The world’s media have paid close attention to the gathering of 15 world leaders in Samarkand, Uzbekistan these past two days with particular emphasis on the ‘summit’ held by Presidents Putin of Russia and Xi of China on the sidelines of this general meeting. 

Observers noted that the visit to Samarkand is the first foreign trip by Xi since before the onset of the Covid pandemic and it was being undertaken precisely for the sake of face-to-face meetings with Putin, with whom he met last during the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks prior to the launch of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.

Today’s news updates from Moscow point to the Chinese leader’s expressions of readiness to continue and expand his country’s ties with and support for Russia.  What exactly that means is left entirely vague.  However, yesterday the pickings for the world press were still more meager.  The online edition of The Financial Times built its main ‘front page’ article on the Russian-Chinese summit around one sentence from Putin, to the effect that he understands the questions and concerns of the Chinese with respect to the war. From this one sentence, the FT speculated at length on how the Ukraine war has raised tensions between the two countries and put in question Xi’s famous declaration at the Olympics summit that the Russian-Chinese relationship is greater than an alliance.

As a protocol event, the SCO gathering has a great deal of symbolism because of the shared ambition of all its members to pursue creation of a multi-polar world order to replace global American hegemony. The members represent a very substantial share of the world population and also of the world economy. However, what went on in Samarkand surely also had a great deal of material content. We know, for example, that Russia and Pakistan in their side talks have fleshed out prospective energy cooperation entailing the high volume sale of pipeline gas to Karachi, all of which will represent a substantial restructuring of the energy markets in South Asia. But because so much of the content is being negotiated against a backdrop of aggressive American imposition of sanctions, most particularly of late directed against Russia in connection with its military operation in Ukraine, it is understandable that all parties in Samarkand sought to avoid waving a red flag before the American bull and were quiet about their bilateral commercial and other agreements.

Apart from Russia and China, surely the country that has followed the progress of talks in Samarkand most closely is Iran, which made its debut as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Accordingly, Iran’s Press TV last night organized a live discussion of the fruits of the Samarkand talks in which I was pleased to be a participant. The link to the video recording of this broadcast is here:

http://www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/116895

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

In my last essay, I devoted considerable attention to commentary by the host of the leading political talk show on Russia’s state television Friday night with respect to the country’s obvious military setback in the Kharkov front, which still had not yet reached its culmination in the evacuation of the strategic town of Izyum and the withdrawal from a vast territory in the neighborhood measuring 3,000 square kilometers. As I noted, Vladimir Solovyov was likely speaking on behalf of the Kremlin when he said  Russia was now fighting NATO, not just Ukraine, and it was time to escalate to all out war.

The notion that these talk shows have relevance to conduct of the war was disputed by a few readers in comments posted on my website. They remarked that ‘talk is cheap,’ and that such shows in no way influence what the President of the country does. That in itself is a challenge to my long-standing characterization of such shows: I have said in the past that they reflect the thinking of Russian social elites who set limits on what the Kremlin can or cannot do without running unacceptable political risks.

Under present conditions of war censorship, I believe the producers of the best of these shows strictly control who says what about the war, assigning roles before they go on air, so as not to cross red lines by giving unwanted advice to the Commander-in-Chief and reserving for the host and select panelists ideas coming from Putin and his closest advisers.  To those readers who might object that such shows were always stage managed, I say ‘no’ on the basis of my own experience going back to 2016 as a guest panelist on the talk shows of all the state and private Russian channels, including once on the Solovyov show: these live shows were uncensored; you could take the question given you and run with it in any direction without fear of being cut off the air. But that was then…

The best proof that it is worth paying close attention to what the country’s top talk show host says came yesterday, when the first in his list of things to do as Russia escalates to all out war on Ukraine was implemented.  The Russians used long range bombers to fire missiles which destroyed electric power stations in a number of cities across Ukraine. The impact of the attack was sufficiently great to create a disbalance in the country’s power grid that compelled Kiev to shut down the atomic power stations they still manage.

President Zelensky today acknowledged that 9 million people in his country were left without power. He called this a ‘terrorist attack’ on civilian infrastructure, as if his own forces have not in the last few months been systematically destroying civilian infrastructure including power stations in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics of the Donbas.

Yesterday Russian forces also destroyed a railway center 60 km west of Donetsk city which was no doubt being used to supply munitions to the artillery that daily strikes residential districts in the capital. Attacking railway trains and infrastructure was point two in Solovyov’s list.  For the moment, there has not been any move towards point three in the list – attacks on the decision making centers of the Kiev regime – but that may not be long off.

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Vladimir Solovyov from time to time brings in colleagues who make insightful observations that are useful for those of us trying to understand the psyche of Russian decision makers.  In yesterday’s Sunday Evening edition, we were treated to the views of director of RT (Russia Today) Margarita Simonyan.  Her comments on this program have become ever more serious in recent weeks. For that reason, I open today’s essay with a brief summary of what she told us.

Her main contribution was to remind the audience that overconfidence in its armed forces has been very costly to Russia in the past, just as it seems to have been responsible for inattention to enemy forces that led to the serious losses in the surroundings of Kharkov. What she had in mind was Russian behavior at the outset of the Crimean War, which, she pointed out, resembles the present conflict in that Russia was fighting the combined forces of the leading Western powers of the day, France and Britain.  The Ottoman Empire, over which the war was fought, was only a nominal participant, just as Ukraine is today. At the outset of one of the key battles, Russian generals invited polite society to a look-out point to watch the expected Russian victory. The ladies came in their finest, but what they saw was a rout of the Russian army.

However, it is always risky to mine history for lessons, and Simonyan failed to see one big difference with the Crimean War:  that was lost because Russia had fallen way behind in military technology and was simply outclassed on the field of battle.  Today, by contrast, Russia has developed and turned over to its soldiers some of the most advanced military hardware on Earth.

Meanwhile other panelists drew out lessons from another war in which Russia stood alone against the combined forces of all of Europe: the war of 1812 against Napoleon’s invading Grande Armée numbering half a million soldiers, many of them Germans and Poles. In that case, Western textbooks commonly attribute Napoleon’s defeat and Russia’s victory to Father Frost. However, in a magnificent work entitled Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace (published in 2011), British historian Dominic Lieven carefully explains that Napoleon’s defeat was actually attributable to Russia’s superior logistics and to its manifold numerical superiority in cavalry horses, which were the tanks of that day.

