Press Poodles

A few points:

• It ran for one day at WaPo
• Where the fuck was this, Bob?
• You've done this before - what were you waiting for this time?

5 key revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book

Trump, Putin, Biden, Netanyahu and other world leaders in secretive, off-the-cuff moments revealed in “War.”

Bob Woodward’s “War,” set to be released next week, is the author and Washington Post associate editor’s fourth book since Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016.

The new book opens the aperture to reveal how a years-long political contest between Trump and President Joe Biden — and now Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee — has unfolded against the backdrop of cascading global crisis, from the coronavirus pandemic, to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed proxies in the Middle East. At the book’s end, Woodward concludes that Biden, mistakes notwithstanding, has exhibited “steady and purposeful leadership,” while Trump has displayed recklessness and self-interest making him, in Woodward’s estimation, “unfit to lead the country.”

That determination is based on a series of key revelations. Below are some of the book’s main findings. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign issued a statement attacking the book and saying, “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true.”

1. Trump sent American-made coronavirus tests to Putin

When Trump was president in 2020, he sent coveted tests for the disease to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a crippling shortage in the United States and around the world.

As the book explains, Putin was petrified of contracting the deadly illness. He accepted the supplies but cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had shared them, concerned for the political fallout that the U.S. president would suffer.

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.

Woodward reports that Trump’s reply was: “I don’t care. Fine.”

“War” also suggests that Trump and Putin may have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021. On one occasion, this year, Trump sent an unnamed aide away from his office at his Mar-a-Lago Club so he could conduct a private phone call with Putin, according to the book.

A campaign official, Jason Miller, was evasive when Woodward asked him about the contact, eventually offering, “I have not heard that they’re talking, so I’d push back on that.”

2. Biden’s profanity-laced outbursts about Putin and Netanyahu

“War” portrays Biden as a careful and deliberate commander in chief, but combustible in private about intractable foreign leaders — especially Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden called Putin the “epitome of evil” and remarked to his advisers, about his Russian counterpart, “That f---ing Putin.”

The intelligence community believed racial animus — namely the idea that Ukrainians were a lesser people than the Russians — was a significant factor in Putin’s designs on Ukraine, as “War” explains. The book quotes Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, saying of Putin, “He is one of the most racist leaders that we have.”

Biden’s anger toward Netanyahu boiled over in the spring of 2024, Woodward reports, as Biden concluded that the Israeli prime minister’s interest was not actually in defeating Hamas but in protecting himself. “That son of a b----, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f---ing guy!” Biden reportedly told advisers.

3. Harris’s two-track approach with Netanyahu

Harris delivered high-profile remarks after a July face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu, shortly after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. She seemed to separate herself from Biden’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza by speaking forcefully about the costs of the military campaign and pledging to “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering.

Her public tone surprised, and infuriated, Netanyahu because it marked a contrast with her more amicable approach during the private conversation the two had shared, Woodward reports. The book quotes the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Michael Herzog, saying: “She wants to be tough in public. But she wasn’t as tough privately.”

The episode is one of several in the book about Harris, who appears as a loyal No. 2 to Biden but hardly influential in major foreign policy decisions.

4. Frantic de-escalation in the face of possible Russian nuclear use

Woodward details some of the stunning intelligence capabilities that allowed Washington to foresee Russian plans for an all-out war against Ukraine in early 2022, including a human source inside the Kremlin.

This insight, however, got the Biden administration only so far as it sought to foreclose Russia’s nuclear option. In the fall of 2022, that option seemed like a live one, as U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Putin was seriously weighing use of a tactical nuclear weapon — at one point, assessing the likelihood at 50 percent.

An especially frantic quest to bring Moscow back from the brink came in October of that year, when Russia appeared to be laying the groundwork for escalation by accusing Ukraine of preparing to detonate a dirty bomb. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin flatly denied Russia’s accusations in a phone call with the Kremlin’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, instructed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team to summon the International Atomic Energy Agency to absolve themselves immediately. And Biden called out Russia’s apparent scheme publicly while privately leaning on Chinese President Xi Jinping to emphasize to Putin the dire consequences of nuclear use.

