Has ‘partial mobilization’ breathed full-blooded democracy into Russia’s parliamentary government structure and broader society?

It is normal to think of wartime as a period of tightened censorship and imposition of ever greater controls on society at large.  Indeed, Western journalists have in the past half year focused attention on the closure of several notorious anti-Putin broadcasting companies and print media in Russia, including Rain (Dozhd’) and Novaya Gazeta. They have covered the flight of editors and staff abroad after they were labeled as ‘foreign agents’ and could expect invitations to appear before the courts.

However, in the days since the announcement by the Kremlin of ‘partial mobilization’ of the reserves, it is increasingly clear to any outside objective observer that a full blast of social activism is underway, and that the dikes of state controls on free speech are being swept away. A week ago, following reversals on the battlefield and loss of territory to the enemy that could not be ignored, members of the State Duma openly denounced the Ministry of Defense for dispensing ‘fairy tales’ about the progress of the campaign in Ukraine and demanded transparency in communications to the public. Speaker of the Duma Volodin, who is a leader of the ruling United Russia party, must have been in shock.

Meanwhile, we see on state television news reporting on the formation of private committees across the country to raise funds, procure goods and directly deliver to the new recruits clothing and other gear which the Army is not providing as it sends them off to the front. This is presented as representing a patriotic upsurge in Russian society, but on closer view it is a damning criticism of the incompetence of the powers-that-be for sending citizens off to war without the kit they need.

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In the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe, the escalating confrontation between Russia and NATO in and over Ukraine is presented as a repetition of the actors and principles underlying the outbreak of World War II.  Putin is the modern day Hitler and Western leaders must defend democratic institutions against authoritarian regimes which commit aggression against neighbors.

In Russia, the escalating confrontation is seen in different terms, as a repetition of World War I, when the leaders of the Great Powers ‘sleep walked’ into the greatest tragedy for civilization of all time by failing to see the abyss before them. If the Kremlin is not careful, the likeness of today’s developments on the home front to the situation at the start – and more importantly, at the end – of WWI may yet be proven. That war did not end well for the tsarist regime and to a very considerable extent it was brought down precisely by patriotic society. 

Current Russian television footage of the send-off of the reservists in provincial cities, with busloads of recruits driving past cheering citizenry waving little flags and bouquets of flowers, bears an uncanny resemblance to vintage photos taken in Russia at the outset of The Great War. The patriotic organizations formed by local politicians to support the war effort in 1914 over time became hotbeds of open criticism of the army leadership and of the tsarist dynasty, leading to the February Revolution and forced abdication of Nicholas II. Kremlin elites have excellent memories and surely are concerned.

Why is there today such a public display of civic activism?  What has happened to the passive Russian public?  The one-word answer is mobilization.  As Sergey Mikheev, a panelist in last night’s Vladimir Solovyov talk show explained, the mobilization has turned what was a technical operation manned by professional soldiers into a ‘people’s war’ and the people now want a say in how it is conducted.

That is a sea change in Russian domestic politics. But it was to be expected, and its emergence so quickly is precisely why the Kremlin postponed mobilization as long as it could.

A little less than a year ago, I published an essay about the passivity of the Russian citizen-taxpayer under the piquant heading “no representation without taxation,” standing on its head the call to arms that once motivated American Revolutionaries against their colonial masters in England – https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2021/11/03/no-representation-without-taxation/. 

For a number of reasons, the lion’s share of the Russian state budget comes from export taxes on gas and oil, with a relatively low share coming from taxes on the average Russian citizen:  income tax is set at a flat rate of 15% and property taxes on houses and apartments are close to nil, while the government assures welfare state benefits of free medical care and education to the broad population. But when the Russian citizen has a direct interest in the game, as is now the case with the mobilization of husbands and fathers, that passive citizenry can become very emotional, involved and vocal.

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Last night’s political talk show hosted by Vladimir Solovyov was outstanding for giving voice to precisely the thoughts you otherwise hear in people’s home as they talk in their kitchens with relatives and close friends. There were several noteworthy contributors to the discussion, but the most comprehensive contribution was made by Sergey Mikheev, whom I briefly cited above. He was given the microphone for ten minutes or more, was not interrupted by the host or fellow panelists, which is common practice on these talk shows, and he delivered a stirring programmatic speech which, if you take it apart, was severely critical not of the generals for unprofessional management of field operations but of the country’s political leadership, going straight back to Vladimir Putin, for deeply flawed concepts on how the war should be prosecuted.

The mobilization, per Mikheev, is merely an extension or escalation of the failed policies to date, namely the attempt to conduct an artillery and infantry war with successes measured in destruction of Ukrainian military assets, instead of conducting total war, with the emphasis placed on destruction of the entire Ukrainian power generation, logistics and other infrastructure so as to demoralize the Ukrainian population and deprive its army of the wherewithal to continue fighting.

