Russian President Vladimir Putin and the deposed leader of Afghanistan were among the top gift givers to President Joe Biden and his family in 2021, according to federal documents published on Thursday.
In happier diplomatic times between all three countries, Putin gave Mr. Biden a $12,000 lacquer writing box and pen when they met at a highly anticipated summit in Geneva, Switzerland in June 2021.
That month, then-Afghan President Mohammed Ashraf Ghani and his wife gave Mr. Biden and first lady Jill Biden silk rugs worth an estimated $28,800.
Relations between the U.S. and Russia soured soon after the Geneva meeting and have plummeted since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February. Ghani, meanwhile, fled Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. withdrew from the country on Biden’s orders in August, 2021.
Biden also in June received a brass and lapis lazuli jewelry box, worth an estimated $1,150 from Abdullah Abdullah, who was then considered to be the No. 2 in the Afghan government. And Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was given a carpet valued at $2,650 in March by Ghani.
The details appear in the State Department’s annual accounting of gifts to U.S. officials from world leaders posted on the website of the Federal Register on Thursday. The list, covering 2021, will formally be published on Friday.
All of the Putin and Ghani gifts were transferred to the National Archives, a requirement for any gift to a U.S. official valued at more than $415. The recipient has the option of paying the estimated value and keeping the gift.
However, Mr. Biden decided to retain, at least for official display, a photograph of the late British monarch Queen Elizabeth II. The photo, in a silver frame was presented to the president on the occasion of a Group of Seven summit in southeast England and is estimated to be worth $2,200.
According to the records, Putin gave Mr. Biden a “Kholuy Lacquer Miniature Workshop Desk Writing Set and Pen” on the occasion of their meeting in Geneva on June 16, 2021.
There are no other gifts from Putin or other Russian officials to Mr. Biden or U.S. officials documented in the filing.
Later that month, well after the president had given the order for American forces to withdraw from Afghanistan in April, Ghani and his wife, Rula, gave Joe and Jill Biden two silk carpets: one valued $9,600 and the other $19,200, according to the list.
At the time, U.S. officials believed that Ghani’s government and security forces could survive the withdrawal of American troops. A White House statement from Biden’s meeting with Ghani on June 25 said that “the U.S. and Afghan leaders firmly agreed that although U.S. troops are leaving Afghanistan, the strong bilateral partnership will continue.”
In another relationship that has grown more rocky, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reported receiving a porcelain vase worth $2,000 from the former foreign policy chief of the Chinese Communist Party, Yang Jiechi. The exchange took place in March, 2021, just two months after the Biden administration took office, and the vase is now with the General Services Administration.
Two years later, the U.S. and China are now at odds on numerous issues ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine to Chinese policies regarding Taiwan, Tibet, the South China Sea, Hong Hong and human rights.
Former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster joins “CBS Mornings” for a closer look at the state of the Russian invasion of Ukraine one year on. McMaster examines the potential for a Russian spring offensive, how Ukraine can counter-attack and how he thinks the conflict could end.
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• Live updates: Russian warplane crashes near Ukraine border, killing the pilot, state media report
• China is helping to prop up the Russian economy. Here’s how
Kyiv, Ukraine – How often do you get a chance to witness the birth of a new world order? To chronicle not just a war – but a Darwinian fight for survival between a cunning little mammal and a cold-blooded, slow-thinking tyrannosaur?
To see how an entire nation unites to decolonise itself, to remake its identity and mindset, to stand up to a Goliath they once mistook for a “brother”?
There’s a price to pay for a ticket to an emotional roller coaster that will one day make your shrink rich.
You spend the war’s first days in bomb shelters, trying to sleep next to panicking women, weeping children and nervously smoking men.
You remember a tired, silent woman in her 70s who just hunches on a bench before somebody invites her to sit on their mattress, drink their tea and eat their biscuits.
You’ll never forget the kindness in the eyes and words of total strangers you met in the war’s first weeks.
You’ll also never forget the greedy cabbie who charges $600 to take you and your mother out of Kyiv to central Ukraine, a 260km-long (162-mile) ride that took almost 12 hours because of traffic jams and roadblocks.
Your mother is so unnerved that she loses sight in her right eye. After an urgent cataract surgery, for a month your life is all about applying five kinds of eye drops on time – because mum has dementia and can’t even remember that she’s 81.
These days, she doesn’t remember the war either and spends her days reading or watching movies made when she was young, when Russia and Ukraine were chained together into a Communist dystopia.
Reporter Mansur Mirovalev pictured with his pro-Russia stepsister, in happier times [Courtesy: Mansur Mirovalev]
You sever ties with your lifelong friends and your own stepsister because they blindly believe Russian TV propaganda and never care to ask you about what’s happening in Ukraine.
When you hear the bang of an exploding cruise missile, you just pull down the curtains – because more people die of broken glass than of actual blasts.
You return to Kyiv weeks later to find the city of four million nearly empty. The air is clean, roads and streets filled with checkpoints and anti-tank “hedgehogs”.
Banksy would later draw a picture next to one.
Bansky’s art in wartime Kyiv [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]
You write about how Ukrainians ridicule Russia in memes and jokes, and realise that their ability to crack a joke even in their darkest hour, sometimes at their own expense is one of the key differences between Ukrainian and Russian mentalities.
When you manage to sleep in your apartment – the sound of explosions wakes you up.
Or was it just the wind shaking the windowpanes? An elderly neighbour in the apartment above yours?
When there is a real air raid, for the umpteenth time you recalculate the chances of cruise missiles or Iranian drones hitting your central neighbourhood and your apartment building hidden between a steep hill and another building.
The chances are minuscule. Statistically speaking, you are still much more likely to die in a car crash but your body still produces and pumps adrenaline.
You learn that the only healthy way to process the adrenaline is sit-ups and push-ups, dozens of them. Yeah, time to lose those kilograms gained after stress-eating at midnight.
And when the air raid is over and silence reverberates in your ears, you go out to examine the explosion craters. And you realise that three of them are on the way you used to take with your daughter to her elementary school.
Your daughter is not with you, that’s great and depressing at the same time, because she is safe – and because you are ready to gnaw off your right arm just for a chance to be with her.
She sends you a poorly-rhymed poem about the war or a drawing of a Ukrainian girl holding a gun next to a blue-and-yellow flag – and you feel like the proudest father on Earth.
Ukrainians queue to visit a supermarket in Kyiv on February 29, days after the war began [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]
Pride and empathy become your dominant feelings.
You are proud of being a tiny part of this Manichaean fight between absolute evil and nearly absolute good, of having a chance to describe how people around you turn into real-life heroes, mythical demigods.
You interview a human-rights activist-turned soldier and a month later, he is captured on the eastern front and faces years in jail as a “Ukrainian propagandist”.
You were about to interview another serviceman who wrote lyrics to a beautiful anti-war song but his truck gets blown to pieces by a landmine.
One more serviceman you’ve spoken to several times is back in the trenches, where he still finds time and web access to start a campaign to buy a $50,000 drone.
Then you learn that Ukrainians collected enough money to buy a satellite for their armed forces – and realise that to them, the sky is not the limit.
You talk to a man who survived weeks of bombing in Mariupol and he tells you from the safety of a hospital in western Ukraine that he might not survive surgery.
He does.
You talk to another Mariupol survivor, a woman with two small children, and when she repeats their question – “Mum, does it hurt to die?” – you start sobbing, and she calms you with a motherly, “It’s ok, it’s ok”.
You are fixated on Mariupol because that’s where pro-Russian rebels nearly killed you back in 2014, and only your loud cursing – “Guys, are you f—g crazy?” – stopped them from crushing your skull with metal rods.
A billboard advertises a theatre performance based on George Orwell’s 1984 next to a damaged Russian tank in central Kyiv [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]
Death or the possibility of death become part of almost every conversation.
A taxi driver tells you about his wife and daughter who went missing in Mariupol weeks ago.
A woman tells you how she drove out of her occupied village near Bucha and saw Russian soldiers shoot women and children in other cars.
You don’t believe her then and you feel guilty for it when you hear of the liberation of Bucha and the blood-curdling discovery of killed civilians a couple of weeks later.
You interview another man from Bucha, who says Russians had doused him with fuel to “set him on fire and send back to his people”, and realise that his words and their deeds cancel, annihilate the Russian culture you had grown up on.
And most Ukrainians around you don’t hesitate to cancel their own poets and writers, rename streets and city squares named after them and tear down their statues just because they wrote in Russian.
You talk to a serviceman who looks and talks like a small-time hoodlum, and when he tells you how he and his men armed with AK-47s and Molotov cocktails ambushed three dozen Russian APCs full of gun-toting Chechens, you realise that you’re looking at a character from an epic poem.
In Kyiv, this enlarged copy of a postal stamp depicts the Kremlin, burning [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]
Of course, the main protagonist in this poem is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s funniest man from a Russian-speaking Jewish family who once wanted to sign a truce with Putin.
Zelenskyy didn’t chicken out, he stayed in Kyiv, he is 10 feet tall and can kill a dozen Russians with just an angry glance.
(You are still mad at Zelenskyy’s press service for refusing an interview with him months before his 2019 election, when no Western news editor even heard his name, let alone believed in his chances of winning.)
Your hatred crystallises, becomes razor-sharp and pointed at the bad guy in the poem, the angry bald man in the Kremlin, only you don’t call him a person, a human any more.
You tell your daughter how you had seen Putin many times, years ago, in the Kremlin:
“He was so full of hatred, he just radiated it.”
