LONDON — She might have crashed Britain. But can she save the world?
Former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss landed in Washington this week to drum up support for Ukraine among skeptical Republican lawmakers.
On both sides of the Atlantic there are hopes Truss can help steer the debate on the American right away from isolationism and toward the active international role espoused by both U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden.
Truss — no fan of either man — makes for an unlikely diplomatic superhero.
The trip comes barely a year after her humiliating resignation ended a disastrous tenure as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. Since the end of her 49-day stint in Downing Street, Truss has tried to carve out a place for herself as a champion of right-wing policies around the world.
She is in Washington this week as part of a delegation of the Conservative Friends of Ukraine (CFU), alongside fellow former Tory leaders Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. The group has a packed schedule, with around two dozen meetings planned with conservative U.S. lawmakers and think tanks.
The delegation’s arrival coincides with a stand-off between Biden and Republican lawmakers, who are stalling on a request to send billions more dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Congress has twice passed spending bills this fall that omitted funding for the conflict.
Republicans have sought to tie support for Ukraine with measures to strengthen the U.S–Mexican border.
Former President Donald Trump, who is widely expected to secure the Republican nomination for next year’s general election — and whom polling suggests is ahead of Biden in a series of key battleground states — shares this skeptical view of Ukraine aid. Back in May, Trump refused to say even whether he thought Ukraine or Russia should prevail in the war.
A showdown is expected next week with a potential vote in the Senate on Joe Biden’s $106 billion aid package — $61.4 billion of which is earmarked for Ukraine. Senior diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic hope Truss could help break the impasse.
One U.K. official said of the delegation: “They bring a more authentic voice to those kind of Republicans who like speaking to people from their own party — they’re not encumbered by government policy, they don’t have to sort of say nice things about the [Biden] administration.
“If that resonates with Republican lawmakers in a way that governments don’t, then all to the good.”
“We’ve targeted Trump-leaning or Trump-supporting Republicans to try and get them to think strategically,” Tory MP Jake Lopresti said | Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
Showing the right what’s right
Truss’ full-bodied right-wing agenda might have ended in disaster in Downing Street — but it puts her in a good stead with the Republican right.
Far from being nice about the Biden administration, Truss was quick to explicitly endorse the Republican Party ahead of her trip, writing in the Wall Street Journal that she hoped “a Republican will be returned to the White House in 2024.”
She went on: “There must be conservative leadership in the U.S. that is once again bold enough to call out hostile regimes as evil and a threat.”
The CFU said there is no meeting with Trump himself on its agenda. Instead, Jake Lopresti, a Tory MP who is among the delegation, told POLITICO the group was focusing on lawmakers ahead of the expected Senate vote next week. “We’ve targeted Trump-leaning or Trump-supporting Republicans to try and get them to think strategically,” he said.
Lopresti said the case the delegation was making was simple: “If you want to avoid conflict in the future, you have to have a strong deterrent. There’s trouble bubbling up all over the world. It’s a bit like the 1930s.
“It’s cheaper and cleaner and quicker to actually solve it now, send a message — we won’t allow people to walk into other people’s countries in the 21st century. Ukraine is an independent nation, free, democratic. It’s got a right to run its own affairs.”
High stakes
John E. Herbst, a senior director at the Atlantic Council — and former U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv — said his think tank is supporting the delegation because it agrees Washington has a “vital stake … in making sure Russia loses in Ukraine.”
“When Tory MPs come to the United States to explain to populist Republicans that the policy view of those Republicans on Ukraine is a great mistake, we think they should be supported,” he said.
Notably, the delegation is following in Boris Johnson’s footsteps — another former British PM who has travelled to Washington several times this year to bring the case for supporting Ukraine to wavering Republican lawmakers.
Johnson addressed a lunch organized by a pro-Ukraine think tank deep in the Republican territory of Dallas, Texas, where he told those present that victory for Vladimir Putin would be “terrible in its ramifications.” He evoked China’s claim over Taiwan, a major foreign policy concern for U.S. politicians of all stripes — especially Republicans.
Duncan Smith, who has been sanctioned by China for criticizing its human rights record, similarly warned in a speech to the Heritage Foundation this week that the conflict in Ukraine and China’s threats against Taiwan are “linked inexorably” by a “new axis of totalitarian states.”
“To ignore one is to multiply the danger in the others,” he said. “If Ukraine loses or is forced into some weak settlement with Russia … this in turn will be the strongest signal that the free world will not stand by Taiwan.”
Whether enough Republicans are ready to listen remains to be seen.
Ukraine’s security service blew up a railway connection linking Russia to China, in a clandestine strike carried out deep into enemy territory, with pro-Kremlin media reporting that investigators have opened a criminal case into a “terrorist attack.”
The SBU set off several explosions inside the Severomuysky tunnel of the Baikal-Amur highway in Buryatia, located some 6,000 kilometers east of Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian official with direct knowledge of the operation told POLITICO.
“This is the only serious railway connection between the Russian Federation and China. And currently, this route, which Russia uses, including for military supplies, is paralyzed,” the official said.
Four explosive devices went off while a cargo train was moving inside the tunnel. “Now the (Russian) Federal Security Service is working on the spot, the railway workers are unsuccessfully trying to minimize the consequences of the SBU special operation,” the Ukrainian official added.
Ukraine’s security service has not publicly confirmed the attack. Russia has also so far not confirmed the sabotage.
“On the Itikit — Okusykan stretch in Buryatia, while driving through the tunnel, the locomotive crew of the cargo train noticed smoke from one of the diesel fuel tanks. The train was stopped, and two fire extinguishing trains were sent from nearby towns to help. The movement of trains was not interrupted, it was organized along a bypass section with a slight increase in travel time,” Russia’s state railroad company RZHD said in a statement on Thursday.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán regularly pushes the EU to the cliff edge, but diplomats are panicking that his hostility to Ukraine is now about to finally kick the bloc over the precipice.
A brewing political crisis is set to boil over at a summit in mid-December when EU leaders are due to make a historic decision on bringing Ukraine into the 27-nation club and seal a key budget deal to throw a €50 billion lifeline to Kyiv’s flailing war economy. The meeting is supposed to signal to the U.S. that, despite the political distraction over the war in the Middle East, the EU is fully committed to Ukraine.
Those hopes look likely to be knocked off course by Orbán, a strongman who cultivates close ties with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and who is widely seen as having undermined democracy and rule of law at home. He is demanding the whole political and financial process should be put on ice until leaders agree to a wholesale review of EU support for Kyiv.
That gives EU leaders a massive headache. Although Hungary only represents 2 percent of the EU population, Orbán can hold the bloc hostage as it is supposed to act unanimously on big strategic decisions — and they hardly come bigger than initiating accession talks with Ukraine.
It’s far from the first time Orbán is throwing a spanner in the works of the EU’s sausage making machine. Indeed, he has been the most vocal opponent of sanctions against Russia ever since Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. But this time is different, EU diplomats and officials said.
“We are heading toward a major crisis,” one EU official said, who was granted anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. One senior EU diplomat warned this could become “one of the most difficult European Councils.”
Orbán is playing the long game, said Péter Krekó, director of the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute. “Orbán has been waiting for Europe to realize that it’s not possible to win the war in Ukraine and that Kyiv has to make concessions. (…) Now, he feels his time is coming because Ukraine fatigue is going up in public opinion in many EU countries.”
In theory, there is a nuclear option on the table — one that would cut Hungary out of EU political decisions — but countries feel that emergency cord is toxic because of the precedent it would deliver on EU disunity and fragmentation. For now, the European leaders seem to be taking to their usual approach of fawning courtship of the EU’s bad boy to try to coax out a compromise.
European Council President Charles Michel, whose job it is to forge deals between the 27 leaders, is leading the softly-softly pursuit of a compromise. He travelled to Budapest earlier this week for an intense two hour discussion with Orbán. While the meeting did not reach an immediate break-through, it was useful to understand Orbán’s concerns, another EU official said.
It’s all about the money
Some EU diplomats interpret Orbán’s threats as a strategy to raise pressure on the European Commission, which is holding back €13 billion in EU funds for Hungary over concerns that the country is falling foul of the EU’s standards on rule of law.
Others however said it’s a mistake not to look beyond the immediate transactional tactics. Orbán has long been questioning the EU’s Ukraine strategy, but was largely ignored or portrayed as a puppet for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We were watching it, amazed, but maybe we didn’t take enough time to actually listen,” a second senior EU diplomat acknowledged.
Some EU diplomats interpret Orbán’s threats as a strategy to raise pressure on the European Commission | Peter Kohalmi/AFP via Getty Images
Increasingly, the leader of the Fidesz party has been isolated in Brussels. Previous peacemakers such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel or other Orbán-whisperers from the so-called Visegrád Four — Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — are no longer there. The expected comeback of Donald Tusk for Poland, a pro-EU and anti-Russian leader, will only heighten Orbán’s status as the lonely, defiant hold-out.
“There is no one left to talk sense into Orbán,” a third EU official said. “He is now undermining the EU from within.”
Guns on the table
As frustration grows, the EU is weighing how to deal with the Hungarian threats.
In theory, Brussels could come out with the big guns and use the EU’s so-called Article 7 procedure against Hungary, used when a country is considered at risk of breaching the bloc’s core values. The procedure is sometimes called the EU’s “nuclear option” as it provides for the most serious political sanction the bloc can impose on a member country — the suspension of the right to vote on EU decisions.
Because of those far-reaching consequences, there is reticence to roll out this option against Hungary. When EU leaders brought in “diplomatic sanctions” against Austria in 2000, the day after the party of Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider entered the coalition, it backfired. Many Austrians were angry at EU interference and anti-EU sentiment soared. Sanctions were lifted later that year.
There is now a widespread feeling in Brussels that Article 7 could create a similar backlash in Budapest, fueling populism and in the longer term potentially even trigger a snowball effect leading to an unintended Hungarian exit of the bloc.
Given those fears, diplomats are doubling down on ways to work around a Hungarian veto.
One option is to split the €50 billion from 2024 to 2027 for Ukraine into smaller amounts on an annual basis, three officials said. But critics warn this option would fall short in the goal of offering greater predictability and certainty to Ukraine’s struggling public finances. It would also send a bad political signal: if the EU can’t make a long term commitment to Ukraine, then how can it ask the U.S. to do the same?
The same dilemma goes for the EU’s planned military aid. EU countries could use bilateral deals rather than EU structures such as the European Peace Facility to send military aid to Ukraine — effectively freezing out Budapest. Yet this would mean that the EU as such plays no role in providing weapons, an admission of impotence that is hard to swallow and hurts EU unity toward Kyiv.
It’s “obvious” that concern is growing about EU political support for Ukraine, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told POLITICO. “At first it’s Hungary, now, more countries are doubtful whether there’s a path.”
Asked about Hungary’s objections, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, told POLITICO: “Ukraine is going to the European Union and Ukraine has followed all the recommendations (…) I want to make sure that all member states respect the progress that Ukraine has demonstrated.”
The long game
That leaves one other default option, and it’s an EU classic: kicking the can down the road and pushing key decisions on Ukraine policy to early next year. Apart from Hungary, Berlin is also struggling with the consequences of Germany’s top court wiping out €60 billion from a climate fund — thus creating a huge hole in its budget.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, center, during a summit in Brussels | Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga via AFP/Getty Images
Such a delay would also lead to stories about fractured EU unity, said another EU diplomat. But “in the real world it wouldn’t be a problem because the Ukraine budget is fine until March 2024.”
But for others, buying time is tricky. Europe is heading to the polls in June next year, which makes sensitive decision-making harder. “Getting closer to the elections will not make things easier,” the second EU official said, while stressing that fast decisions are key for Ukraine. “For Zelenskyy, this is existential to keep up morale on the battlefield.”
Both, like another official quoted in this story, were granted anonymity to speak freely.
Increasingly, Brussels is also worried about Orbán’s long game.
There is a constant stream of attacks coming from Budapest against Brussels, on issues ranging from democratic deficit to culture wars over the EU’s migration policy. The latest example is an aggressive euroskeptic advertising campaign featuring posters targeting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen herself. The posters show von der Leyen next to Alexander Soros, the son of George Soros, chair of the Open Society Foundations, with the line: “Let’s not dance to the tune they whistle!”