Mikheev attributed to his opponents in the Kremlin the argument that what they are doing is more humane, that Russia has no intention of leaving the broad Ukrainian public without heat or electricity in winter, or of causing unnecessary civilian deaths in its missile strikes. He insisted that the more humane way would have been to inflict massive pain on Ukraine back in March and April, so as to bring the conflict to an early conclusion. Escalation by baby steps is only prolonging the war and raising the risk of nuclear Armageddon.

Mikheev said that the loss of territory during the recent Ukrainian counteroffensives has many citizens scratching their heads. Why is Russia not using the technological superiority of its weaponry to greatest advantage? Why is it instead only increasing the numbers of its front line fighters as if this were a 20^th century rather than a 21^st century war?

Doubts about how the war is being conducted are causing ordinary Russians to lose confidence in their leadership and to look for hidden traitors. People are asking whether the oligarchs are influencing how the war is being fought so as to protect their interests. There is no room for private interests in what has been described as an existential conflict, says Mikheev.  How is it that the truck loaded with explosives was allowed onto the bridge despite what had been described as tightest security?  People are thinking that someone was paid off to let this vehicle through without inspection.  Such corrosive doubts can be cut short only by a change in the way the war in being conducted.

It is hard to imagine a more damning statement than what Sergey Mikheev was allowed to present live on air on the Solovyov show.  All reports about secret messages of criticism to Putin from within the Kremlin ranks that our newspapers feature pale in significance by comparison.

Another noteworthy panelist in last night’s show was the general director of Mosfilm, Karen Shakhnazarov, who, like Mikheev, is a regular visitor to the program. Shakhnazarov had two points to convey, one minor, and strictly professional from his domain, the world of entertainment, and the other major, and likely more broadly representative of thinking among Russia’s ‘creative classes.’ The minor point was to call out the absence today of a comprehensive patriotic management of the war effort. With all due respect to the mastery of foreign film directors and production companies, how can it be, he asked, that our television stations, including the private station NTV, are showing Rambo films these days? Such adulatory films of American daring-do could and should be put on hold till after this war is over.

Shakhnazarov’s major point was that Russia erred in not taking up Elon Musk’s latest proposal for ending the war. This was a missed Public Relations opportunity of great potential value in the Information War.  Yes, Russia does not accept certain points in the plan, in particular, regarding holding new referendums in the four newly annexed territories.  But it would have served Russia very well to say ‘yes, the plan is worth considering, and we are ready to go the extra mile in pursuit of peace’ when Zelensky unreservedly rejected the Musk plan.  Said Shakhnazarov, Musk has tens of millions of followers and they could have been won over to Russia’s cause had the Kremlin given a qualified yes to the plan.

Finally, I call attention to the remarks made by a retired military intelligence officer, hero of the Russian Federation, who gave highly relevant explanations to the alleged Russian targeting of purely civilian targets like children’s playgrounds and opera houses in its missile strikes on cities across Ukraine a day ago in revenge for the bombing of the Crimea bridge.  As he noted, Ukrainian authorities have claimed that the Russians fired 72 missiles that day, of which 42 were supposedly knocked out by the Ukrainian air defenses.  Meanwhile the Russian authorities have said nothing about possible losses of their missiles to Ukrainian defenses and only said that all of the targets on their list were destroyed.

Let us say, this general argued, that the Ukrainian figures were inflated and that they shot down not 42 but 21 of our missiles. That would take the loss rate into typical range given that Ukraine still has a powerful anti missile defense in Kiev and elsewhere, which has been strengthened in recent weeks by more advanced systems sent in from NATO countries.  “Shot down” is a deceptive term:  usually this means not total destruction but the break-up of the incoming missile into fragments which contain explosives and land wherever gravity brings them down.  Accordingly it is entirely possible that fragments of such Russian missiles indeed landed in civilian, residential neighborhoods with associated loss of life.  Though the general did not mention it, exactly the same scenario occurred in Donetsk and other cities in the rebel provinces when they came under attack from Ukrainian Tochka-M rockets early in this war. The rockets were intercepted by Russian air defenses, but the fragments landed in city streets and caused significant loss of life as well as damage to infrastructure.

Finally, this military intelligence expert had some interesting and possibly valuable words to say about the newly appointed head of military operations in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, whom he met several times in the past and for whom he has great respect.  Surovikin has been given this assignment after serving as chief of the Aerospace Forces, which was in itself an unusual career move for an officer whose basic education and experience was in charge of ground forces.  In this appointment, we may well see better coordination and use of the two different branches of the military, which have been criticized in Western expert circles for precisely a lack of effectiveness.  As regards the coincidence between the new assignment and the dramatic ratcheting up of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian cities a day ago, the general insisted that from one day to the next a new appointee cannot master all aspects of the ongoing complex military operations, so that Surovikin cannot be the author of these strikes. 

Having some experience as an historical researcher in Russian government archives from the tsarist period, I learned one lesson that bears on today:  in government offices there are always competent and highly experienced officials who draft legislation or orders that sit idly in their desk drawers but which can become government policy in a matter of hours if events outside the bureaucracy force a change.  I believe that is precisely what happened with respect to Russia’s massive attack on Ukraine of late.