5. The pervasive influence of the Saudi crown prince

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known by his initials MBS, is not a major figure in the book but looms large at critical junctures, with key assessments of him delivered by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Mohammed, currently the prime minister of Saudi Arabia, matters greatly as the de facto ruler of the Arab world’s wealthiest country. He cultivated close ties to Trump, who made Riyadh his first foreign stop as president. So, too, he has been crucial to matters of significant interest to Biden, especially oil supplies and the prospects of normalized relations with Israel.

Woodward summarized Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s perception of the crown prince this way: “MBS was nothing more than a spoiled child.”

One of the Saudi royal’s important interlocutors has been Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.). The Republican senator kept Biden’s aides apprised of Mohammed’s perspective on the possible normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, according to Woodward, and also kept the gulf leader in communication with Trump. During a March visit to Saudi Arabia recounted in the book, Graham proposes to the crown prince that they call the Republican presidential candidate. Mohammed proceeds to conduct the conversation over speakerphone.

On an earlier trip, Graham had asked the crown prince to contact Sullivan, so the senator could inform them both about a discussion with Netanyahu.

“Hey, I’m here with Lindsey,” the Saudi royal reportedly announced to Sullivan over the phone.

Mr Olbermann would like a word.

The Bromance

Democracy has to constrain the majority, even as it delivers power to the majority.

There's A Body Count

Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen and Lauren Southern are Kremlin stooges.

And it doesn't excuse them if they didn't know what they'd gotten into - it makes it worse. They cared about the money and the power, and it never occurred to them what harm they were doing to people they claimed to care about.

This guy's a new one for me, and I haven't dug too deep into his resumé or whatever credentials he might have, except for the fact that he produced for 60 minutes and Voice Of America, and that he's based in Kyiv now.

Seems pretty understandable that he'd be a bit biased against Putin's Russia, seeing as how it's a regime that's doing some horrendous things to people - because he's a normal human, and being biased against assholes is a healthy thing for normal humans.

Philip Ittner

Not News

Yeah - like Trump didn't "order" anybody to do shitty things on Jan6.

Nobody with a living thinking brain believes Putin didn't have a hand in it.

Everybody knows "the boss" isn't going to be disappointed to hear the news that the biggest threat to his very existence has conveniently expired - no matter what the circumstance.

Putin ‘likely’ didn’t order Navalny’s death in February, US agencies believe: WSJ

U.S. intelligence agencies agree Russian president probably didn’t order opposition leader’s killing “at that moment,” according to report.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “likely” didn’t order opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be killed at an Arctic prison in February, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Navalny, the leading figure in Russia’s beleaguered opposition, died on Feb. 16 in a penal colony. The EU and the U.S. directly blamed Russia for Navalny’s death, moving toward imposing new sanctions on the Kremlin.

But the WSJ said Saturday that several U.S. agencies — including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the U.S. State Department’s intelligence unit — agree that Putin probably didn’t order Navalny’s death “at that moment,” citing people familiar with the matter.

According to the WSJ report, U.S. intelligence agencies have shared the assessment with some European intelligence agencies. But some European security officials “remain skeptical” that Putin didn’t play a direct hand in Navalny’s death, considering his tight grip on Russia.

The U.S. assessment is “based on a range of information, including some classified intelligence, and an analysis of public facts, including the timing of his death and how it overshadowed Putin’s re-election,” the WSJ reported.

Navalny ally Leonid Volkov told the WSJ that “the idea of Putin being not informed and not approving killing Navalny is ridiculous.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees U.S. intelligence agencies, declined to comment on the issue, according to the WSJ report.

Putin has denied any involvement in Navalny’s death. Last month, the Russian president said that he had agreed to swap the opposition leader in a prisoner exchange days before Navalny died, confirming claims made by a close Navalny ally that Russia and Western officials had negotiated a prisoner exchange deal.

On Saturday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he had seen the WSJ’s report.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a high-quality material that deserves any attention,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian media. “Some very empty arguments. Apparently, they planted it for Saturday reading to the world audience,” he said.

Can You Say "Containment"?