And she tells you that she wants to have a superpower to teleport herself to the Kremlin and “hit him with a skillet”.
Death or the possibility of death are part of any conversation.
A staffer of the Chornobyl nuclear plant tells you how he’d spent weeks next to Russian occupiers. How they asked for vodka and he laced it with radioactive isotopes so that within hours they “barfed blood.” But he refuses to be interviewed, another entry in your list of great stories that would never be written.
A construction manager tells you that one of his employees, a single father, was drafted and his little son ended up in an orphanage.
You learn to take the stairs or walk on icy asphalt in total darkness because electricity is no longer wasted on street lights.
You get emotionally paralysed because your brain can’t process this much violence, tears and tragedy.
A single phrase or photo breaks you down, you sob and wail uncontrollably and can’t force yourself to finish the transcription of an interview.
You realise that you’re burned out.
But like Phoenix, a mythical bird that self-immolates only to be reborn from its own ashes, you wash your face, do some pushups and get back to work.
President Biden sought to assure the eastern-most members of NATO that the U.S. would stand with them in the event of a Russian invasion as he wrapped up his overseas trip. Ed O’Keefe reports.
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says that the military alliance has seen “some signs” that China may be planning to support Russia in its war in Ukraine, and strongly urged Beijing to desist from what would be a violation of international law.
Stoltenberg also told The Associated Press in an interview that the alliance, while not a party to the war, will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” He spoke to The AP in Warsaw, following a meeting of NATO’s nine eastern flank members with U.S. President Joe Biden on the region’s security.
Asked whether NATO has any indication that China might be ready to provide arms or other support to Russia’s war, Stoltenberg said, “We have seen some signs that they may be planning for that, and of course NATO allies, the United States, have been warning against it because this is something that should not happen. China should not support Russia’s illegal war.”
Stoltenberg said potential Chinese assistance would amount to providing “(direct) support to a blatant violation of international law, and of course (as) a member of the U.N. security council China should not in any way support violation of the U.N. charter, or international law.”
On Saturday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Blinken said in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan that China is actively considering providing lethal support, including weapons and ammunition to aid Moscow in its war against Ukraine. But Blinken spoke only in general terms about the type of lethal aid the Chinese are considering.
“There’s a whole gamut of things that — that fit in that category, everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves,” he said.
Notably, China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, told other leaders at the Munich Security Conference this week that China is working on a peace proposal to end the conflict. That public position runs contrary to what U.S. intelligence has indicated.
Blinken pointed out, “We have seen them provide non-lethal support to Russia for use in Ukraine.” He went on to say that “the concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.”
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official — Wang Yi — raising concern in the West that Beijing might be ready to offer Moscow stronger support in the almost year-old war.
China has pointedly refused to criticize the invasion of Ukraine while echoing Moscow’s claim that the U.S. and NATO were to blame for provoking the Kremlin. China, Russia and South Africa are holding naval drills in the Indian Ocean this week.
But State Department Counselor Derek Chollet said the U.S. has assessed that China has not yet decided to provide lethal assistance to Russia.
“Our assessment is they have not yet made that decision up to this point,” Chollet told CBS News contributor Michael Morell on his podcast “Intelligence Matters” this week. “But there are just increasing indications that this is something on their minds. And that’s a concern to us.”
Stoltenberg stressed that while NATO “is no party” to the Ukraine conflict, its tasks are to “ensure that Ukraine prevails” and to “prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine and becoming a full-fledged war between Russia and NATO.”
He said the main message from the meeting in Warsaw was that “we will provide support to Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
It would be a “tragedy for the Ukrainians if President Putin wins in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said, and also “dangerous for all of us” because it would “send the message to all authoritarian leaders that when they use military force, they get what they want.”
The Russian attack on Ukraine has prompted Sweden and neighboring Finland to abandon decades of nonalignment and apply to join the 30-nation alliance. But their bids — particularly Sweden’s — are being delayed by Turkey, which wants the two countries to crack down on mostly Kurdish groups Ankara regards as terrorists.
Stoltenberg told the AP that following talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week he could see Turkey “is moving closer to being ready to ratify and (to) welcome Finland into the alliance. But (Ankara continues) to have some challenges with Sweden.”
He said he welcomed the fact that he and Erdogan agreed to a meeting soon “of experts and officials in Brussels” from the three countries involved “to look into how we can make progress also on the ratification of Sweden as a full NATO ally.”
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine one year ago, Western countries hit back with unprecedented sanctions to punish Moscow and pile pressure on President Vladimir Putin. The aim: to deal an economic blow so severe that Putin would reconsider his brutal war.
Russia’s economy did weaken as a result. But it also showed surprising resilience. As demand for Russian oil fell in Europe, Moscow redirected its barrelsto Asia. The country’s central bank staved off a currency crisis with aggressive capital controls and interest rate hikes. Military expenditure supported the industrial sector, while the scramble to replace Western equipment and technology lifted investment.
“The Russian economy and system of government have turned out to be much stronger than the West believed,”Putin said in a speech to Russia’s parliamentTuesday.
Yet cracks are starting to show and they will widen over the next 12 months. The European Union — which spent more than $100 billion on Russian fossil fuels in 2021 — has made huge strides in phasing out purchases. The bloc, which dramatically reduced its dependence on Russian natural gas last year, officially banned most imports of Russian crude oil by sea in December. It enacted a similar block on refined oil products this month.
Those measures arealready straining Russia’s finances as it struggles to find replacement customers. The government reported a budget deficit of about 1,761 billion rubles ($23.5 billion) for January. Expenditure jumped 59% year-over-year, while revenue plunged 35%. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced that Russia would cut oil production by about 5% starting in March.
“The era of windfall profits from the oil and gas market for Russia is over,” Janis Kluge, an expert on Russia’s economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told CNN.
Meanwhile, the ruble has slumped to its weakest level against the US dollar since last April. The currency’s weakness has contributed to high inflation. And most businesses say they can’t conceive of growing right now given high levels of economic uncertainty, according to a recent survey by a Russian think tank.
These dynamics place the country’s economy on a trajectory of decline. Andthey will force Putin to choose between ramping up military spending and investing in social goods like housing and education — a decision that could have consequences both for the war and the Russian public’s support of it.
“This year could really be the key test,” said Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, a think tank.
In a bid to bring Russia to heel for its aggression, Western countries have used their sway over the global financial system, unveiling more than 11,300 sanctions since the invasion and freezing some $300 billion of the country’s foreign reserves. At the same time, more than 1,000 companies, ranging from BP
(BP) to McDonald’s
(MCD) and Starbucks
(SBUX), have exited or curtailed operations in the country, citing opposition to the war and new logistical challenges.
Russia’s economic output duly contracted by 2.1% last year, according to a preliminary estimate from the government. But the hit was more limited than forecasters initially expected. When sanctions were first imposed, some economists predicted a contraction of 10% or 15%.
One reason for Russia’s unexpected pluck was itspush toward self-sufficiency following Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Through a policy known as “Fortress Russia,” the government boosted domestic food production and policymakers forced banks to build up their reserves. That created a degree of “durability,” said Ash at Chatham House.
The swift intervention of Russia’s central bank, which jacked up interest rates to 20% after the invasion and implemented currency controls to buttress the ruble, was also a stabilizing force. So was the need for factories to increase production of military goods and replace items that had been imported from the West.
But the greatest support came from high energy prices and the world’s continued thirst for oil and other commodities.
Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of crude, was able to send barrels that would have gone to Europe to countries like China and India. The European Union, which imported an average of 3.3 million barrels of Russian crude and oil products per day in 2021, was also still buying 2.3 million barrels per day as of November, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“It’s a question of natural resources,” Sergey Aleksashenko, Russia’s former deputy minister of finance, said at an event last month hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. That meant the economy experienced a decline, but “not a collapse,” he added.
In fact, Russia’s average monthly oil export revenues rose by 24% last year to $18.1 billion, according to the IEA. Yet a repeat performance is unlikely, presaging increasingly tough decisions for Putin.
The price of a barrel of Urals crude, Russia’s main blend, fell to an average of $49.50 in January after Europe’s oil embargo — as well as a Group of Seven price cap — took effect. By comparison, the global benchmark stood around $82. That suggests that customers like India and China, seeinga smaller pool of interested buyers, are negotiating greater discounts. Russia’s 2023 budget is based on a Urals price of more than $70 per barrel.
Finding new buyers for processed oil products, which are also subject to new embargoes and price caps, won’t be easy either. China and India have their own network of refineries and prefer to buy crude, noted Ben McWilliams, an energy consultant at Bruegel.
Meanwhile, gas exports to Europe have plunged since Russia shut its Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Russia’s government relied on the oil and gas sector for 45% of its budget in 2021. As it plans to maximize defense spending, lower revenues inevitably mean trade-offs. Spending plans for 2023 finalized in December involved a decrease in expenditureon housing and health care, as well as a category that includes public infrastructure.
“Whatever energy resources are obtained, they’ll be spent on military needs,” said Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, acting director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London.
The International Monetary Fund still expects Russia’s economy to expand by 0.3% this year and 2.1% thenext. Yet any outlook is contingent on what happens in Ukraine.
“Whether the economy shrinks or expands in 2023 will be determined by developments in the war,” Tatiana Orlova, an economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. Shortages of workers tied to military conscription and emigration pose a key risk, she noted.