With this, I rest my overriding point from the foregoing summary of the 10 October Solovyov show:  Russian state television is essential reference material to anyone seeking to make sense of this war and to see where it may lead.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Zelensky’s wildly irresponsible call for a ‘preventive nuclear strike against Russia”: analysis on Iran’s Press TV

Once again I have the pleasure of recommending to my readership a live interview on Iran’s Press TV earlier today. Once again, I find their news presenter very well briefed on the subject at hand. Once again I find their political positioning remarkably friendly to the Russian side in the conflict with the West over Ukraine.

One might draw conclusions about a shift in Iranian state politics away from ‘kiss and make up’ with the United States and towards alignment with its regional neighbors and with the great powers Russia and China. It is these last two which are raising Iran’s image of stable and constructive contributor to the world order in forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Caspian Economic Forum, presently being held in Moscow.

As I have observed based on my participation in live broadcasts dealing with current Russia-related events on Iran’s Press TV, the productions are good professional journalism and the guests are notable.  A couple of days ago this impression was further substantiated when I joined the Christian Science Monitor’s man in Moscow, Fred Weir, in analysis of the accession of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic and the Kherson and Zaporozhie oblasts to the Russian Federation.

http://www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/118340

Three years ago, I published an essay under a ‘fake news’ heading urging Vladimir Putin to put aside ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ behavior and rhetoric with respect to Russia’s supposed ‘partners’ in the West and to slam his shoe on the table in the crude manner of Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations in 1956.

https://original.antiwar.com/gilbert_doctorow/2019/02/01/vladimir-putin-to-the-west-we-will-bury-you/  

I very much regretted that Putin repeatedly turned the other cheek when his country was treated unceremoniously or when he was personally insulted by hack politicians in the United States including Joe Biden. Nikita Khrushchev was never called a ‘thug’ or a war criminal; Putin has been so described in mainstream media. I insisted that it was much better for nations and statesmen to be feared than to be liked. Indeed, the future of the world depends on mutual respect born of fear, not brotherly love, as 70 years of Mutually Assured Destruction demonstrated.

Mr. Putin’s devastating critique of the U.S.-led Collective West yesterday in his speech to Russia’s bicameral legislature, regional governors and other high officials just prior to the signing of papers leading to the accession of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic and the Kherson and Zaporozhie oblasts to the Russian Federation, indicates clearly that he has thrown in his personal fate and the nation’s fate to the policies of Kremlin hard-line patriots. He has parted company with the still substantial faction of pro-Western Liberals populating the decision-making instances in the Russian capital and in gubernatorial offices.

Until now, Putin played a careful balancing act between domestic liberals and conservatives in a manner similar to what Mikhail Gorbachev did with his Central Committee colleagues of the CPSU. Gorbachev finally lost his balance, was briefly overthrown by the weak and unpopular conservatives, then was reinstated by the liberals only be turned out onto the street months later.  In the case of Vladimir Putin, the conservatives with whom he is now aligned are the key to his own 72% approval rating, even today following implementation of the ‘partial mobilization,’ while the leadership of the liberals, beginning with the ‘red forelock’ (рыжий чуб) Anatoly Chubais, have fled the country in large numbers and pose no threat to the President.

Putin’s recognition of the new ‘subjects of the Russian Federation’ as near and dear to the whole country and as irrevocably integrated into the Motherland, has been correctly identified by Western observers as doubling down on the core ideas of his ‘special military operation’ or, put in other words, as a serious escalation in the proxy war with NATO. Everyone now understands perfectly that Russia will defend its new borders with all its considerable military and other resources.

 Russia’s showing its claws has changed the game. Within hours, Ukrainian President Zelensky formally asked NATO for expedited approval of its membership application, by which we may assume he meant immediate admission. In a press conference later in the day, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg effectively rejected this request, noting that the Alliance has its procedures and admittance of any new member takes time. There can be little doubt that this answer was given to him by Washington. Of course, the days of the Kiev regime are numbered as Russia steps up its war effort. Zelensky & Co. will not survive in power long enough to pursue their NATO application.

Meanwhile the dummy in charge of the U.S. State Department, Antony Blinken, told reporters yesterday that in fact the United States has no indications Russia intends to use nuclear arms in Ukraine. This reversal of his remarks of the past few weeks is no minor point; it means that U.S. flirtation with staging yet another anti-Russian false flag operation, this time by detonating a nuclear device somewhere in Ukraine that might be blamed on the Kremlin, has, thankfully, been abandoned. The world is much safer for all that.

Today’s Financial Times continues its snarling denunciations of the Russian leader and his ‘annexation’ of the four former Ukrainian oblasts. However, in The New York Times I see a sign that even our media can comprehend that the game is up, with or without successes of the Ukrainian counter offensive. I point to today’s opinion essay on the paper’s front page by columnist and three time winner of the Pulitzer Prize Thomas Friedman entitled “Putin is Trying to Outcrazy the West.” 