The 1812 war was very much on the minds of educated Russians this past week as they marked the anniversary of the Borodino battle, which was a loss in terms of casualties but a win in terms of stopping the onslaught of the invaders and demonstrating the bravery and élan of Russia’s men at arms. The battle was a necessary relief from the incessant retreats that weighed so heavily on the mood of Russian society at the time.  As Solovyov’s panelists remarked, Russia’s general Kutuzov, hero of the battle, had an edge over today’s generals in that he did not come under daily attack for his strategic retreat from outraged patriots using the Telegram social app. 

Indeed, one of the main points in Simonyan’s several minutes at the microphone last night was that she has been receiving a lot of social network messages from ordinary citizens, from Putin supporters, who simply cannot understand Russia’s restraint in the way it is conducting the war.  ‘Why do we hold back?’  they ask. This message, of course, builds on what Vladimir Solovyov was saying last Friday, and it explains the change in Russian war making we are about to see in the coming weeks.

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A word is now in order with respect to what the Ukrainians have achieved on the ground in the Kharkov region.  I have in front of me today’s Financial Times article entitled “Russians ‘fled like Olympic sprinters’ as Ukraine retook northeast.”  

The story is surely music to the ears of the Ukraine Contact Group that assembled in Ramstein last week. The Ukrainians are delighted to describe the Russian departure as ‘cowardly.’  A military adviser to Ukraine’s defense ministry concludes that “the Russian army is a blown-up balloon.”

The FT journalists are more cautious in their conclusions. “The strategic effect of what this attack has already achieved – other than free vast swaths of thinly populated Ukrainian territory – are still to become clear.”

Russian news channels do not dispute the loss of territory but give some clarifications that are vitally important to appreciate what happened.  First, the Russian lines around Kharkov were held not by the Russian army but by local militias of the Donetsk Republic, who are not professionals and are not equipped with the advanced hardware of the Russian army.

Second, it appears that the Ukrainian ambition of surrounding and capturing large numbers of Russian soldiers in Izyum and nearby settlements in their very swift attack failed completely.  To what extent the ‘sprinters’ skills of the Russian side explains their evading the enemy as they withdrew, we will never know.  But I make reference again to Dominic Lieven’s book when I say that effective retreat is a more difficult operation in war than attack due to a number of factors, especially the morale and discipline of the combatants. In this sense, the Russians have no more reason for embarrassment than did Kutuzov in his day.

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Finally, I would like to shine some light on what we may expect from the Russian war effort in the coming week.  Why the coming week?  Because we are in a count-down period to the meeting of Chinese President Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Samarkand, Uzbekistan at the gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization one week from today.

This will be the first trip abroad for Xi in over two years, and there is heightened expectation that some understanding with the Russians over the way forward together in dealing with the US-led containment policy against them both will be agreed. It may be that the Russians will do something of importance to move their campaign in Ukraine to a higher plane right now to give a positive impulse to the cooperation with China.

From the outset of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, one of my close colleagues in the United States insisted that Putin would never have entered upon this project without having secured the backing of Xi. I was skeptical that Putin, the Realist, would ever commit his nation to a conflict that it cannot handle on its own thanks to its own armed forces. However, as that conflict has gone on and on, as the United States has drawn ever more countries to its side to punish Russia, the need for Chinese assistance becomes clearer by the day.

Until now, the Chinese were very circumspect in their backing to Russia.  They were generous with diplomatic support in the United Nations and elsewhere, but their leading international corporations withdrew from the Russian market for fear of coming under U.S. sanctions, and we have not heard about any arms and munitions being sent to Russia.  The only signs of material cooperation so far have been from second tier Chinese companies which have no big foreign establishments that might come under U.S. scrutiny and can safely trade with Russia. .However, recent American warnings that it will apply secondary sanctions against countries importing Russian oil in violation of price caps, as China is certainly going to do, have put the country on notice that further confrontation with Washington is inescapable.

What Russia needs now from China is more than words and more than enhanced trade, including in military supplies.  Arms and munitions, the Russians can procure elsewhere.  But China has the possibility of rendering the Russians invaluable help by simply stepping up their pressure on Taiwan and harassing the American fleet in the South China Sea. This would open the specter of a ‘second front’ that would necessarily distract Washington from its current focus on the Kremlin and would cut Russia some much needed slack.

This question of relations with China may become as important an ‘off ramp’ for Russia from the Ukrainian war as the possibility of  popular demonstrations forcing European leaders to change course, lift sanctions and cut their support to Kiev, about which I wrote in my last essay.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

The UK and Commonwealth may be mourning the passing of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday.  I am in mourning as well, but for a very different reason:  the gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in the Ramstein air base in Germany yesterday reshuffled the deck on Western military and financial assistance to Ukraine, raising contributions to the ongoing holy crusade against Russia from still more nations and adding new, still more advanced precision strike weapons to the mix of deliveries to Kiev. It was an open summons to the Kremlin to escalate in turn, as were the test firing the same day of a new intercontinental rocket, the Minuteman III, from Vandenberg air base in California and the unannounced visit to Kiev yesterday of not only Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was featured in Western media accounts, but also other top officials of the Biden administration. The most notorious member of this delegation was surely Blinken’s deputy, Victoria Nuland, who had stage managed the February 2014 coup that put in power in Kiev the Russia-hating regime that Zelensky now heads.

 The Russians may be compelled to take the bait due to the course of military action on the ground. As now becomes clear, they have just suffered some losses in very heavy ground and artillery fighting these past few days around Kharkov. The Ukrainian gains were facilitated by the advanced weaponry recently arrived from NATO countries, by the targeting data they are receiving from the U.S. and from off-stage tactical direction from NATO officers.  By ‘take the bait,’ I mean the Russians may escalate to all out war on Ukraine.  This question figured prominently in yesterday’s major news and political talk show programs of Russian state television.  I will go into these matters in some detail below.

Regrettably, all of the foregoing also obliges me to revisit the critique I published a couple of weeks ago on the latest essay in Foreign Affairs magazine by John Mearsheimer. His overarching message on the dangers of our stumbling into a nuclear war is better substantiated by the latest developments, even though I believe that Mearsheimer failed to identify the several successive steps that lie ahead before we find ourselves in such a war. Mearsheimer oversimplified Russian options to deal with setbacks on the ground. This also will be a central issue in my narrative below.  