“Nobody feels comfortable given what’s going on in Hungary,” Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn told reporters on Thursday. “It’s very difficult to digest given the campaign that he’s leading against the EU and against the president. When he’s asking his people many things, he’s not asking if the Union is so much worse than USSR why is he not leaving?”
But Orbán seems more eager to hijack the EU from within rather than jump ship, as the U.K. did. Increasingly, he also feels the wind is blowing his way after the recent election results in Slovakia and the Netherlands, said Krekó, where the winners are on the same page as him when it comes to Ukraine, migration or gender issues.
Hungary’s prime minister was quick to congratulate the winner of the Dutch election, the vehemently anti-EU Geert Wilders, saying that “the winds of change are here.”
“Orbán plays the long game,” the third EU official said. “With Wilders, one or two more far-right leaders in Europe and a potential return of Trump he could soon be less isolated than we all think.”
Gregorio Sorgi, Nicolas Camut, Stuart Lau and Jakob Hanke Vela contributed reporting.
CORRECTION: This story has been amended to correct a quote on Ukraine’s budget.
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Barbara Moens, Nicholas Vinocur and Jacopo Barigazzi
DUBAI — The war in Gaza crashed into the United Nations climate summit on Friday, as furious sideline diplomacy, blunt censures of violence and an Iranian boycott shoved global warming to the side.
It was a sharp change in tone from the COP28 opening on Thursday, which ended on an upbeat note as countries promised to support climate-stricken communities. The mood darkened the following day as news broke that the week-old truce between Israel and Hamas was collapsing.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog spent much of the morning in meetings telling fellow leaders about “how Hamas blatantly violates the ceasefire agreements,” according to a post on his X account. He ended up skipping a speech he was meant to give during Friday’s parade of world leaders.
There were other conspicuous no-shows. Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was absent, despite being listed as an early speaker. And Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, also disappeared from the final speakers’ list after initially being scheduled to talk just a few slots after Herzog.
Then, shortly after leaders posed for a group photo in the Dubai venue on Friday, the Iranian delegation announced it was walking out. The reason, Iran’s energy minister told his country’s official news agency: The “political, biased and irrelevant presence of the fake Zionist regime” — referring to Israel.
By Friday afternoon, the Iranian pavilion had emptied out.
The backroom drama played out even as leader after leader took the stage in the vast Expo City campus to make allotted three-minute statements on their efforts to stop the planet from boiling. The World Meteorological Organization said Thursday that 2023 was almost certain to be the hottest year ever recorded.
U.N. climate talks are often buffeted by outside events. This is the second such meetingheld after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That war provoked some public barbs and backroom discussions at last year’s summit in Egypt, but leaders still maintained their scheduled speaking slots and a veneer of focus on the matter they were supposedly there to discuss.
This year, that veneer cracked.
“There are currently a number of very, very serious crises that are causing great suffering for many people. It was clear that these would also affect the mood at the COP,” a German diplomat, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly, told POLITICO.
But that can’t distract officials working on climate change, the diplomat added: “It is also clear that no one on our planet, no country on Earth, can escape the destructive effects of the climate crisis.”
Tell-tale signals
There had been early signs that the conflict would spill over into discussions at the climate summit.
Sameh Shoukry, president of the COP27 climate conference and Egyptian minister of foreign affairs, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, president of COP28 | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
At Thursday’s opening ceremony, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry — president of last year’s COP27 summit — asked all delegates to stand for a moment of silence in memory of two climate negotiators who had recently died, “as well as all civilians who have perished during the current conflict in Gaza.”
On Friday, Jordanian King Abdullah II, Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were among the leaders who used their COP28 speeches to draw attention to the war.
“This year’s COP must recognize even more than ever that we cannot talk about climate change in isolation from the humanitarian tragedies unfolding around us,” Abdullah said. “As we speak, the Palestinian people are facing an immediate threat to their lives and wellbeing.”
Ramaphosa went further: “South Africa is appalled at the cruel tragedy that is underway in Gaza. The war against the innocent people of Palestine is a war crime that must be ended now.
But, he added, “we cannot lose momentum in the fight against climate change.”
Asked for comment, an official from the United Arab Emirates, which is overseeing COP28, said the country had invited all parties to the conference and “are pleased with the exceptionally high level of attendance this year.”
The official added: “Climate change is a global issue and as the host for this significant, momentous conference, the UAE welcomes constructive dialogue and continues to work with all international partners and stakeholders across the board to deliver impactful results for COP28.”
The other summit in Dubai
In the back rooms of the conference venue, leaders were holding urgent talks on the war. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken huddled with Herzog on Thursday, according to a post on Herzog’s X account.
“In addition to participating in the COP, I’ll have an opportunity to meet with Arab partners to discuss the conflict in Gaza,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday while in Brussels for a NATO gathering. He didn’t offer further details.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters Vice President Kamala Harris would also be “having discussions on the conflict between Israel and Hamas” during her trip to Dubai.
On his X account, Herzog said he had met with “dozens” of leaders at the summit. His post featured photographs of Britain’s King Charles III, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, India’s Narendra Modi and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He also posted about meetings with Blinken and UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed.
Erdoğan met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at COP28 to discuss the war in Gaza, according to a statement by the Turkish communications directorate that made no mention of climate action.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made no secret of the fact that he intended to use some of his brief visit to Dubai to talk about regional security.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made no secret of the fact that he intended to use some of his brief visit to Dubai to talk about regional security | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
“I’ll be speaking to lots of leaders … not just [about] climate change, but also the situation in the Middle East,” he told reporters on his flight outof the U.K. Thursday night.
The reignited Israel-Hamas conflict came to dominate his time at the summit. Meetings with other leaders were arranged with regional tensions in mind — not climate. Sunak met Israel’s Herzog and Jordan’s Abdullah, as well as Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al Sisi and the emir of Qatar.
“Given the events of this morning in Israel and Gaza, the prime minister has spent most of his bilateral meetings discussing that situation,” Sunak’s spokesperson told reporters in Dubai.
The meetings focused on “what more we can do both to support the innocent civilians in Gaza, to de-escalate tensions, to get more hostages out and more aid in,” the spokesperson said.
Even the U.K.’s ostensibly nonpolitical head of state, King Charles III — in Dubai to give an opening address to world leaders — was deployed to aid the diplomatic effort. Buckingham Palace said the king would “have the opportunity to meet regional leaders to support the U.K.’s efforts to promote peace in the region.”
Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron was planning to meet various leaders on the security situation and then fly on for talks in Qatar, according to an Elysée Palace official.
Meanwhile, three of Europe’s leaders who have been the strongest backers of the Palestinians — Irish leader Leo Varadkar, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez — held talks on the fringes of COP on Friday morning.
Earlier on Friday, Israel withdrew its ambassador to Spain, blasting what it called Sánchez’s “shameful remarks” on the situation.
Brazil’s Lula, whose country will host a major COP conference in 2025, lamented that just as more joint action is needed to prevent climate catastrophe, war and violence were cleaving the world apart.
“We are facing what may be the greatest challenge that humanity has faced till now,” he said. “Instead of uniting forces, the world is going to wars. It feeds divisions and deepens poverty and inequalities.”
Zia Weise, Suzanne Lynch and Charlie Cooper reported from Dubai. Karl Mathiesen reported from London.
Clea Calcutt contributed reporting from Paris. Nahal Toosi contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
Russia offered to end Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022 if Ukraine agreed to drop its ambitions to join NATO, according to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s political party, who was present at peace negotiations.
David Arakhamia, leader of the Ukrainian political party Servant of the People, revealed part of the purported deal during an interview with Ukrainian journalist Natalia Moseychuk on Friday. The Kyiv official previously led the Ukrainian delegation that held peace talks with senior Russian officials in the months following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Both sides of the war have laid out conditions for a ceasefire in the conflict in recent months, but many war analysts doubt neither Zelensky nor Russian President Vladimir Putin currently has a serious urge to end the 21-month-long fight.
According to Arakhamia, however, there was a drafted peace agreement between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators early in the war. Arakhamia said that Moscow pledged to end the fighting if Ukraine’s agreed to remain neutral and forego its bid to join NATO.
Leader of the Servant of the People’s Political Party of Ukraine David Arakhamia talks to the media as he arrives for the Renew Europe Leader’s pre-summit meeting, in Brussels, on June 29, 2023. Arakhamia said in a recent interview that Russia once offered to end the war in Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv’s agreement to reject its bid to join NATO. KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images
“They really hoped almost to the last that they would put the squeeze on us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality,” Arakhamia told Moseychuck, according to an English translation of his comments by the Kyiv Post. “It was the biggest thing for them.”
“They were ready to end the war if we took…neutrality and made commitments that we would not join NATO. This was the key point,” the Ukrainian official added.
Ukraine has aimed to become a member of NATO for decades, and in September 2022, Kyiv announced its bid for a fast-tracked membership in the military alliance. Russian officials have warned that fighting would only escalate if Ukraine was admitted into NATO, which would solidify Kyiv’s alliances with Western countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.
Arakhamia said changing Ukraine’s intentions to join NATO would require an amendment to the country’s constitution since Kyiv’s parliament voted to adopt an amendment in February 2019 that stated Ukraine’s goal of becoming a member of both NATO and the European Union.
Arakhamia also said that Ukrainian officials did not trust Russia to uphold their end of the bargain.
“There is no, and there was no, trust in the Russians that they would do it. That could only be done if there were security guarantees,” he told Moseychuck.
Elsewhere in the interview, Arakhamia brought up former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson‘s surprise visit to Kyiv in April 2022. He said Johnson encouraged Ukraine to not “sign anything” with Russia and “just fight.”
The Russian Embassy in the U.K. reacted to Arakhamia’s interview in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. The message put the blame on Johnson for interrupting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
“In the Spring of 2022 Russian and Ukrainian delegations were on the verge of negotiating an end to the conflict, assuring Ukraine’s military non-alignment and protection of rights of Russian speakers,” the Russian Embassy’s post read. “A text was on the table in Istanbul, almost ready to be signed.”
“However, according to Arakhamia, during his visit to #Kiev Prime Minister @BorisJohnson pressured the Ukrainian side ‘not to sign anything’ and ‘just keep on fighting,'” the X post continued. “Thus, evidently, with substantial #UK input, an off-ramp for a negotiated solution was missed—with tragic consequences for Ukrainian statehood, economy and population.”
Newsweek reached out to Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday night via email for comment.
Reuters reported in September 2022 that people close to Kremlin leadership confirmed that Russian negotiators had struck a provisional deal with Kyiv that would keep Ukraine out of NATO, but Putin rejected the deal and continued with his invasion. Sources who spoke with Reuters said the Russian leader told his negotiations that the deal “did not go far enough and that he had expanded his objections to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory.”
Russia currently occupies large parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv has said that the war will not end unless the annexed territory is returned to Ukraine’s control.
Zelensky said earlier this month that reaching an end to the war would require “the restoration of territorial integrity, rights and the freedom of citizens. Another stage of the war is the restoration of justice.”
“The restoration of sovereignty is the main principle for ending the hot stage of the war,” the Ukrainian president added. “Everything will end in peace.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
First, a trip to a camp for grieving Ukrainians in the Austrian Alps. Then, a visit to Sealand: the world’s smallest state. And, a look at Georgia’s 8,000 years of wine history.
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Grieving Ukrainian widows and children headed to the Austrian Alps for mountain healing. They’re climbing at a camp while learning from U.S. veterans about strength, resilience and overcoming trauma.
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A bus filled with widows of war and their children left Ukraine recently bound for the Austrian Alps. They’d been invited to a charity summer camp hosted by Nathan Schmidt, an American marine who knows, all too well, the bereavement of war. Mountain climbing was Schmidt’s path to recovery from three combat tours in Iraq. And so, when Vladimir Putin launched his attack on an innocent people, Schmidt offered Ukraine what seemed like an impossible hope—that, in only six days in the Alps, he could teach grieving families to rise.
