in tone in Havana suggests that the recruitment of Cubans through informal backchannels has “hit a nerve,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
“Cuba and the Soviet Union fought side by side in Angola and other places, but for ideological reasons,” he said. “Now it’s boiled down to the ugliest, most mercenary terms, giving it a transactional quality that goes against decades of friendship.”
In November 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree offering fast-tracked naturalization to foreigners who signed up as contract soldiers. “We are all getting Russian citizenship,” one recruit texted this reporter. That week, he and others told POLITICO, some 15 recruits, some of whom had been in Russia for only a couple of months, had been personally handed their passports by the local governor.
With heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia “needs the cannon fodder,” said Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He added most foreign recruits come from Central Asian and African countries, Syria and Afghanistan.
It is unclear exactly how many foreign citizens have joined Russia’s ranks. But Luzin says their limited numbers mainly serve to boost Russia’s narrative that it has international support for its war.
“Without speaking the language, knowing the local terrain, or the right training for modern warfare, they’ll be swiftly killed and that’s it,” he said.
Joining the 106th
For most of the Cubans with whom POLITICO spoke, their involvement with the Russian army began in late 2022, when somebody using the name Elena Shuvalova began posting on social media pages targeting Cubans looking to go abroad or already in Russia.
One post showed a woman in a long skirt in front of a car decorated with a Cuban flag and a “Z,” Russia’s pro-war symbol. In the accompanying text, Shuvalova offered a one-year contract with the Russian army, “help” with the required language exams and medical tests, and “express legalization within two days.”
Pay consisted of a one-off handout of 195,000 rubles (about $2,000) followed by a monthly salary of 204,000 rubles ($2,100). By comparison, Cuba’s average GDP per capita in 2020 was $9,500 per year.
Of the four recruits currently in Russia who shared their stories with POLITICO, three said they had been flown in from Cuba this summer. At home, they worked in hospitality, teaching and construction. One said he had a professional military background. Two others had completed two years of standard compulsory military service.
While they knew they would be employed by Russia’s military, they were reassured that they would be working far from the front line as drivers or construction workers. “To dig fortifications or help rebuild cities,” one recruit’s exasperated wife told POLITICO.
Because they could face charges of joining a mercenary group in Cuba or of treason or espionage in Russia for talking to a reporter, POLITICO changed the names of the recruits quoted in this story.
Each of them said they were flown in from Varadero along with several dozen other men. They said their passports were not stamped on departure, and that upon entering Russia their migration cards were marked “tourism” as their purpose of stay.
On landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, the recruits were met by a woman who introduced herself as Diana, who said she was a Cuban with Russian ties. They were then loaded onto a bus and brought to what one recruit described as “an empty school building” near Ryazan, a city in western Russia 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
There, they underwent a cursory medical check and were subject to a mountain of red tape, including the signing of a contract with the Russian defense ministry. One recruit said a Spanish version of the text was made available to those who specifically requested it, but others said that a translator simply summarized its content verbally.
The recruits said that some of the new arrivals remained behind at a military unit in Ryazan. But most were transferred to the 106th Guards Airborne, a division based in the city of Tula near Moscow that has been deployed into some of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine.
Kyiv claims the 106th was largely “reduced to fertilizer” in the early days of the invasion when it tried to capture Kyiv. In recent months, it has been stationed around Soledar and Bakhmut, hotspots in eastern Ukraine.
“When they handed us the uniform and told us to go train I realized this was not about construction at all,” one recruit said. By then, however, he was locked in.
A legal adviser who is well-known within Russia’s Cuban community told POLITICO he has delivered the same tough message to scores of Cuban recruits who have appealed to him for help: “Once you’ve signed the contract, defecting is tantamount to treason.”
When POLITICO spoke to Pedro in Tula, he said he felt trapped by his decision.
“I came here to give my children a better life, not to kill,” he said, breaking down into tears. “I won’t fire a single bullet.”
He added he had considered trying to escape. “But where do I go?”
On landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, the recruits were met by a woman who introduced herself as Diana, who said she was a Cuban with Russian ties | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images Willing participants
POLITICO could not determine whether Shuvalova or Diana were working for Russian or Cuban authorities. Neither woman responded to requests for comment — though Shuvalova told journalists at the Russian-language Moscow Times that she worked pro-bono.
While the Cuban Embassy in Moscow did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the government itself has sent mixed messages. Shortly after Cuba’s announcement that it had broken up the human trafficking ring, Havana’s ambassador to Moscow told the state-run RIA agency that “we have nothing against Cubans who just want to sign a contract and legally take part in this operation.”
Russia’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s not easy to tell just how many Cuban citizens have joined the Russian military.
In conversations with POLITICO, the recruits said roughly 140 Cubans were currently in Tula. And a caller to a Miami-based Spanish-language television channel in early September said that he had some 90 Cubans under his command in Ryazan.
A trove of 198 hacked documents, allegedly belonging to recent Cuban recruits and published online by the Ukrainian website Informnapalm, showed the ages of those who joined the Russian army ranged between 19 to 69 years old. More than 50 of the passports were issued in June and July this year.
Not all Cubans POLITICO spoke to said they had been tricked into joining the war. In photos shared online and in messenger apps, many pose proudly in military gear, some carrying weapons.
“No one put a gun to their heads,” Yoenni Vega Gonzalez, 36, a Cuban migrant in Russia, said of his acquaintances in Ukraine. “The contract makes it clear that you’re going to war, not to play ball or camping.”
He said he had been refused the opportunity to join because he does not speak Russian. “Otherwise, I would have gone [to the front] with pride and my head held high.”
During the reporting of this article, several Cubans still on the island reached out saying they wanted to enlist. All cited economic, and not political, reasons as their core motivation.
Accounts of daily life behind the fences of the training sites differed greatly.
Some recruits described their interaction with the Russians as friendly and the atmosphere as relaxed. In their free time they smoked cigarettes and sipped on Coca-Cola (officially not available in either Cuba or Russia). On the weekends they went sightseeing and reveled in the city’s bars.
But those who say they were tricked into service, seemingly a minority, complain about payment delays and said they are threatened with incarceration for resisting orders.
When asked about the moral implications of his decision, one recruit in Tula said it wasn’t his primary concern.
“This is the way we found to get out of Cuba,” he said. “No one here wants to kill anyone. But neither do we want to die ourselves.”
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The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict explained
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Fierce firefights and heavy shelling echo once again around the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh, an isolated region at the very edge of Europe that has seen several major wars since the fall of the Soviet Union.
On Tuesday, the South Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan announced its armed forces launched “local anti-terrorist activities” in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is inside Azerbaijan’s borders but is controlled as a breakaway state by its ethnic Armenian population.
Now, with fighting raging and allegations of an impending “genocide” reaching fever pitch, all eyes are on the decades-old conflict that threatens to draw in some of the world’s leading military powers.