The impact of Western sanctions is poised to develop into a crisis over time. Bloomberg Economics estimates that Putin’s war in Ukraine will slash $190 billion off Russia’sgross domestic product by 2026 compared with the country’s prewar path.
Sectors that rely on imports have been particularly vulnerable. Domestic car makers such as Avtovaz, which manufactures the iconic Ladas, have struggled with shortages of key components and materials.
Russia’s auto industry was already weakened after companies such as Volkswagen
(VLKAF), Renault
(RNLSY), Ford
(F) and Nissan
(NSANF) halted production and began to sell their local assets last year. Chinese firms have stepped up their presence, part of a broader trend. Even so, sales of new cars dropped 63% year-over-year in January, according to the Association of European Businesses.
Across sectors, firms are struggling to plan for the future. A survey of more than 1,000 Russian businesses by the Stolypin Institute of Economic Growth in November found that almost half plan to maintain production over the next one to two years and aren’t thinking about growth. The group said this contributed to a high risk of “long-term stagnation of the Russian economy.”
Given Putin’s ideological commitment to subsuming Ukraine, he’s unlikely to back down, according to Sharafutdinova at King’s College London. But his war chest “is likely, inevitably, to diminish,” she added.
Prioritizing military spending will also come at a social cost, with a “slow and creeping” erosion of living standards, she added.
“In normal times, we might have said that the population would protest against that,” Sharafutdinova said. “But of course, these are not normal times.”
— Clare Sebastian and Olesya Dmitracova contributed reporting.
The Ukrainian military has a pioneering approach to first aid: giving soldiers therapy during war, instead of afterward, in hopes of reducing PTSD. Many frontline soldiers in the war are volunteer fighters who never held a gun before. Debora Patta visits a facility that offers the soldiers group and private therapy sessions, salt room therapies, meditation and more.
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Beijing announced on Saturday that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will travel to China on a state visit from February 28 to March 2.
The announcement of the trip comes a day after Beijing, looking to play a role in mediating a resolution to the Russian war on Ukraine, published a 12-point “position paper” aimed at ending the conflict.
“At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko will pay a state visit to China from February 28 to March 2,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Belarusian foreign ministry confirmed the planned visit, saying the Chinese and Belarusian foreign ministers discussed it in a telephone call on Friday.
Lukashenko has backed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and allowed its territory to be used in the Russian assault. Lukashenko said last week that his country was prepared to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, if attacked. That prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to warn the Belarusian leader not to get directly involved in the war.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday said he will visit China in early April and seek Beijing’s help in ending the war in Ukraine. “The fact that China is engaging in peace efforts is a good thing,” Macron said, according to French media reports.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy also said he would like to engage with Beijing following the proposals unveiled on Friday toward resolving the conflict. Zelenskyy said he was open to considering some aspects of the Chinese “position paper” and would welcome the chance to discuss the proposals with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A meeting with Xi could be “useful” to both countries and for global security, Zelenskyy said.
MOSCOW — Among the perks offered to those stamping their feet to stay warm outside Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium there were hot drinks, payouts, free food or a day off from class. Others had simply been told by their employers to attend, independent media reported.
“We’re from the Russian Post,” a young man with dark hair said glumly, burying his face into his coat. Minutes earlier, a woman in a white wooly hat had called out his name from a list and handed him a paper invite in the colors of the Russian tricolor.
“Invite to the festive program ‘Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland,’” it read.
The mass event at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on Wednesday could hardly be called spontaneous. But it was certainly a crowd-puller.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 and a symbol of its international appeal. Now it is a favorite location for staged patriotic rallies.
This event was timed for Defender of the Fatherland Day on February 23, a traditional holiday in Russia which this year acts as an upbeat to the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a day later.
The lineup included a number of pop stars who are regular faces at patriotic events, such as singers Grigory Leps and Oleg Gazmanov, both of whom are on the EU’s sanctions list.
Тhe singer Shaman belted out his ballad “We’ll rise,” dressed in a T-shirt reading: “I am Russian.”
But the real star was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants of: “Russia! Russia!”
“Right now there is a battle going on our historic lands, for our people … we are proud of them,” he told the crowd. “Today, in defending our interests, our people, our culture, language, territory, all of it, our entire people is the defender of the fatherland.”
Earlier, a group of young children described as being from Mariupol were brought on stage with footage of a destroyed city playing in the background. “I want to thank Uncle Yurya for saving me and hundreds of thousands of others,” one of the girls said before being encouraged to hug а military commander said to have “saved” more than 350 children.
Generally, public messaging has tended to avoid putting too much focus on Ukraine and the war — a term which in Russia is still a criminal offense — and more on a broader and less contentious narrative of patriotism and support for the country’s armed forces.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
At the stadium, some law enforcement officers, but few visitors, brandished Zs, the letter that has become a symbol of the war. Similarly, across the city, billboards featured veterans and modern-day soldiers and slogans such as “We stand together!” but rarely did they explicitly mention Ukraine.
Access to the concert was strictly controlled. There were no tickets for purchase and only a handful of media were allowed in. Attendants had to sign up beforehand via youth organizations, state companies and educational institutions.
“I was signed up by my university,” a young man dressed in a light gray hooded sweater said. Asked whether it had been mandatory, he nodded and looked away.
He declined to give his name and, fearing reprisals, others were similarly wary to talk. “We don’t speak Russian,” a woman of Central Asian appearance said, after being asked what had brought her there.
“It’s very cold today, and we’re just having a snack, thank you, goodbye,” said another woman in a fur coat, who stood outside with a group eating sausage sandwiches and pickles in the snow.
A similar rally in Luzhniki was held in March last year, when Russia marked the eight-year anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. And another in October on Red Square after a ceremony annexing four more Ukrainian regions, despite them not being fully under Russian control.
In fact, since 2014 the rallies have become a fixed feature of Putin’s leadership.
“After Crimea’s annexation, Putin went from aspiring to the legitimacy of an elected president to that of being an almighty Leader. And if you’re a Leader, you need a crowd to gather around you,” analyst Nikolai Petrov, a consultant at Chatham House think tank, told POLITICO.
But even the most fervent Kremlin supporter would struggle to portray the rallies as spontaneous. In fact, the traditional scenes of rows of similar buses transporting similar-looking people who then wave similar-sized Russian flags are more like North Korea than Woodstock.
However, said Petrov, the Kremlin is unlikely to consider this a weakness. “The Kremlin doesn’t need people to mobilize themselves, even in its support,” he said. “The whole idea of such events is to demonstrate loyalty, not some kind of fanatical love.”
Though the Luzhniki concert was the big showstopper, other festivities are expected across the country in the coming days.
According to the business outlet RBC, the presidential administration has sent out guidelines to regional authorities on suitable activities. Suggestions reportedly included painting military-themed murals, staging flash mobs with people lining up in the form of a star-shaped war medal, and arts and crafts workshops to produce, among other things, knitted socks that could later be sent to soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
The real star of the show was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
Russians who have family or friends involved in the “special military operation” have also been encouraged to record personal video messages and share them online under the hashtag #ourheroes.
In one such video posted on Instagram — a platform that has been banned in Russia as extremist but is still widely used via VPN — a teary-eyed woman from the town of Prokhladny in Kabardino-Balkaria dressed in uniform tells her husband: “You’re our rock, our defender. I wish for you to come back victorious, healthy, unharmed. I love you very much.”
Back at Luzhniki, ahead of the rally, loudspeakers promised attendants free hot tea, porridge and sausages.
Meanwhile, coordinators continued to call out names from their clipboards to groups of middle-aged women in mittens and fur coats and men in dark jackets and hats. “Smirnova, Oxana Pavlovna!” one such organizer yelled. Answering to that name, a woman walked forwards and accepted her entry ticket with little emotion.
After getting their names ticked, a trickle of people headed straight back to the metro, away from the grounds before the celebrations had even started, some of them with the Russian tricolor flags they had been given still in hand.
With another anniversary, the annexation of Crimea, around the corner in March, they are likely to be back soon.
In the packed meeting rooms and hallways of Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof last weekend, back-slapping allies pushed an agenda with the kind of forward-looking determination NATO had long sought to portray but just as often struggled to achieve. They pledged more aid for Ukraine. They revamped plans for their own collective defense.
Two days later in Moscow, Vladimir Putin stood alone, rigidly ticking through another speech full of resentment and lonely nationalism, pausing only to allow his audience of grim-faced government functionaries to struggle to their feet in a series of mandatory ovations in a cold, cavernous hall.
With the war in Ukraine now one year old, and no clear path to peace at hand, a newly unified NATO is on the verge of making a series of seismic decisions beginning this summer to revolutionize how it defends itself while forcing slower members of the alliance into action.
The decisions in front of NATO will place the alliance — which protects 1 billion people — on a path to one the most sweeping transformations in its 74-year history. Plans set to be solidified at a summit in Lithuania this summer promise to revamp everything from allies’ annual budgets to new troop deployments to integrating defense industries across Europe.
The goal: Build an alliance that Putin wouldn’t dare directly challenge.
Yet the biggest obstacle could be the alliance itself, a lumbering collection of squabbling nations with parochial interests and a bureaucracy that has often promised way more than it has delivered. Now it has to seize the momentum of the past year to cut through red tape and crank up peacetime procurement strategies to meet an unpredictable, and likely increasingly belligerent Russia.
It’s “a massive undertaking,” said Benedetta Berti, head of policy planning at the NATO secretary-general’s office. The group has spent “decades of focusing our attention elsewhere,” she said. Terrorism, immigration — all took priority over Russia.