The journey to an Austrian hotel ended at 3 in the morning after 45 hours on the road. So, the trip already felt like a mistake to widows who packed enough skepticism to last the week. Their husbands died defending Ukraine– among the estimated 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed. Time stopped for Natalia Zaremba and her two young boys. She told us…
Natalia Zaremba (translated): I think they still don’t believe what happened. Just like me, they’re still waiting for daddy to come home from work
For daddy to fly home to 8-year-old Illia and 5-year-old Andrii who imagined mastering the air like their dad. Mykhailo Zaremba was a navy pilot shot down, May 2022–in the unprovoked invasion of his home.
Natalia Zaremba (translated): He loved Ukraine, so, he gave his life for Ukraine.
Scott Pelley: What is your hope for this trip?
Natalia Zaremba (translated): I want to find strength for myself to be able to bring my children up, to bring our children up. I want to find the strength to not let my husband down, and to give our children a good future.
Natalia Zaremba’s husband died in Ukraine.
60 Minutes
Thirteen widows and 20 children had come to Austria from Mykolaiv, a city bombed by the Russians for 260 days. The bereaved families traveled 13-hundred miles on faith to meet a stranger still struggling to heal from his own war.
Nathan Schmidt, Naval Academy graduate, lieutenant colonel U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, led shouts of glory to Ukraine at the third summer camp hosted by his small charity, the Mountain Seed Foundation.
Nathan Schmidt: It comes from the Bible. It was, you know, “With faith the size of a mustard seed, one can move mountains.” We’re not– we’re not a religious organization, but that faith– that faith in something bigger, that faith in self. And if you can reinforce that faith — we and you can move mountains.
Scott Pelley: What do you hope these families have when they return to Ukraine?
Nathan Schmidt: We teach, we teach about the significance of the rope in mountaineering. The rope signifies community, it signifies team. You’re never alone on the rope. It also signifies courage. Because when you’re on the rope that means you’re climbing a mountain. And courage doesn’t mean that you’re not afraid. It actually means that you are afraid and you’re gonna overcome that fear.
There would be plenty of fear to overcome because, ultimately, this was his goal. To lead children on the last leg of a climb to the peak of Mount Kitzsteinhorn—at more than 10,000 feet. The first steps to the summit began with training for the kids, ages 5 to 17.
For their moms, there were daily group therapy sessions. And every day of the camp would raise the challenge for both.
Nathan Schmidt: We’re gonna trust ourselves, the main thing, we’re gonna trust our equipment, and we’re going to trust the team that we’re with.
The team of professional guides and other volunteers included Dan Cnossen. Cnossen was Schmidt’s Naval Academy classmate. As a Navy SEAL in 2009 he lost his legs in Afghanistan. He’s a three-time paralympian, but he’d never climbed since his injury.
The first days of training looked dangerous.
But there was always an expert on the rope—
One professional guide for every four children who eased the tension slowly for kids including 14-year-old Myroslav Kupchenkov.
Guide: Now just lean back, lean back, totally trust.
Myroslav Kupchenkov: No, I can’t.
Guide: You can.
Myroslav Kupchenkov: I can’t.
Guide: You can.
Myroslav Kupchenkov: I CAN’T!
Guide: Of course you can.
Myroslav, his adult sister and their mother, Natalia, lost Oleksandr Kupchenkov, a 53-year-old career soldier.
Natalia Zaremba (translated): He was the man I wanted to spend my whole life with. He was the best at everything, wonderful husband, wonderful dad. People loved him.
Kupchenkov was hit by a Russian missile, March 2022, as he was running ammunition to his pinned-down soldiers.
Myroslav Kupchenkov (translated): Every day he showed me how to be a good person. And he was always brave. He would never go back – only forward.
And Myroslav discovered, in rappelling, going back is going forward and terror was just one step before triumph.
Guide: That’s it. There you go, super!
As the children learned the ropes, the moms seemed to be near the end of theirs.
Amit Oren: It will be hard for you to hear this…
They were led by clinical psychologist Amit Oren, with translation by Iryna Prykhodko, the charity’s Ukrainian co-founder. Amit Oren is an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
Amit Oren: The way I approach this group of people is not in looking at their trauma; it’s in looking at their strengths.
Amit Oren, a clinical psychologist , leads therapy groups at the camp.
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Scott Pelley: And what strengths are you finding?
Amit Oren: Capacity for love, honesty. These are the strengths that they’re finding. All I do is take a flashlight, illuminate inside them, and let them see and remember who they are.
But Svitlana Melnyichuk, on the left, didn’t see the light. She didn’t believe in breakthroughs. She brought her daughter Myroslava while her adult daughter stayed home. Svitlana lost her husband, Yuriy, a civilian building inspector who volunteered the day after Putin invaded. Svitlana mixed homemade explosives for the troops as her husband sent text messages from the front. Svitlana told us:
Svitlana Melnyichuk (translated): Pictures started coming in “Good morning darling” with a photo of a flower taken right from the trench. It was spring already, right from the trench.
The photos thrilled her because Yuriy had always worked too much, at the expense of the family, she thought. But after the invasion family was all he cared about. His revelation lifted their lives. Then he was dead. and her rage is almost like blindness.
Svitlana Melnyichuk (translated): I became very distant and angry, and I kept all the sorrow inside. I didn’t share it.
Nathan Schmidt was keeping his sorrow inside when in 2019, a friend invited him on a climbing trip. Schmidt wasn’t a mountaineer. He’s afraid of heights. to him, the idea sounded so difficult and frightening it might just have the force to break his grief.
Nathan Schmidt: Yeah. You know, I spent the Naval Academy preparing myself for war, and nothing can prepare yourself for war.
In 2004, Schmidt was a 24-year-old first lieutenant who dreamed of leading marines. He landed in Fallujah, on the eve of the bloodiest battle of the entire Iraq war.
Nathan Schmidt: Two weeks after arriving in–at Camp Fallujah I lost my teacher who was a mentor of mine at the Naval Academy.
Scott Pelley: Killed?
Nathan Schmidt: Yeah. The rocket struck the office. I was the second one in the room. And– and it was the first time I had ever seen anyone die in such a way. And– and it was my teacher. And that established a crack in me that had to be healed in another way that took years and years to heal. The problem was that, that was the first of many cracks. I lost one of our Marines that was in my unit a month later. I then had my friend lose his leg. I took over his team. A few days after that, I lost my analyst in the gun turret of our vehicle. By the end of November, the unit that I was with, which is a great unit, 3/1– was combat ineffective. We had lost over 20% of our unit either injured or killed.
American Marine Nathan Schmidt co-founded the Mountain Seed foundation.
60 Minutes
And that was his first tour. He fought in Iraq for three years.
Scott Pelley: Who were you after that third tour?
Nathan Schmidt: I thought in my mind that I was the strongest, but in reality, I was – I was the weakest. I was strong physically. I could do as many pull-ups as you asked me to do. I could run. But, yeah, I was broken. And you know, and those cracks, they take a lifetime to heal.
Scott Pelley: You spend this week doing what you can to heal these families. And I wonder how much of that is healing you.
Nathan Schmidt: It’s huge. This program has healed me in ways that I can’t even describe. And then I feel sometimes like it’s selfish. You’re right, you’re right. It works. And I’m not sure why.
Maybe it works because the children and mothers who arrived on the bus will not bethe same people who return to Ukraine. No one’s quite the same after scaling a wall like this.
Nathan Schmidt’s week-long summer camp for bereaved Ukrainian children and their mothers began with training in the Austrian Alps. Then, serious work began—the kind of challenge that might rise to a revelation.
The Hohe Tauren National Park embraces some of the highest peaks in the Austrian Alps and a feat of engineering. The Mooserboden Dam would be the first big challenge for the 13 widows and their 20 children. A zipline flew them to the concrete face.
…where they found a steel cable to clip their harnesses to. Footholds were set across the span about two-and-a-half football fields wide. The children and moms literally could not fall. and yet, the Mooserboden Dam remained 32 stories of doubt.
Natalia Zaremba did not like the measure of it. The Russians had killed her husband, the father of her two boys. Was this risk foolish?
Scott Pelley: Why do you put them on this dam?
Nathan Schmidt: We put them on this dam because we want them to confront discomfort. We want them to confront their fears.
Nathan Schmidt co-founded the Mountain Seed Foundation charity. We met in the 700-square mile park where the dam, finished after World War II, is a tourist attraction for rock climbers.
Scott Pelley: What makes this safe, in your view?
Nathan Schmidt: First off, we have professional mountain guides. The second thing is, all the equipment that we have, they trained throughout the week on it. They know how to use the equipment. And then particularly the little children, they are also short roped into a guide. So, there’s multiple layers of security for them.
And so, with all that security…. the challenge was not so much under their feet, as under their skin.
Climbing Mooserboden Dam in the Austrian Alps
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Myroslav Kupchenkov who told us his late father “never went back—always forward”—was following his father’s lead.
Nathan Schmidt: You know, in life sometimes the thing that gets you through a difficult point is knowing that you’ve already done something more difficult.
Scott Pelley: What difference do you see in them when they reach the top?
Nathan Schmidt: The sheer look of joy on their faces…
Nathan Schmidt:…It’s hard to even comprehend. And we know that will be a strong point for them when they go back to Ukraine. They will know that they’ve conquered this wall, and they will– they’ve conquered their own fears.
Fears conquered by Natalia Zaremba who, at the end of the climb, was walking on air.
She told us she came to Austria to find strength to raise her boys alone.
Natalia Zaremba (translated): It was something incredible. As soon as I stepped on the ground, the children ran to me, hugged me. There were no flowers there, so my older son gave me a branch from a bush.
Scott Pelley: You know, I see you smiling. And I suspect there hasn’t been a lot of that.
Natalia Zaremba (translated): I don’t feel joy the way I used to. Wherever I am, no matter how good a time I’m having, it’s hard knowing my husband could have been with us. But he’s not. And even when I smile, the pain in my heart is very strong.
The pain is strong but maybe not invincible. Natalia was listening at the meetings. and words of inspiration, like those of Navy SEAL Dan Cnossen, were getting through.
Dan Cnossen: That bomb in Afghanistan took my legs and I can’t change that fact, but ultimately it has to be up to me to decide if it’s going to take the rest of my life too. Thank you all very much.
Still for others, especially Svitlana Melnyichuk, words fell short. She had told us her husband sent photos of flowers from his trench until the Russians killed him. She said…
Svitlana Melnyichuk (translated): Life is a book that you read your whole life. When my husband died, I stopped turning the pages in the book.
But opening a new chapter is what clinical psychologist Amit Oren had in mind—and so she took the widows to a storybook castle. where she hoped to scale the walls of Svitlana Melnyichuk.
Svitlana Melnyichuk’s husband was killed.
60 Minutes
Amit Oren: And I started to talk with her about castle walls, that we’re going to see a castle, where there are always very deep, tough, impenetrable walls, and that I thought that her face looked like that, that it was hard to see what’s inside, like this castle. And I brought them to a wall– a side wall of the castle, where there are teeny, tiny windows And I said to them, “Right now, I think you’re here at the bottom. And as you go up, you’re able, then, to see three windows” I said, “Unless you open that window, you can’t peer out and see the beauty around you. You’re trapped.” And ultimately what happened is several of the women stood there on the grass and opened up to each other. She was one of them.
Amit Oren: It was choking you, It was choking you.
Svitlana Melnyichuk (Ukrainian): Da. Da.
The next day, after the group session, Svitlana had been thinking.
Amit Oren: She came up to me and said to me, “It was a very painful conversation we had. And I made a decision. My anger was choking me. And I decided to let it go so I can breathe.”
Amit Oren: Congratulations. You’ve done hard work. I’m so happy for you.
Amit Oren: She has a long way to go. But she’s understood that it’s a choice, at least, the few things she can control in this world is how open or closed she chooses to be in her own castle.
Nathan Schmidt: You know as you talk to the mothers none of them expected what happened in February of 2022.
Scott Pelley: The invasion?
Nathan Schmidt: Losing their homes, in many cases losing their future, or at least the future being unknown. And it’s one of those moments in climbing where you look all around and you don’t know where you’re gonna put your hand, and you don’t know where you’re gonna put your foot. You don’t know if you’re gonna be able to stay in that position or fall. This program is meant to show them the footholds and the handholds to fill the cracks that they have too. And then lead their children back up– up the mountain.