Friedman is the Liberals’ Liberal, much beloved by many of my former classmates at Harvard. He is now saying that maybe the United States should swerve to avoid being hit by the vehicle driven by madman Putin.  Yes, according to Friedman, Russia is losing the war in Ukraine. Yes, Russia is ruled by an autocrat, whose political views are anathema to freedom loving America. Yes, he is isolating Russia globally and turning it into a kind of North Korea. But for our and the world’s safety, we should let him pass and not go head-to-head with Russia.  This is precisely what I expected in my mention a couple of days ago that Putin would do well to take a page of Richard Nixon’s strategy of assuming the guise of a madman in 1972 to bring the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table.

 The notion that there will be some ‘kiss and make up’ between Russia and the Collective West is now fully discredited. An enemy is an enemy. A clash of civilizations is a clash of civilizations. The most to hope for in the foreseeable is a truce, an end to military hostilities. For this to be achieved, Mr. Putin has to match his tough words with tough deeds and, as I have suggested, swiftly decapitate the civilian and military leadership in Kiev. The leadership of the Collective West will do nothing about it other than bark, while the rest of us will be able to sleep calmly after months of anxiety.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Vladimir Putin speaks at the accession ceremony of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhie and Kherson

Russia’s online portal for state television programming smotrim.ru has put up the full address by Vladimir Putin earlier this afternoon to the joint session of Russia’s parliament in the St George’s Hall of the Kremlin. The speech was indeed substantive and very important, as had been tipped in advance by the presidential team. It was followed directly by the signing of papers incorporating into the Russian Federation the four territories of Ukraine which have just completed their referendums on accession: the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Kherson oblast and the Zaporozhie oblast.

In what follows, I will direct attention first to how this speech broke new ground in Vladimir Puitn’s description of Russia’s difficult relations with the world’s powers that be which first took concrete form in his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February 2007.  I will be brief. I will not attempt to summarize passages or go into great detail, because the speech itself will very quickly be made available in English on the presidential website and will be carried in full on Johnson’s Russia List.

Next I will offer what the text does not provide: my observations on how it was delivered, that is to say, the state of mind of the speaker, and on how it was received by the audience, judging by facial expressions of the ministers and other high officials in the front rows who were given greatest coverage by the cameras.

Finally, I have a word to say on what this speech means for Russia’s backers in the ongoing showdown with the Collective West, China, India and Iran, and what it means for the further conduct of the war in Ukraine.

For the main part, the speech was a comprehensive denunciation not only of the United States as global hegemon, a theme which goes back to Putin’s remarkable talk in 2007, but a denunciation of the Collective West which the United States directs. The elites of this Collective West, and in particular the elites of Europe, in their various vassal states, come in now for special mention as willing collaborators in the plunder of the world that Washington oversees, even at the expense of their own peoples, as we see today in the ongoing destruction and de-industrialization of Europe that follow from the anti-Russian sanctions demanded by the USA and their resultant energy crisis and rampant inflation. In passing, Putin characterizes these elites as traitors to their countries. On the upside, he notes that there are in all of these countries people of good will and common sense who understand matters in the same way as does Russia, and he claims that their numbers are increasing all the time.

It also is worth remarking that Putin speaks of Germany, Japan and South Korea as ‘occupied countries,’ meaning of course the large American forces based in these countries since the end of the Second World War and Korean War.  In light of all the discussion in the West of whether Russia will or will not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, he points out that the only country to have used nuclear weapons was the United States, in its attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, to which he adds that these bombings were not for military purposes in the ongoing campaign, but to inspire fear in the world and in the Soviet Union in particular. Moreover, he mentioned the US and Allied bombing of Dresden, Cologne and other German cities as having had shock value rather than military utility, all of which reduces to zero U.S. credibility today as a teacher of civilized morals to Russia.

Talking points from the civilizational conflict with the West which have been delivered by Putin in various forums and conferences over the past year are also set out here.  Russia stands by its traditional values and will not accept the gender games and aggressive secularism that are promoted by the neoliberal elites of the West.

More importantly, he explains that the Collective West is guided by the principles of colonialism, which legitimize the robbery of the national wealth of countries in the rest of the world.

The United States and Collective West are in open conflict with Russia for its insubordination, for its insistence on being itself and not following a diktat from anyone. The Collective West is intent on Russia’s destruction, its break-up into smaller units easier to control and colonize. The spoliation of Russia by the West at the time the country was flat on its back in the 1990s amounted to 1 trillion dollars.

Putin characterized the information war and lies propagated by the West about Russia as worthy of Goebbels, following the principle that the more outrageous is the lie, the more it is repeated, the greater the likelihood it will be believed and accepted.

The speech had very little content drawing on current events, aside from the referendums in the respective territories which have now become ‘subjects of the Russian Federation.’  He did mention the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in one sentence, as the work of the ‘Anglo-Saxons,’ which in the context we may take to mean the United Kingdom. It will be interesting to see in the coming days whether Russian diplomats put forward this allegation in international forums like the United Nations.

As for the speaker, he was in top form. His delivery was self-assured and smooth. He looked radiant and in good health.