Finally, in this essay I will direct attention to the second dimension of the ongoing confrontation between Russia and the entire Collective West:  the economic war being waged on the Russian Federation via sanctions, which now far outnumber those directed against any other country on earth. This war, as I will argue, is going well for the Russians. More importantly for us all, it is the sole area in which the peoples of Europe may have a say in putting an end to the mad policies being pursued by their national governments under the direct pressure of Washington.

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Over the past ten days, we have witnessed the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive which was preceded by so much anticipation in Western media. A reversal of Russian fortunes in the war was predicted, leading to the stalemate or outright defeat for Russia which Mearsheimer and some other analysts in the US foreign policy community feared would trigger a nuclear response from the Kremlin.

In fact, the Ukrainian counter-offensive got off to a very bad start. It opened in the south, in the Kherson region.  Kherson, which is predominantly Russian-speaking, was the first major Ukrainian city to fall to the Russians and it has strategic importance for ensuring Russian domination of the Black Sea littoral.  However, first results of the Ukrainian attacks there were disastrous for the Ukrainian armed forces. It soon was obvious that they had deployed new recruits who had little or no military experience. The infantry attacked across open terrain where they were easily destroyed in vast numbers by the Russian defenders of Kherson. I have heard the figure of 5,000 Ukrainian casualties in the Kherson counter offensive.   Obviously the Russians were jubilant, though there were reports of some Ukrainian reservists being withdrawn from the field of action for redeployment elsewhere.

What followed was something the Russians evidently did not expect, namely a well prepared and implemented assault on their positions around the northeastern city of Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city. Kharkov was briefly surrounded by Russian forces at the start of the war, but was left in relative peace as the Russians refocused their strategy on taking the Donbas and avoiding major urban warfare except in one place, Mariupol.  Exactly what the Russian game plan has been was recently explained in a remarkable paper published by a certain ‘Marinus’ in the Marine Corps Gazette. See https://www.imetatronink.com/2022/08/a-former-us-marine-corps-officers.html

A couple of days ago I picked up the following amidst the chatter of panelists on Evening with Vladimir Solovyov: “yes, we made some mistakes, but it is inevitable in a war that mistakes are made.” As from the latest news on the apparent loss of Balakliya and surrounding villages on the outskirts of Kharkov, we can see that the Ukrainian tactics were precisely those which Russia had been using so effectively against them from day one of the ‘special military operation,’ namely a feint in one war zone followed by all-out attack on a very different region. Of course, the ‘feint’ around Kherson, if that is what it was, entailed the cynical sacrifice of thousands of young and not so young Ukrainian foot soldiers. But the resultant distraction prevented the Russians from bringing up sufficient manpower to successfully defend their positions around Kharkov, which include the strategically important city of Izyum.

Izyum is close to the Russian-Ukrainian border southeast of Kharkov and is a major logistical base for munitions and weaponry that are sent onward to support the Donbas operation. The latest information on the Russian side appears to be that the Russians have now dispatched large numbers of reservists to this area to hold their positions.  They also speak of intense artillery duels. We may well assume that both sides have experienced heavy loss of life. As yet, the outcome is unforeseeable. Meanwhile, Russian war correspondents on the ground in Donetsk insist that the Russian advance towards Slavyansk, in the center of the former Donetsk oblast, is continuing without pause, which suggests that the strikes on their munitions stores claimed by the Ukrainians have not been totally effective. If Slavyansk is taken in the coming few weeks, then Russia will quickly assume control of the entire territory of the Donbas.

In last night’s talk show program, host Vladimir Solovyov said that this latest push in the Ukrainian counter-offensive was timed to coincide with the gathering at the Ramstein air base, Germany of top officials from NATO and other allies under the direction of the visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.  If the Ukrainian efforts were failing in the field, then the cry would go up:  we must provide them with more weapons and training.  And if the Ukrainian efforts in the counter-offensive were succeeding, those in attendance at Ramstein would hear exactly the same appeal to aid Kiev.

Though Evening with Solovyov, on air from about 23.00 Moscow time, offered viewers some few minutes of video recordings from the opening of the Ramstein gathering, far more complete coverage was provided to Russian audiences a few hours earlier by the afternoon news show Sixty Minutes.  Here, nearly half an hour on air was given over to lengthy excerpts from CNN and other U.S. and European mainstream television reporting about Ramstein. Host Yevgeni Popov read the Russian translation of the various Western news bulletins. His presentation clearly sought to dramatize the threat and to set off alarm bells.

For his part, Vladimir Solovyov went beyond presentation of the threat posed by the United States and its allies to analysis of Russia’s possible response.  He spoke at length, and we may assume that what he was saying had the direct approval of the Kremlin, because his guests, who are further removed from Power than he is, were, for the most part, allowed only to talk blather, such as the critique by one panelist of a recent pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia article in The New York Review of Books by Yale professor Timothy Snyder, who counts for nothing in the big strategic issues Russia faces today.

So, what did Solovyov have to say? First, that Ramstein marked a new stage in the war, because of the  more threatening nature of the weapons systems announced for delivery, such as missiles with accuracy of 1 to 2 meters when fired from distances of 20 or 30 kilometers thanks to their GPS-guided flight, in contrast to the laser-guided missiles delivered to Ukraine up till now. In the same category, there are weapons designed to destroy the Russians’ radar systems used for directing artillery fire.  Second, that Ramstein marked the further expansion of the coalition or holy crusade waging war on Russia.  Third, that in effect this is no longer a proxy war but a real direct war with NATO and should be prosecuted with appropriate mustering of all resources at home and abroad.

Said Solovyov, Russia should throw off constraints and destroy the Ukrainian dual use infrastructure which makes it possible to move Western weapons across the country to the front.  The railway system, the bridges, the electricity generating stations all should become fair targets.  Moreover, Kiev should no longer be spared missile strikes and destruction of the ministries and presidential apparatus responsible for prosecution of the war.  I note that these ideas were aired on the Solovyov program more than a month ago but then disappeared from view while the Russians were making great gains on the ground.  The latest setbacks and the new risks associated with the Western policies set out at Ramstein bring them to the surface again.