This past April, Finland was admitted to NATO. That in itself had to have been galling enough to Putin, but the deal to add Sweden is nearing a close as well.

Now Finland has agreed to put US forces on Finnish ground, and that has to be giving Putin nightmares.

The kicker there (for me) is that it's another Biden master stroke. Putin doesn't just have to worry about another 700 miles of border with a NATO member - now it's 700 miles of border with a NATO member that has large quantities of knock-your-dick-in-the-dirt courtesy of Uncle Sam (that whupass is about 100 miles from St Petersburg). And that means the Russians have to defend even more border areas, when they can't defend what they already had - which could mean a little less pressure on Ukraine.

Seems pretty smart to me.

Finland to sign defence pact with US

HELSINKI, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Finland will on Monday Dec. 18 sign a defence cooperation agreement with the United States, the Finnish government said on Thursday, to grant the U.S. military broad access across the Nordic country to the vicinity of its long border with Russia.

Russia's Nordic neighbour Finland became the NATO military alliance's newest member earlier this year in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

"The fact that there will be no need to agree on everything separately, makes organising peace time operations easier, but above all it can be vital in a crisis," Finland's Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told reporters.

The agreement with the United States is aimed at allowing swift military access and aid to Finland in case of conflict, officials said ahead of the announcement.

The agreement lists 15 facilities and areas in Finland to which the U.S. military will have unimpeded access and where it can also store military equipment and ammunition.

The areas will include four airbases, a military port and railway access to northern Finland, where the U.S. military will have a storage area alongside a railway that leads up to the Russian border, the agreement showed.

As Reuters reported in July, Finland is currently improving its railway infrastructure on its Swedish border, to make it easier for allies to send reinforcements and equipment from across the Atlantic to Kemijarvi, an hour's drive from the Russian border and seven hours from Russia's nuclear bastion and military bases near Murmansk in the Kola peninsula.

Neighbouring Sweden, which has also asked to join NATO but has been left waiting due to resistance from existing members Turkey and Hungary, signed a similar agreement with the U.S. last week, giving it access to 17 areas including four air bases, one harbour and five military camps.

Among other NATO members, the U.S. has signed similar agreements with Norway, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Estonia, while the one with Denmark is pending approval.

Finland will not allow storage or transport of nuclear and biological weapons or anti-personnel mines on its territory, in line with international non-proliferation treaties it has committed to previously, officials said.

The U.S. military can have a permanent presence and regular exercises in Finland, but there are no plans for permanent bases, they said.

The agreement will be signed in Washington D.C. on Monday, before official ratification by legislators in both countries.

Today's Anti-MAGA

Texas Paul

Marge The Impaler Greene is not a nice person.

Another One Down

There's been no credible confirmation yet of any bucket-kicking or dust-biting, but things have not been going well for Putin's buddies lately.

Scorecard:

• Prigozhin & Utkin assassinated
• Girkin imprisoned 
• Surovikin tortured & exiled
• Kadyrov comatose

They're all war criminals, and none will be missed. The system is eating itself.

Key Putin Ally Ramzan Kadyrov Is Critically Ill: Ukrainian Report

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is reportedly in critical condition amid his ongoing health problems, according to Ukrainian intelligence.

Andriy Yusov, a representative for the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence, told the Belarusian news site Nexta that Kadyrov's current health status had been confirmed by both "medical and political circles." The Chechen leader has reportedly faced health problems due to ongoing kidney issues and recently blamed his worsening health on his personal doctor.

"This is not about injuries. Other details need further clarification," Yusov told the outlet, according to a report from Nexta posted to X, formerly Twitter. "He has been sick for a long time, and we are talking about systemic health problems."

Yusov's comments were also confirmed by Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform. Obozrevatel, an online Ukrainian media outlet, reported earlier this week that Kadyrov had fallen into a coma and was flown to Moscow to seek treatment.

A close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kadyrov has been nicknamed "Putin's attack dog" and has supported Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, including deploying his own troops to fight along the front lines.