What is happening?
For weeks, Armenia and international observers have warned that Azerbaijan was massing its armed forces along the heavily fortified line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, preparing to stage an offensive against local ethnic Armenian troops. Clips shared online showed Azerbaijani vehicles daubed with an upside-down ‘A’-symbol, reminiscent of the ‘Z’ sign painted onto Russian vehicles ahead of the invasion of Ukraine last year.
In the early hours of Tuesday, Karabakh Armenian officials reported a major offensive by Azerbaijan was underway, with air raid sirens sounding in Stepankert, the de facto capital. The region’s estimated 100,000 residents have been told by Azerbaijan to “evacuate” via “humanitarian corridors” leading to Armenia. However, Azerbaijani forces control all of the entry and exit points and many locals fear they will not be allowed to pass safely.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s top foreign policy advisor, Hikmet Hajiyev, insisted to POLITICO the “goal is to neutralize military infrastructure” and denied civilians were being targeted. However, unverified photographs posted online appear to show damaged apartment buildings, and the Karabakh Armenian human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanyan, reported several children have been injured in the attacks.
Concern is growing over the fate of the civilians effectively trapped in the crossfire, as well as the risk of yet another full-blown war in the former Soviet Union.
How did we get here?
During the Soviet era, Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region inside the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, home to both ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but the absence of internal borders made its status largely unimportant. That all changed when Moscow lost control of its peripheral republics, and Nagorno-Karabakh was formally left inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory.
Amid the collapse of the USSR from 1988 to 1994, Armenian and Azerbaijani forces fought a grueling series of battles over the region, with the Armenians taking control of swathes of land and forcing the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis, razing several cities to the ground. Since then, citing a 1991 referendum — boycotted by Azerbaijanis — the Karabakh-Armenians have unilaterally declared independence and maintained a de facto independent state.
For nearly three decades that situation remained stable, with the two sides locked in a stalemate that was maintained by a line of bunkers, landmines and anti-tank defenses, frequently given as an example of one of the world’s few “frozen conflicts.”
However, that all changed in 2020, when Azerbaijan launched a 44-day war to regain territory, conquering hundreds of square kilometers around all sides of Nagorno-Karabakh. That left the ethnic Armenian exclave connected to Armenia proper by a single road, the Lachin Corridor — supposedly under the protection of Russian peacekeepers as part of a Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement.
What is the blockade?
With Russia’s ability to maintain the status quo rapidly dwindling in the face of its increasingly catastrophic war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan has moved to take control of all access to the region. In December, as part of a dispute supposedly over illegal gold mining, self-declared “eco-activists” — operating with the support of the country’s authoritarian government — staged a sit-in on the road, stopping civilian traffic and forcing the local population to rely on Russian peacekeepers and the Red Cross for supplies.
That situation has worsened in the past two months, with an Azerbaijani checkpoint newly erected on the Lachin Corridor refusing to allow the passage of any humanitarian aid, save for the occasional one-off delivery. In August, amid warnings of empty shelves, malnourishment and a worsening humanitarian crisis, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, published a report calling the situation “an ongoing genocide.”
Azerbaijan denies it is blockading Nagorno-Karabakh, with Hajiyev telling POLITICO the country was prepared to reopen the Lachin Corridor if the Karabakh-Armenians accepted transport routes from inside Azerbaijani-held territory. Aliyev has repeatedly called on Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh to stand down, local politicians to resign and those living there to accept being ruled as part of Azerbaijan.
Why have things escalated now?
Over the past few months, the U.S., EU and Russia have urged Azerbaijan to keep faith during diplomatic talks designed to end the conflict once and for all, rather than seeking a military solution to assert control over the entire region.
As part of the talks in Washington, Brussels and Moscow, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a series of unprecedented concessions, going as far as recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory. However, his government maintains it cannot sign a peace deal that does not include internationally guaranteed rights and securities for the Karabakh-Armenians.
The situation has worsened in the past two months, with an Azerbaijani checkpoint newly erected on the Lachin Corridor refusing to allow the passage of any humanitarian aid | Tofik babayev/AFP via Getty Images Aliyev has rejected any such arrangement outright, insisting there should be no foreign presence on Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. He insists that as citizens of Azerbaijan, those living there will have the same rights as any other citizen — but has continued fierce anti-Armenian rhetoric including describing the separatists as “dogs,” while the government issued a postage stamp following the 2020 war featuring a worker in a hazmat suit “decontaminating” Nagorno-Karabakh.
Unwilling to accept the compromise, Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of stalling the peace process. According to former Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, a military escalation is needed to force an agreement. “It can be a short-term clash, or it can be a war,” he added.
Facing growing domestic pressure amid dwindling supplies, former Karabakh-Armenian President Arayik Harutyunyan stood down and called elections, lambasted as a provocation by Azerbaijan and condemned by the EU, Ukraine and others.
Azerbaijan also alleged Armenian saboteurs were behind landmine blasts it says killed six military personnel in the region, while presenting no evidence to support the claim.
What’s Russia doing?
Armenia is formally an ally of Russia, and a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military bloc. However, Russian peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh have proven entirely unwilling or unable to keep Azerbaijani advances in check, while Moscow declined to offer Pashinyan the support he demanded after strategic high ground inside Armenia’s borders were captured in an Azerbaijani offensive last September.
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko previously said Azerbaijan has better relations with the CSTO than Armenia, despite not being a member, and described Aliyev as “our guy.”
Since then, Armenia — the most democratic country in the region — has sought to distance itself from the Kremlin, inviting in an EU civilian observer mission to the border. That strategy has picked up pace in recent days, with Pashinyan telling POLITICO in an interview that the country can no longer rely on Russia for its security. Instead, the South Caucasus nation has dispatched humanitarian aid to Ukraine and Pashinyan’s wife visited Kyiv to show her support, while hosting U.S. troops for exercises.
Moscow, which has a close economic and political relationship with Azerbaijan, reacted furiously, summoning the Armenian ambassador.
In a message posted on Telegram on Tuesday, Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia and secretary of its security council, said Pashinyan “decided to blame Russia for his botched defeat. He gave up part of his country’s territory. He decided to flirt with NATO, and his wife took biscuits to our enemies. Guess what fate awaits him…”
Who supports whom?
The South Caucasus is a tangled web of shifting alliances.
Russia aside, Armenia has built close relations with neighboring Iran, which has vowed to protect it, as well as India and France. French President Emmanuel Macron has previously joined negotiations in support of Pashinyan and the country is home to a large and historic Armenian diaspora.
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, operates on a “one nation, two states” basis with Turkey, with which it has deep cultural, linguistic and historical ties. It also receives large shipments of weaponry and military hardware from Israel, while providing the Middle Eastern nation with gas.