On day five, one mountain remained. Nathan Schmidt took the first steps from a high tram station on an ascent to the peak of Mount Kitzsteinhorn. It was a steep and icy 570 feet to the ultimate test of the camp.
The camp goal is reaching the mountain top.
60 Minutes
Like the dam earlier, there was a fixed cable to hook onto. But, like the dam, glancing down looked fatal. And looking up– a cold, thin glare exposed hours of struggle. We followed Schmidt’s lead and remembered what he told us about the rope we were on and its three lessons, community, courage…
Nathan Schmidt: And the last thing is responsibility. And this is probably the most difficult one. And that is, when you’re on the rope you’re responsible for those that are on the rope with you. When they’re weak you pull them up. When they are showing signs of fatigue, you encourage them.
Nathan Schmidt: Look at me, Ivan. “Breathe in, 2, 3, 4, hold 2, 3, 4…
Nathan Schmidt: We hope that when they go home, that they build their own communities, they add people to their rope that they encourage them to face their fears and have courage.
Courage lifted them 10,508 feet—a summit reached by everyone.
Nathan Schmidt: Let’s go Dan!
Including, Nathan Schmidt’s Naval Academy classmate, Dan Cnossen on his prosthetics.
Dan Cnossen: It was tough, it was tough but I’m happy to make it to the top and it was great to do it with everyone, seeing the kids climbing gave me a lot of inspiration to keep pushing.
Natalia Zaremba’s kids pushed to the top. She had come to Austria to find strength within herself. but, from the peak, she could see where that kind of strength truly comes from.
Natalia Zaremba (translated): We have something that bonds us more now, some new achievements, which we experienced together and that taught us to be braver and stay together, because only together can we overcome this. Our strength, SHE SAID, will be from being together.
Also among the climbers at the summit, was Myroslav Kupchenkov, who told us, now, he could do anything.
Scott Pelley: What is your hope for them?
Nathan Schmidt: My hope for them is that they can remember the achievement that they’ve, they’ve had and I also hope they remember the stillness and the peace of these mountains. You can’t hear the sounds of war here. You just close your eyes, and you feel like you could fly.
Even Svitlana Melnyichuk took flight—rising, to the summit and, at last, to the high, open windows of her castle.
Svitlana Melnyichuk (translated): I was screaming, to be honest I was simply screaming. Having breathed in full lungs of air, I was screaming with my head up toward I don’t know, God, nature, I don’t know. I was just getting rid of all the negative.
Scott Pelley: Has this helped you in some small way to heal?
Svitlana Melnyichuk (translated): Oh. Well, at least I managed to open the bag of my sorrows.
To open their sorrows to the sky. Five days before, they clipped to a rope a string of broken souls. Now they would return to the war, but this time, resurrected in strength and love and invincible hope.
Produced by Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey. Associate producer, Jaime Woods. Broadcast associate, Michelle Karim. Edited by Robert Zimet.
RUSSIA’S Wagner mercenaries are still waging a secret war earning £8million a month to reign terror for brutal warlords in Mali.
It’s a standard play for the mercenary army that terrorises, maims and murders on behalf of the Russian state in exchange for blood gold to feed Putin’s war machine, experts told The Sun.
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Wagner troops (pictured in Mali) have been paid £8million a month to reign terrorCredit: AP
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The merciless thugs have been stirring up violence, corruption and conflict across the war-ravaged stateCredit: AP
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The shadowy army is kept at an arm’s length from the Kremlin but does its biddingCredit: AP
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The French military say they caught the Russian mercenaries burying bodies near an army base in northern MaliCredit: AP
Mostly recently, the poverty-stricken and failed state of Mali has become a zombie host for the Russian state’s spiky tentacles.
And dirty business is booming.
In late 2021, the military junta who took power in a coup invited Wagner to bring in its weapons and hardened fighters to crush the Islamic State terror group.
In reality, they booted out the last of the UN peacekeeping force and France’s troops and propped up Mali’s corrupt military regime – leaving a succession of atrocities in their dusty wake.
US intelligence claims this so-called “security” costs Mali £8million per month.
The de-facto army offers a “broad portfolio” of “violence, atrocities and human rights violations,” according to Professor Salvador Sánchez Tapi, a conflict analysis expert at the University of Navarra.
“[Wagner] are following the same template everywhere – adapting it to the particular case of each host nation (civil war, military coup, colonial background),” he said.
In Mali, “anything related to buttressing the junta takes precedence over improving the overall security situation in the country”.
GHOST ARMY
The role of the murky mercenary army in half a dozen countries across the continent is often difficult to track.
They usually wear no identifiable uniforms, their vehicles are unmarked and their faces masked.
An arm’s length from the Kremlin – Wagner provides them with a level of deniability and unpredictability that is essential to their mission.
Mali’s government has denied the presence of Wagner troops, stating only that they have a contract with Russia to provide “instructors”.
However, the Russian Foreign Ministry, its milbloggers, Western governments and human rights groups have repeatedly stated otherwise.
Investigators have accused the armed thugs of turning Mali into a playground for manipulation – deepening violence, corruption and conflict and earning huge profits for Moscow.
It appears to be a clear business model.
The more instability and fighting they stir up in these powder keg countries, the more Wagner gets paid to crush it and prop up unlawful, corrupt regimes.
As Vladimir Putin reaps the blood-soaked rewards, the true cost has been paid by ordinary Malians.
MOURA MASSACRE
In March last year, 500 civilians were slaughtered by Malian armed forces and foreign soldiers in the remote town of Moura.
It was the single worst massacre to have taken place for decades in a country that is defined by brutality and violence after decades of coups, terror and civil war.
The UN accused Wagner of being directly involved in the slaughter that saw villagers gunned down by helicopters as they gathered at a Sunday market.
For five days, troops overseen by Russian mercenaries carried out rape, torture and the summary executions of roughly 500 people, according to witnesses, Western military officials and diplomats.
“From Monday to Thursday, the killings didn’t stop,” Hamadoun, a tailor that was working at the market when the helicopters arrived, told The New York Times.
A cattle trader, Bara, added: “They terminated all the youth of this area.”
Of those killed, a handful were alleged to be members of an al-Qaida affiliated terror group – but the rest were unarmed villagers.
The extensive UN account of the murderous rampage lists it as the worst atrocity committed by Russian forces outside of Ukraine to date.
The rest of Wagner’s murderous campaign inside Mali has been more covert, but still devastating.
In Mali and the Central African Republic, “Wagner fighters are documented as having targeted civilians at a significantly higher rate than both state forces and major insurgent or terrorist groups,” Westminster said in July.
Numerous witnesses reported to Human Rights Watch (HRW) that foreign, non-French speaking, armed men were present at harrowingly similar attacks on village populations.
Each time, they described the foreign soldiers as “white”, “Russian” or “Wagner”.
On February 3, “foreign” soldiers attacked the village of Séguéla – leading to beating and arrests and the grim discovery of the bodies of eight locals on its outskirts.
Then throughout July, dozens of villagers from Mali’s hinterlands were reported missing during Wagner’s “counter-insurgency operations”.
On August 6, troops occupied a village and rounded up 16 male villagers and a boy. Their bodies were later found on the settlement’s outskirts.
Again, in each incident witnesses reported the involvement of “foreign” and “white” armed men that appeared to be Wagner soldiers.
Overall, the new HRW report claimed that Mali’s armed forces – backed by Wagner troops – killed at least 175 civilians between April to September this year.
The Malian Foreign Ministry has denied these claims.
A local man told HRW: “The army… kills people without fearing any consequences. The jihadists also kill, kidnap, and burn without fear of being held accountable.
“And we, the civilians, are caught between a rock and a hard place in our own country.”
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A Wagner-linked plane crashed in Mali in September, reportedly killing dozens of its troopsCredit: East2West
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A man carries the haunting black insignia of the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group in NigerCredit: AFP
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Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels often document Wagner’s shady presence across Africa
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The mercenary thugs have dug their claws deep into AfricaCredit: Telegram
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The guns-for-hire were loyal to warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin till he met his fiery end in AugustCredit: Reuters
BLOOD GOLD
Intelligence suggests Russia’s interest in gold has increased tenfold since the start of Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine.
To finance that bloodshed, the Kremlin has intensified its plundering of Africa’s riches and resources, said Zoltàn Kész, a leading investigator of the “Blood Gold” report.
He told The Sun: “It’s clear that Wagner’s priority is not stability.
“The security situation has undoubtedly deteriorated since their arrival.”
The fellow at 21 Democracy added: “Violence targeting civilians in Mali has risen 38 per cent so far in 2023 compared to 2022, with Malian state forces alongside Wagner Group perpetrating 160 incidents.”
In Mali, the hefty bill of £8million for Wagner’s brutal services is settled in gold and by tax revenues from Western mining companies, Kész explained.
Their investigation hopes to uncover these “deadly bargains” made between Wagner, the ruling junta and Western companies, which lands this blood gold onto our fingers.
Only this week, Mali announced an agreement with Russia to build what will be their largest gold refinery, effectively allowing Putin “to control all gold production”.
“The price is being paid in lives across Africa and Ukraine,” said Jessica Berlin, another of the report’s authors.
A WORLD OF WAGNER
Wagner forces first cut their teeth in Crimea in 2014 before fighting in proxy wars throughout the Middle East and finally Africa, collecting almost a decade of accusations of war crimes and gross human rights abuses.
Despite the brutality and violence, there is a method to the Kremlin proxy force’s madness.
And a series of terrifying outcomes could lie ahead.
Tapi fears that “Russia might end up using the territory of these countries to deploy weapons to reach Europe.”
And with the increased military presence, a future war with the West could be waged through proxies.
“They may control terrorism, [either] neutralising the threat or deflecting it at will towards the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.”
Options could also be explored to “gain control of the routes used by criminal networks to smuggle narcotics, arms, human beings, terrorists etc into Europe,” Tapi warned.
“We may see Russia using the territories under its control to destabilise the Maghreb [north western Africa] and Europe alike.”
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A Russian flag hangs on a monument to fallen Wagner soldiers in CARCredit: AFP
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Another Russian flag is paraded in the streets of Burkina Faso as Russian influence sweeps across AfricaCredit: AP
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An undated picture of Prigozhin in an African nation surrounded by local supporters
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Russian mercenaries spotted in Khartoum, Sudan in late 2019Credit: Telegram
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Wagner-linked Telegram channels shared their hopes for a new USSR to lead top world domination
Ukraine’s 2023 fighting season is drawing to a close under a cloud of unmet expectations. Its soldiers and citizens, who are steeling themselves for a Russian winter blitz, will not be warmed by the memories of summer success, Kyiv’s long-awaited counteroffensive operation having failed to achieve the breakthrough needed to collapse Moscow’s occupation of the south of the country.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and top commander General Valerii Zaluzhnyi have admitted Ukraine’s shortcomings. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” Zaluzhnyi said in an interview with The Economist earlier this month. Zelensky, meanwhile, told citizens that “all attention should be focused on defense.”
As Kyiv works to maintain its Western coalition, stress fractures are forming. In Europe, a wave of right-wing populism threatens to derail the continent’s political establishment, while in the U.S. President Joe Biden is heading into a fierce re-election contest with a Republican Party cowed by former President Donald Trump and shifting into open Ukraine-skepticism.
A common refrain since February 2022 is that the U.S. is giving Ukraine enough military aid to survive, but not enough to win. In this telling, Washington, D.C. fears that a strategic Kremlin defeat in Ukraine could prompt chaos within Russian borders, perhaps the unseating of President Vladimir Putin, and a vicious regional struggle to fill a power vacuum littered with weapons of mass destruction. With the China challenge looming, Eurasian anarchy would pose many new problems for the White House.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Joe Biden walk to the Oval Office of the White House September 21, 2023. Biden has tied his presidency closely to Ukrainian victory. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Zelensky appears to be feeling the pinch. “The Ukrainians do see continued hesitancy and this mindset of worrying about escalation, not provoking the Russians in some sort of way,” Daniel Vajdich—president of Yorktown Solutions and one of Ukraine’s most prominent lobbyists in Washington, D.C.—told Newsweek.