The Chechen leader was also one of the first public figures to condemn the brief Wagner Group rebellion against Moscow in June, led by the now-deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The U.S. State Department sanctioned Kadyrov last month for his reported role in the deportation of Ukrainian children from Russia-occupied territory, an ongoing act by the Kremlin. In a video message earlier this month, Kadyrov demanded that the U.S. sanctions, which also targeted his mother, Aymani Kadyrova, be removed, and called Washington's decision "a deliberate and cynical disregard for all ethical norms."

"I had already ceased to be surprised by the illogical sanctions decisions of the US and the West," Kadyrov said in his video. "And suddenly again, now my own dear mother has been put on the list. The entire world knows that she is engaged only in charitable activities."

Kadyrov was also accused earlier this week of murdering his personal physician and former Chechen deputy prime minister, Elkhan Suleymanov, who the Chechen head reportedly blamed for his sudden worsening health. According to the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, which claims to have inside information from Russian security forces, Kadyrov accused Suleymanov of poisoning him and was rumored to have buried the doctor alive.

Newsweek previously reported that there has been no hard evidence to support claims of Suleymanov's death, although his whereabouts have been widely unknown since October 2022, when Kadyrov removed him from his post as deputy prime minister.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment Friday evening.

Bad Thoughts

Making wild claims about 'false flag' attacks is all the rage these days, so yeah, I'll go there.

If I'm a Wagner Group 2nd tier commander with high hopes and obsessive ambitions, maybe I'm a little peeved about Prigozhin wimping out on the whole uprising thing, making a deal for himself and basically leaving me just kinda hangin' around with my dick in my hand.

So I'm a trusted guy, and I can get somebody to monkey with the airplane - or I can get my hands on a spare S200 SAM that's just kinda laying around (and that's not as weird as it sounded when I ran it thru my head just now - not in Russia). Anyway, maybe I set it up to fuck Prigozhin, knowing everybody will blame Putin, so I can stoke the rebellion and have my shot at playing in the big leagues. (?)

Unlikely, I know. But look at how any of this shit is going and tell me it's impossible.

Putin's Reach

Talk about effective optics. 

And timing. Putin memorializes the battle of Kursk, reminding everybody of Russia's brute power, as he re-asserts himself as the personification of the Russian state.

L'État, c'est moi. C'est moi l'État.

And all of that against the backdrop of his having decapitated the organization that most threatens his reign, and the not-so-quiet purge of the upper echelons of the Russian military's command structure.

Putin is the guy who benefits most from the MAGA gang's insistence that we stop helping Ukraine.

And Xi Jinping sits passively, watching our reaction to all this.

With Prigozhin’s Death, Putin Projects a Message of Power

The Kremlin appears to be sending the signal that no degree of effectiveness can protect someone from punishment for disloyalty.

Just as the news broke on Wednesday of the presumed death of the mercenary chief Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was presiding over a televised World War II anniversary ceremony on a dark stage lit dramatically in red.

He held a moment of silence, flanked by service members in dress uniforms, while a metronome’s beats sounded, like the slow ticking of a clock: Tock. Tock. Tock.

The eerie split screen — the reported fiery demise of the man who launched an armed rebellion in June and the Russian president telegraphing the state’s military might — may have been coincidental. But it underscored the imagery of dominance and power that Mr. Putin, 18 months into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, appears more determined than ever to project.

Mr. Prigozhin may have been brutally effective, throwing tens of thousands of his fighters into the maw of the battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, tying up Ukrainian forces in the process and hobbling Kyiv’s ability to stage a counteroffensive. His internet “troll farm” helped the Kremlin interfere in the 2016 American presidential election, while his mercenary empire helped Russia exert influence across Africa and the Middle East.

But with his June rebellion, Mr. Prigozhin threatened something even more sensitive: Mr. Putin’s own hold on power. After the crash of Mr. Prigozhin’s plane on Wednesday, the Kremlin appears to be sending the message that no degree of effectiveness and achievement can protect someone from punishment for violating Mr. Putin’s loyalty.

“Everyone’s afraid,” Konstantin Remchukov, a Moscow newspaper editor with ties to the Kremlin, said of the reaction among the Russian elite to the plane crash Wednesday that Western officials theorize was caused by an explosion on board. “It’s just that everyone sees that anything is possible.”