The EU has turned to Azerbaijan to help replace Russia as a provider of energy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made an official visit to the capital, Baku, last summer in a bid to secure increased exports of natural gas, describing the country as a “reliable, trustworthy partner.”
Gabriel Gavin
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Putin exposes the myth of Austria’s victimhood
VIENNA — No one does victimhood quite like Austria.
Over the past century, the Central European country has presented itself to the outside world as an innocent bystander on an island of gemütlichkeit, doing what it can to get by in a treacherous global environment.
“Austria was always apolitical,” insists Herr Karl, the archetypal Austrian opportunist, brought to life in 1961 by Helmut Qualtinger, the country’s greatest satirist. “We were never political people.”
Recalling Austria’s collaboration with the Nazis, Herr Karl, a portly stockist who speaks in a working-class Viennese dialect, was full of self pity: “We scraped a bit of cash together — we had to make a living…How we struggled to survive!”
Russia’s war on Ukraine offers a bitter reminder that Austria remains a country of Herr Karls, playing all sides, professing devotion to Western ideals, even as they quietly look for ways to continue to profit from the country’s friendly relations with Moscow.
The most glaring example of this hypocrisy is Austria’s continued reliance on Russian natural gas, which accounts for about 55 percent of the country’s overall consumption. Though that’s down from 80 percent at the beginning of 2022, Austria, in contrast to most other EU countries, remains dependent on Russia.
Confront an Austrian government official with this fact and you’ll be met with a lengthy whinge over how the country, one of the world’s richest, is struggling to cope with the economic crosswinds triggered by the war. That will be followed by a litany of examples of how a host of other EU countries is guilty of much more egregious behavior vis a vis Moscow.
The unspoken, if inevitable, conclusion: the real victim here is Austria.
The myth of Austrian victimhood has long been a leitmotif of the country’s bilious tabloids, which serve readers regular helpings of all the ways in which the outside world, especially Brussels and Washington, undermines them.
Outside supervision
Earlier this month, the EU’s representative in Austria, Martin Selmayr, ended up in the sights of the tabloids — and the government — for uttering the inconvenient truth that the millions Vienna pays to Russia for gas every month amounted to “blood money.”
“He’s acting like a colonial army officer,” fumed Andreas Mölzer, a right-wing commentator for the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s best-selling tabloid, noting with delight that both of Selmayr’s grandfathers were German generals in the war.
A few weeks before his “blood money” remarks, Selmayr told a Vienna newspaper that “the European army is NATO” | Patrick Seeger/EPA “The Eurocrats have this attitude that they can just tell Austrians what to do,” Mölzer concluded.
Yet if Austria’s history since the collapse of the Habsburg empire in 1918 has shown anything, it’s that the country needs outside supervision. Left to their own devices, Austrians’ worst instincts take hold.
One needn’t look further than 1938 to understand the implications. But there’s no shortage of other examples: voters’ enthusiastic support for former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim as president in 1986, despite credible evidence that he had lied about his wartime service as an intelligence officer for the Nazis; the state’s foot-dragging on paying reparations to slave laborers used by Austrian companies during the war; the resistance to return valuable artworks looted from Jews by the Nazis to their rightful owners.
Not that Austrians learn from their mistakes. To this day, Austrians rarely heed the better angels of their nature unless the outside world forces them to, either by shaming them into submission or brute force.
That said, the West is almost as much to blame for Austria’s moral shortcomings as the Austrians themselves.
The Magna Carta for Austria’s cult of victimhood can be found in the so-called Moscow Declarations of 1943, in which the allied powers declared the country “the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression.” Though the text also stresses that Austria bears a responsibility — “which she cannot evade” — for collaborating with the Nazis, the Austrians latched onto the “victim” label after the war and didn’t look back.
In the decades that followed, the country relied on its stunning natural beauty and faded imperial charm to transform its international image into that of an alpine Shangri-La, a snow-globe filled with prancing Lipizzaners and jolly folk enjoying Wiener schnitzel and Sachertorte.
Convenient excuse
A key element of that gauzy fantasy was the country’s neutrality, imposed on it in 1955 by the Soviet Union as a condition for ending Austria’s postwar allied occupation. At the time, Austrians viewed neutrality as a necessary evil towards regaining full sovereignty.
During the course of the Cold War, however, neutrality took on an almost religious quality. In the popular imagination, it was neutrality, coupled with Austrians’ deft handling of Soviet leaders, that allowed the country to escape the fate of its Warsaw Pact neighbors (while also doing business with the Eastern Bloc).
Today, Austrian neutrality is little more than a convenient excuse to avoid responsibility.
Austria’s center-right-led government insists that on Ukraine it is only neutral in terms of military action, not on political principle. In other words, it won’t send weapons to Kyiv, but it does support the EU’s sanctions and allows arms shipments destined for Ukraine to pass through Austrian territory.
At the same time, many Austrian companies continue to conduct brisk business with Russia for which they face little criticism at home.
Andreas Babler took over as leader of the Social Democrats in June AND has a long history of opposing not just NATO, but Austrian participation in any EU defense initiatives | Helmut Fohringer/APA/AFP via Getty Images In the Austrian population as a whole, decades of fetishizing neutrality has left many convinced that it’s their birthright not to take sides. Most are blissfully unaware of the EU’s mutual defense clause, under which member states agree to come to one another’s aid in the event of “armed aggression.”
That mentality explains why Austria’s political parties — with the notable exception of the liberal Neos — refuse to touch, or even debate, the country’s neutrality and its security implications.
In March, just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy began an address via video to Austria’s parliament, Freedom Party MPs placed signs stamped with “Neutrality” and “Peace” on their desks before standing up in unison and leaving the chamber.
The far right wasn’t alone in its disapproval of Zelenskyy. More than half of the Social Democratic MPs also boycotted the event to avoid upsetting Russia.
Geographic good fortune
Andreas Babler, who took over as leader of the Social Democrats in June, has a long history of opposing not just NATO, but Austrian participation in any EU defense initiatives.
In 2020, he characterized the EU as “the most aggressive military alliance that has ever existed,” adding that it “was worse than NATO.”
It’s an extraordinary assertion given that NATO is the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from swallowing Austria during the Cold War. The defense alliance, which Austrian leaders briefly entertained joining in the 1990s, remains the linchpin of the country’s security for a simple reason: Austria’s only non-NATO neighbor is Switzerland.
Austria’s neutrality and geographic good fortune have led it to spend next to nothing on defense. Last year, for example, spending fell to just 0.8 percent of GDP from 0.9 percent, putting it near the bottom of the EU league table with the likes of Luxembourg, Ireland and Malta.
A few years ago, the country’s defense minister even proposed doing away with “national defense” altogether so that the army could concentrate on challenges such as natural disaster relief and combatting cyber threats. The idea was ultimately rejected, but that it was proposed at all — by the person who oversees the military no less — illustrates how seriously Austria takes its security needs.