“On the implementation side, there’s a whole lot of continued caution that raises real questions in Kyiv about whether there is a desire for the Ukrainians to truly defeat the Russians. And the conclusion is ‘no’.
“The Ukrainians believe that despite all the assistance, despite the fact that the administration is doing so much, there is still so much caution because there is not a desire for the Ukrainians to decisively defeat the Russians, thinking that this would really lead to internal turmoil and collapse in Russia.”
Newsweek has contacted Zelensky’s office and the White House by email to request comment.
‘Failure Is an Orphan’
American and allied Western officials have been privately critical of Ukraine’s offensive approach. The New York Timesreported in August that U.S. planners felt Kyiv’s attacking forces were too spread out along the 600-mile front, failing to concentrate enough firepower in one spot to punch through.
But for many Ukrainians, the U.S. bears some responsibility for the as-yet underwhelming counteroffensive. “I’m grateful to the U.S. as the leaders of our support,” Zelensky told CNN in July. “I told them as well as the European leaders that we would like to start our counteroffensive earlier, and we need all the weapons and materiel for that. Why? Simply because if we start later, it will go slower.”
Vajdich said this sentiment is still strong in Kyiv. “It is an empirical fact that a lot of the assistance has not gotten to the Ukrainians as quickly it as it could have,” he said. “There are supply chain issues, there’s no doubt about that. But there’s also a portion of this assistance, both qualitatively and quantitatively, that could have gotten to the Ukrainians a lot earlier.
“It had a decisive impact in terms of the situation on the ground…the spring offensive this year would have been a spring offensive and not a July offensive, which made all the difference. It allowed the Russians to literally entrench themselves and fortify their defenses.”
Kyiv has had to fight hard for every new NATO weapons system. The first American-made main battle tanks had arrived in Ukraine as of October, more than 18 months since Russian armored columns rolled across Ukrainian frontiers. Kyiv is still pushing for the longest-range version of the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System—known as the ATACMS, and U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets will not expected to arrive until early 2024.
Flags on Independence Square, each honouring a soldier lost in the war, after fresh snowfall in Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 22, 2023. Ukraine is thought to have suffered more than 100,000 casualties in its war with Russia. Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
Ukraine is fighting a war of national survival. Biden and other Western leaders, though, have been clear that the Western coalition is charged with global survival. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Biden said in October 2022.
The White House has favored a graduated approach to military aid for Kyiv. Too much too soon, officials have warned, could prompt dangerous escalation from the Russian side. Western partners have also cited the need for strategic ambiguity and the element of surprise. Actual strikes on Russian positions have often been the first sign that Ukraine has received certain NATO weapon systems.
But step-by-step Western aid has sown frustration nonetheless. Steven Moore—once a chief of staff for former chief deputy GOP whip Rep. Pete Roskam (R-IL), and now running Ukraine Freedom Project in Kyiv—told Newsweek: “Ukrainians view themselves as our partners in taking out a long-held American adversary in Russia.”
“We supply the weapons, they supply the lives of their very best people,” Moore said. “The Ukrainians aren’t getting the weapons that we promised nor are they getting the weapons that they need.”
America’s Inflection Point
Some hope the onset of winter and the relatively static front may facilitate fresh peace negotiations. Putin has repeatedly said he is open to revived talks, though only on the condition that Ukraine accepts the “new territorial realities” of Moscow’s occupation of around 20 percent of Kyiv’s territory.
Zelensky has refused talks on Russian terms, and disputed suggestions that the war has become a stalemate. “A few military tricks, and you remember, the Kharkiv region was liberated,” he said this month, referring to the surprise counteroffensive success in northeastern Ukraine in fall 2022.
“We have no right to give up. What’s the alternative? What, we need to give away a third of our state? This will only be the beginning. We know what a frozen conflict is, we have already drawn conclusions for ourselves. We need to work more with air defense partners, unblock the sky, give our fighters the opportunity to carry out offensive actions.”
Zelensky denied any pressure from Western partners to go back to the negotiating table. Vajdich said he too sees no coercion. “But if it did exist, or if this is what some Western leaders are thinking without acting on it, what they need to do is not convince President Zelensky, they need to convince the Ukrainian people,” he said, noting sustained public support for full liberation of the country.
An unpopular peace proposal may spell the end of Zelensky’s stint in office, “with an election or without an election,” Vajdich added.
Ukraine cannot continue its war without Western—and especially U.S.—support. Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank wrote this month in Foreign Affairs that the looming winter and disappointing Ukrainian summer push “necessitate a comprehensive reappraisal of the current strategy that Ukraine and its partners are pursuing.”
Both told Newsweek that neither the U.S. nor Ukraine has yet reached that point. “That broader public debate is overdue and is necessary,” Kupchan said. “We’ve been in a political environment in which having this kind of conversation has been almost taboo.”
“It’s a dangerous situation to be in,” he added. “That’s how wars go on endlessly. Good strategy is about not just what’s desirable, but also what’s possible.”
Haass proposed “an interim definition of success,” one that pauses rather than abandons the goal of full territorial liberation. “It might have to wait years or even decades to accomplish the larger definition of success,” he explained. “That would probably have to wait on the emergence of a post-Putin leadership, or a post-post-Putin leadership.”
Full liberation is “unlikely to be achievable given the military balance,” Haass said. “We’ve now had two fighting seasons. I don’t see a basis for saying if you had a third, or a fourth, or fifth Ukraine would be able to realize that goal.”
“I think it is essential for Ukraine survive that Russia be frustrated. And the current situation I would describe as a strategic victory for Ukraine and the West. It’s not everything, but it’s a lot. And it doesn’t rule out more down the road.”
The Biden administration shows no sign of breaking with Kyiv, despite the difficult environment almost two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion. “The Biden administration finds itself in something of a dilemma,” Haass said.
There are some “who are sympathetic to what I’ve just articulated, but don’t want the Biden administration to be seen to be at cross purposes with Ukraine,” he added.
Two Ukrainian soldiers in Maidan Square, Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 22, 2023. The country is bracing for a tough winter after a summer-fall of underwhelming battlefield progress. Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
“It’s always an awkward topic when you disagree with an ally with about policy aims,” Haass said, warning that the broader geopolitical trends are not necessarily in Ukraine’s favor. “I would argue we should do this now from a position of strength, and I would argue Ukraine should do it now from a position of strength.”
The sense in D.C., Kupchan said, is that “Zelensky is not ready to begin to pivot to a strategy aimed at ending the war. If the Ukrainians are not ready for this conversation, then the West is not going to foist it upon them.”
“My guess is that behind closed doors there is a conversation about how to end the war, and about a set of feasible war aims, and about the role of diplomacy,” he added. “But I don’t think you’re going to see that conversation go public until the there is a sense that the Ukrainians themselves are ready to have that conversation.”
“It’s inevitable that Ukrainians themselves begin to address the question of ‘what do we do now?'” Kupchan said. “Perhaps, at some point, it makes more sense for Ukraine to invest the resources that it’s getting from the West into the defense and reconstruction of the 82 percent of Ukraine under Kyiv’s control.”
Post-Putin Planning
Ukrainians will not look kindly on Western partners urging what amounts to surrender, even if only in the short term. Kyiv is believed to have sustained more than 100,000 casualties in nearly two years of fighting, and tens of thousands more in the lower intensity war with Moscow and its separatist puppets since 2014.
Ukrainians are scarred by the collective Western failure to hold Putin to account in 2014, or to deliver on the security assurances given to Ukraine in the 1997 Budapest Memorandum, under which Kyiv surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Few Ukrainians want to allow the Russian dictator to keep the spoils of another round of aggression.
Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, on November 24, 2023. The Russian president appears to be waiting out Ukraine and its Western partners. Contributor/Getty Images
Growing Western discomfort is clear to Ukrainians. “Maybe it’s a sign for us, for Ukrainians that we have to discuss a few more options of how to stop this war, not only to reach our borders of 1991—now, it’s very difficult to achieve it,” Ivan Stupak—a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine and now an adviser to the Ukrainian parliament’s national security, defense and intelligence committee—told Newsweek. “Maybe [there is] a middle point.”
But the lack of trust between the two sides remains a serious problem. “Russians never kept their promises,” Stupak said. “How do we force the Russian Federation to keep their word?”
Kupchan acknowledged that the “downside” of his proposed approach “is that you let, at least for now, Russia get away with a blatant act of aggression and territorial conquest. And that sends a terrible message to the world about the rule of law and the sanctity of sovereignty.”
Still, he added, not all is well for the Kremlin. “Russia has already been dealt a profound strategic defeat,” Kupchan said. “Putin has lost Ukraine. We know that. And now the question is whether he going to get a consolation prize by holding on to some percentage of Ukrainian territory.”
Both Haass and Kupchan were part of a group that reportedly took part in back-channel talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this year. “I think, at the moment, the Russian conversation is based on the assumption that things are going their way politically,” Haass said.
“They see the populist trends, they see the polls in the United States. I think Putin strategy boils down to, ‘Let’s see where things stand in a year,'” he added. “I assume he’s lighting candles for a Trump victory.”
Kupchan said Ukraine and the West should, like Putin, consider “the long game.”
“You get the fighting to end, you get Ukraine back on the path of prosperity, and then you wait Putin out, and you hope for a day when at the negotiating table Russia gives Ukraine back its territory.
“Is that outcome in sight? No. But how many people in 1985 believed that Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia would be independent democracies and members of NATO? Nobody.
“Everyone talks about Putin waiting out Ukraine and the West. I think we turn the tables. We out-wait him.”
Ukrainian soldiers operate a Flakpanzer Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft gun near Kyiv on November 23, 2023. The country is approaching the two-year mark of war following Russia’s full-scale invasion, with no end in sight. Kostya Liberov/ Libkos/Getty Images
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Ukraine said on Saturday it had downed 74 out of 75 drones Russia launched at it overnight, in what it said was the biggest such attack since the start of the invasion.
The Ukrainian army said Russia had launched a “record number” of Iranian-made Shahed drones, the majority of which targeted Kyiv, causing power cuts as temperatures dipped below freezing.
The drone attack came as Ukraine marked Holodomor Remembrance Day, commemorating the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
“The enemy launched a record number of attack drones at Ukraine! The main direction of the attack is Kyiv,” said the commander of Ukraine’s air force, General Mykola Oleshchuk.
A school in the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv, Ukraine, suffers damage from the latest Russian drone strike on Nov. 25, 2023.
Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The air force said it had downed “74 out of 75” Shahed drones.
Kyiv authorities said five people — including an 11-year-old — were wounded in the capital, where the air raid lasted six hours.
Falling drone debris had sparked fires and damaged buildings across the city, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
AFP saw Kyiv residents clearing smashed windows and other damage in the city’s Dniprovsky district, with ambulances parked nearby.
One of the buildings that was damaged housed a nursery and another had part of its top floor destroyed.
Local resident Viktor Vasylenko said he had soothed his young daughter, who experienced “panic and nausea” during the long night-time attacks as they sheltered in a corridor.
The 38-year-old said his family always has “everything prepared” in case of such attacks, but this was the first time one had hit so close.
“My wife thought that the house would collapse in half,” he said.
Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkevics, on a visit to Kyiv during the attack, posted a photo of himself on social media inside a dark bomb shelter.
In a statement, the French foreign ministry condemned the drone barrage “with the utmost firmness.”
More than 21 months into Moscow’s offensive, fighting is most intense in the east of Ukraine and is now centered around the city of Avdiivka, which is nearly encircled by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s army said that while the “main target” of the attack was Kyiv, air defenses had also been called into action across the south.
Kyiv said it was “symbolic” that the capital had been the subject of such a large-scale attack on the day Ukraine marks Holodomor.
“More than 70 Shahed on the night of the Holodomor Remembrance Day … The Russian leadership is proud of the fact that it can kill,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
Zelensky attended a ceremony with Kyiv’s top military brass, holding candles, to mark the event.