Judging by the faces of those who were repeatedly captured by the cameramen, the mood of the audience was predominantly, almost exclusively somber, similar to when Putin delivered his announcement on recognition of the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the days leading up to the 24 February launch of the ‘special military operation.’ I call out in particular Prime Minister Mishustin, chief of the presidential administration Kiriyenko, speaker of the Federation Council Matviyenko, Speaker of the State Duma Volodin, former president and head of the Security Council Medvedev, head of the Just Russia party Mironov, head of Foreign Intelligence Naryshkin, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Federation Council Kosachev, minister of foreign affairs Lavrov.  The weight and responsibility before history for the fate of the country at this critical time could be read on all these faces.

Curiously, the party leader of the Communists, Zyuganov, was not picked out by the cameras; presumably, he would have been in a more celebratory mood. And the only major Russian politician who surely would have smiled broadly, Zhirinovsky, has been dead now for six months. Oh, yes, there was on the dais one man who was clearly in very good spirits: the leader of the Donetsk Republic, Pushilin.

Where does the campaign in Ukraine go from here?  There was absolutely nothing in Putin’s speech to answer that question. The only mention of Kiev in this connection was his insistence that Russia stands ready to enter into negotiations on condition that the status of the four new ‘subjects’ of the Russian Federation not be discussed, since their fate was solved now once and for all.

For the world at large, Vladimir Putin has set out a broad and vastly damaging condemnation of the Collective West which no one can ignore. He has thrown down his gauntlet. 

From the beginning of the ‘special military operation’ there has been speculation among expert observers of all political stripes that Russia would never have dared to invade Ukraine had he not had the backing of China’s president Xi.  It was assumed by others that the stress of the war and of the sanctions imposed by the West has made Russia a junior partner of China, with all the loss of independence that implies.  However, I would maintain that with this speech the Russians have both the Chinese and the Indians by the tail, not the other way around.  There is no way that either of these great powers can walk away from Russia without losing all credibility in the Global South as champions of a multipolar world and challengers to the rapacious collective West.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Panel discussion of the referendums and coming reintegration into Russia of the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporozhie

I take pleasure in sharing the link to the just posted Cross Talk show hosted by Peter Lavelle and with the participation of the widely read journalist Pepe Escobar.

Draft evasion, escalation of military operations and other highly topical subjects in today’s Russia

My good friend and “comrade in arms” in the anti-war community, Ray McGovern, yesterday published an article on how The New York Times is stoking the war in Ukraine and goading the Biden administration to be ever more aggressive and irresponsible. Ray went on to remind us of the ignominious role played by NYT news reporters and their editorial board in promoting the Vietnam War, from the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that heralded the start of the real US engagement to the bitter end, all without a word of apology or regret in later years.

As a member of the Vietnam War generation in the USA, mention of that war brings up for me two words of great importance in the Russia that I see around me on this three week visit to St Petersburg:  draft evasion and escalation.

It would be no exaggeration to say that the “partial mobilization” that was announced by the Kremlin in the past week is the number one item of news and discussion in the social networks here as well as on  radio and television broadcasting. As I mentioned a day ago in my coverage of the national radio station Business FM, there is extensive examination on air of the implications of the call-up to military service for business and society in general.

 A great deal of attention is directed at exemptions from service for various categories of the population, primarily, by relevance of their work to national defense and technological sovereignty. In this regard the most widely discussed industry is IT. The public is being told that software programmers are absolutely needed in their present workplaces to further the import substitution program. But does that extend to individuals and companies developing software for video games? And what about the owners-managers, the finance directors, the legal department heads of IT companies that do serve the defense industry and/or technology more broadly?  As we hear on air, these other members of staff are also critical to the viability of the companies and so to the national interest. Without them the companies in question just fold.

Another related issue widely covered in the media here is draft evasion, in particular, by those leaving the country clandestinely by plane, by private car across the land frontiers, and even by electric scooters which move straight to the head of the queues at the border crossings. The Georgian border is now being closed by authorities in Tbilisi. The border with Kazakhstan is being closed down to auto traffic.  But there is still the Finnish border, where 7 hour lines are forming.

Media reporting tells us that some 300,000 Russian males eligible for call-up, which now extends to age 55, have already fled the country. The significance of that number, if it is in fact reliable, depends on who these draft dodgers are:  if they are skilled and experienced, say in computer programming and communications, then the loss is significant; if they are hair dressers and farm hands, then the loss of 300,000 in a population of 145 million is a drop in the bucket.

Those who are departing to evade the call-up are being denounced as “rats” by socially prominent personalities before the radio and television microphones.  Ordinary women interviewed on the streets of Moscow or other multi-million cities across Russia tell members of the opposite sex to “be men” and do their duty. 

I have no doubt that the European elites shudder at this very traditional appeal to sexist stereotypes that underlie national defense and patriotism. But such appeals definitely have resonance in Russia today.  My 50-year old main taxi driver, infantry captain in the reserves, has little doubt he will be called up, if not in this first “partial” mobilization then in the general mobilization that is sure to follow once Russia declares war on Ukraine, which may be within the coming two weeks. And what does he say about it? “I already have the best years of my life behind me. I am ready to go and, if necessary, to die for my country.”  Verbatim and without a hint of jingoism. It sounds a bit like the charming “my country write [sic] or wrong” that my grandfather Max, who emigrated to the U.S. from the Russian Empire in about 1910, wrote to me in the 1960s. Both expressions were heartfelt and merit respect.