Solovyov also argued that Russia should now use in Ukraine its own most advanced weapons that have similar characteristics to what NATO is delivering to the other side. As a sub-point, Russia should consider neutralizing in one way or another the GPS guidance for U.S. weapons.  Of course, if this means destroying or blinding the respective U.S. satellites, that would mean crossing a well-known U.S. red line or casus belli.

Next, in the new circumstances, Russia should abandon its go-it-alone policy and actively seek out complementary weapons systems from previously untouchable countries, such as Iran and North Korea. Procurements from both have till now been minimal. On this issue, a couple of panelists with military expertise were allowed to explain that both these countries have sophisticated and proven weapons that could greatly assist Russia’s war effort.  Iran has unbeatable drones which carry hefty explosive charges and have proven their worth in operations that are unmentionable on public television. And North Korea has very effective tanks and highly portable field artillery which are both fully compatible with Russian military practice, because the designs were based on Chinese weapons, which in turn were copies of Russia’s own. These weapons also have shown their worth in the hands of unnamed purchasers in the Middle East. Moreover, North Korea has a vast store of munitions fully compatible with Russian artillery.  It was also mentioned in passing that insofar as Kiev has mobilized in the field many Western mercenaries and covert NATO officers, Russia should also recruit from abroad, as for example, whole brigades from North Korea available for hire.

If any of these ideas put out by Solovyov last night are indeed implemented by the Kremlin, then the present confrontation in and over Ukraine will truly become globalized, and we have the outlines of what may be called World War III.  However, I note that the use of nuclear weapons, tactical or otherwise, does not figure at all in the set of options that official Moscow discusses in relation to the challenges it faces in its Ukraine operation. Such a possibility would arise only if the NATO forces being sent to the EU’s ‘front line states’ grew in number by several times those presently assigned and appeared to be preparing to invade Russia.

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Before Ramstein, before the news of Ukrainian successes on the ground in the Kharkov sector, I had plans to write about a very different development this past week that coincided with a different calendar: the end of summer vacations and return to work of our national governments.  With the return, our presidents and prime ministers would finally have to address the critical state of the European economies, which are facing the highest inflation rates in decades and an energy crisis brought about by the sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. Speculation was rife on what exactly they would do.

I was particularly struck by several articles in the 7 September edition of The Financial Times and planned to comment on them.

 For months now, the FT has been the voice of Number 10, Downing Street, at the vanguard of the Western crusade to crush Russia.  Their editorial board has consistently backed every proposal for sanctions against Russia, however hare-brained.   And yet on the 7^th their journalists ran away with the show and cast doubt on the basic assumptions held by their bosses. One article by Derek Brower in the “FT Energy Source” newsletter has the self-explanatory title “The price cap idea that could worsen the energy crisis.”  As we saw today, Brower’s concern was misplaced:  finally, the EU could not agree a price cap policy. This notion, promoted from the United States by none other than the Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, is in full contradiction with the practices of the global hydrocarbon market, as even a few EU leaders understood, depriving the initiators from the Baltic States of their hoped for consensus.

Another article of the 7^th in FT, by Valentina Pop, Europe Express Editor, analyzed quickly and competently the problems facing European policy-makers in their bid to alleviate the pain to households and industry that the latest electricity and heating bills would otherwise present, given that they are several times higher than just a year ago and are unaffordable by large swathes of the population. Pop identified the key issue thus:  how to provide aid quickly to those most in need given the constraints and resources available to the various government bureaucracies: “Some capitals will take many months in determining which households require help” she says.  Of course, ‘many months’ of patience in the broad population will not be there.

But the most surprising article in this collection from the  7^th was in the “Opinion Lex” section of the paper which was nominally about how Russian banks have weathered the storm that broke out when the EU sanctions on their industry first were laid down shortly after the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation.’ Indeed, VTB and other major Russian banks have returned to profitability despite it all. The author finds that ‘sanctions are biting less than western politicians hoped.’ Not only did the expected banking crisis not materialize, but the ruble is at five-year peaks and inflation is falling. Moreover the official Russian financial data behind these generalizations is said to be sound by independent and trustworthy market observers. The key conclusions are saved for last: “Russia has shown it can bear the pain of western sanctions. Western Europe must endure reprisals as robustly, or concede a historic defeat.’ The ‘reprisals’ in question are the complete shutdown of Russian gas deliveries through Nord Stream I until Europe lifts its sanctions.

It is interesting that even the Opinion article by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg published on the 7^th in FT carries the following grim warning:  “We face a difficult six months, with the threat of energy cuts, disruptions and perhaps even civil unrest.’ [emphasis mine]

To be sure, here and there in Europe, there are a few clever administrators who find promising solutions to the pending crisis of energy bills. In her first day in office, Britain’s new Prime Minister Liz Truss announced one such solution:  to immediately freeze the maximum energy bill per household at the present level of 2500 pounds sterling per year and then to turn around and agree with the power companies a subsidy for them to cover their losses. 

This is fine for nipping in the bud possible ‘civil unrest.’  But the question remains how Britain will finance the estimated 150 billion pounds this will cost in the first year alone. If a similar solution were approved in the EU, the overall cost would surely approach the 800 billion euros of assistance borrowed to cover losses attributable to the Covid pandemic a year ago. But whereas the Covid aid was financed by collective borrowing of the EU, no such solidarity is likely to deal with the energy crisis, given that Germany, the Netherlands and other northern Member States oppose this becoming a general practice and will apply a veto. The British solution, however clever it may be, will hardly be available to many countries in the EU on their own given their high state indebtedness.

Then there is the second question of what to do to assist industry.  Failure to give industry proper relief will result in company closures and rampant unemployment, which finally also sparks political protest. In any case, such solutions do not deal with the knock-on effects of vastly increased government borrowing to finance the energy subsidies, something which in the best of times always reduces capital available for other government services and capital available to private business for investment and job creation.

These various problems in dealing with the energy crisis that Europe created for itself by imposing sanctions on Russia may well be intractable and may well lead to spontaneous protests in a number of European countries this fall.   