Over the past year, the government has pledged to increase defense spending, yet those plans are still well below what the country would be obligated to pay were it in NATO.
Put simply, Austria is freeloading on its neighbors and the United States and will continue to do so until it’s pressured to change course.
Reality check
That’s why it needs more straight talk from people like Selmayr, not less.
A few weeks before his “blood money” remarks, the diplomat told a Vienna newspaper that “the European army is NATO,” noting that the accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance would leave only Austria and a few small island states outside the tent.
Austria’s neutrality and geographic good fortune have led it to spend next to nothing on defense | Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images The reality check dashed Austria’s hope that it could avoid paying its share for EU defense by waiting for Brussels to create its own force.
Even so, rhetoric alone is not going to convince Austria to shift course. Nearly 80 percent of Austrians support neutrality because it’s so comfortable. The EU and the U.S. need to make it uncomfortable.
At the moment, most Austrians only see the upsides to neutrality; yet that’s only because the West has refused to impose any costs on the country for freeriding. That needs to change.
Critics of a more aggressive approach towards Vienna argue that it will only harden the population’s resolve to sustain neutrality and bolster the far right. That may be true in the short term, but the history of foreign pressure on Austria, especially from Washington — be it the isolation it faced during the Waldheim affair or the push to compensate slave laborers from the war — shows that the interventions ultimately work.
If forced to choose between remaining in the Western fold or facing isolation, Austrians will always chose the former.
Though almost no Austrian security officials will say so publicly, few have any illusions about the necessity of a sea change. More than one-third acknowledge that the country’s neutrality is no longer credible, according to a study published this month by the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy. A further third say the country’s participation in the EU’s common foreign and security policy has a “strong influence” on the credibility of its neutrality claim (presumably not in a good way).
And nearly 60 percent say the country needs to improve its interoperability with NATO in order to fight alongside its EU allies in the event of an armed conflict.
The problem is that no one is forcing them.
If Austria’s partners continue to avoid a confrontation, the country is likely to continue its slide towards Orbánism.
The Freedom Party, which wants to suspend EU aid for Ukraine and lift sanctions against Russia, leads the polls by a widening margin with just a year until the next national election. With neighboring Slovakia on a similar trajectory, Russian President Vladimir Putin may soon have a major foothold in the heart of the EU.
So far, the EU and Washington have been silent on the Freedom Party’s worrying rise, counting on Austrians to snap out of it.
Barring foreign pressure, they won’t. Why would they? With its populist prescriptions and beer hall rhetoric, the Freedom Party encourages Austrians to see themselves as what they most want to be: victims.
Or as Herr Karl famously put it: “Nothing that they accused us of was true.”
Matthew Karnitschnig
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‘Just a temporary blip’: Chinese travelers will be back, says Banyan Tree founder
Chinese travelers are returning to Banyan Tree Holdings hotels, it’s founder told CNBC.
Christian Heeb| Prisma By Dukas | Universal Images Group | Getty Images
A dearth of Chinese travelers is nothing to “worry about,” said Banyan Tree Holdings founder Ho Kwon Ping.
“They are definitely going to come back,” he told CNBC’s Chery Kang at the Milken Institute’s Asia Summit on Wednesday.
“China is just a temporary blip,” he said. “Most of us in the hospitality industry, a year or so ago, predicted that Chinese tourism would only start to rebound around maybe this year or even next year.”
No one expected a quick turn-around from lockdown to mass travel, he added.
For Banyan Tree Holdings — which operates more than 60 hotels in 17 countries — Ho said “Chinese tourism [is] coming back quite strongly.”
What’s missing are the “mass group tours, which provide the numbers, but they don’t come to our hotels anyway,” he said.
“So you have a lot more free individual travelers … and they’re the ones who can pay the higher airfares and so on.”
He’s also bullish on the tourism market within China.
“The Chinese government made it very clear, they don’t want to have a heavy investment-led growth, they want consumption-based growth and consumption equals tourism. And tourism, as any economist will tell you, has got the greatest sort of trickle-on effect,” he said.
China’s property market
Ho also dismissed concerns about the turmoil surrounding China’s real estate market, which makes up about 30% of its economy.
“The banking system is not going to collapse because it’s Chinese banks that are lending money,” he said.
We’re comfortable with a China real estate story, because we had a number of hotels in China which were all sold prior to the property bubble.
Ho Kwon Ping
Banyan Tree Holdings
“So that’s why you see things like Country Garden … near to going bust, yet not going bust,” he said, referring to the Chinese property giant that narrowly missed a default.
In addition, “the percentage of the Chinese population that actually still lives in modern housing is not halfway near what it is in the Western world. So there’s a lot of demand still.”
As to his company’s exposure to a Chinese real estate bubble, he said: “We’re comfortable with a China real estate story, because we had a number of hotels in China which were all sold prior to the property bubble.”
Not just two superpowers
Ho said he believed Singapore, where his hospitality brand is headquartered, can help soothe geopolitical tensions that have escalated between China and the United States.
“I think Singapore can actually play a very important role in trying to make the U.S., the West in particular, understand that the rise of China is the rise of an entire civilization — and that it’s not a zero-sum game where they’re trying to rise to the extent of putting America and the West down.”
The Western psyche has been too absorbed by the Cold War, which was a zero-sum game, he said.
Even though the West has been dominant for the last 300 years, one global dominant power is not sustainable into perpetuity, he said.
“I think we’re going back to what I call ‘Back to the future’ — like in the movie, where the world 50 years from now will consist of various great civilizations,” he said.
“I use the word civilization because it’s not about economics. It’s not about military power, even politics [or] the idea of the only criteria by which you should judge a country’s politics is whether it practices liberal democracy … I think that’s all changing.”
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Is nuclear energy the answer to a sustainable future? Experts are divided
Nuclear power has been touted as a proven, safe way of producing clean energy, but why isn’t it more widely adopted?
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
As the world pushes toward its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, nuclear power has been touted as the way to bridge the energy gap — but some, like Greenpeace, have expressed skepticism, warning that it has “no place in a safe, clean, sustainable future.”
Nuclear energy is not only clean. It is reliable and overcomes the intermittent nature of renewables like wind, hydro and solar power.
“How do you provide cheap, reliable and pollution-free energy for a world of 8 billion people? Nuclear energy is really the only scalable version of that, renewables are not reliable,” Michael Shellenberger, founder of environmental organization Environmental Progress, told CNBC.
Governments have started to pour money into the sector after years of “treading water,” according to a report by Schroders on Aug. 8.
According to the report, there are 486 nuclear reactors either planned, proposed or under construction as of July, amounting to 65.9 billion watts of electric capacity – the highest amount of electric capacity under construction the industry has seen since 2015.