In my description of how Business FM covers the impact of the mobilization on society and also the issue of lines at the borders, I said the broadcaster was neither pro-Putin, nor anti-Putin, but that is not entirely true. By its nature, such coverage provides useful information to draft dodgers, meaning the Opposition.  I mention this to underline the fact that despite the heightened controls on society that the war has brought with it, Russian media are still often honest, transparent and useful in ways that your average Russia-basher in the West cannot conceive.

On the question of escalation, there is less public discussion but a lot of grumbling in the kitchens of ordinary folk that the war is proceeding much too slowly, that Russia should apply the devastating conventional weapons at its disposal to put an end to the fighting one-two-three. The hard-line patriots are calling for Defense Minister Shoigu, who in fact never served in the armed forces, to be replaced by someone with “balls,” like Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechnya Republic. Kadyrov sent his forces to the Donbas, where they spearheaded the conquest of Mariupol and are destroying the enemy now by tough urban warfare in other Donbas settlements

War by escalation was the policy which the Kennedy brain trust of the “the best and the brightest” implemented in Vietnam. From a modest expeditionary force, it led finally to the deployment of more than 600,000 troops in Vietnam and to vastly destructive bombing of that country and neighboring Laos and Cambodia. But to no avail. This seemingly rational doctrine was overturned when Nixon came to power and introduced the “madman” leader guise by his Christmas bombing of Hanoi in 1972. The U.S. then projected the image of a dangerous foe ready to inflict all manner of atrocities on the enemy, and some have argued this helped bring the North to the negotiating table.  Regrettably, this approach to war seems not to have caught the attention of Mr. Putin’s inner circle of advisers. I recommend it to them.

But perhaps I am mistaken.  Perhaps the mobilization is just a cover, suggesting continuation of the war under its present method of attrition, while de facto preparing the way for a change of tactics to destruction of the Ukrainian command and control at the Ministry of Defense and destruction of the civilian decision making instances by precision bombing in Kiev using unstoppable hypersonic missiles for which the latest air defense installations coming from the USA are useless. Perhaps the mobilization is merely to have ready boots on the ground to occupy and hold the Ukraine following the decapitation of its civilian and military leadership.  Time will tell.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

In recent articles I have made frequent references to the political talk shows on Russian state television as an invaluable source of information about the thinking of the chattering classes and, in particular of social and political elites close to the Kremlin.  Even an acerbic academic from Rhode Island who left a nasty comment on my site about the value of my latest article on the shift from ‘special military operation’ to open war remarked in his closing sentence that he intends to follow more closely the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov program, especially when RT director Simonyan appears as a panelist. So I think I have made my point about television fairly convincingly.

In today’s essay, I want to direct attention first to Russian radio, in particular commenting on the national broadcaster “Business FM” which is based in Moscow but has national coverage and puts on air reports from all around this vast country that are of interest not only to stock brokers but to the general public. I listen to them daily over breakfast and their slogan “Radio not in words but in facts” is well justified by the originality of their news management. Politics and politicians are not on their agenda. The impact of new laws, regulations and government programs on the population and especially on the business community is their main interest.  Sales figures, company profits, challenges in recruiting and keeping personnel: all of these subjects are dealt with by presentation of concrete facts from concrete companies and localities, and the result is a very informative mosaic. These very serious news items are leavened by humor in their feature sketches under such categories as “Деньги к деньгам,” which may be loosely translated as “Money flows to those with money.”

Business FM offers little slices of life which tell a big story, such as the remark yesterday that in the last couple of months Russians’ purchases of tranquillizers went up by 15% and such sales are 30% above the level of a year ago. That is a pretty good indicator of the nervousness of the general population.

Then there has been reporting from Siberian and other provincial cities regarding how the call-up of reservists is being conducted and in particular how this affects businesses which are losing highly capable personnel for whom they will have to reserve their jobs in the same way they must keep on hold the posts of women who go out on maternity leave.

Another very interesting look at the home front is the broadcaster’s interviews of Russians who are crossing the land borders to Finland – where there is now a waiting time of more than three hours each on the Russian and Finnish border control points. The journalists go into the details of whether those departing are being asked about their military status, about their reasons for leaving, etc.

Business FM has also reported on the impact of Russians leaving to avoid the draft on the apartment rental prices in their key destinations such as Istanbul and Tbilisi. The impact appears to be negligible.

Finally, I heard this morning a fascinating set of interviews with the leaders of voluntary organizations in Moscow working to provide the military forces with materiel that is not available in sufficient supply out in the field because of mismanagement in the defense hierarchy. These shortages include headgear and body armor, warm clothing, and more. 

All of the above is not pro-Putin or anti-Putin but a realistic composite picture of life in the home front in times of mobilization.