“It’s really a quite significant historic shift for the alliance,” she said.
For now, individual nations are making the right noises. But the proof will come later this year when they’re asked to open up their wallets, and defense firms are approached with plans to partner with rivals.
To hear alliance leaders and heads of state tell it, they’re ready to do it.
“Ukraine has to win this,” Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s military committee, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We cannot allow Russia to win, and for a good reason — because the ambitions of Russia are much larger than Ukraine.”
All eyes on Vilnius
The big change will come In July, when NATO allies gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their big annual summit.
Gen. Chris Cavoli will reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice | Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images
NATO’s top military leader will lay out a new plan for how the alliance will put more troops and equipment along the eastern front. And Gen. Chris Cavoli, supreme allied commander for Europe, will also reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice.
The changes will amount to a “reengineering” of how Europe is defended, one senior NATO official said.
The plans will be based on geographic regions, with NATO asking countries to take responsibility for different security areas, from space to ground and maritime forces.
“Allies will know even more clearly what their jobs will be in the defense of Europe,” the official said.
NATO leaders have also pledged to reinforce the alliance’s eastern defenses and make 300,000 troops ready to rush to help allies on short notice, should the need arise.Under the current NATO Response Force, the alliance can make available 40,000 troops in less than 15 days. Under the new force model, 100,000 troops could be activated in up to 10 days, with a further 200,000 ready to go in up to 30 days.
But a good plan can only get allies so far.
NATO’s aspirations represent a departure from the alliance’s previous focus on short-term crisis management. Essentially, the alliance is “going in the other direction and focusing more on collective security and deterrence and defense,” said a second NATO official, who like the first, requested anonymity to discuss ongoing planning.
Chief among NATO’s challenges: Getting everyone’s armed forces to cooperate. Countries such as Germany, which has underfunded its military modernization programs for years, will likely struggle to get up to speed. And Sweden and Finland — on the cusp of joining NATO — are working to integrate their forces into the alliance.
Others simply have to expand their ranks for NATO to meet its stated quotas.
“NATO needs the ability to add speed, put large formations in the field — much larger than they used to,” said Bastian Giegerich, director of defense and military analysis and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
East vs. West
An east-west ideological fissure is also simmering within NATO.
Countries on the alliance’s eastern front have long been frustrated, at times publicly, with the slower pace of change many in Western Europe and the United States are advocating — even after Russia’s invasion.
Joe Biden traveled to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
“We started to change and for western partners, it’s been kind of a delay,” Polish Armed Forces Gen. Rajmund Andrzejczak said during a visit to Washington this month.
Those concerns on the eastern front are being heard, tentatively.
Last summer, NATO branded Russia as its most direct threat — a significant shift from post-Cold War efforts to build a partnership with Moscow. U.S. President Joe Biden has also conducted his own charm offensive, traveling to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights.
Still, NATO’s eastern front, which is within striking distance of Russia, is imploring its western neighbors to move faster to help fill in the gaps along the alliance’s edges and to buttress reinforcement plans.
It is important to “fix the slots — which countries are going to deliver which units,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, adding that he hopes the U.S. “will take a significant part.”
Officials and experts agree that these changes are needed for the long haul.
“If Ukraine manages to win, then Ukraine and Europe and NATO are going to have a very disgruntled Russia on its doorstep, rearming, mobilizing, ready to go again,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If Ukraine loses and Russia wins,” he noted, the West would have “an emboldened Russia on our doorstep — so either way, NATO has a big Russia problem.”
Wakeup call from Russia
The rush across the Continent to rearm as weapons and equipment flows from long-dormant stockpiles into Ukraine has been as sudden as the invasion itself.
After years of flat defense budgets and Soviet-era equipment lingering in the motor pools across the eastern front, calls for more money and more Western equipment threaten to overwhelm defense firms without the capacity to fill those orders in the near term. That could create a readiness crisis in ammunition, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and anti-armor weapons.
A damaged Russian tank near Kyiv on February 14, 2023 | Sergei Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE
NATO actually recognized this problem a decade ago but lacked the ability to do much about it. The first attempt to nudge member states into shaking off the post-Cold War doldrums started slowly in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
After Moscow took Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014, the alliance signed the “Wales pledge” to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense by 2024.
The vast majority of countries politely ignored the vow, giving then-President Donald Trump a major talking point as he demanded Europe step up and stop relying on Washington to provide a security umbrella.
But nothing focuses attention like danger, and the sight of Russian tanks rumbling toward Kyiv as Putin ranted about Western depravity and Russian destiny jolted Europe into action. One year on, the bills from those early promises to do more are coming due.
“We are in this for the long haul” in Ukraine, said Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, a body comprising allies’ uniformed defense chiefs. But sustaining the pipeline funneling weapons and ammunition to Ukraine will take not only the will of individual governments but also a deep collaboration between the defense industries in Europe and North America. Those commitments are still a work in progress.
Part of that effort, Bauer said, is working to get countries to collaborate on building equipment that partners can use. It’s a job he thinks the European Union countries are well-suited to lead.
That’s a touchy subject for the EU, a self-proclaimed peace project that by definition can’t use its budget to buy weapons. But it can serve as a convener. And it agreed to do just that last week, pledging with NATO and Ukraine to jointly establish a more effective arms procurement system for Kyiv.
Talk, of course, is one thing. Traditionally NATO and the EU have been great at promising change, and forming committees and working groups to make that change, only to watch it get bogged down in domestic politics and big alliance in-fighting. And many countries have long fretted about the EU encroaching on NATO’s military turf.
But this time, there is a sense that things have to move, that western countries can’t let Putin win his big bet — that history would repeat itself, and that Europe and the U.S. would be frozen by an inability to agree.
“People need to be aware that this is a long fight. They also need to be brutally aware that this is a war,” the second NATO official said. “This is not a crisis. This is not some small incident somewhere that can be managed. This is an all-out war. And it’s treated that way now by politicians all across Europe and across the alliance, and that’s absolutely appropriate.”
Paul McLeary and Lili Bayer also contributed reporting from Munich.
MOSCOW — Every year, during the anniversary of the battle that turned back the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, the city of Volgograd is briefly renamed Stalingrad, its Soviet-era name.
During this year’s commemoration, however, authorities went further. They unveiled a bust of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and paraded soldiers dressed as secret police in a bid to emphasize the parallels between Russia’s past and its present.
“It’s unbelievable but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Volgograd to deliver a speech on February 2. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.”
Putin’s statement was full of factual inaccuracies: Russia is fighting not the West but Ukraine, because it invaded the country; the German Leopards being delivered to Kyiv date back only to the 1960s; there’s no plan for them to enter Russian territory.
But the Russian president’s evocation of former victories was telling — it was a distillation of his approach to justifying an invasion that hasn’t gone to plan. These days in Russia, if the present is hard to explain, appeal to the past.
“The language of history has replaced the language of politics,” said Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg. “It is used to explain what is happening in a simple way that Russians understand.”
Putin has long harkened back to World War II — known in the country as The Great Patriotic War, in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died.
Invoking the fight against Adolf Hitler simultaneously taps into Russian trauma and frames the country as being on the right side of history. “It has been turned into a master narrative through which [Putin] communicates the basic ideas of what is good and bad; who is friend and who foe,” said Kurilla.
Putin’s announcement of his full-scale assault on Ukraine was no exception. On February 24, 2022, Russians awoke to a televised speech announcing the start of “a special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.
“The official narrative was: ‘there are fascists in Ukraine, and we want to help people there. We are fighting for the sake of a great cause,’” said Tamara Eidelman, an expert in Russian propaganda.
On the streets, however, Russians seemed confused.
Asked in the early days of the war what “denazification” meant by the Russian website 7×7, one man suggested: “Respect for people of different ethnicities, respect for different languages, equality before the law and freedom of the press.”
Russia’s laws punish those seen as discrediting the Russian Armed Forces or spreading fake news by using the word “war” | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
Another interviewee ventured a different definition: “Destroy everyone who is not for a normal, peaceful life.”
The term “special military operation” at least was somewhat clearer. It suggested a speedy, professional, targeted offensive.
“There is a certain mundaneness to it — ‘yes, this is going to be unpleasant, but we’ll take care of it quickly,’” said Eidelman, the propaganda expert.
А week after the invasion, Russia’s laws were amended to punish those seen as discrediting the Russian armed forces or spreading fake news, including by using the word “war.”
Historical parallels
As the special military operation turned into a protracted conflict, and the facts on the ground refused to bend to Putin’s narrative, the Kremlin has gradually been forced to change its story.
Images of a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol or corpses littering the streets of Bucha were dismissed by state propaganda as fake or a provocation — and yet by spring the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” had practically disappeared from the public sphere.
New justifications for the invasion were inserted into speeches and broadcasts, such as a claim that the United States had been developing biological weapons in Ukraine. In October, Putin declared that one of the main goals of the war had been to provide Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, with a stable water supply.
But the appeal to history has remained central to Putin’s communication effort.
While World War II remains his favorite leitmotif, the Russian president has been expansive in his historical comparisons. In June, he referenced Peter the Great’s campaign to “return what was Russia’s.” And during an October ceremony to lay claim to four regions in Ukraine, it was Catherine the Great who got a mention.
“Every so many months, another story is put forward as if they’re studying the reaction, looking to see what resonates,” said Kurilla.