Only a few years ago, the International Energy Agency had warned that nuclear power was “at risk of future decline.” The report in 2019 said then that “nuclear power has begun to fade, with plants closing and little new investment made, just when the world requires more low-carbon electricity.”
Schroders noted that nuclear power is not only scalable, but much cleaner — emitting just 10-15 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour. That’s competitive with both wind and solar energy and substantially better than coal and natural gas.
Nuclear power is also the second largest source of low carbon energy after hydro power, more than wind and solar combined, Schroders said.
Shellenberger’s view is that renewable energy is reaching the limits of what it can achieve in many countries. For example, hydroelectric power is not viable in all countries, and those that have them are “tapped out,” which means they cannot exploit any more land or water resources for that purpose.
Nuclear power is a great alternative, with “very small amounts of waste, easy to manage, never hurt anybody, very low cost when you build the same kind of plants over and over again,” he added.
That’s the reason why nations are having a second look at nuclear power, Shellenberger said. “It’s because renewables aren’t able to take us where we need to go. And countries want to be free of fossil fuels.”
Nuclear safety
Twelve years after Fukushima, we’re just getting better at operating these plants. They’re more efficient, they’re safer, we have better training.
Michael Shellenberger
Environmental Progress
In an interview with CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” last week, Adam Fleck, director of research, ratings and ESG at Morningstar, said the social concern around nuclear power is “somewhat misunderstood.”
While the tragedies in Chernobyl and Fukushima cannot be forgotten, using nuclear is one of the safest ways to produce energy, even taking into consideration the need to store the nuclear waste.
“Many of those [storage facilities] are highly protected. They’re protected against earthquakes, tornadoes, you name it. But there’s a reason why there hasn’t been a significant tragedy or concern related to storage of nuclear waste.”
Shellenberger said: “Twelve years after Fukushima, we’re just getting better at operating these plants. They’re more efficient, they’re safer, we have better training.”
There have been new designs for nuclear power plants that have also enhanced safety, “but really what’s made nuclear safe has been the kind of the boring stuff, the stuff of the trainings and the routines and the best practices,” he told CNBC.
Too expensive, too slow
So, if nuclear has been a tested, proven and safe way of generating power, why isn’t it more widely adopted?
Fleck said it boils down to one main factor: cost.
The extra time that nuclear plants take to build has major implications for climate goals, as existing fossil-fueled plants continue to emit carbon dioxide while awaiting substitution.
“I think the biggest issue of nuclear has actually been cost economics. It’s very costly to build a nuclear plant up front. There’s a lot of overruns, a lot of delays. And I think, for investors looking to put money to work in this space, they need to find players that have a strong track record of being able to build out that capacity.”
But not everyone is convinced.
A report by global campaigning network Greenpeace in March 2022 was of the position that besides the commonly held concern of nuclear safety, nuclear energy is too expensive and too slow to deploy compared to other renewables.
Greenpeace noted that a nuclear power plant takes about 10 years to build, adding “the extra time that nuclear plants take to build has major implications for climate goals, as existing fossil-fueled plants continue to emit carbon dioxide while awaiting substitution.”
Furthermore, it points out that uranium extraction, transport and processing are not free of greenhouse gas emissions either.
Greenpeace acknowledged that “all in all, nuclear power stations score comparable with wind and solar energy.” However, wind and solar can be implemented much faster and on a much bigger scale, making a faster impact on carbon emissions and the clean energy transition.
Nuclear power is a “distraction” from the “answer we need” — such as renewables and energy storage solutions to mitigate the unreliability from renewables, said Dave Sweeney, a nuclear analyst and nuclear-free campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation.
“That’s the way that we need to go, to keep the lights on and the Geiger counters down,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Friday.
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Facing threat of Trump’s return, Ukrainians ramp up homegrown arms industry
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KYIV — Ukraine’s long-range Beaver drones seem to be making successful kamikaze strikes in the heart of Moscow, but Serhiy Prytula is coy about how much he knows.
“We are not sure whether we are involved in this,” he says with a charming but inscrutable smile, when asked about these mysterious new weapons.
Prytula rose to fame — just like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — as an actor, TV star and comedian, but is now best known for his contribution to the war, running a foundation that acquires components, helps support domestic arms production and supplies front-line forces. Tracking down parts for drones has proved to be one of his fortes.
Whether or not Prytula played any role in finding parts for the Beaver, it has now joined the ranks of other homegrown creations such as the Shark, Leleka and Valkyrie.
From the outside, his foundation looks like any other nondescript five-story apartment block in the quiet side streets of Kyiv. Inside, it is a chaotic human hive of volunteers, preparing packages and dispatching deliveries to soldiers on the front. On August 9, the team packed 75 drones for military units. That’s barely a drop in the ocean, given the needs of Ukraine’s forces across a 1,000-kilometer front, but every extra eye in the sky can help save dozens of lives.
The crowd of young, energetic volunteers at Prytula’s headquarters epitomizes an important dimension of the war: Ukrainians are increasingly taking matters into their own hands when it comes to weapons supply. With the defense ministry and the traditional state arms sector widely criticized for inefficiency and tarnished by corruption scandals over past years, the country is now witnessing an explosion of private enterprise to deliver kit to the front lines and to ramp up domestic production in the most hazardous of conditions. With arms-makers being prime targets for Russian cruise missiles, factories are spreading their manufacturing over numerous secret locations.
This sense that Ukrainians need to take the initiative at home both by scouring the global arms bazaar for hi-tech gizmos and by making more of their own heavy armor and shells is only amplified by the looming threat of a return to the White House by Donald Trump, who argues that America should not be “sending very much” to Ukraine and that Kyiv should sue for peace with the invader. Other Republican candidates have only heightened Ukrainians’ fears that the next U.S. president could sell out their young democracy to the Kremlin.
In addition to the aerial drones, there have been other homegrown success stories — Ukrainian-made armored vehicles are on the front lines beside U.S. Bradleys and locally made maritime drones have hit Russian ships in the Black Sea.
Not that anyone reckons going it alone is an option. Ukraine cannot even begin to match the vast military expenditure of Russia — Kyiv is expected to spend €24 billion on defense over 2023, while Russia is probably splurging well over €80 billion — so foreign assistance will always prove vital to keeping Ukraine in the fight.
But that’s no reason to sit idly by. Almost an entire country has mobilized for national defense, and there are many ways in which entrepreneurial private suppliers are now proving nimbler than state behemoths and bureaucrats in getting soldiers what they need.
When it came to the key question — on every Ukrainian’s mind — of continued Western support, Prytula stressed the efforts that Ukrainians were making to defend themselves made it less likely that outside aid would diminish. “I am convinced that they will keep supplying us with weapons because the world sees the war efforts of Ukrainian society.”