“We mark the solemn anniversary of the Holodomor as the brave people of Ukraine continue to defend their freedom and Ukraine’s sovereignty against Russia’s brutal war of aggression,” President Biden said in a statement.
Ukraine says Holodomor — Ukrainian for “death by starvation” — was caused deliberately by Soviet agricultural policies.
Moscow denies this, and says it was part of a wider famine that also affected Russian parts of the Soviet Union.
Zelensky said it was “impossible” for Kyiv to forgive or forget the “horrific crimes of genocide,” and thanked the growing number of countries that had recognized Holodomor as a deliberate crime against Ukraine.
“They tried to subjugate us, to kill us, to exterminate us,” Zelensky said. “They failed.”
Switzerland’s President Alain Berset was in Kyiv Saturday and paid homage to the victims of Holodomor that he said was “provoked by Soviet leaders”.
The pair discussed “humanitarian demining, the use of frozen profits from the assets of the aggressor country and the peace formula,” according to Zelensky.
Switzerland’s famous tradition of neutrality has been tested since Russia invaded Ukraine. The Alpine country has followed the EU’s lead on sanctions on Moscow, but has refused to allow countries that hold Swiss-made weapons to send them to Kyiv.
Kyiv has set up a new corridor in the Black Sea since Moscow pulled out of the United Nations-brokered grain deal in July, but it continues to operate under risk.
“We have already accumulated more than $100 million (through the Kyiv-installed corridor),” Zelensky said.
Drones have been extensively used in the conflict, with Ukraine also launching drones into Russia and annexed Crimea.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia on Saturday launched its most intense drone attack on Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion in 2022, targeting the Ukrainian capital, military officials said.
In total, Russia launched 75 Iranian-made Shahed drones against Ukraine, of which 74 were destroyed by air defenses, Ukraine’s air force said.
“Kyiv was the main target,” Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk wrote on his Telegram channel.
The attack was “the most massive air attack by drones on Kyiv,” said Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv city administration. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat confirmed later that the air defenses shot down 66 air targets over the capital and surrounding region throughout the morning.
At least five civilians were wounded in the hourslong assault, which saw several buildings damaged by falling debris from downed drones, including a kindergarten. The wounded included an 11-year-old child, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
In the city’s Solomiansky district, debris left a crater in the courtyard of a residential area, and the windows of a nearby building were blown out. Residents, most of them elderly, received medical attention at the scene. Others took shelter in a nearby subway station. As people were clearing up debris and broken glass in the neighborhood, the hum of a fresh wave of drones could be heard nearby.
The assault on Kyiv began at 4 a.m., local time, continuing in waves for more than six hours, and caused power outages in 77 residential buildings and 120 institutions, according to Popko. Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said 17,000 people were without power in the Kyiv region as a result of the attack, noting that four power lines were damaged. Power was restored in the early afternoon.
“Our soldiers shot down most of the drones. Unfortunately, not all,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. “But we continue to work to strengthen our air defense and shoot down more.”
The attack was carried out on the morning of Holodomor Memorial Day, which commemorates the manmade famine in Soviet Ukraine that killed millions of Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933. It is marked on the fourth Saturday in November.
Speaking at the Grain from Ukraine summit on Saturday, which saw leaders and parliamentary representatives from Belgium, Ireland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia meet with Zelenskyy in Kyiv to discuss global food security, the Ukrainian President warned that “if (Russian President Vladimir) Putin could arrange another Holodomor for Ukraine, he would do it.”
Besides Kyiv, the Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions were also targeted.
Meanwhile, shelling killed one person and wounded three in the southern Kherson region, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Saturday. According to Prokudin, the region had been shelled 100 times over the previous 24 hours.
Ukraine’s battlefield data is reflecting the growing role of first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones in Kyiv’s frontline operations, as Ukrainian and Russian forces push for elusive territorial gains at the start of the long, freezing winter.
The snapshot of Ukrainian military data details the growing role of drone strikes against Russian targets along the 600-mile front, and the nature of both Ukrainian and Russian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations.
On several days in November, between 50 percent and 70 percent of all damaged or destroyed Russian equipment was attributed to FPV drones, according to figures published by analyst Andrew Perpetua on X, formerly known as Twitter. On November 13, the FPV proportion of successful strikes was even higher, at around 84 percent.
Perpetua’s most recent update for November 23 attributed 67 percent of destroyed or damaged Russian systems to FPV drones.
A Ukrainian soldier attaches a shell to a FPV drone on October 26, 2023, in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine. Cheap kamikaze UAVs have become central to the frontline fighting. Vitalii Nosach/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Ivan Stupak—a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine who provided the data—told Newsweek that the data indicates the FPV drone’s emergence as a weapon of “mass destruction,” adding that his military sources suggest Perpetua’s data corresponds to the frontline reality.
“It’s the next chapter of war,” Stupak—who is now an adviser to the Ukrainian parliament’s national security, defense and intelligence committee—added.
Fighting in recent weeks has been particularly fierce in areas where the Ukrainians are advancing in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, as well as around the Donetsk city of Avdiivka, where Moscow’s troops are grinding forwards.
Along the banks of the Dnieper River—called the Dnipro in Ukrainian—drones are facilitating Kyiv’s efforts to maintain and expand small bridgeheads across the broad waterway, which for a year has formed an imposing barrier to any Ukrainian advance.
Ukrainian forces on the Russian-occupied east bank of the river are currently fighting within three miles of the M-14 highway that serves as the backbone for all of occupied southern Ukraine, known as Moscow’s “land corridor” connecting Crimea to western Russia.
“It’s a very short distance for FPV drones,” Stupak said, noting that even basic systems have ranges of more than six miles.
More generally, “the numbers are telling, and it is clear that there is potential to reach the average level of 75-90 percent in destroyed/damaged [Russian targets] daily,” Stupak said. “It is obvious,” he added, that Ukraine should expand its drone production program for broader frontline use.
Newsweek was unable to independently verify the data and has contacted the Russian defense ministry by email to request comment.
The FPV figures show that Russian drones are also inflicting losses on the Ukrainian side. Armored personnel carriers, an American-made M777 howitzer, and a radio relay system are among the systems damaged or destroyed by Russian UAVs in November.
The U.S. howitzer was among the targets hit by the Lancet kamikaze drones that have become so feared by Ukrainian soldiers.
Drones have been one of the most important weapons in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. UAVs are used in massive numbers for bombing missions, direct kamikaze strikes, and reconnaissance—including spotting targets for artillery and guiding long-range fire onto ground targets.
Both sides have also repeatedly used longer-range drones to bombard civilian and infrastructure targets.
The Royal United Services Institute estimated earlier this year that Ukraine is losing around 10,000 drones per month, a reflection of their significance in daily combat. In August, Ukraine’s “drone tsar” told Newsweek that Kyiv considers unmanned aircraft central to its future battlefield capabilities and will expand its production and training programs as such.
“In a year, Ukrainian drone’s industry produces different types of drones: FPV [first person view], strike, bombers, large-radius drones,” Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said. “Prior to the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s industry has been focused mostly on air reconnaissance. It’s a major shift.”
Ukrainian soldiers on air defense combat duty on November 23, 2023, near Kyiv, Ukraine. Russia has regularly launched kamikaze drones at the capital. Kostya Liberov/ Libkos/Getty Images
“The important thing is that UAVs allow us to save the lives of our military,” Fedorov added. “So, we need as many drones as possible to cover the whole frontline. We believe that in this war, it’s the drones who should fight and die, not people.”
Oleksandr Kamyshin, the minister who oversees Ukraine’s defense industry, told a conference in October that by the end of 2023, Kyiv wants to be producing “dozens of thousands” of drones each month. “And that’s something we grow even faster than conventional warfare ammunition and warfare weapons.”
Ukraine’s counteroffensive drive in the Zaporizhzhia region has ground to a halt amid extensive Russian defenses. But the Kherson front—relatively dormant compared with the mechanized battlefields to the east—is posing the Russian command serious problems as 2023 draws to a close.
Kyiv’s small bridgeheads on the east bank are within 50 miles of the entrance to the occupied Crimean Peninsula, which retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges has told Newsweek represents the “decisive” battlefield of the decade-long Moscow-Kyiv war.
Stupak suggested that Ukrainian troops might look to break out of their Dnieper footholds and drive as far as the Black Sea port of Skadovsk, some 35 miles to the south. Doing so, he said, could cut off Russian forces defending the Kinburn Spit and put Crimea under “fire control” of Kyiv’s U.S.-made HIMARS.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Russia’s interior ministry has added the spokesperson of U.S. tech giant Meta Andy Stone to its wanted list, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported.
Stone “is wanted under an article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation,” the agency reported, citing the ministry’s database. The reason Stone was added to the list was not indicated, according to the report.
In 2022, following Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, Moscow officially designated the American tech company — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — as a “terrorist and extremist” organization. That opened the door to heavier legal proceedings against its users in the country.
Western social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) were banned from Russia and are only accessible in the country through VPNs.
On Sunday, Russian authorities also said they downed 24 Ukrainian drones. The day before, Russia had launched the largest aerial attack against Ukraine since its invasion started, barraging the country with 75 Shahed drones.
BERLIN — Germans gave the world schadenfreude for a reason. And southern Europe couldn’t be more pleased.
For countries that spent years on the receiving end of Europe’s German-inspired fiscal Inquisition, there’s no sweeter sight than to see Germany splayed on the high altar of Teutonic parsimony.
The irony is that Germany put itself there on purpose and has no clue how it will find redemption.
A jaw-dropping constitutional court ruling earlier this month effectively rendered the core of the German government’s legislative agenda null and void left the country in a collective shock. In order to circumvent Germany’s self-imposed deficit strictures, which give governments little room to spend more than they collect in taxes, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition relied on a network of “special funds” outside the main budget. Scholz was convinced the government could tap the money without violating the so-called debt brake.
The court, in no uncertain terms, disagreed. The ruling raises questions about the government’s ability to access a total of €869 billion parked outside the federal budget in 29 “special funds.” The court’s move forced the government to both freeze new spending and put approval of next year’s budget on hold.
Nearly two weeks after the decision, both the magnitude of the ruling and the reality that there’s no easy way out have become increasingly clear. Though Scholz has promised to come up with a new plan “very quickly,” few see a resolution without imposing austerity.
The expectation in the Bundestag is that Scholz will find enough cuts to deal with the immediate €20 billion hole the decision created in next year’s budget, but not much more.
In the meantime, his government is on edge. While Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a Green, has been telling any microphone he can find that Germany’s economic future is hanging in the balance, Finance Minister Christian Lindner has triggered panic and confusion by announcing a series of ill-defined spending freezes.
On Thursday, the government was forced to deny a report that a special fund created to bolster Germany’s armed forces after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be affected by the cuts.
At a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni late Wednesday, Scholz endured the humiliation of a reporter asking his guest whether she considered Germany to be a reliable partner given its budget crisis. A magnanimous Meloni, whose country knows a thing or two about creative accounting, gave Scholz a shot in the arm, responding that in her experience he was “very reliable.”
Greek accounting
Between the lines, the justices of Germany’s constitutional court suggested the use of the shadow funds by Scholz’s coalition amounted to a bookkeeping sleight of hand — the same sort of accounting alchemy Berlin upbraided Greece for more than a decade ago. Perhaps unwittingly, the court ruling echoed then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s unsolicited advice to Athens during Greece’s debt crisis: “Now is the time to do the homework!”
For eurozone countries with a recent history of debt trouble — a group that alongside Greece includes the likes of Spain, Portugal and Italy — Germany’s financial pickle must feel like déjà vu all over again. From 2010 onwards, they found themselves in the unenviable position of trying to explain to Wolfgang Schäuble, Merkel’s taskmaster finance minister, how they planned to return to the path of fiscal rectitude. At Schäuble’s urging, Greece nearly ditched the euro altogether.
The expectation in the Bundestag is that Scholz will find enough cuts to deal with the immediate €20 billion hole the decision created in next year’s budget, but not much more | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
In recent months, Germany has once again assumed the role of the fiscal scold in Brussels, where officials have been negotiating a new framework for the eurozone’s rulebook on government spending, known as the Stability and Growth Pact. The pact, which dates to 1997, has been suspended since the pandemic hit, but it is set to take effect again next year. Many countries want to loosen the rules given the huge budget pressures that have followed multiple crises in recent years. Berlin is open to reform but skeptical of granting its fellow euro countries too much leeway on spending.