There is,no anti-war movement on the Old Continent to speak of.  So popular protests over the ‘heat or eat’ dilemma being imposed from the chanceries on the people without anything resembling public debate may be the salvation of us all if they induce war mongering politicans to resign.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

I was pleased to join Alfred de Zayas on this ten minute discussion of the latest developments in Europe’s energy crisis

Germany to keep two nuclear plants available as a backup as it faces an energy crisis – YouTube

Russia makes a U-turn on reciprocity policies as regards issuance of tourist visas to foreign nationals

This news item very likely will not appear in mainstream, though it represents a stunning victory of pragmatism and common sense by a government engaged in a bitter and costly war that has a heavy ideological dimension. 

Today in a meeting with government administrators and stakeholders in the tourist industry, Vladimir Putin said publicly that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will break with its traditional insistence on full reciprocity in relations with other states as regards issuance of visas to citizens of “unfriendly countries.”

Putin argued that there was no reason to make a fetish of reciprocity when the result would run counter to Russia’s national interests.  In this instance, he said Russia would best respond to the sanctions and restrictions being imposed on it by unfriendly countries, meaning first of all, the European Union, by issuing visas to their citizens so that they may see for themselves what the country is like.  “We have nothing to hide,” he added.

The instructions to Sergei Lavrov’s team were clear: to proceed with reinstatement of electronic visas available free of charge upon demand via an internet portal. This program was barely under way in 2020 when the Covid epidemic closed down borders everywhere. As from March 2020, Russia stopped issuing visas of any kind other than so-called ‘humanitarian’ visas for close relatives of Russian citizens.  There was a glimmer of hope that the e-visas would resume in late 2021 as the epidemic receded. However, the onset of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine in February 2022 put a halt to that.

Let us imagine that the same pragmatism and enlightened self-interest may be extended to Russian policy on applicants for permanent residency and naturalization. Russian talk shows now raise the question of conceding an Israeli-like “right of return” to ethnic Russians who were left to their lot as second class citizens of the new sovereign republics formed from the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Should this come to pass, then Russian statehood will be entering a new level of maturity just as the West slips into self-debilitating obtuseness.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Arena di Verona:  The healthy opposition between Patriotism and civilizational continuity on the one hand and  Political correctness, Russophobia on the other

I am on my way home from a week-long cultural vacation in Northern Italy which included three evenings of opera at the Arena di Verona.  My comments here on the state of civilization in Italy are drawn from what I saw at the opera: this was a world of mostly traditional cultural values on stage, of courting heterosexual couples and mature heterosexual couples in the audience, of packed eateries that surround the Arena, and of open patriotic fervor when the unofficial national anthem, “Va, pensiero’ from Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” was performed with the customary reprise following prolonged applause from the audience and amidst fluttering 4 meter high Italian flags on stage.

My point is simple and direct:  notwithstanding the mindless political correctness that Northern and Eastern Europe have been projecting from even before the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine on 24 February, the policy makers in Verona have kept cool heads and resisted any deviation from  sophisticated multiculturalism and respect for artistic accomplishment wherever it comes from.  As a token of this policy from the top, I note that the spring performances by the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko  in “Aida” and “Traviata” took place as scheduled. Unlike in Germany or New York’s Metropolitan, the Verona administrators stood by the artist and did not play to cheap populism under a banner of “cancel Russia.”  Still more remarkable is the fact that the choreography commissioned from Russia’s Alexander Vasiliev for the Zeffirelli staging of Aida was offered last night without apologies or cuts. This runs directly in the face of the primitive anti-culture policy decisions of the opera houses in Paris and in Germany which, even before the Russian-Ukraine war, threw out Russian choreography over its alleged racial slurs and stereotypic ethnic dances. 

It bears mention that Vasiliev’s choreography for the main dance scenes in “Aida” drew directly on the tradition of the late 19^th century-early 20^th century Mariinsky theater choreographer Fokin, whose works were also carried to Europe by the Ballets Russes of the impresario Diaghilev.  Here the oriental melodies are danced by black-face African slave boys using pseudo-African steps.  Similar ethnic platitudes were widely used in Silver Age Russian choreography, for example, in Tchaikowsky’s ballets.  What we are witnessing on stage is artistic masterpieces which happen also to carry the naïve and benign prejudices of theater-goers from the mostly wealthy and aristocratic layers of society who frequented the ballet and opera houses. 

The implausible argument that these ballet pieces support a less benign prejudice today conceals something far more dangerous for society at large, namely the aggressive intolerance of politicians and administrators who impose censorship, who want to wipe out the past so as to better enhance their control over society today.  A society without a past, however flawed it may be in various respects, is a society living under totalitarian conditions.

In my first paragraph above, I alluded to patriotism. Allow me to explain that the single driver of popularity of Verdi’s otherwise complicated opera “Nabucco” is the five minutes in the next to the last act when the Hebrew captives (the Babylonian captivity) who are about to be slaughtered by order of the Assyrian king Nabucco sing a fascinating melody recalling their native land.  It is an open appeal to national patriotism. See this Fenice Opera recording of several years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSSz0snWzA

I have heard “Nabucco” performed in Belgium, and the song in question does not evoke any special enthusiasm, familiar as it is to all music lovers everywhere.  However, in an open sky arena, in the company of an audience numbering perhaps 15,000, nearly all of them Italians who know very well why they are there, the high emotional level is extraordinary.  Why is this important?  Because it is the policy of the Brussels’ based European Commission and of select leaders of the Member States like Emanuel Macron, to wipe out all traces of “nationalism,”  previously known as “patriotism” on the argument that nationalism was responsible for Europe’s endless wars including the global civil wars we know as World Wars I and II.  Here again, the policy coming from Brussels aims to destroy identities of masses of people who organize for their own protection from Big Government, meaning against those same unelected officials, mostly failed national politicians, who sit in Brussels and issue their diktats.

Finally, in closing, I wish to share another impression from the last week, one formed last night in our hotel room when I watched on the Russian internet broadcaster smotrim.ru the News of the Week program hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov.  This was an unusually serious program which directed a good half hour to remembering Gorbachev, who died in the past week and was just buried in Novodevichii cemetery with state honors.  Kiselyov emphasized that among the less attractive Soviet government  traditions which Gorbachev broke was to leave in peace and not discredit previous leaders.  He pointed to the solemn respect for Gorbachev which Vladimir Putin displayed in his visit to the bier when it was on public display. And Kiselyov presented a very balanced coverage of Gorbachev’s achievements and failures as state leader.  This is a kind of maturity in politics and general civility which has eluded American leaders in the past several decades right up to the present day.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

When I received a call this morning from Turkish public television TRT asking that I comment on the death of Mikhail Gorbachev in a live broadcast, the first thought which came to mind was the ironic remark of Soviet intellectuals on the place of leading personalities in history:  “there is nothing as changeable and unpredictable as the past.”