The search for historical parallels has also bubbled up from below, as even supporters of the war search for justification. “Especially in spring and early summer, there was an attempt to Sovietize the war, with people waving red flags, trying to make sense of it through that lens.”
In the city of Syzran, students were filmed late last year pushing dummy tanks around in a sports hall in a re-enactment of the World War II Battle of Kursk. More recently, law students in St. Petersburg took part in a supposed restaging of the Nuremberg trials, which the region’s governor praised as “timely” in light of Russia’s current struggle against Nazism.
More recent statement by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin himself have made the idea of “war” less taboo | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Throughout, the Kremlin has sought to depict the conflict as a battle against powerful Western interests bent on using Ukraine to undermine Russia — a narrative that has become increasingly important as the Kremlin demands bigger sacrifices from the Russian population, most notably with a mobilization campaign in September.
“Long before February last year, people were already telling us: We are being dragged into a war by the West which we don’t want but there is no retreating from,” said Denis Volkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Center.
The sentiment, he added, has been widespread since the nineties, fed by disappointment over Russia’s diminished standing after the Cold War. “What we observe today is the culmination of that feeling of resentment, of unrealized illusions, especially among those over 50,” he said.
Long haul
With the war approaching the one-year mark, the narrative is once again having to adapt.
Even as hundreds in Russia are being prosecuted under wartime censorship laws, slips of the tongue by top officials such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and even Putin himself in December have made the idea of “war” less taboo.
“We are moving away from a special military operation towards a holy war … against 50 countries united by Satanism,” the veteran propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his program in January.
According to Levada, Russians are now expecting the war to last another six months or longer. “The majority keep to the sidelines, and passively support the war, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly,” said Volkov, the pollster.
Meanwhile, reports of Western weapons deliveries have been used to reinforce the argument that Russia is battling the West under the umbrella of NATO — no longer in an ideological sense, but in a literal one.
“A year of war has changed not the words that are said themselves but what they stand for in real life,” said Kurilla, the historian. “What started out as a historic metaphor is being fueled by actual spilled blood.”
In newspaper stands, Russians will find magazines such as “The Historian,” full of detailed spreads arguing that the Soviet Union’s Western allies in World War II were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers all along — another recycled trope from Russian history.
“During the Cold War, you would find caricatures depicting Western leaders such as President Eisenhower in fascist dress and a NATO helmet,” said Eidelman, the expert in Russian propaganda.
“This level of hatred and aggressive nationalism has not been seen since the late Stalin period,” she added.
The anti-West sentiment in Russia has been fed by disappointment over the country’s diminished standing after the Cold War | Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
On Tuesday, three days before the one-year anniversary of the invasion, Putin is scheduled to give another speech. He is expected to distract from Russia’s failure to capture any new large settlements in Ukraine by rehearsing old themes such as his gripes with the West and Russia’s past and present heroism.
There may be a limit, however, to how much the Russian president can infuse his subjects with enthusiasm for his country’s past glories.
In Volgograd, proposals to have the city permanently renamed to Stalingrad have been unsuccessful, with polls showing a large majority of the population is against such an initiative.
When it comes to embracing the past, Russians are still one step behind their leaders.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion, senior Ukraine opposition politicians and former ministers were brimming with frustration. They’d been imploring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet with them — something he’d not done since his landslide election nearly two years before.
They’d also been urging him to boost funding for the country’s armed forces for months, clamoring for Ukraine’s reservists to be called up as America’s warnings of an invasion intensified — an invasion Zelenskyy still thought unlikely. They wanted intensive war-planning, including the drafting and publication of civil defense orders, so people would know what to do when the guns roared.
“Ukraine is trapped with a national leader who does not think strategically,” Lesia Vasylenko, a lawmaker and member of the liberal and pro-European political Holos party, had told me five days before the invasion.
“I think that’s the thing he will be blamed for later. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about refusing to have in your entourage experts who know what questions to ask, and having advisers who can contradict and challenge you, and we may pay a price for that,” she’d fumed.
Of course, Zelenskyy’s missteps — as Vasylenko and many other opposition lawmakers see them — have since been forgiven, but they have not been forgotten. And these missteps form the basis of their worries for post-war Ukraine. They see a pattern that will become even more troubling when the guns fall silent, arguing that the president’s strengths as a lionhearted wartime leader are ill-suited for peacetime.
War hasn’t done anything to temper Zelenskyy’s impatience with governing complexities or with institutions that don’t move as fast as he would like or fall in line fast enough. He prefers the big picture, ignores details and likes to rely on an inner circle of trusted friends.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now — even hero-worshipped — by a starstruck West for his inspirational wartime rhetoric, spellbinding oratory and skill at capturing the hearts of audiences from Washington to London and Brussels to Warsaw, Zelenskyy floundered as president before Russia invaded. Few gave him much chance of being reelected in 2024, as his poll numbers were plummeting — his favorability rating was at 31 percent by the end of 2021.
He had promised a lot — probably too much — but achieved little.
“Ukraine has two main problems: the war in the Donbas and the fear of people investing in the country,” Zelenskyy had said shortly after his election win. But his anti-corruption efforts stalled and were unhurried, while his promise to solve the problem of the Donbas went nowhere. And in his early eagerness to clinch a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declined a sit-down, some criticized Zelenskyy for thinking too much of his powers of persuasion and charisma.
“He thought peace would be easy to establish because all you needed to do was to ‘look into Putin’s eyes’ and talk to him sincerely,” said lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytskyi.
“He became president without any political experience, or any experience in managing state structures. He thought running a state is actually quite simple. You make decisions and they have to be implemented,” Kniazhytskyi told me. And when things went wrong, his reaction was always, it’s “the fault of predecessors, who need to be imprisoned,” Kniazhytskyi said.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now, he floundered as president before Russia invaded | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Yet, Zelenskyy’s transformation from disappointing peacetime leader to, in the hyperbolic words of French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, “a new, young and magnificent founding father” of the free world, has been startling.
Even his domestic critics doff their caps to him for his strengths as a superb communicator: His daily addresses to Ukrainians have steadied them, given direction and boosted morale, even when spirits understandably flag. And they acknowledge he likely saved the country by declining U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s offer for “a ride” out of Kyiv.
“He has become a compelling leader,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the upcoming “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the Russian War.” According to Karatnycky, Zelenskyy’s strengths as a communicator match the times. “He’s good at channeling public opinion, but he’s more effective now because the country is much more united and surer about its identity, interests and objectives. He’s still the same guy he was — an actor and performer — but that makes him an ideal war leader because he’s able to embody the public impulse,” he added.
But when normal politics are in play and the public isn’t united, Zelenskyy’s an inconsistent leader who switches the script and recasts the story to chase the vagaries and whims of public opinion. “When the public purpose is clear, he has great strength, and in wartime, he has behind him the absolute power of the state. But when the carriage turns into a pumpkin again, he’s going to have to cope with a very different world,” Karatnycky concluded.
And that world hasn’t really gone away.
Domestic political criticism is mounting — though little noted by an international media still enraptured by Zelenskyy’s charismatic appeal and enthralled by the simple story of David versus Goliath.
Meanwhile, in the Verkhovna Rada — the country’s parliament — frustration is building, with lawmakers complaining they’re being overlooked by a government that was already impatient of oversight before the war and now shuns it almost entirely. Zelenskyy has only met with top opposition leaders once since Russia invaded — and that was nearly a year ago.
“The routine of ministers being questioned by the Rada has been abandoned,” said opposition lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a member of the European Solidarity party and former deputy prime minister in the previous government of former President Petro Poroshenko.
“Wartime does call for urgent decisions to be taken quickly, and it calls for shortened procedures. And so that’s kind of understandable,” she said. “But we are seeing decisions being increasingly centralized and concentrated in fewer hands, and this is having an impact on the balance of political power, and [it’s] damaging to the system of governance we are trying to develop and the strengthening of our democratic institutions in line with the criteria laid out by the EU for convergence.”
Klympush-Tsintsadze is worried the recent wave of anti-corruption arrests was more an exercise in smoke and mirrors in the run-up to February’s EU-Ukraine summit — and one that might be used as an opportunity to centralize power even further. “If someone thinks that centralization of power is the answer to our challenges, that someone is wrong,” she added. “I think it is important to watch very closely how anti-corruption cases develop, and whether there will be transparent investigations, and whether the rule of law will be closely observed.”
According to Kniazhytskyi, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Zelenskyy is a populist politician and shares the personality-focused flaws of this breed. However, what cheers the opposition lawmaker is how Ukrainian civil society has bloomed during the war, how local self-government has been strengthened because of wartime volunteering and mutual assistance and how some state bodies have performed — notably, the railways and the energy sector.
It is this — along with a strong sense of national belonging forged by the conflict — that will form the foundation of a strong post-war Ukraine, he said.
The Baltic states and Poland want to make it easier to sanction the family members and entourage of Russia’s richest men and women but are facing resistance from Hungary, several EU diplomats told POLITICO.
Under its current rules, the EU can freeze the assets and impose visa bans on “leading businesspersons operating in Russia.” Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland now want to expand this definition, according to their proposal seen by POLITICO, to include “their immediate family members, or other natural persons, benefitting from them.”
The EU has sanctioned more than 1,400 people in relation to Russia’s activities in Ukraine, many of who are Russian oligarchs. An additional 96 people could be added to the EU’s next sanctions package, draft documents seen by POLITICO indicate. Including oligarchs’ family members and other associates of oligarchs would make it possible to sanctions thousands more people without having to prove that they are directly involved in the war in Ukraine or acting in the economic interest of the Russian state.