Now I propose to switch over to anecdotal but also telling details from my own experience living in Petersburg for the past couple of weeks.  I can point first to the dramatic decision earlier today of the prospective Buyer of our dacha in the south of Petersburg, already under contract of deposit, to suspend the deal, first in the hope of squeezing a further discount from us due to post-mobilization uncertainties and then with demand for more time to see the fall-out of the referendums in Donbas.  Yes, ordinary Russian business women, like our fairly shrewd Buyer, are spending sleepless nights worrying whether in these turbulent times it is better to own bricks or to have liquid cash in rubles under the pillow.  But such uncertainties and contradictions have always existed. As an argument that it is always ‘the best of times and the worst of times,’ I think of the French sterling silver forks and knives bearing hallmarks from 1791 or so that we bought in antique booths in the Brussels weekend market on the Sablon: even in the midst of Revolution some folks were ordering silver sets for newlyweds.

My experience as a shopper in supermarkets in the economy, middle class and luxury ranges reveals changes from what I have reported several months ago.  “ПРОМ УПАК” is replacing Sweden’s Tetra Pak on milk and other liquid foodstuffs. The QR code is replacing the strip codes on every variety of store products. I assume that is due to some licensing issue.

 French, Spanish and Italian wines are present on store shelves in much reduced offerings, as are wines from even “friendly” countries like Chile.  Surprisingly, friendly South Africa has dropped out of the wine market, perhaps over difficulties with payment.  Meanwhile Russian sourced wines from the Krasnodar region and the Crimea now take up 80% or more of shelf space. To be sure, in luxury shops, the Russian wines can be excellent, but at prices well above the European peers they replace, and the Russian wines in economy and middle class stores can be of highly variable quality for the same price.

The owner of a high-end wine shop on Vasilevsky Ostrov told me that he continues to receive shipments of top level chateau wines from France, and some are coming via third countries including China. But there is no way of knowing how long this will continue. He has hedged his bets by stocking up on the priciest and most sought after wines from the Russian south.

Otherwise, the assortment and pricing of meats, poultry, fruits and vegetables in the Russian stores at all market levels are unchanged from what they were some months ago.

A visit to the city’s most prestigious shopping center on Nevsky Prospekt where the anchor store was and still remains the Finnish retailer Stockmann’s provided further insights into the way the home front is adapting to the sanctions and to the departure of foreign companies from this market.

At the Food Court on the 4th floor, I enjoyed a couple of hamburgers in McDonald’s replacement as fast food operator ‘’Вкусно – и точка’’ (Tasty – period).  Quality and price were both unchanged.   Then on the ground floor I followed up with a visit to the Starbucks replacement, which is named “Star Coffee.”  All the design elements remain the same as before and my coffee Americano was excellent. 

All the design elements of the Apple store just opposite Star Coffee also are unchanged.  To be sure, the store legend “Apple Reseller” now reads “Premium Reseller.”  The product assortment seems to be unchanged.  I asked about the i-phone 14 and was told that it is available by advance order and will be arriving in shop as from the first week of October. The price for the model on offer is a stunning 238,000 rubles, which comes to about 4,000 euros.

Finally, a personal observation about the exodus across the Finnish border.  Yesterday, I tried to book tickets for our departure by bus from Petersburg to Helsinki. All seats on all buses of the two competing bus operators were sold out until October 6^th, five days later than we had planned to leave.  To be sure, there are only five or six buses making this trip each day, and each has only 50 seats.  In fact the great majority of those crossing the border are doing so in their private cars. They are the ones suffering the seven hours of lost time spent in queues and in individual processing.  Buses such as we will be using go to the head of the line and are typically processed within an hour or an hour and a half, which is a nuisance but not yet a misery.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

From ‘special military operation’ to open war: significance of the referendums in Donbas, Kherson and Zaporozhie

The televised speech yesterday morning by Vladimir Putin and the follow-up remarks by his Minister of Defense Shoigu announcing the partial mobilization of Russia’s army reserves to add a total of 300,000 men to the military campaign in Ukraine have been widely reported in the Western press.  Plans to hold referendums on accession to the Russian Federation in the Donbas republics this weekend and also in the Kherson and Zaporozhie oblasts in the very near future also were reported by the Western press.  However, as is very commonly the case, the interrelationship of these two developments has not been seen, or, if seen, has not been shared with the general public. Since precisely this interrelationship has been highlighted on Russian state television talk shows these past two days, I use this opportunity to bring to my readership the key facts on what turn the ongoing conflict in Ukraine will now take and an updated view of when it will end and with what results.

The very idea of referendums in the Donbas has been ridiculed by mainstream media in the United States and Europe. They are denounced as ‘sham’ and we are told that the results will not be recognized.  In fact, the Kremlin does not at all care whether the results are recognized as valid in the West.  Their logic lies elsewhere. As for the Russian public, the only critical remark about the referendums has been about the timing, with even some patriotic folks saying openly that it is too early to hold the vote given that the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhie and Kherson oblasts have not yet been fully ‘liberated.’ Here too, the logic of these votes lies elsewhere.