Of course, this notion is applicable everywhere, not just to Soviet history and personalities. Indeed, history is always being reinterpreted in light of current developments. As I commented in my interview, the achievements and failures of Gorbachev in power must now be reevaluated in light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which is the largest and most dangerous military conflict on the European continent since 1945.

This war follows directly from the break-up of the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev failed to prevent, though he did his best. Indeed, in the spring of 1991 he oversaw a referendum on the issue and won support from the population for continuation of the USSR. However, his playing off the right and left forces within the Politburo and within the Party at large over a number of years, the deceptions he practiced to get his way, finally caught up with him and laid the way in the summer of 1991 for the Putsch by rightists intent on restoring Soviet orthodoxy, which in turn so weakened Gorbachev that he was easily pushed aside by Boris Yeltsin. Destruction of the Union was Yeltsin’s instrument for achieving the complete removal of Gorbachev from power and setting out on a course of economic reform and de-Communization that was anathema to the leaders of the more conservative Soviet republics.

As we now know, the break-up of the USSR released pent-up animosities within and between the successor states, which had in each substantial ethnic minorities, in particular Russian-speakers, who numbered more than 25 million outside the boundaries of the Russian Federation in 1991. This was the largest such dispossessed ethnic community from the disintegration of empire in history, and its existence did not augur well for tranquility in Eurasia, from the Baltics, to the Caucasus, to Central Asia.

The collapse of the Soviet Union also touched off a very unhealthy wave of national excitement in the United States. It was now the sole surviving superpower, unchecked by any rivals. Fueled by hubris, Washington elites set course on remaking the world through a succession of military interventions and full-fledged wars abroad that has gone on for close to 30 years.  Failures in these military missions led to ever greater concern to “contain” any and all possible competitors on the world stage.  In practice, this meant containment first and foremost of Russia as it recovered economically and politically in the first decade of the new millennium. And this, expressed in terms of NATO expansion, is what brought us to the present conflict over Ukraine.

In that regard, I direct attention to Gorbachev’s greatest failure which resulted not from the conspiracies of his compatriots but from his own peculiar naivete in his dealings with the United States, meaning with Reagan, with Bush and their minions. The man who had shown such cunning in outfoxing his Politburo colleagues was completely outfoxed by his American and European interlocutors.  Had he been more cautious to protect Soviet-Russian interests, he would have demanded and likely received much better terms of compensation for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from all of Eastern Europe and disbanding the Warsaw Pact. Had he been less gullible and more realistic, he would have demanded  written treaties setting in concrete the prohibition of NATO expansion to the East and, or, he would have left Soviet garrisons in each of these states to ensure compliance. As it was, the Americans who gave him verbal assurances knew full well that they were meaningless and were perplexed at the Kremlin’s failure to defend strategic national interests.

These are the sins which patriotic Russians hold against Gorbachev today, even as they acknowledge his astonishing feats in freeing Soviet citizens from the totalitarian yoke of the past through glasnost and perestroika.

Of course, it is an open question whether a democratic Soviet Union could have long survived. The economy was hopelessly mismanaged and the entire legacy of Soviet legislation rendered it virtually impossible to escape from violence or the threat of violence to make things work.  This is a point over which historical debate will continue for many decades to come.

For today’s interview, see  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVz4QGouoFQ

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Yesterday’s print and electronic media in the United Kingdom had as their lead story the just announced 80% rise in the price cap on energy as from October. The new bill to households will come to approximately 350 euros per month, or the equivalent of 25-30% of take home pay for a large segment of the working population, more of course for those at the bottom of the wage scale. As British journalists remarked, by winter this will put many families before the stark choice of heating or eating.

Similar grim news on rising energy costs were on the front pages of Le Monde and Figaro in Paris, where energy costs to consumers are now running at 10 times the level of a year ago.

Iran’s Press TV channel convened a panel discussion on its ‘Spotlight’ evening program to discuss the causes and likely consequences of the looming crisis in Britain and across Europe.

http://www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/115153

85 Days in Slavyansk was first published in Russian in 2018, that is to say four years after the events it describes, but it has only now received international attention following its translation into English by Peter Nimitz and release in mid-spring 2022.

Today the city of Slavyansk appears regularly in news from the front. Slavyansk, together with its surrounding villages, and nearby strategic town of Kramatorsk is being reclaimed by Russia in its ‘special military operation.’  Indeed, as we write, the Russian army is within 20 miles of Slavyansk, which it will surely retake in the months ahead as it frees the entire Donbas from Ukrainian misrule.

This book was written as a tribute to a small band numbering initially 52 separatist fighters who crossed over from Russia into the Ukraine in April 2014 and ‘liberated’ Slavyansk, population 100,000 from its Ukrainian administration,  virtually without firing a shot, by acts of shear daring. They were headed by a certain Igor Strelkov, who, like some of his fellow volunteers had participated in the takeover of the Crimea from Ukrainian forces a month before. They all believed passionately in the Russian Spring and in a national revival that would reunite Russian-speaking lands of the former Soviet Union with the Russian heartland.. They hoped and expected that the Kremlin would step in and support them as it had done in Crimea.

Their fight attracted local and Russian Federation volunteers, swelling their numbers to 2,500 of whom half were combatants and half logistics and medical support personnel. They confronted Ukrainian forces that were ten times as numerous. Ultimately they retreated, leaving what remained of the city to its fate under Ukrainian occupation.

And yet, judged on its own terms at the time it was written, the book was a lot more than an oddity, or footnote to history. As the author tells us, their retreat was not a defeat in the grand order of things. They turned what had been only street demonstrations in Donbas into a full-blown military challenge to the Ukrainian army. By instilling fear in the Ukrainian forces that they enjoyed military support of Russia, which was not in fact the case, they were treated more cautiously than was warranted. For two and a half months, they tied down Ukrainian troops which otherwise could have overwhelmed the entire Donbas separatist movement. Battle hardened by their own war experience, they formed the backbone of what became the Donbas militias in the months that followed their retreat from Slavyansk.