The latest budget mess certainly won’t help the Germans make their case.
Simple hubris
The allure of the strategy the court has now deemed illegal was that the government thought it could spend money it salted away in the special funds without violating Germany’s constitutional debt brake, which restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP, except in times of emergency.
Put simply, Scholz’s coalition wanted to have its cake and eat it too, creating a veneer of fiscal discipline while spending freely to finance an ambitious agenda.
Despite ample warning from legal experts that the government’s plan to repurpose a huge chunk of emergency pandemic-related funds might not withstand a court challenge, Scholz and his partners went ahead anyway. What’s more, they staked their entire political agenda on the assumption that the strategy would go off without a hitch.
Last week’s court decision is the national equivalent of a rich kid being cut off from his trust fund: Daddy’s money is still there, but junior can’t touch it and has to exchange his Porsche for an Opel.
What many in Berlin cite as the main reason for what they are calling derSchlamassel (fiasco), however, is simple hubris.
Scholz’s mild-mannered public persona belies a know-it-all approach to governing. A lawyer by training who has served for decades in the top ranks of German government, Scholz, at least in his own mind, is generally the smartest person in the room.
During coalition negotiations in 2021, Scholz sold the budget trick idea to his future partners — the conservative liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens — as a way to square the circle between the welfare agenda of his own Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens’ expensive climate agenda, and the FDP’s demands for fiscal rigor (or at least the appearance thereof).
Indeed, it’s doubtful the coalition would have ever been formed in the first place without the plan. The Greens and FDP happily went along; after all Scholz, Germany’s finance minister from 2018-2021, knew what he was doing. Or so they thought.
Finance minister or ‘fuck-up’?
Scholz’s role notwithstanding, his successor as finance minister, FDP leader Christian Lindner, shares a lot of the responsibility for the snafu, for the simple reason that it was his ministry that oversaw the strategy.
During the coalition talks in 2021, Lindner was torn between a desire to govern and the fiscal strictures long championed by his party. Scholz offered him what appeared to be an elegant way to do both.
Scholz’s role notwithstanding, his successor as finance minister, FDP leader Christian Lindner, shares a lot of the responsibility for the snafu | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
When Lindner, who had never served in an executive government role before, was poised to secure the finance ministry, some critics questioned his qualifications to lead the financial affairs of Europe’s largest economy.
Many Germans have no doubt made their determinations in recent weeks.
Green machine
In contrast to the FDP, the Greens, had no qualms about endorsing Scholz’s bookkeeping tricks.
When it comes to realizing the Greens’ environmental goals, the ends have long justified the means.
In the early 2000s, for example, party leaders sold Germans on the idea of switching off the country’s nuclear plants and transitioning to renewables. They won the argument by promising that the subsidies consumers would be forced to finance to pay for the rollout of solar and wind power wouldn’t cost more every month than a “scoop of ice cream.”
In the end, the collective annual bill for German households was €25 billion, enough to have cornered the global ice cream market many times over.
The Greens’ ice cream strategy — secure difficult-to-reverse legislative commitments and worry about the financial details later — also informed their approach to what they call the “social, ecological transformation,” a plan to make Germany’s economy carbon neutral.
That’s why the shock of the court decision has hit the Greens hardest. After more than 15 years in opposition, the Greens saw the alliance with Scholz and Lindner as the culmination of their effort to convince Germans to embrace their ecological vision for the future. Just as the hoped-for revolution was within reach, it has slipped from their grasp.
Habeck, the face of the Green transformation, has looked like a man at his wits’ end in recent days, making dire predictions about the coming economic Armageddon.
“This marks a turning point for both the German economy and the job market,” Habeck told German public television this week, predicting that it would become much more difficult for the country to maintain the level of prosperity it has enjoyed for decades.
Road to perdition
For all his candor, Habeck failed to address the elephant in the room: It’s a fake debt crisis.
There is no objective reason for Germany to be in this dilemma. A best-of-class credit rating means Berlin can borrow money on better terms than almost any country on the planet. With a budget deficit of 2.6 percent of GDP last year and a total debt load amounting to 66 percent of GDP, Germany is also well above average compared to its eurozone peers in terms of fiscal discipline — even counting the debt raised for the special funds.
The only reason Germany can’t spend the money in the special funds is not because it can’t afford to, but rather because it remains beholden to an almost religious fiscal orthodoxy that views deficit debt as the road to perdition.
That conviction prompted Germany to anchor the so-called debt brake in its constitution in 2009, thereby allowing the government to run only a minor deficit, barring a natural disaster or other emergency, such as a war.
For eurozone countries with a recent history of debt trouble — a group that alongside Greece includes the likes of Spain, Portugal and Italy — Germany’s financial pickle must feel like déjà vu all over again | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
The constitutional amendment passed by a comfortable margin with broad support from both the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the SPD, which shared power in a grand coalition led by Merkel. At the time, Germany was still recovering from the shock triggered by the 2008 collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers and had to commit billions to shore up its banking sector.
The country’s federal government and states had begun planning a reform of fiscal rules even before the crisis. The emergency gave them additional impetus to pursue a debt brake enshrined in the constitution as a way to restore public trust.
In that respect, it worked as planned. As countries such as Greece and Spain struggled with their public finances in the years that followed, Germany’s debt brake looked prescient.
Even as southern Europe struggled, the German economy went into high gear powered by strong demand for its wares from Asia and North America, allowing the government to not just balance its budget but to run a string of surpluses, peaking in 2018 with a €58 billion windfall.
Goodbye to all that
The good times ended with the pandemic. Germany, along with the rest of the world, was forced to dig deep. It had the fiscal capacity to do so, however, as the pandemic justified lifting the debt brake in both 2020 and 2021.
The fallout from Russia’s attack on Ukraine forced the government to do so again in 2022.
By drawing from special funds, Scholz and Lindner believed they could avoid a repeat in 2023. But the court’s ruling dashed that plan.
Long before the current crisis, it had become clear to most in government — both conservative and left-leaning — that the debt brake was a hampering investment in public infrastructure (Merkel’s coalition emphasized paying down debt instead of investing the surpluses) and, by extension, Germany’s economic competitiveness. Hence the liberal use of the now-closed special fund loophole.
Trouble is, even as many politicians have woken up to the perils of the debt brake, the public remains strongly in favor of it. Nearly two-thirds of Germans continue to support the measure, according to a poll published this week by Der Spiegel.
Repealing or even reforming the brake would require Germany’s political class not just to convince them otherwise, but also to muster a super majority in parliament, which at the moment is unlikely.
Late Thursday, the finance minister signaled that the debt brake would have to fall for 2023 as well. That means the government will have to retroactively declare an emergency — likely in connection with the war in Ukraine — and then hope that the constitutional court buys it.
The Israeli-Hamas war has given Russia a golden opportunity to sow division among its Western enemies. It’s a chance Vladimir Putin’s disinformation machine was never going to miss.
Since the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, Kremlin-linked Facebook accounts have ramped up their output by almost 400 percent, with the Middle East crisis now dominating posts from Russian diplomats, state-backed outlets and Putin supporters in the West.
The entrenched — and bloody — conflict represents a double opportunity for Putin.
It allows Russia to foment division in the West via targeted social media activity aimed at splitting those in support of Israel from those who back Palestine. Real-world violence, particularly against Jews, has spiked over the last seven weeks and anti-war protests by hundreds of thousands of people have sprouted up from London to Washington.
Russia’s Middle East social media onslaught also pulls public attention away from its war in Ukraine, which has become bogged down after a succession of military missteps, a mutiny by Wagner mercenaries, and a long-running counteroffensive from Kyiv.
“Taking attention off Ukraine is only a good thing for Russia,” said Bret Schafer, head of the information manipulation team and the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based think tank. “The more the Western public is focused on Israel and Hamas, the less they’re paying attention to the fact that Congress is about to not fund Ukraine’s war effort,” he added. “Shining a light on other places pulls attention away from Ukraine.”
The Kremlin’s online assault mirrors Putin’s geopolitical game-playing since the Hamas attacks of October 7.
His government hosted Hamas leaders in Moscow at the end of October — apparently as he sought to play a mediation role on the release of Israeli hostages. Russia and Hamas have a common ally in Iran and Putin himself has warned that Israeli military action in Gaza could escalate beyond the region.
The Kremlin was quick to weaponize the Israel-Hamas war for its own propaganda purposes.
In the seven weeks since Hamas fighters attacked Israel, Russian Facebook accounts have posted 44,000 times compared to a mere 14,000 posts in the seven weeks before the conflict began, according to data compiled by the Alliance for Securing Democracy. In total, Russian-backed social media activity on Facebook was shared almost 400,000 times collectively, a four-fold increase compared to posts published before the conflict.
The most-shared keywords now include many phrases associated with the conflict like “Hamas” and the “Middle East,” while before the war, Russia’s state media and diplomatic accounts had focused almost exclusively on either Ukraine or Putin’s role in the world.
The near-400 percent increase in posts from Russian government-linked accounts represents a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of Facebook posts about the Middle East conflict from regular social media users over the same time period. But many of the Kremlin-backed accounts — especially those from sanctioned media outlets like RT and Sputnik — have an oversized digital reach. Collectively, these companies boast millions of followers in Europe, Latin America and Africa, even though the EU has imposed sanctions on their broadcast and social media operations.
Surfing the wave
“They use whatever they can to spread anti-West messaging,” said Jakub Kalenský, a deputy director at the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a joint NATO-EU organization tracking state-backed influence campaigns. “They surf on the wave of the news cycle because they are competing for the same audience that is consuming solid media sources.”
Such digital propaganda can have real-world effects. Some in the West now openly question how long governments can support Ukraine in its costly war against Russia in a time of economic uncertainty.
In France, for instance, the foreign affairs ministry accused a Russian-affiliated network of social media bots of amplifying anti-semitic images of Stars of David graffiti on buildings across Paris. French officials blamed Russia for “creating tensions” between supporters of Israel and those who favored Palestine. The Russian embassy in Paris said Moscow had no ties to the covert digital activity.
The goal of the clandestine campaign was to heighten real-world tensions — both in France and across Western Europe — over which side governments are backing, according to two senior European officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
“What happens online never just stays online anymore,” one of the officials said.
Think the location of this year’s global climate summit is contentious? Wait till you hear about the next one.
When COP28 kicks off next week in the United Arab Emirates, the oil kingdom presiding over the talks will face pressure to show its fossil fuel interests won’t capture negotiations.
But at least the conference has a host. Next year’s summit, COP29, is currently homeless.
That’s because regional tensions have created a deadlock. The conference is meant to take place in Eastern Europe, but Russia is preventing any European Union country from hosting, while warring neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia are blocking each other, and no one has been able to agree on a way forward.
The result: COP29 is in limbo, and global efforts to secure a liveable future risk being left leaderless. If no one picks up the baton, the current host may remain in place until COP30 starts in 2025 — likely leaving the UAE in charge of talks on major decisions like a new finance goal and getting governments to commit to post-2030 climate targets.
Officially, Russia’s line of reasoning “is that they don’t believe that Bulgaria or any other EU country will be impartial in running COP29,” said Julian Popov, the environment minister for Bulgaria, which has offered to host next year’s climate summit.
But behind closed doors, “their argument is that they are being blocked by EU countries about various things in relation to the war against Ukraine,” he told POLITICO in an interview.
“They are,” he said, “basically retaliating.”
The dispute now risks disrupting both COP28 and COP29, as diplomats scramble to resolve the issue before departing Dubai in mid-December.
“Russia has chosen to hold these negotiations almost hostage,” said Tom Evans, policy advisor on climate diplomacy and geopolitics at think tank E3G.
Race against time
The hosting dispute is inflaming geopolitical tensions heading into COP28, which takes place amid growing global discord related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and an evolving debt crisis looming over developing nations.