It is a foregone conclusion that the Donbas republics and other territories of Ukraine now under Russian occupation will vote to join the Russian Federation. In the case of Donetsk and Lugansk, it was only under pressure from Moscow that their 2014 referendums were about declaring sovereignty and not about becoming part of Russia. Such annexation or merger was not welcomed by the Kremlin back then because Russia was not ready to face the expected massive economic, political and military attack from the West which would have followed.  Today, Moscow is more than ready: indeed it has survived very well all the economic sanctions imposed by the West from even before 24 February as well as the ever growing supply to Ukraine of military materiel and ‘advisers’ from the NATO countries.

The vote over joining Russia will likely hit 90% or more in favor.  What will immediately follow on the Russian side is also perfectly clear:  within hours of the declaration of referendum results, the Russian State Duma will pass a bill on ‘reunification’ of these territories with Russia and within a day or so, it will be approved by the upper chamber of parliament and immediately thereafter the bill will be signed into law by President Putin.

Looking past his service as a KGB intelligence operative, which is all that Western “Russia specialists” go on about endlessly in their articles and books, let us also remember Vladimir Putin’s law degree. As President, he has systematically stayed within domestic and international law. He will do so now.  Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin has not ruled by presidential decree; he has ruled by laws promulgated by a bicameral parliament constituted from several parties.  He has ruled in keeping with international law promulgated by the United Nations. UN law speaks for the sanctity of territorial integrity of Member States; but UN law also speaks of the sanctity of self-determination of peoples.

What follows from the formal merger of these territories with Russia?  That is also perfectly clear. As integral parts of Russia, any attack on them, and there certainly will be such attacks coming from the Ukrainian armed forces, is a casus belli. But even before that, the referendums have been preceded by the announcement of mobilization, which points directly to what Russia will do further if developments on the field of battle so requires. Progressive phases of mobilization will be justified to the Russian public as necessary to defend the borders of the Russian Federation from attack by NATO.

The merger of the Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories with the Russian Federation will mark the end of the ‘special military operation.’ An SMO is not something you conduct on your own territory, as panelists on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show remarked a couple of days ago.  It marks the beginning of open war on Ukraine with the objective of the enemy’s unconditional capitulation. This will likely entail the removal of the civil and military leadership and, very likely, the dismemberment of Ukraine.  After all, the Kremlin warned more than a year ago that the US-dictated course of NATO membership for Ukraine will result in its loss of statehood. However, these particular objectives were not declared up to now; the SMO was about defending the Donbas against genocide and about de-nazification of Ukraine, itself a rather vague concept.

Adding another 300,000 men at arms to the force deployed by Russia in Ukraine represents a near doubling and surely will address the shortages of infantry numbers that has limited Russia’s ability to ‘conquer’ Ukraine. It was precisely lack of boots on the ground that explains Russia’s painful and embarrassing withdrawal from the Kharkov region in the past two weeks. They could not resist the massive concentration of Ukrainian forces against their own thinly guarded hold on the region. The strategic value of the Ukrainian win is questionable, but it greatly enhanced their morale, which is a major factor in the outcome of any war. The Kremlin could not ignore this.

At the press conference in Samarkand last week following the end of the annual gathering of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Vladimir Putin was asked why he has shown so much restraint in the face of the Ukrainian counter offensive. He replied that the Russian attacks on Ukrainian electricity generating plants which followed the loss of the Kharkov territory were just ‘warning shots’ and there would be much more ‘impactful’ action to come.  Accordingly, as Russia moves from SMO to open war, we may expect massive destruction of Ukrainian civil as well as military infrastructure to fully block all movement of Western supplied arms from points of delivery in the Lvov region and other borders to the front lines. We may eventually expect bombing and destruction of Ukraine’s centers of decision-making in Kiev.

As for further Western intervention, Western media have picked up on President Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threat to potential co-belligerents. Russia has explicitly stated that any aggression against its own security and territorial integrity, such as has been raised by generals in retirement in the USA speaking to national television in the past several weeks about Russia’s break-up, will be met by a nuclear response. When Russia’s nuclear threat is directed at Washington, as is now the case, rather than at Kiev or Brussels, the supposition till now, it is unlikely that policy makers on Capitol Hill will long remain cavalier about Russian military capabilities and pursue further escalation.

In light of all these developments, I am compelled to revise my appreciation of what transpired at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.  Western media have focused full attention on only one issue: the supposed friction between Russia and its main global friends, India and China, over its war in Ukraine.  That seemed to me to be grossly exaggerated. Now it appears to be utter nonsense. It is inconceivable that Putin did not discuss with Xi and Modi what he is about to do in Ukraine. If Russia indeed now supplies to its war effort a far greater part of its military potential, then it is entirely reasonable to expect the war to end with Russian victory by 31 December of this year as the Kremlin appears to have pledged to its loyal supporters. 

Looking beyond Ukraine’s possible loss of statehood, a Russian victory will mean more than an Afghanistan-like bloody nose for Washington. It will expose the low value of the U.S. military umbrella for EU member states and will necessarily lead to re-evaluation of Europe’s security architecture, which is what the Russians were demanding before their incursion into Ukraine was launched in February.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

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