The author is a professional journalist who participated in the defense of Slavyansk on the front lines. His first hand knowledge of the people and events he is writing about endows the book with great value both for the general reader and for future historians. His book was skillfully organized and written to be an easy read even for those, like myself, who are strangers to accounts of artillery duels, sniper attacks and other armed skirmishes.  He intermixes this material with biographical sketches of some of his fellow combatants and leaders, who are all extraordinary people. From interviews with them, he offers their appraisals of what was achieved as a counterpoint to his own thoughts.

The leading figure in the story, Igor Strelkov, was in 2014 and later highly critical of Russia’s early decision not to extend to Donbas the lifeline it provided to Crimea. His open criticism of the Kremlin resulted in his being shunted aside once Russia took charge.

The question ‘why Moscow held back’ hangs over the book from beginning to end.  After all, in the summer of 2014 the Ukrainian army was weak, poorly armed, badly led and demoralized following the shameful loss of Crimea. Taking the Donbas militarily would have required a very small effort by the Kremlin and referenda over unification with Russia which would have followed would likely have given massive support to that initiative.

To be sure, the Russian Federation did in fact enter the conflict in the summer of 2014, but only three weeks after the loss of Slavyansk, and then with relatively modest assistance. Moreover, the Kremlin sought simultaneously to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis, and prodded the Donbas republics to accept the Minsk Accords which established the principle of their eventually returning to the fold of the Ukrainian state in return for its federalization, meaning the granting of considerable autonomy to the Donbas regions, including with respect to Russian as a language of state.

This question of why Russia did not pursue the Crimean scenario in Donbas in 2014 assumes special importance today, in 2022, when ensuring the security of the Donbas through the ‘special military operation’ is taking enormous efforts from Russia, including significant loss of life among its soldiers and massive expenditure of military equipment and munitions over a very lengthy period of time. Indeed Ukrainian capitulation may yet take many months to achieve.

The challenges to Russia’s move to subdue Ukraine today come from the eight years of work on its own and with the help of allies that Kiev has used to prepare militarily for this very conflict, in particular, by building vast fortifications just to the west of the demarcation line with the Donbas republics. Their concrete reinforced trenches and bunkers are resistant to most artillery fire and they are positioned in the proximity of residential communities, meaning that carpet bombing or other drastic methods would result in enormous civilian casualties, which the Russians cannot tolerate amidst a population they hope to acquire. In this same period of time, Ukraine has received both modern military equipment and extensive training under NATO country programs. The results serve them well.

The question of Russian restraint in 2014 came up in the 17 August edition of Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. The moderator himself answered the question:  the Russian Army was then only partly on its way to the thorough reorganization that has produced the modern and well-equipped professional Army of today. Moreover, in 2014 Russia did not possess the cutting edge strategic weapons systems, both conventional and nuclear, that it has today to put fear into the United States and other international foes and moderate their direct involvement in a Russia-Ukraine war. Even if Ukraine’s military was weak and poorly led in 2014, behind it stood NATO, which surely would have stepped in to reverse any Russian victory.

 But there is also an economic side to the calculations. In 2014 Russia was totally unprepared for the ‘sanctions from hell’ that would surely have been applied then had it taken the Donbas by force. It had nothing to counter any cut-off from SWIFT and its economy would have plummeted. It also had still far more dollar assets than it did this year given that it has sold off Treasury notes in the meantime. Russia has used the past eight years to devise new payment systems bypassing SWIFT, to agree on settlements of foreign trade in their national currency with friendly countries like India and China, and to otherwise insulate itself from US-dominated financial infrastructure. In addition, the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 over Crimea already set the country on course to import substitution and ‘economic sovereignty’ in a number of domains, in particular in agriculture, so that today the country is largely self-sufficient in food supplies and a major exporter of grains, poultry and other agricultural products.

For all of these reasons, it is appropriate to credit the Kremlin with realism and common sense in its dealings with Donbas and Ukraine in 2014, however disappointing its decisions then may have been for the Russian Spring movement.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

A couple of weeks before Vladimir Putin announced his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, he met in the Kremlin with Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz. At their joint press conference following the meeting, Putin mentioned in passing that Ukraine is controlled today by neo-Nazis. This remark was famously ridiculed by Scholz as “laughable,” thereby earning for him the Kremlin’s utter contempt. German-Russian relations have undergone a sharp deterioration ever since, with Germany gradually stepping up its supplies of cutting-edge lethal weaponry to Kiev and Russia, in its internal political discussions, placing Germany alongside the United States and Britain as de facto ‘co-belligerents’ which may be subjected to Russian missile attacks if the war escalates further.

At the time of the exchange of courtesies between Putin and Scholz in February, I wrote an essay in which I tried to explain the background to Russian claims of rampant Nazism in Ukraine, which sounded very odd to Westerners but found a very receptive audience among the Russian population, where evocations of Nazism arise at every annual May 9^th celebration of Victory in Europe Day, marking the end of WWII. As I noted then, one source of Russian allegations was the celebration by official Kiev of the ultra-nationalist Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator of the German forces in WWII who practiced vicious ethnic cleansing against Jews, Russians and Poles. Statues are erected to him; streets are named after him across Ukraine.

Of course, the numbers of actual neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine before and since 2014 have been very small as a percentage of the overall population. In the parliamentary and presidential elections that have taken place since the United States installed its preferred regime in Kiev in February 2014, the neo-Nazi candidates have not scored more than several percentage points.  However, from the first days of the February coup d’etat, neo-Nazis have held the key ministerial posts in defense and the security apparatus of the Ukrainian government, effectively calling the shots in foreign policy and the confrontation with Russia.

When the Russians finally flushed out the Azov battalion extremists from their fortified positions at the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol three months into the ‘special military operation,’ they found and presented on television proof positive of the Nazi presence at the core of the Ukrainian armed forces. Ukrainian prisoners of war were stripped and the Russian camera men video-recorded their tattooed bodies, featuring not only swastikas and other German Nazi symbols but also portraits of Hitler and other Nazi leaders from the Third Reich. Western journalists, of course, saw all of this but it hardly was reported in our media. Nor has there been any reconsideration in the West of the facile dismissal of Russian concern over neo-Nazism that Scholz demonstrated.