This could, for example, apply to the ex-wife of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, whose daughters have been sanctioned but has not been herself, and other members of the oligarchs’ entourage.
While some countries had doubts, legal experts are on board, said one of the diplomats.
Yet, in a meeting on Tuesday, at which EU ambassadors discussed the bloc’s next round of sanctions, Hungary resisted such plans, the diplomats said. Budapest argued that this is not part of the 10th sanctions package, said one of the diplomats. Hungary has long been skeptical of including too many names on the list.
Hungary also pushed to strike four people out the already existing sanctions list, two of the diplomats said.
It was not immediately possible to learn the identity of the four individuals.
That request is igniting tensions, and will be likely subject to another heated debate during a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday. During that meeting, they will not only discuss the new package of sanctions against Russia, but also the so-called rollover of the 1,400-plus names already on the list to keep them sanctioned.
That’s because the regime is subject to a six-month review, which has hitherto been more or less a formality. Now, Hungary is using this extension review as leverage by insisting that four specific people have to be struck from the EU’s existing sanctions list before it will agree to the rollover. If Hungary blocks the rollover and refuses to compromise, all 1,400 people would be de-listed, the two diplomats warned.
One of the diplomats didn’t hide his frustration: “It shows Hungary’s disregard for unity and European values that they are willing to risk this in the week where we commemorate one year since the Russian invasion,” he said.
And those aren’t the only measure that Hungary takes issue with. It also is chiefly against sanctioning personnel working in the nuclear sector.
But a Hungarian official poured water on this last point, saying that “the only open issue for Hungary is with the length of the rollover and not with the listings.”
On the oligarchs issue and the proposal of the Baltics and Poland, the same Hungarian official said that this is not part of the 10th package.
As all EU countries have to agree to the proposal, any country could veto the move even if all other 26 EU countries were in favor. Time is running out, with the EU wanting to adopt the 10th sanctions package before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday.
One year of war in Ukraine has left deep scars — including on the country’s natural landscape.
The conflict has ruined vast swaths of farmland, burned down forests and destroyed national parks. Damage to industrial facilities has caused heavy air, water and soil pollution, exposing residents to toxic chemicals and contaminated water. Regular shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, means the risk of a nuclear accident still looms large.
The total number of cases of environmental damage tops 2,300, Ukraine’s environment minister, Ruslan Strilets, told POLITICO in an emailed statement. His ministry estimates the total cost at $51.45 billion (€48.33 billion).
Of those documented cases, 1,078 have already been handed over to law enforcement agencies, according to Strilets, as part of an effort to hold Moscow accountable in court for environmental damage.
A number of NGOs have also stepped in to document the environmental impacts of the conflict, with the aim of providing data to international organizations like the United Nations Environment Program to help them prioritize inspections or pinpoint areas at higher risk of pollution.
Among them is PAX, a peace organization based in the Netherlands, which is working with the Center for Information Resilience (CIR) to record and independently verify incidents of environmental damage in Ukraine. So far, it has verified 242 such cases.
Left: Hostomel, Ukraine, after a Russian assault. Right: Port of Mykolaiv after a Russian strike | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
“We mainly rely on what’s being documented, and what we can see,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, a humanitarian disarmament project leader with PAX. Information comes from social media, public media accounts and satellite imagery, and is then independently verified.
“That also means that if there’s no one there to record it … we’re not seeing it,” he said. “It’s such a big country, so there’s fighting in so many locations, and undoubtedly, we are missing things.”
After the conflict is over, the data could also help identify “what is needed in terms of cleanup, remediation and restoration of affected areas,” Zwijnenburg said.
Rebuilding green
While some conservation projects — such as rewilding of the Danube delta — have continued despite the war, most environmental protection work has halted.
“It is very difficult to talk about saving other species if the people who are supposed to do it are in danger,” said Oksana Omelchuk, environmental expert with the Ukrainian NGO EcoAction.
That’s unlikely to change in the near future, she added, pointing out that the environment is littered with mines.
Before and after flooding in the Kyiv area, Ukraine | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Agricultural land is particularly affected, blocking farmers from using fields and contaminating the soil, according to Zwijnenburg. That “might have an impact on food security” in the long run, he said.
When it comes to de-mining efforts, residential areas will receive higher priority, meaning it could take a long time to make natural areas safe again.
The delay will “[hinder] the implementation of any projects for the restoration and conservation of species,” according to Omelchuk.
And, of course, fully restoring Ukraine’s nature won’t be possible until “Russian troops leave the territory” she said.
Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol before and after a Russian attack |Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Meanwhile, Kyiv is banking that the legal case it is building against Moscow will become a potential source of financing for rebuilding the country and bringing its scarred landscape and ecosystems back to health.
It is also tapping into EU coffers.In a move intended to help the country restore its environment following Russia’s invasion, Ukraine in June became the first non-EU country to join the LIFE program, the EU’s funding instrument for environment and climate.
Earlier this month, Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius announced a €7 million scheme — dubbed the Phoenix Initiative — to help Ukrainian cities rebuild greener and to connect Ukrainian cities with EU counterparts that can share expertise on achieving climate neutrality.
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Louise Guillot, Antonia Zimmermann and Giovanna Coi
KYIV — As the distant howl of air raid sirens echoes around them, a dozen Ukrainian soldiers clamber out of camouflaged tents perched on a hill off a road just outside Kyiv, hidden from view by a thick clump of trees. The soldiers, pupils of a drone academy, gather around a white Starlink antenna, puffing at cigarettes and doomscrolling on their phones — taking a break between classes, much like students around the world do.
But this isn’t your average university.
The soldiers have come here to study air reconnaissance techniques and to learn how to use drones — most of them commercial ones — in a war zone. Their training, as well as the supply chains that facilitate the delivery of drones to Ukraine, are kept on the down low. The Ukrainians need to keep their methods secret not only from the Russian invaders, but also from the tech firms that manufacture the drones and provide the high-speed satellite internet they rely on, who have chafed at their machines being used for lethal purposes.
Drones are essential for the Ukrainians: The flying machines piloted from afar can spot the invaders approaching, reduce the need for soldiers to get behind enemy lines to gather intelligence, and allow for more precise strikes, keeping civilian casualties down. In places like Bakhmut, a key Donetsk battleground, the two sides engage in aerial skirmishes; flocks of drones buzz ominously overhead, spying, tracking, directing artillery.
So, to keep their flying machines in the air, the Ukrainians have adapted, adjusting their software, diversifying their supply chains, utilizing the more readily available commercial drones on the battlefield and learning to work around the limitations and bans foreign corporations have imposed or threatened to impose.
Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army. Dronarium, which before Russia’s invasion last year used to shoot glossy commercial drone footage and gonzo political protests, now provides five-day training sessions to soldiers in the Kyiv Oblast. In the past year, around 4,500 pilots, most of them now in the Ukrainian armed forces, have taken Dronarium’s course.
What’s on the curriculum
On the hill outside Kyiv, behind the thicket of trees, break time’s over and school’s back in session. After the air raid siren stops,some soldiers grab their flying machines and head to a nearby field; others return to their tents to study theory.
A key lesson: How to make civilian drones go the distance on the battlefield.
“In the five days we spend teaching them how to fly drones, one and a half days are spent on training for the flight itself,” a Dronarium instructor who declined to give his name over security concerns but uses the call sign “Prometheus” told POLITICO. “Everything else is movement tactics, camouflage, preparatory process, studying maps.”
Drone reconnaissance teams work in pairs, like snipers, Prometheus said. One soldier flies a drone using a keypad; their colleague looks at the map, comparing it with the video stream from the drone and calculating coordinates. The drone teams “work directly with artillery,” Prometheus continued. “We transfer the picture from the battlefield to the servers and to the General Staff. Thanks to us, they see what they are doing and it helps them hit the target.”
Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army | John Moore/Getty Images
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many of these drone school students were civilians. One, who used to be a blogger and videogame streamer but is now an intelligence pilot in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, goes by the call sign “Public.” When he’s on the front line, he must fly his commercial drones in any weather — it’s the only way to spot enemy tanks moving toward his unit’s position.
“Without them,” Public said, “it is almost impossible to notice the equipment, firing positions and personnel in advance. Without them, it becomes very difficult to coordinate during attack or defense. One drone can sometimes save dozens of lives in one flight.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher: “If you don’t fly, these tanks will kill your comrades. So, you fly. The drone freezes, falls and you pick up the next one. Because the lives of those targeted by a tank are more expensive than any drone.”
Army of drones
The war has made the Bayraktar military drone a household name, immortalized in song by the Ukrainians. Kyiv’s UAV pilots also use Shark, RQ-35 Heidrun, FLIRT Cetus and other military-grade machines.
“It is difficult to have an advantage over Russia in the number of manpower and weapons. Russia uses its soldiers as meat,” Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said earlier this month. But every Ukrainian life, he continued, “is important to us. Therefore, the only way is to create a technological advantage over the enemy.”
Until recently, the Ukrainian army didn’t officially recognize the position of drone operator. It was only in January that Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi ordered the army to create 60 companies made up of UAV pilots, indicating also that Kyiv planned to scale up its own production of drones. Currently, Ukrainian firms make only 10 percent of the drones the country needs for the war, according to military volunteer and founder of the Air Intelligence Support Center Maria Berlinska.