The COP climate summits typically rotate among the United Nations’ five regional groups, and next year is Eastern Europe’s turn. The 23-country Eastern Europe group has to decide on the host country by consensus.
COP28 President-Designate Dr. Sultan Al Jaber | Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies
In the past, that wasn’t hard: The COP conference would just rubber-stamp the host chosen by the regional group. Now, however, the decision will have to be taken at the height of tricky talks on a host of issues ranging from the future of fossil fuels to financial help for poorer countries.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Popov, that the hosting dispute may “distract” from the actual negotiations in Dubai.
Then there’s the issue of preparation. COP locations are usually chosen well in advance — the UAE was announced as host in 2021, and COP30 will take place in Brazil — to allow host cities to ready themselves for the arrival of tens of thousands of delegates.
The host country usually, but not always, also takes on the COP presidency, which plays a crucial role in leading negotiations before, during and after the summit.
“We still don’t know who will run the process next year,” Popov said. “This is damaging the whole COP process and will inevitably have a negative impact on the quality of negotiations.”
Among the key issues to be settled at COP29 is a new financial target for funding climate action in developing countries from 2025 onward. Ahead of COP30, countries are meant to submit a new round of climate pledges, including targets to reduce emissions by 2035.
“You really need months of diplomacy in advance to set these COPs up for success,” Evans said.
Geopolitical stalemate
Besides Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Belarus and Armenia also said last year they would throw their hats in the ring for 2024.
Prague eventually withdrew, proposing instead to host the annual pre-COP summit ahead of the main event in Bulgaria. But this past spring, Russia sent an email to other Eastern European representatives saying it would prevent EU countries from hosting, accusing them of blocking Russia-backed countries.
The email, obtained by Reuters, read: “It is reasonable to believe that EU countries, driven by politics from Brussels, do not have the capacity to serve as honest and effective brokers of global climate negotiations under the UNFCCC,” the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In the summer, Azerbaijan joined the race to host COP29 — a few months before launching a large-scale offensive to retake the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, forcing tens of thousands to flee to Armenia.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are now opposing each other’s bids, said Gayane Gabrielyan, Armenia’s deputy environment minister.
“Russia is blocking any EU country, and Armenia and Azerbaijan can’t find a solution,” she told POLITICO. “We have more than 100,000 refugees … In this situation, we will not be able to discuss anything with them.”
The foreign and environment ministries of Russia and Azerbaijan did not respond to requests for comment.
The Eastern Europeans could also swap with another regional group or a specific country outside the region to host — like Spain stepped in for Chile in 2019 — but that would also require consensus, as well as the formal withdrawal of all host candidates.
“The only option now is going to Bonn,” Gabrielyan said. “The motherland of the UNFCCC.”
Bonn-bound?
Bonn is where the U.N. climate body is headquartered. The conference guidelines indicate that the summit would default to the former West German capital if no agreement is found among the Eastern European group.
But hosting a climate conference “isn’t trivial,” Evans said. “There’s a cost involved, and there’s a huge logistical headache.”
Several European diplomats, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told POLITICO that Germany was less than keen, something German officials would neither confirm nor deny.
Asked if Germany was prepared to host, a foreign office spokesperson said that discussions within the Eastern European group were ongoing, “with the aim of COP28 taking a decision.”
While Bonn may end up serving as the venue, the presidency would likely remain in the hands of the UAE if the Eastern Europeans can’t find consensus, a spokesperson for the U.N. climate body said.
Yet the UAE, which has faced a barrage of criticism since naming national oil company CEO Sultan al-Jaber as conference president, appears reluctant to continue in its role.
COP28 Director-General Majid al-Suwaidi said last month that his country would not host again. Asked to clarify whether that also meant not extending the presidency, a COP28 spokesperson declined to comment.
The predicament has prompted Bulgaria to suggest a novel solution to, as Popov put it, “save COP29” — splitting the mega-event across several nations in Eastern Europe.
“Here’s what we suggested: A distributed COP — have the pre-COP, the presidency and the COP held by three different countries, and have some events organized in different Eastern European countries,” he said.
But that, too, would need the backing of all regional group members. Gabrielyan said Armenia was “ready to discuss” this option, but that Azerbaijan had signaled opposition.
The uncertainty over who will host COP29 may come with one positive side-effect, however: Diplomats might be wary of postponing difficult decisions to next year.
“It’s not uncommon for COPs, when they reach some of the trickiest issues, to kick the can down the road,” said Evans. “I don’t feel like this is an option this time.”
KYIV — In the largest aerial attack since its invasion started, Russia barraged Ukraine with 75 Shahed drones overnight, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
Most of the drones were aimed at Kyiv and the region around the capital, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement.
Ukrainian forces managed to shoot down all but one of the Shahed kamikaze drones, as well as an X-59 cruise missile over the Dnipro region, the Ukrainian air force said.
The assault included the highest number of Russian drones to be deployed in one night since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The air attack lasted more than six hours, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said in a statement. Anti-aircraft missiles, tactical aviation, mobile fire groups, and electronic warfare units were involved in repelling the air attack.
No deaths were reported as a result of the barrage, but falling debris damaged buildings. In Kyiv, a fire broke out at a kindergarten, while windows were damaged in neighboring houses. Debris damaged the second floor of a five-story building, where two women had to be evacuated, Klitschko said.
Five people were injured in total, the mayor said.
As a result of the attack, more than 12,000 households in the capital were temporarily cut off from electricity, Ukraine’s state energy operator Ukrenergo said. Power cuts were also reported in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Cherkasy and Sumy regions.
THREE Russian FSB officers have been killed after their food delivery was reportedly spiked with arsenic and rat poison.
Officials claimed the alleged poisoning was the work of Ukraine’s underground “resistance forces” in Melitopol.
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Three FSB agents reportedly died after being poisoned by the Ukrainian resistance (file photo)
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Exiled Melitopol mayor Ivan Fedorov speaking on Ukrainian TV about the poisoning
A fourth security service operative is reportedly in intensive care.
There has been no confirmation from Russian officials about the alleged assassination of the FSB agents – once headed by dictator Putin.
Telegram channel Kremlevskaya Tabakerka reported: “The restaurant where the food and alcohol were delivered was searched, and no traces of poisons were found.
“At the same time, the courier who delivered the food and alcohol disappeared without a trace.”
The poisoning claim was reported in Ukraine by the Kyiv Post, and apparently confirmed by exiled mayor Ivan Fedorov.
Speaking on Ukrainian TV channel United News, Fedorov said: “They ordered food from a local cafe and after they were able to consume this food, they all got poisoned and some of them even died.
“They will definitely not be able to fight against our state anymore.
“It is interesting that they cannot find the courier who delivered the food, but this is the active resistance that continues in Melitopol after almost two years of occupation.”
The mayor said: “The elimination of the enemy is carried out not only by explosions, missile strikes, but also by resistance forces.
“For example, the other day there was another batch of eliminated enemies, namely poisoned enemies, which was even reported by enemy Telegram channels.”
The Telegram channel claimed two of the three dead FSB operatives had launched an investigation into an alleged grave of Russian Black Sea Fleet sailors recently found in Melitopol.
Seventeen mutilated bodies showing evidence of missile attack had been discovered, it alleged.
Occupying forces have been repeatedly warned about the risk of food poisoning.
Last month, cake and booze laced with deadly poison was allegedly delivered to a Russian military bash in a Ukrainian plot to assassinate dozens of top pilots.
The Bond-style plan to take out Putin’s top-brass cronies at the elite military academy was reportedly thwarted at the last minute.
But 77 guests avoided the killer treats as a pro-war Telegram channel reported “everyone is alive” following the alleged plot.
Russian pilots were marking the 20th anniversary of their graduation from the Armavir Higher Military Aviation School.
The guests included many highly decorated and senior ranking pilots from the Class of 2003.
While the deadly 20 kilogram cake was cut, it was apparently left untouched as a crucial clue foiled Ukraine’s alleged plot at the last second.
The soldiers, from the third Motor Rifle Division, are said to have died instantly after being given the delicacies as “gifts” by locals in Izium.
Another 28 Russians were said to have been rushed to intensive care after the poisoning, with hundreds of others suffering “severe illness” from poisoned food and drink.
BRUSSELS — Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is emerging as the front-runner to be the new NATO chief, but faces resistance in Washington from lawmakers who accuse the Netherlands of underspending on defense on his watch, and from others who think it’s time for a woman at the top.
In what’s shaping up to be at least a three-person race, Rutte is considered a strong favorite, according to two European officials and a diplomat granted anonymity to talk about internal deliberations.
“He’s certainly a heavyweight, he’s a very good candidate,” Poland’s Ambassador to NATO Tomasz Szatkowski said at an event hosted by POLITICO Pro Defense on Tuesday.
One of the officials said the longtime Dutch leader had won the support of “senior U.S. and German officials.”
France, another crucial decision-maker, is also favoring Rutte, driven primarily by his personal rapport with President Emmanuel Macron, who was one of Rutte’s earliest cheerleaders in his quest for the NATO top job.
“That Macron and Rutte appreciate each other is no secret,” said a French diplomat.
However, some American lawmakers adamantly oppose Rutte, as the Netherlands has consistently failed to meet NATO’s defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product.
That pits him unfavorably against Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who signaled interest in the NATO job while in Washington last week. Her government agreed to raise defence spending to 3 percent of GDP for 2024-2027, from 2.85 percent this year. Tallinn has also been an outsize supporter of Ukraine in terms of weaponry.
The underdog is Latvia’s Foreign Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, whose announcement on Sunday that he was running was even a surprise to some in Riga, according to a diplomat.
The candidacies of Kallas and Kariņš ruffle some Western European feathers — still smarting from the intense criticism they faced from Baltic nations that they are insufficiently supportive of Ukraine and too fearful to challenge Russia.
The White House was coy when asked whether U.S. President Joe Biden prefers Rutte.
“We’re not going to get into internal deliberations over the next secretary general,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. “We look forward to working closely with allies to identify a secretary general who can lead the alliance at this critical time for transatlantic security.”
Penny-pincher
For some, though, the record of burden sharing in a secretary-general candidate’s home country does matter politically, and Washington is scrutinizing that closely.
U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska and senior of member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Rutte “should be unequivocally disqualified” over his country’s record on NATO burden sharing. He said there is “deep bipartisan frustration in the U.S. about NATO members not pulling their weight.”
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas signaled interest in the NATO job while in Washington last week | Leon Neal/Getty Images
The Netherlands has a poor track record. In 2014 it spent only 1.15 percent of its GDP on defense, while the alliance has a 2 percent spending goal. This year, The Hague will spend 1.7 percent of GDP and has agreed to spend 2.03 percent in 2024 and 2.01 percent in 2025.
Ahead of July’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Sullivan led a bipartisan group of 35 senators in writing a letter to Biden urging him to ensure NATO countries meet their defense spending commitments. That tally — which amounts to more than a third of the U.S. Senate — hints at the potent politics of burden sharing in Washington.
Congress’ ongoing negotiations over its annual defense legislation include a provision from Sullivan that would require the Pentagon to prioritize NATO members that hit the 2 percent target when making decisions about U.S. military basing, training, and exercises.
Some in Biden’s own Democratic Party also believe it’s time for a woman to run NATO.
“I’ve long thought it was time the allies appoint the first woman NATO secretary general,” Senate NATO Observer Group Co-Chair Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, said in a statement.
“That said, it’s critical that support for NATO remains strong and bipartisan in the Senate and for that to happen, the successor for this important position should hail from a country that is meeting the 2 percent defense spending commitment, or has a robust plan in place to meet that goal, which was agreed to by all allies in Vilnius,” she added.
With NATO helping coordinate members’ efforts to help Ukraine fight Russia, there are also calls for someone from the eastern flank of the alliance to become the next leader.
“Maybe at some point it is also [the] right time for the alliance to look at the region of Eastern Europe,” Ukraine’s Ambassador to NATO Natalia Galibarenko told POLITICO. “So my preference … would be at some point to see [a] secretary-general representing Eastern Europe.”
Such as Kallas?
“Why not?” said the Ukrainian envoy.
With additional reporting from Clea Caulcutt. and Joshua Posaner. Joe Gould and Alexander Ward reported from Washington.