Events in the EU’s ‘front line’ countries of the Baltic states and Poland have given a new dimension to the Russian concerns over neo-Nazism. I have in mind the dismantling and removal of statues and other monuments to the Soviet Army liberators of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from German occupation in 1945 even as their own Nazi collaborators from the past are given new honors. This has greatly accelerated in recent weeks. Meanwhile, parades of the descendants of the collaborators have been going on in Riga and elsewhere year after year.

 Still more controversial and significant has been the attempts of Lithuania to close down land transportation between the main territory of the RF and its Kaliningrad outpost in violation of all signed undertakings for free transit between different constituent parts of Russia agreed by the EU.

 Add to that the latest Estonian led effort to close Europe entirely to Russians. A few weeks ago, Estonian border guards at the Narva crossing refused to admit Russians holding Schengen visas issued previously by their own authorities and now they are refusing to recognize Schengen visas issued by other EU Member States. Together with Poland, all three Baltic States have demanded that the EU no longer issue visas to Russian tourists.

To be sure, the demand that all Russians be barred from Europe as punishment for their war on Ukraine has not met with universal approval within the EU. Even Germany came out against the initiative, with Scholz saying that exceptions must be made for humanitarian reasons. Others have debated the legality under EU law of such generalized prohibitions directed at an entire population.  But the debate rages on.

Finally, a statement made yesterday by Latvian President Egils Levits got the full attention of Moscow. He said that Russian-speaking residents of Latvia should be ‘isolated from society’ if they oppose his government’s policies with respect to the war in Ukraine.  Just what is meant by “isolate” is not clear. Does Levits intend to intern them in concentration camps?  Given the absolute failure of Latvia to respect EU human rights norms going back from the first days of the country’s independence from the USSR in 1991, such an atrocity would not be out of character.

I have dealt with precisely this issue in essays going back to 2014 which were included in my collection Does Russia Have a Future?:  see chapter 22 “Latvia’s 300,000 Non-Citizens and the Ukrainian Crisis Today” and chapter 33 “Latvia’s failed U.S. inspired policies towards Russia and Russians.” I further explored these issues in my 2019 book A Belgian Perspective on International Relations, chapter38 “Republic of Latvia, Apartheid State Within the EU.” 

The point is that upon achieving independence thanks to the active support of many of its Russian-speaking citizenry, the government of Latvia turned around and stripped 400,000 of them of their citizenship, close to 40% of the total population at the time, and offered them a path to regain passports that only a tiny fraction of them could follow.  When President Levits speaks today of Russian-speaking “residents” of Latvia, he has in mind those who were deprived of civil rights including passports and remain stateless up to the present time.  Everything that Latvia did to its Russian-speaking population going back 30 years set the precedents for Kiev’s repressive policies towards its own 40% who are Russian speakers after the nationalists from Lvov came to power in 2014.

These various developments were the main topic for discussion in yesterday’s Evening with Vladimir Solovyov political talk show, which stood out as especially valuable.  Although I have made reference to this particular talk show frequently over the years as a good source of information about what Russia’s political and social elites are thinking, I freely acknowledge that the presenter cannot and does not fill every program with material and panelists worth listening to.  Indeed, there is a lot of sludge on air between the gems. By ‘sludge’ I mean the kind of ‘kitchen talk’ in which expert panelists talk the same non-facts-based drivel that ordinary Russians will engage in when they follow the principle of socializing described by Chekhov in Act Two of The Three Sisters:  “They are not serving us tea, so let’s philosophize.”

In any case, last night’s Solovyov was definitely worth listening to. The question of neo-Nazism in Europe was the glue binding together different elements of the discussion, ranging from Levits’ obnoxious declaration of the same day to the fate of ordinary Russians in Kazakhstan and Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and what to do about all of these challenges to the Russian World.

The overriding point was that the Russophobia and ‘cancel Russian culture’ movements that have swept Europe during 2022 mean that Russians are the Jews of today. They are what the Hitlerites called Untermenschen, against whom all manner of rights violations if not outright murder can be practiced. This arises in its worst form in Ukraine, where Russians as a people are systematically dehumanized in statements from the top leadership of the country.  In Ukraine, the ultra-nationalists call Russians “Colorado,” a reference to the bugs that infest potato crops. These insects carry the orange and black colors of the St George’s ribbons that patriotic Russians wear. This is the same logic that made possible the biological weapons attack on Russian soldiers in the Zaporozhie that was carried out last week by Ukrainian forces, sending the victims to intensive care treatment for botulism poisoning. That development probably did not get coverage in your daily newspaper.

The conversation on Solovyov was particularly interesting in the ‘what is to be done’ segment. Acknowledging that a ‘special military operation’ against Latvia is not practicable yet given Latvia’s membership in NATO, a panelist who heads the State Duma committee on relations with the Former Soviet Union states, said that those Russians who profited from the transit business between Russia and Latvia for decades should now pay up and contribute financially to relocating the Russian speakers in Riga to the Russian Federation, meaning providing good housing and jobs that till now were never on offer to incentivize immigration. A fellow panelist broadened the proposed assistance to suggest a government program of resettlement modeled on what Israel did some decades ago to facilitate the relocation of certain Black African Jews from their country of persecution to the State of Israel.  And it was suggested that similar relocation offers should be extended to Russian speakers in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries where they have all been second class citizens since these countries became independent of the USSR.

This issue of the fate of ethnic Russians living outside the borders of the Russian Federation at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union has been around for a long time.  When Vladimir Putin spoke the words that have been so often raised by Russia-haters in the West, namely that the break-up of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century, he definitely had in mind the fate of the 25 million Russian speakers who were left high and dry in the other republics, now sovereign states ruled by the non-Russian majority populations.  In 1991 and later years, Russia’s own economic woes left it unable to offer decent housing to its soldiers and officers transferred back to Russia from the former Warsaw Pact countries, let alone to care for the 25 million Russian civilians outside its borders.

Last night’s panelists argued that the time has come to redress this moral failure of Russia to stand by its former citizens who are Russian-speakers, to offer to repatriate them under attractive conditions.  This would respond to the country’s own economic interests by redressing the demographic challenges Russia is facing as a result of its 1990s collapse and birth rates that then declined precipitously.  And it would be a direct answer to the neo-Nazi movements in Europe which would gladly exacerbate repression among Russians in their midst.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022