In the meantime, many of Ukraine’s drone pilots prefer civilian drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI — Mavics and Matrices — which are small, relatively cheap at around €2,500 a pop, with decent zoom lenses and user-friendly operations.
Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor. “Larger drones with wings fly farther and can do reconnaissance far behind enemy lines. But at some point, you lose the connection with it and just have to wait until it comes back. Mavics have great zoom and can hang in the air for a long time, collecting data without much risk for the drone.”
But civilian machines, made for hobbyists not soldiers, last two, maybe three weeks in a war zone. And DJI last year said it would halt sales to both Kyiv and Moscow, making it difficult to replace the machines that are lost on the battlefield.
In response, Kyiv has loosened export controls for commercial drones, and is buying up as many as it can, often using funds donated by NGOs such as United24 “Army of Drones” initiative. Ukraine’s digital transformation ministry said that in the three months since the initiative launched, it has purchased 1,400 military and commercial drones and facilitated training for pilots, often via volunteers. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation said it has purchased more than 4,100 drones since Russia’s full-scale invasion began last year — most were DJI’s Mavic 3s, along with the company’s Martice 30s and Matrice 300s.
But should Ukraine be concerned about the fact many of its favorite drones are manufactured by a Chinese company, given Beijing’s “no limits” partnership with Moscow?
Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images
DJI, the largest drone-maker in the world, has publicly claimed it can’t obtain user data and flight information unless the user submits it to the company. But its alleged ties to the Chinese state, as well as the fact the U.S. has blacklisted its technology (over claims it was used to surveil ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang), have raised eyebrows. DJI has denied both allegations.
Asked if DJI’s China links worried him, Prometheus seemed unperturbed.
“We understand who we are dealing with — we use their technology in our interests,” he said. “Indeed, potentially our footage can be stored somewhere on Chinese servers. However, they store terabytes of footage from all over the world every day, so I doubt anyone could trace ours.”
Dealing with Elon
Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced it had moved to restrict the Ukrainian military’s use of its Starlink satellite internet service because it was using it to control drones. The U.S. space company has been providing internet to Ukraine since last February — losing access would be a big problem.
“It is not that our army goes blind if Starlink is off,” said Prometheus, the drone instructor. “However, we do need to have high-speed internet to correct artillery fire in real-time. Without it, we will have to waste more shells in times of ongoing shell shortages.”
But while the SpaceX announcement sparked outcry from some of Kyiv’s backers, as yet, Ukraine’s operations haven’t been affected by the move, Digital Transformation Minister Fedorov told POLITICO.
Prometheus had a theory as to why: “I think Starlink will stay with us. It is impossible to switch it off only for drones. If Musk completely turns it off, he will also have to turn it off for hospitals that use the same internet to order equipment and even perform online consultations during surgeries at the war front. Will he switch them off too?”
And if Starlink does go down, the Ukrainians will manage, Prometheus said with a wry smile: “We have our tools to fix things.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautiously welcomed Beijing’s efforts toward ending the war in Ukraine and said he would like to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss China’s proposals.
Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv Friday to mark the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Zelenskyy said he was open to considering some aspects of the 12-point “position paper” published by the Chinese foreign ministry. Both NATO and the EU have criticized the initiative, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying that “China has taken sides” in the Ukraine conflict.
Beijing claims to have a neutral stance in the war but also has said it has a “no limits” relationship with Moscow and has refused to criticize President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said a meeting with Xi could be “useful” to both countries and for global security. “As far as I know, China respects historical integrity,” he told reporters in Kyiv.
“I believe that the fact that China started talking about Ukraine is not bad,” Zelenskyy said, according to the Associated Press. “But the question is what follows the words. The question is in the steps and where they will lead to.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called the Chinese proposals “unrealistic” in a tweet on Saturday.
Zelenskyy also warned Beijing against providing Russia with weapons, something of increasing concern to Western governments. China is considering providing drones and ammunition to help Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO on Friday.
“I very much want to believe that China will not deliver weapons to Russia, and for me this is very important,” Zelenskyy said, according to Reuters.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said the alliance is closely monitoring China’s activities, adding that Beijing sending lethal aid to Moscow would be a “very big mistake.”
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday welcomed Beijing’s initiative on the conflict in Ukraine and said he will visit China in early April and seek Chinese help in ending the war. “The fact that China is engaging in peace efforts is a good thing,” Macron said, according to French media reports.
The French leader also asked Beijing “not to supply any arms to Russia.” And he sought Beijing’s aid to “exert pressure on Russia to ensure it never uses chemical or nuclear weapons and it stops this aggression prior to negotiations,” according to the reports.
Meanwhile, Beijing announced on Saturday that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will visit China on a state visit from February 28 to March 2. The Belarusian foreign ministry confirmed the planned visit.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, has backed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and allowed its territory to be used in the Russian assault. Lukashenko said last week that his country was prepared to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, if attacked.
Zelenskyy also said that any proposal to end the war would be acceptable only if it led to Putin pulling his troops out of all occupied Ukrainian territory.
LONDON — It was clear when Boris Johnson was forced from Downing Street that British politics had changed forever.
But few could have predicted that less than six months later, all angry talk of a cross-Channel trade war would be a distant memory, with Britain and the EU striking a remarkable compromise deal over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland.
Private conversations with more than a dozen U.K. and EU officials, politicians and diplomats reveal how the Brexit world changed completely after Johnson’s departure — and how an “unholy trinity” of little-known civil servants, ensconced in a gloomy basement in Brussels, would mastermind a seismic shift in Britain’s relationship with the Continent.
They were aided by an unlikely sequence of political events in Westminster — not least an improbable change of mood under the combative Liz Truss; and then the jaw-dropping rise to power of the ultra-pragmatic Rishi Sunak. Even the amiable figure of U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would play his part, glad-handing his way around Europe and smoothing over cracks that had grown ever-wider since 2016.
As Sunak’s Conservative MPs pore over the detail of his historic agreement with Brussels — and await the all-important verdict of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland — POLITICO has reconstructed the dramatic six-month shift in Britain’s approach that brought us to the brink of the Brexit deal we see today.
Bye-bye Boris
Johnson’s departure from Downing Street, on September 6, triggered an immediate mood shift in London toward the EU — and some much-needed optimism within the bloc about future cross-Channel relations.
For key figures in EU capitals, Johnson would always be the untrustworthy figure who signed the protocol agreement only to disown it months afterward.
In Paris, relations were especially poisonous, amid reports of Johnson calling the French “turds”; endless spats with the Elysée over post-Brexit fishing rights, sausages and cross-Channel migrants; and Britain’s role in the AUKUS security partnership, which meant the loss of a multi-billion submarine contract for France. Paris’ willingness to engage with Johnson was limited in the extreme.
Truss, despite her own verbal spats with French President Emmanuel Macron — and her famously direct approach to diplomacy — was viewed in a different light. Her success at building close rapport with negotiating partners had worked for her as trade secretary, and once she became prime minister, she wanted to move beyond bilateral squabbles and focus on global challenges, including migration, energy and the war in Ukraine.
“Boris had become ‘Mr. Brexit,’” one former U.K. government adviser said. “He was the one the EU associated with the protocol, and obviously [Truss] didn’t come with the same baggage. She had covered the brief, but she didn’t have the same history. As prime minister, Liz wanted to use her personal relationships to move things on — but that wasn’t the same as a shift in the underlying substance.”
Indeed, Truss was still clear on the need to pass the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given U.K. ministers powers to overrule part of the protocol unilaterally, in order to ensure leverage in the talks with the European Commission.
Truss also triggered formal dispute proceedings against Brussels for blocking Britain’s access to the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. And her government maintained Johnson’s refusal to implement checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, causing deep irritation in Brussels.
But despite the noisy backdrop, tentative contact with Brussels quietly resumed in September, with officials on both sides trying to rebuild trust. Truss, however, soon became “very disillusioned by the lack of pragmatism from the EU,” one of her former aides said.
“The negotiations were always about political will, not technical substance — and for whatever reason, the political will to compromise from the Commission was never there when Liz, [ex-negotiator David] Frost, Boris were leading things,” they said.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Truss, of course, would not be leading things for long. An extraordinary meltdown of the financial markets precipitated her own resignation in late October, after just six weeks in office. Political instability in Westminster once again threatened to derail progress.
But Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street — amid warnings of a looming U.K. recession — gave new impetus to the talks. An EU official said the mood music improved further, and that discussions with London became “much more constructive” as a result.
David Lidington, a former deputy to ex-PM Theresa May who played a key role in previous Brexit negotiations, describes Sunak as a “globalist” rather than an “ultra-nationalist,” who believes Britain ought to have “a sensible, friendly and grown-up relationship” with Brussels outside the EU.
During his time as chancellor, Sunak was seen as a moderating influence on his fellow Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, several of whom seemed happy to rush gung-ho toward a trade war with the EU.
“Rishi has always thought of the protocol row as a nuisance, an issue he wanted to get dealt with,” the former government adviser first quoted said.
One British officialsuggested the new prime minister’s reputation for pragmatism gave the U.K. negotiating team “an opportunity to start again.”
Sunak’s slow decision-making and painstaking attention to detail — the subject of much criticism in Whitehall — proved useful in calming EU jitters about the new regime, they added.
“When he came in, it wasn’t just the calming down of the markets. It was everyone across Europe and in the U.S. thinking ‘OK, they’re done going through their crazy stage,’” the same officialsaid. “It’s the time he takes with everything, the general steadiness.”