Beaver blitz
The back story of the Beaver is a closely guarded secret.
Last year, Ukrainian blogger and volunteer Ihor Lachenkov announced he was aiming to collect 20 million hryvnia (about €500,000) to produce and buy five Beaver drones for military intelligence, and later posted pictures of himself hugging one. Since then drones that looked like Beavers have hammered Russian oil depots and other military targets deep inside Russian territory and even hit Moscow’s business district. Officially, Ukraine is saying nothing about where this kit is coming from, and men such as Lachenkov and Prytula provide a useful smokescreen.
The country is now witnessing an explosion of private enterprise to deliver kit to the front lines | Sergey Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images Prytula in late July also showed off grinning pictures of himself walking past three Beaver drones on a landing strip, quipping ironically: “We have no idea what can fly to Moscow.”
Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Prytula’s foundation has raised $135 million, which has been used to buy more than 7,000 drones, 1,200 vehicles, over 17,000 communication devices and much more.
When asked about his role in getting the Beaver drones, Prytula diplomatically said a volunteer’s job is to buy what the military needs and hand it over. “But it is not always necessary to talk about it. We honestly always say that we have nothing to do with it. When we see oil bases are exploding somewhere in Russia, or that there are some attacks on military facilities, we are glad that our army has learned to take out the enemy outside the country,” Prytula said.
Indeed, Prytula’s volunteers play a key middleman role in acquiring components more quickly than the state bureaucracy can.
China is a key part of the puzzle as the Ukrainian defense ministry cannot buy Chinese-made civilian drones directly. Shenzhen-based drone maker DJI no longer openly sells to Russia or to Ukraine, so the key trick is to acquire their wares quickly from third countries, or pick up parts and components internationally that can be assembled by Ukrainian technicians. There is a boom in small Ukrainian arms producers, with more than 100 companies active in the field.
“For the Russians, it was always easier to get [the Chinese products] in the never-ending race. So, when I hear Ukrainians managed to snatch up 10,000 components for … drones from Russians, I am happy,” Prytula said, sitting in his office, beside a giant wooden map of Ukraine.
This sense that Ukrainians need to take the initiative at home is only amplified by the looming threat of a return to the White House by Donald Trump, who argues that America should not be “sending very much” to Ukraine and that Kyiv should sue for peace with the invader | Brandon Bell/Getty Images “The defense ministry also can’t buy [drones] that are not in serial production yet. But we can, and the producers can reinvest the money to increase the number, if soldiers’ feedback from the front was good,” Prytula continued. “So, by donating money people are not only helping the army, but also stimulating domestic military production.”
The game-changing role of drone producers has also made them a target. Over the weekend, Russia attacked a theater in the center of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, where drone producers and volunteers had organized a closed meeting with the help of the local military administration. Most of them managed to escape to shelter but people walking around the theater on the central square did not, with seven killed and 129 injured.
Bringing it all back home
While almost everyone now wants to get involved in the defense business, that wasn’t always the case. Just as Russia was building up its military from 1991 to 2014, Ukraine neglected its own arms factories. In the wild years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, illegal networks smuggled out arms. While the country remained a heavyweight military producer, it focused on export earnings rather than tailoring weapons for Ukraine’s own forsaken troops.
“No one predicted any military conflicts either with Russia or other countries,” Maksym Polyvianyi, acting director of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries, told POLITICO. “In a way, Russia’s 2014 invasion boosted our defense industry. Dozens of defense companies appeared and started the modernization of Ukrainian armory and the army.”
Still, the old scourge of corruption held the country back, even after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. Under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, the state arms industry was rocked by scandals in which money was siphoned off, even as the country faced open conflict against Russia in the east.
Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 forced another change, however, accelerating diversification from the state industrial complex. “As of 2022, Ukrainian armed forces buy up to 70 percent of defense products from private military companies,” Polyvianyi said.
Under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, the state arms industry was rocked by scandals in which money was siphoned off, even as the country faced open conflict against Russia in the east | Chris McGrath/Getty Images With the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s defense producers became primary targets for Russian missiles. Many were bombed. But others managed to relocate to western Ukraine and spread out production.
“You have to be creative to survive nowadays. Two months after the start of the invasion, we resumed our work,” Vladislav Belbas, director general of Ukrainian Armor, told POLITICO. Since 2018, Ukrainian Armor produced the Varta and Novator armored vehicles, as well as 60mm, 82mm, and 120 mm-caliber mortars for the army. “We recently restarted production even though we’ve lost an important components contractor. It is now located on the territory controlled by Russia.”
Secrecy is also crucial. “We do everything to protect our staff, hide information about our production whereabouts. We move and test equipment at night, when it is more difficult to track us. We try not to concentrate equipment in one place,” Belbas said.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, stressed output was rising dramatically but that it was inconceivable to match Russia without major foreign support. “In seven months of 2023, we made 10 times more artillery and mortar ammo than in the entire 2022. But we are still very far from what we need,” he told POLITICO. “Today we have a war of such a scale that the entire capacity of the free world is not enough to support our consumption. We definitely cannot do this without help.”
Ministry malaise
The defense ministry — the main supplier of weapons, food, uniforms and other necessities — is struggling to shake off a reputation for graft and inefficiency.
In a high-profile profiteering scandal earlier this year, it transpired the ministry had paid absurdly inflated prices for soldiers’ rations to a contractor. The ministry denies violations, but keeps hiding behind military secrecy.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, stressed output was rising dramatically but that it was inconceivable to match Russia without major foreign support | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images Other more recent scandals and procurement hiccups have focused on the ministry’s failure to secure delivery of everything it paid for. In private, Ukrainian officials admit the defense ministry is not up to scratch in supplying the army, and some Ukrainian lawmakers openly criticize the minister, Oleksii Reznikov, over his record on procurement.
The Ukrainian government has found alternative ways to cover some of the needs of the Ukrainian army, with the digital transformation ministry engaging in drone supplies, using state donations platform UNITED 24, and liberalizing customs and production rules for drones in Ukraine.
“President Zelenskyy took domestic defense production under personal control,” Kamyshin said.
Prytula, the founder of the foundation, said it was hard to judge the defense ministry during war. “They are quite successful when it comes to accumulating help in the international arena, but have some troubles at home. I think the defense ministry is doing what it can in terms of its responsibility. But with such a war it is never enough,” he said.
But Polyvianyi noted that’s where volunteers were coming into their own as parallel supply lines, filling the gaps left by the ministry. “The task of the state today is to provide heavy equipment. Without help, the state cannot provide all the needs of each army unit. Charitable foundations work in close connection with the ministry of defense and other structures.”
That’s a partnership in which Prytula is one of the most important players. But he is among the first to admit that all of Ukraine’s Herculean efforts at home will amount to nothing without the support of the international coalition.