Never before has someone so central to Russia’s ruling establishment been killed in a suspected state-sponsored assassination, said Mikhail Vinogradov, a Moscow political analyst.

To some, the fact that Mr. Prigozhin was able to survive for two months after staging his rebellion was more surprising than the crash of his private jet. In an address to the nation on June 24, as Mr. Prigozhin’s forces were marching on Moscow and already in control of a city of a million people in Russia’s southwest, Mr. Putin accused the warlord of “betrayal.”

And betrayal, Mr. Putin has said previously, is the one act that cannot be forgiven. So when Mr. Putin appeared to strike a deal with Mr. Prigozhin allowing him to retreat safely to neighboring Belarus, the act struck some Russians as a sign of the president losing control. The view was magnified when photographs surfaced of Mr. Prigozhin meeting with African officials on the sidelines of Mr. Putin’s marquee summit with African leaders in St. Petersburg in July.

“After he ‘forgave’ Prigozhin, it was understood by those around him as weakness,” said Aleksei A. Venediktov, who headed the liberal Echo of Moscow radio station before the Kremlin shut it down last year.

Mr. Venediktov, in an interview in Moscow on Thursday, argued that Mr. Prigozhin’s apparent death had strengthened Mr. Putin’s dominance in the Russian political system after the chaos of the rebellion. Now, “Putin has shown his elite,” Mr. Venediktov went on, that “any betrayal will be found out.”

U.S. officials are increasingly certain that Mr. Prigozhin was killed in Wednesday’s crash, and that Mr. Putin ordered the assassination. But when it comes to the power dynamics inside Russia’s ruling elite, whether Mr. Putin personally ordered the attack may be beside the point: What matters is that Mr. Prigozhin suffered a violent death after Mr. Putin publicly condemned him.

“He called him a traitor,” Mr. Remchukov said. “And that was enough for everyone to see that this person is no longer invulnerable.”

When Mr. Putin broke his silence about the plane crash on Thursday, some 24 hours after it happened, he described Mr. Prigozhin as a “talented man” with a “complicated fate.” Mr. Putin revealed that his personal ties with Mr. Prigozhin dated back to the early 1990s, and he acknowledged for the first time that he had personally asked Mr. Prigozhin to carry out tasks on his behalf.

“He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved necessary results, for himself and, when I asked him about it, for our common cause,” Mr. Putin said.

Mr. Prigozhin had long been suspected of acting in the shadows in Mr. Putin’s interest while giving the Kremlin plausible deniability. His forces deployed to eastern Ukraine in 2014, back when Mr. Putin was stoking a separatist war there while insisting he had nothing to do with it. In 2016, Mr. Prigozhin’s internet “troll farm” intervened in American politics as part of the Kremlin’s attempt to swing the presidential election to Donald J. Trump.

But what Mr. Putin left unsaid in his brief eulogy of Mr. Prigozhin was that by turning against the Russian president after decades of devoted service, Mr. Prigozhin may have signed his own death sentence.

On Friday, another longtime confidant of Mr. Putin, Aleksei Dyumin, issued a statement that made the message a little clearer. Mr. Dyumin, a former bodyguard of Mr. Putin who is now the governor of a region south of Moscow, said he had known Mr. Prigozhin “as a true patriot, a decisive and fearless man.” He said he mourned all Wagner fighters who had died in Ukraine, and added: “You can forgive mistakes and even cowardice, but never betrayal. They were not traitors.”

The apparent subtext was that Mr. Prigozhin’s soldiers and commanders were loyal men worthy of respect. But it also hinted at the notion that if Mr. Prigozhin himself was a traitor — as Mr. Putin had said — then he may have deserved his death.