EU leaders “have watched him closely, they listened to what he said, and they have been prepared to trust him and see how things go,” Lidington noted.
Global backdrop
As months of chaos gave way to calm in London, the West was undergoing a seismic reorganization.
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a flurry of coordinated work for EU and U.K. diplomats — including sanctions, military aid, reconstruction talks and anti-inflation packages. A sense began to emerge that it was in both sides’ common interest to get the Northern Ireland protocol row out of the way.
“The war in Ukraine has completely changed the context over the last year,” an EU diplomat said.
A second U.K. official agreed. “Suddenly we realized that the 2 percent of the EU border we’d been arguing about was nothing compared to the massive border on the other side of the EU, which Putin was threatening,” they said. “And suddenly there wasn’t any electoral benefit to keeping this row over Brexit going — either for us or for governments across the EU.”
A quick glance at the electoral calendar made it clear 2023 offered the last opportunity to reach a deal in the near future, with elections looming for both the U.K. and EU parliaments the following year — effectively putting any talks on ice.
“Rishi Sunak would have certainly been advised by his officials that come 2024, the EU is not going to be wanting to take any new significant initiatives,” Lidington said. “And we will be in election mode.”
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement on April 10 heaped further pressure on the U.K. negotiators, amid interest from U.S. President Joe Biden in visiting Europe to mark the occasion.
“The anniversary was definitely playing on people’s minds,” the first U.K. official said.“Does [Sunak] really want to be the prime minister when there’s no government in Northern Ireland on the anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement?”
The pressure was ramped up further when Biden specifically raised the protocol in a meeting with Truss at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September, after which British officials said they expected the 25th anniversary to act as a “key decision point” on the dispute.
The King and I
Whitehall faced further pressure from another unlikely source — King Charles III, who was immediately planning a state visit to Paris within weeks of ascending the throne in September 2022. Truss had suggested delaying the visit until the protocol row was resolved, according to two European diplomats.
The monarch is now expected to visit Paris and Berlin at the end of March — and although his role is strictly apolitical, few doubt he is taking a keen interest in proceedings. He has raised the protocol in recent conversations with European diplomats, showing a close engagement with the detail.
One former senior diplomat involved in several of the king’s visits said that Charles has long held “a private interest in Ireland, and has wanted to see if there was an appropriately helpful role he could play in improving relations [with the U.K].”
By calling the deal the Windsor framework and presenting it at a press conference in front of Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences, No. 10 lent Monday’s proceedings an unmistakable royal flavor.
The king also welcomed von der Leyen for tea at the castle following the signing of the deal. A Commission spokesperson insisted their meeting was “separate” from the protocol discussion talks. Tory MPs were skeptical.
Cleverly does it
The British politician tasked with improving relations with Brussels was Foreign Secretary Cleverly, appointed by Truss last September. He immediately began exploring ways to rebuild trust with Commission Vice-President and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič, the second U.K. official cited said.
His first hurdle was a perception in Brussels that the British team had sabotaged previous talks by leaking key details to U.K. newspapers and hardline Tory Brexiteers for domestic political gain. As a result, U.K. officials made a conscious effort to keep negotiations tightly sealed, a No. 10 official said.
“The relationship with Maroš improved massively when we agreed not to carry out a running commentary” on the content of the discussions, the second U.K. official added.
This meant keeping key government ministers out of the loop, including Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, an arch-Brexiteer who had been brought back onto the frontbench by Truss.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is welcomed by European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič ahead of a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 17, 2023 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
The first U.K. official said Baker would have “felt the pain,” as he had little to offer his erstwhile backbench colleagues looking for guidance while negotiations progressed, “and that was a choice by No. 10.”
Cleverly and Šefčovič “spent longer than people think just trying to build rapport,” the second U.K. officialsaid, with Cleverly explaining the difficulties the protocol was raising in Northern Ireland and Šefčovič insistent that key economic sectors were in fact benefiting from the arrangement.
Cleverly also worked at the bilateral relationship with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while Sunak made efforts to improve ties with French President Emmanuel Macron, Lidington noted.
A British diplomat based in Washington said Cleverly had provided “a breath of fresh air” after the “somewhat stiff” manner of his predecessors, Truss and the abrasive Dominic Raab.
By the Conservative party conference in early October, the general mood among EU diplomats in attendance was one of expectation. And the Birmingham jamboree did not disappoint.
Sorry is the hardest word
Baker, who had once described himself as a “Brexit hard man,” stunned Dublin by formally apologizing to the people of Ireland for his past comments, just days before technical talks between the Commission and the U.K. government were due to resume.
“I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he said. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. I want to put that right.”
The apology was keenly welcomed in Dublin, where Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister at the time, called it “honest and very, very helpful.”
Irish diplomats based in the U.K. met Baker and other prominent figures from the European Research Group of Tory Euroskeptics at the party conference, where Baker spoke privately of his “humility” and his “resolve” to address the issues, a senior Irish diplomat said.
“Resolve was the keyword,” the envoy said. “If Steve Baker had the resolve to work for a transformation of relationships between Ireland and the U.K., then we thought — there were tough talks to be had — but a sustainable deal was now a possibility.”
There were other signs of rapprochement. Just a few hours after Baker’s earth-shattering apology, Truss confirmed her attendance at the inaugural meeting in Prague of the European Political Community, a new forum proposed by Macron open to both EU and non-EU countries.
Sunak at the wheel
The momentum snowballed under Sunak, who decided within weeks of becoming PM to halt the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Lords, reiterating Britain’s preference for a negotiated settlement. In exchange, the Commission froze a host of infringement proceedings taking aim at the way the U.K. was handling the protocol. This created space for talks to proceed in a more cordial environment.
An EU-U.K. agreement in early January allowed Brussels to start using a live information system detailing goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, seen as key to unlocking a wider agreement on physical checks under the protocol.
The U.K. also agreed to conduct winter technical negotiations in Brussels, rather than alternating rounds between the EU capital and London, as was the case when Frost served as Britain’s chief negotiator.
Trust continued to build. Suddenly the Commission was open to U.K. solutions such as the “Stormont brake,” a clause giving the Northern Ireland Assembly power of veto over key protocol machinations, which British officials did not believe Brussels would accept when they first pitched them.
The Stormont brake was discussed “relatively early on,” a third U.K. official said. “Then we spent a huge amount of effort making sure nobody knew about it. It was kept the most secret of secret things.”
Yet a second EU diplomat claimed the ideas in the deal were not groundbreaking and could have been struck “years ago” if Britain had a prime minister with enough political will to solve the dispute. “None of the solutions that have been found now is revolutionary,” they said.
An ally of Johnson described the claim he was a block on progress as “total nonsense.”
The ‘unholy trinity’
Away from the media focus, a group of seasoned U.K. officials began to engage with their EU counterparts in earnest. But there was one (not so) new player in town.
Tim Barrow, a former U.K. permanent representative to the EU armed with a peerless contact book, had been an active figure in rebuilding relations with the bloc since Truss appointed him national security adviser. He acquired a more prominent role in the protocol talks after Sunak dispatched him to Brussels in January 2023, hoping EU figures would see him as “almost one of them,” another adviser to Sunak said.
Ensconced in the EU capital, Barrow and his U.K. team of negotiators took over several meeting rooms in the basement of the U.K. embassy, while staffers were ordered to keep quiet about their presence.
Besides his work on Northern Ireland trade, Barrow began to appear in meetings with EU representatives about other key issues creating friction in the EU-U.K. relationship, including discussions on migration alongside U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Barrow “positioned himself very well,” the first EU diplomat quoted above said. “He’s very close to the prime minister — everybody in Brussels and London knows he’s got his ear. He’s very knowledgeable while very political.”
But other British officials insist Barrow’s presence was not central to driving through the deal. “He has been a figure, but not the only figure,” the U.K. adviser quoted above said. “It’s been a lot of people, actually, over quite a period of time.”
When it came to the tough, detailed technical negotiations, the burden fell on the shoulders of Mark Davies — the head of the U.K. taskforce praised for his mastery of the protocol detail — and senior civil servant and former director of the Northern Ireland Office, Brendan Threlfall.
The three formed an “unholy trinity,” as described by the first U.K. official, with each one bringing something to the table.
Davies was “a classic civil servant, an unsung hero,”the official said, while Threlfall “has good connections, good understanding” and “Tim has met all the EU interlocutors over the years.”
Sitting across the table, the EU team was led by Richard Szostak, a Londoner born to Polish parents and a determined Commission official with a great CV and an affinity for martial arts. His connection to von der Leyen was her deputy head of cabinet until recently, Stéphanie Riso, a former member of Brussels’ Brexit negotiating team who developed a reputation for competence on both sides of the debate.
Other senior figures at the U.K. Cabinet Office played key roles, including Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and senior official Sue Gray.
The latter — a legendary Whitehall enforcer who adjudicated over Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal — has a longstanding connection to Northern Ireland, famously taking a career break in the late 1980s to run a pub in Newry, where she has family links. More recently, she spent two years overseeing the finance ministry.
Gray has been spotted in Stormont at crunch points over the past six months as Northern Ireland grapples with the pain of the continued absence of an executive.
Some predict Gray could yet play a further role, in courting the Democratic Unionist Party as the agreement moves forward in the weeks ahead.
For U.K. and EU officials, the agreement struck with Brussels represented months of hard work — but for Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues, the hardest yards may yet lie ahead.
This story was updated to clarify two parts of the sourcing.
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