“So it is hard to imagine we can win if we’re left on our own. As in the war of two formerly Soviet armies, the one with more people and weapons will win. Only better technology can help change the situation,” Prytula said. “It will be very difficult for us to fight alone with such a huge monster. But the civilized world has two options: to help us restore our 1991 borders, or to throw away all claims of shared values and just watch us bleed.”
Veronika Melkozerova
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Russia shoots for the moon as space race against US heats up
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Despite war and sanctions, Vladimir Putin is trying to haul Russia back into the space race.
In the early hours of Friday morning, state space agency Roscosmos launched the country’s first lunar mission in nearly half a century as an ambitious play in the scramble to build a base on the moon.
“If they pull it off, it will be a massive technological and scientific achievement,” said Tim Marshall, author of “The Future of Geography” on the geopolitics of space. He argues a successful Russian landing, and fruitful year of research, would mark a big step forward in plans to build a moon base with China by the 2030s.
Russia’s Luna-25 mission is being dispatched to scope out the lunar south pole, where scientists believe there’s a plentiful supply of water locked in ice in the perpetual shade of mountain ridges. Firming up water reserves is a critical requirement for supporting life on the moon with breathable oxygen, drinking water and even rocket fuel, which would then help space-faring nations further explore the cosmos from any lunar outpost in the future.
“The first goal is to find the water, to confirm that it is there … to study its abundance,” said Olga Zakutnyaya, from the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, of Luna-25’s main aim.
But simply successfully landing a spacecraft on the rocky lunar south pole — which would be a first in itself — would also prove to Beijing that Moscow still has something to offer when it comes to cutting-edge aerospace technology. The two countries have already pledged to work together to build a moon base by the 2030s, but Beijing is the clear leader these days.
“Putin knows that Russia is the junior partner in the China relationship, including in the space relationship,” said Marshall, arguing that the Luna-25 mission could help rebalance the scales.
On the other side of the geopolitical divide, the United States is planning to send astronauts to the south pole later this decade as part of its Artemis program supported by Canada and European countries.
And, despite the competition, NASA doesn’t seem worried about Moscow’s mission.
“I don’t think that a lot of people at this point would say that Russia is actually ready to be landing cosmonauts on the moon in the timeframe that we’re talking about,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a panel on Tuesday in response to Luna-25.
Pole race
Only three countries — the United States, China and the Soviet Union — have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon, and only the Americans have put boots on the lunar surface.
The likes of India, Japan and Israel have all tried and failed of late. In 2019, India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission crashed, while an earlier attempt by Israeli firms with Beresheet also failed that year. In April, Japanese start-up ipsace also saw its Hakuto-R Mission 1 crash.
Only three countries — the United States, China and the Soviet Union — have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images Trying again, India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, which literally translates as “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, is scheduled to reach the surface on August 23 to explore the south pole, around the same time that Luna-25 is planning to attempt to land nearby.
“The fact that both Russia and India are targeting to land in the same, albeit large, region of the moon highlights that certain areas are more valuable than others,” said Benjamin Silverstein, an analyst for the Carnegie Space Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
While Roscosmos insists there’s no chance of collision, a lack of agreed regulations for who can do what on celestial bodies like the moon means countries are deciding their own rules of the road when planning missions.
First landers on the lunar south pole could work up their own preferred standards and expect newcomers to follow their lead rather than relying on the slow and laborious process of trying to fix agreed lunar governance norms, Silverstein said.
The U.S.-backed Artemis accords sets out Washington’s preferred principles for a fresh era of space exploration, and would controversially allow countries to claim exclusive access to certain commercial zones around, for example, a moon base next to icy or resource-rich deposits.
“The growth [of Artemis signatories] to 29 shows that without question it’s going to be the dominant space bloc of the century, but for the foreseeable future they will never get China, Russia or their allies on board,” said Marshall.
Even without the politics, landing a spacecraft on the mountainous terrain of the moon’s dark poles isn’t easy.
“The south pole has a lot of craters and is very rocky,” said Nico Dettmann, the European Space Agency’s lead on lunar exploration, adding that a target accuracy of within 100 to 200 meters is required to be certain of a soft landing.
Current thruster and mapping technology, such as that deployed on Luna-25, will only be able to home in on a location between 15 and 30 kilometers from the target point, he said. “These space technology developments take time.”
Luna-25 had been set to include demonstrator navigation camera systems from the ESA as part of a cooperation deal, but that’s been scrapped due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with a separate mission to Mars dubbed ExoMars.
This article was updated to reflect that Russia had launched the lunar mission.
Joshua Posaner, Matt Berg and Laura Hülsemann
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Sun, sea and sanctions evasion: Where Russians are spending the summer
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Even as war rages in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians are eyeing popular holiday destinations for a summer break — or even a safe haven to wait out the conflict.
While a weaker ruble and growing economic woes means many ordinary families will be spending the warmer months on their dachas or taking a break inside Russia, those with enough cash to travel are wasting little time jetting off to sunny spots across Europe and Asia.
That means countries still willing to take their money are tapping into a lucrative market. But that can come at a cost, and the politics of taking tens of thousands of tourists from a pariah state is already creating trouble in paradise for some popular destinations.
Here are six of the top places Russians are spending their vacations.
Turkey
As lazy travel writers so often put it, Turkey is a nation that straddles East and West. That old cliché has taken on new meaning since the start of the war in Ukraine, with the NATO member state offering support to Kyiv while at the same time refusing to impose sanctions on Moscow.
Ankara, as a result, has seen much-needed foreign cash flood into the country as Russians look to move their assets abroad. It’s also one of the only European destinations not to have banned flights from Russia: While the EU’s skies are closed, Turkish operators are offering flights from Moscow to sunny destinations like Antalya and Bodrum for as little as €130.
In the first half of the year, Turkey’s tourism revenues grew by more than a quarter, hitting $21.7 billion, statistics released this week show, with as many as 7 million Russians expected to visit the country this year.
Some have even decided to stay — as many as 145,000 Russians currently have residency permits. But while they’ve escaped political instability and the risk of conscription, they are sharing their new home country with tens of thousands of Ukrainians who’ve fled Russia’s war.
That’s created tensions in resort towns like Antalya, which is popular with both Russians and Ukrainians. And given Turkey’s growing anti-migrant sentiment in the wake of May’s presidential elections, both groups could be at risk of being sent home.
Georgia
The South Caucasus country holds an almost mythical status in the minds of Russians — and its reputation for having some of the best nature, food and hospitality in the former Soviet Union has made it a go-to destination for middle-class holidaymakers, who flock to its Black Sea beaches and snow-capped mountains or kick back in trendy Tbilisi.
In 2022 alone, more than 1.1 million Russians visited Georgia, up from just 200,000 the year before. That number is on the rise after Moscow in May relaxed rules banning direct flights.