But Mr. Prigozhin’s death also carries risks for the Kremlin. In Ukraine, Wagner was seen as one of Russia’s most effective and brutal fighting forces, exacting and taking enormous casualties in the monthslong battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

In Africa, where Mr. Prigozhin built a mercenary empire propping up autocrats loyal to Moscow in countries like Mali and the Central African Republic, it is far from clear whether Wagner will be able to retain its footprint. Wagner’s top military commander, Dmitri V. Utkin, was listed as a passenger alongside Mr. Prigozhin on the plane that crashed, according to the Russian authorities.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Mr. Putin who is now a political consultant based in Israel, said the Kremlin was most likely behind the plane crash, and he argued that the risky decision to kill Mr. Prigozhin in order to send a signal of deterrence revealed the president’s fears of losing power.

“To send this signal, Putin decided to risk a bunch of projects,” Mr. Gallyamov wrote on social media. “This is important for understanding what his priorities are right now: maintaining power, not external expansion.”

Mr. Putin has also long made it clear that he sees his personal interests as inextricable from those of the Russian state. “He believes that if something is important for keeping him in power, then all other concerns are secondary,” said Grigorii Golosov, a professor of political science at the European University at St. Petersburg.

It’s a philosophy that Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s lower house of Parliament, summed up simply earlier this year: “As long as there is Putin, there is Russia.”

Problem Solving

It seems Yevgeny Prigozhin's airplane fell out of a window on the 437th floor of the Moscow regional air column ...

... or ...

Yesterday, Mr Priozhin's airplane underwent an unscheduled rapid disassembly procedure, the details of which will be reviewed and released as early as Autumn two-thousand-fucking-never.

So now we get to play a few exhilarating rounds of the Wild Speculation Game.

This being the latest iteration of This Modern Age, anything that happens - anywhere with more than a few humans per square parsec - carries a fair probability of being documented by smart phone video, but this seems just a tiny bit too convenient.

Apparently, Mr Putin is still convinced he can kill his way out of his problems.

Even if it's just a "lucky break", it serves the purpose of further terrorizing average Russians enough to keep them compliant.

The rumor mill is being cranked up and will soon be running at 110% capacity.

Say What, Vlad?

What up here, dude?

Is this another shot at extortion?

Take hostages and maybe the world will overlook the shit you're always trying to pull?

Russia Pulls Out of the Black Sea Grain Deal

The Kremlin terminated an agreement that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain by sea despite a wartime blockade, a deal seen as essential to keeping global food prices stable.

Russia said on Monday that it was ending an agreement that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain by sea despite Moscow’s naval blockade, upending a deal that had helped to keep global food prices stable and alleviate one element of the global fallout from the war.

Ukraine is a major producer of grain and other foodstuffs, and the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision. Millions of people who face hunger, or are struggling, as well as consumers around the world facing a cost of living crisis, will “pay a price,” he said.

"Today’s decision by the Russian Federation will strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” he told journalists.

A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told journalists earlier on Monday that the agreement was “halted.”

“As soon as the Russian part is fulfilled, the Russian side will immediately return to the implementation of that deal,” he said. He added that the decision was not connected to the attack hours earlier on the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea. Russian officials blamed Ukraine for the attack, but Kyiv has not taken responsibility.

“Only upon receipt of concrete results, and not promises and assurances, will Russia be ready to consider restoring the ‘deal,’” the statement said.

The agreement, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative and brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, had been set to expire on Monday following the latest in a series of short-term extensions.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he would speak to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about the agreement and signaled hope that it could be revived.

“Despite the statement today, I believe the president of the Russian Federation, my friend Putin, wants the continuation of this humanitarian bridge,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Moscow had broken its agreement with the United Nations and with Mr. Erdogan, rather than with his country itself, given that Ukraine had made a separate deal with the two mediators over grain. Ukraine demands a complete withdrawal of Russian forces from its territory and an end to aggression before any talks can take place.

“Even without the Russian Federation, everything must be done so that we can use this Black Sea corridor,” Mr. Zelensky said in remarks sent by his press office, adding that Ukraine was ready to restart shipments if the United Nations and Turkey agreed.

The deal successfully eased shortages that resulted from blockades in the first months of the war, which caused global wheat prices to soar. It allowed Ukraine to restart the export of millions of tons of grain that had languished for months, and it has been renewed multiple times, most recently in May. Wheat prices surged on Monday, exposing vulnerable countries to the prospect of a new round of food insecurity.

But Moscow has complained that Western sanctions continued to restrict the sale of its own agricultural products, and sought guarantees that would facilitate its exports of grain and fertilizers. In an effort to extend the deal, Mr. Guterres sent Mr. Putin proposals last week that he said would “remove hurdles affecting financial transactions” through Russia’s agricultural bank.

Ukraine has exported 32.8 million tons of grain and other food since the initiative began, according to U.N. data. Under the agreement, ships are permitted to pass by Russian naval vessels that in effect have blockaded Ukraine’s ports since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The ships are inspected off the coast of Istanbul, in part to ensure they are not carrying weapons.

Last year, Russia halted participation in inspections that were part of the deal, only to rejoin in a matter of days.

Impressively Deceptive

Can you say, "Dick Nixon at the Lincoln Memorial in 1970"?

This is some pretty heavy PR spin right here. A radically germ-o-phobic, and politically paranoid guy like Vlad Putin doesn't do this. Ever.

Curiouser

Two small men with a large problem

If you believe a Putin stooge like Lukashenko stepped up and became the key figure in a potentially world-changing series of events - still roiling and nowhere near played out yet - then you have to believe Putin either stood aside and let one of his flunkies take the spotlight, or you have to see Putin as a weak-sister paper tiger who is not actually running the show in Moscow.

But there's a third probability too. And a fourth, and a fifth, and a thirty-seventh - cuz nobody knows jack shit what's really going on or what's going to happen until it happens. We're all just passive observers.

One thing that comes to mind is that Putin doesn't have the strangle hold on the Kremlin we thought he had, and his "magnanimous gesture" is a way for him to calm things down a bit - to buy himself a little time - to get people thinking, "Maybe the Russians aren't quite the maniacs they've been showing us they are. Look, Putin is being all generous and cooperative and shit. Let's all just cool out and see if we can get back to business..."

I'm not saying Putin is playing the game at a level we can't even imagine. He's not. He's a guy who made some really fucked up decisions, tried to bull his way through when the plan blew up, and now he's in a desperate scramble to make it look like he's still got a good handle on everything so he can avoid "retiring to his dacha for a much-needed and well-deserved rest".

One last point:

I don't want to underestimate the guy, but Lukashenko? Seriously?

Lukashenko claims he persuaded Putin not to kill Wagner boss Prigozhin

RIGA, Latvia — When Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko tried to convince Yevgeniy Prigozhin to call off his rebellion against Moscow, the mercenary boss was “half-crazed,” Lukashenko said, pouring out obscenities for half an hour — and unaware, perhaps, that his life was at risk.

The swearing in their phone conversation Saturday “was 10 times more than normal,” Lukashenko said in remarkably frank comments during a meeting Tuesday with his generals. He claimed to have stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin from making a “harsh decision” — a suggestion that Putin planned to kill the Wagner Group chief. Lukashenko’s comments were published by Belarusian state media.

Prigozhin said he wanted to speak to Putin, Lukashenko said, and demanded that frequent targets of his ire — Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff — be handed over to him. That wasn’t going to happen, Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko, perhaps improbably, played a central role in brokering the deal between Putin and Prigozhin that led to the enraged mercenary boss diverting a column of fighters that were advancing on Moscow with surprisingly little resistance. Putin, in exchange, agreed to drop insurgency charges against Prigozhin and to allow him and Wagner to move to neighboring Belarus, all but a client state of Moscow.

Putin also allowed Prigozhin to leave Russia alive — a point that seemed uncertain until Lukashenko on Tuesday confirmed that the mercenary chief had arrived by private plane in Belarus.

Lukashenko’s version of events could not be verified. He is widely viewed as a dictator and an abuser of civil, human and political rights. The president of Belarus since 1994 claimed reelection most recently in a 2020 vote widely viewed as fraudulent, igniting months of protests that were brutally repressed. And he’s known for making aggrandizing, far-fetched and at times bizarre statements.