Under the ruling Georgian Dream party, Tbilisi has sought closer relations with the Kremlin since the start of the war and aimed to profit off Russian wanderlust. But many locals are less sure.
In 2022 alone, more than 1.1 million Russians visited Georgia, up from just 200,000 the year before | Jan Kruger/Getty Images In a poll conducted in March, only 4 percent of the 1,500 people surveyed said Russians are welcome in Georgia, while a quarter said Russians were tolerated because of the cash they spend when they visit. More than one in three insisted Russian visitors should be banned until Moscow relinquishes control of the occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — accounting for around a fifth of Georgia’s territory.
Tensions are on the rise, with local Georgian and Ukrainian activists staging protests against Russian cruise ships docking in the port city of Batumi over the weekend. Clips shared by local media show Russian holidaymakers defending Russia’s 2008 war against Georgia and taunting the demonstrators from their balconies.
Thailand
It’s not only about the gleaming luxury resorts and party beaches. For Russians, the appeal of traveling to Thailand has a lot to do with the month of visa-free travel they’re granted.
The number of Russians visiting Thailand has shot up by more than 1,000 percent over the past year, according to a Bloomberg report. Official statistics show 791,574 Russians traveling to the country in the first half of this year alone.
The party city of Phuket has seen a particular influx, with close to half of all villas sold there since January being bought up by Russians — either as holiday homes or as party pads where they can wait out the war.
That rise in tourism comes as Moscow has also sought to forge closer ties with the kingdom. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — one of the most committed supporters of the war in Ukraine — flew into Bangkok in July to hail “the importance of boosting cooperation in trade and investment.”
United Arab Emirates
Dubai isn’t to everyone’s taste. But the billionaires’ playground and its pristine beaches have become a sought-after destination for many wealthy Russians looking for a friendly welcome — and a place to spend huge sums in opulent malls.
The number of Russians jetting to the Gulf nation shot up by 63 percent last year, making them the second largest tourism market. The UAE has also seen a surge in Russian expats, who report feeling more at ease in the desert city than in Western countries because there are no public displays of support for war-ravaged Ukraine.
The influx comes as ties between Russia and the UAE are also booming, with Russian firms relocating to the Gulf nation and the Kremlin selling vast volumes of discounted oil to the country.
But analysts warn that pressure from the U.S., U.K. and EU is making it increasingly difficult to the UAE to profit from sanctions evasion, meaning Russian tourists may find their welcome doesn’t last forever.
Cyprus
The island of Cyprus has long been known as Moscow on the Med — a homage to the country’s largest tourist market.
Those beach holidays are now largely out of reach for ordinary Russians, after Cyprus followed other EU member states in banning commercial flights from Russia and last year imposed an €80 fee for visas. The decision, officials say, has cost the country €600 million worth of income.
The island of Cyprus has long been known as Moscow on the Med | Roy Issa/AFP via Getty Images But, for those who can stump up the costs, flights from Russia with a brief stop in Istanbul or Yerevan cost around €250. Cyprus has also been one of the most prolific issuers of so-called “golden passports,” which offer EU citizenship in exchange for as little as €2.5 million in investment.
While no statistics exist on how many Russians have taken advantage of the scheme, the country has been under pressure to cancel travel documents for sanctioned oligarchs. As many as 222 passports have already been withdrawn, including those belonging to several Russian billionaires.
Ukraine
For Russians with regular jobs and limited cash to spend abroad, country houses and holiday parks are still the most popular option.
Until recently, many of them would be headed to Ukraine’s occupied Crimean peninsula. An iconic spot for vacations and sanatorium breaks since the days of the Soviet Union, many Russians have bought second homes or paid for package holidays to the region’s Black Sea coast since it was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Now, a spate of explosions at military facilities and Kyiv’s insistence that Crimea will come back under its control when it wins the war has worried many Russians.
With air traffic close to the border diverted, one of the only remaining routes into the peninsula is across the car and railway bridge opened by President Vladimir Putin in 2018. That bridge has repeatedly been struck by Ukrainian forces looking to disrupt Russian military convoys.
As a result, officials say, hotels are on average more than half empty — despite heavy promotions and discounts. Local proprietors say the situation is even more dire than the government is prepared to admit.
Gabriel Gavin
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Ukraine Replaces Soviet-Era Emblem On Towering Kyiv Monument
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The towering Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv — one of the nation’s most recognizable landmarks — lost its hammer-and-sickle symbol on Sunday as officials replaced the Soviet-era emblem with the country’s trident coat of arms.
The move is part of a wider shift to reclaim Ukraine’s cultural identity from the Communist past amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
Erected in 1981 as part of a larger complex housing the national World War II museum, the 200-foot (61-meter) Mother Ukraine monument stands on the right bank of the Dnieper River in Kyiv, facing eastward toward Moscow.
Created in the image of a fearless female warrior, the statue holds a sword and a shield.
But now, instead of the hammer-and-sickle emblem, the shield features the Ukrainian tryzub, the trident that was adopted as the coat of arms of independent Ukraine on Feb. 19, 1992.
Workers began removing the old emblem in late July, but poor weather and ongoing air raids delayed the work. The completed sculpture will be officially unveiled on Aug. 24 — Ukraine’s Independence Day.
The revamp also coincides with a new name for the statue, which was previously known as the “Motherland monument” when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
Workers install the trident coat of arms of Ukraine on a shield of the Motherland Monument, now titled “Mother Ukraine.” The statue was built in 1981 and originally had the Soviet-era hammer-and-sickle symbol on its shield, before it was replaced as part of a wider effort to reclaim Ukraine’s cultural identity from its Communist past. Aleksandr Gusev/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The change is just one part of a long effort in Ukraine to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces — often by removing monuments and renaming streets to honor Ukrainian artists, poets, and soldiers instead of Russian cultural figures.
Most Soviet and Communist Party symbols were outlawed in Ukraine in 2015, but this did not include World War II monuments such as the Mother Ukraine statue.
Some 85% of Ukrainians backed the removal of the hammer and sickle from the landmark, according to data from the country’s Culture Ministry released last year.
For many in Ukraine, the Soviet past is synonymous with Russian imperialism, the oppression of the Ukrainian language, and the Holodomor, a man-made famine under Josef Stalin that killed millions of Ukrainians and has been recognized as an act of genocide by both the European Parliament and the United States.
The movement away from Soviet symbols has accelerated since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022, where assertions of national identity have become an important show of unity as the country struggles under the horror of war.
In a statement about the emblem’s removal, the website of Ukraine’s national World War II museum described the Soviet coat of arms as a symbol of a totalitarian regime that “destroyed millions of people.”
“Together with the coat of arms, we’ve disposed the markers of our belonging to the ‘post-Soviet space’. We are not ‘post-’, but sovereign, independent and free Ukraine.”