In September 2020, for instance, Lukashenko claimed that reports of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny being poisoned were falsified. He released a transcript of what he said was a conversation between a Polish intelligence officer named “Mike” and a German agent named “Nick” intercepted by Belarus that confirmed the fraud. Angela Merkel, then German chancellor, announced the findings of a German military laboratory that Navalny was poisoned with chemical weapon personally.

But however checkered Lukashenko’s reputation, the Kremlin confirmed that he was a central figure in the deal. And in his remarks on Tuesday, Lukashenko described conversations with Putin and Prigozhin in unusually granular terms.

While speaking with Putin on Saturday morning, Lukashenko said, he concluded that the Russian president planned to “whack” Prigozhin. He said he convinced Putin that while that option was theoretically available, it risked causing major bloodshed.

“I say, ‘Don’t do this, because then there will be no negotiations,’” Lukashenko said.

Wagner fighters, the Belarusian president said Tuesday, are battle-hardened and “will do anything — these guys know how to stand up for each other.”

“And this is the most trained unit in the army,” he said. “Who will argue with this?” If Putin had taken harsh action against Prigozhin, he said, thousands of civilians and Russian forces would die in the conflict.

Lukashenko’s detailed account of sensitive conversations at the heart of the greatest crisis of Putin’s career was highly unusual. He conveyed the sense of a warm relationship with Putin, who he said addressed him as “Sasha,” a diminutive of Alexander.

At the same time, he offered a complimentary assessment of Prigozhin at a moment when senior Russian officials are trying to sully his reputation.

“Who is Prigozhin?” Lukashenko asked, and answered: “He is a very authoritative person today in the armed forces. No matter how much some would not like it.”

Lukashenko said he had received alarming reports about Prigozhin’s mutiny when he was informed through links between the Belarusian KGB and Russia’s Federal Security Service that Putin wanted to speak. When they talked shortly after 10 a.m., he said, he realized Putin was planning tough action and urged him to wait until Lukashenko had spoken to Wagner.

“The most dangerous thing, as I understood it, was not what the situation was, but how it could develop and its consequences,” Lukashenko said.

“I suggested that Putin take his time,” he said, but the Russian president responded: “Listen, Sasha, there’s no point. He doesn’t even pick up the phone. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

In Lukashenko’s telling, he succeeded in persuading Putin to wait until he reached Prigozhin in Rostov-on-Don, the city in southern Russia where Wagner fighters had seized control of an important military headquarters and airfield.

“A bad peace is better than any war,” Lukashenko said he told Putin. “Do not rush. I will try to contact him.”

“He once again says, ‘It’s useless.’ I say, ‘Okay, wait.’”

Putin also discussed the war in Ukraine, Lukashenko said, claiming that it was proceeding “better than before.”

“I say, ‘You see, not everything is so sad,’” Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko and Prigozhin spoke at 11 a.m., Lukashenko said.

Wagner’s commanders, who had just come from the front in Ukraine, were upset that so many fighters had been killed in the war, Lukashenko said. Prigozhin said some in Russia’s military wanted to “strangle” Wagner. Prigozhin has publicly accused Shoigu of trying to destroy the mercenary group.

“The guys are very offended, especially the commanders. And, as I understand it, they greatly influenced … Prigozhin himself,” Lukashenko said. “Yes, he is such, you know, a heroic guy, but he was pressured and influenced by those who led the assault squads and saw these deaths.”

He said Prigozhin denied that Wagner had killed any Russian service members on the way to Rostov-on-Don — contradicting claims Prigozhin made earlier Saturday on camera to Yunus-bek Yevkurov, when he said Wagner shot down three Russian military helicopters because they had fired at the mercenaries.

Lukashenko said he believed Prigozhin’s assertion that Wagner had not yet killed any Russian service members or civilians. He asked what he wanted.

“Let them give me Shoigu and Gerasimov. And I need to meet Putin,'” Lukashenko said Prigozhin told him.

“I say, ‘Zhenya [the diminutive for Yevgeniy], no one will give you either Shoigu or Gerasimov, especially in this situation,’” he said. “You know Putin as well as I do. Secondly, he will not only not meet with you. He will not talk to you on the phone due to this situation.”

Prigozhin was silent at first, Lukashenko said, but then burst out: “But we want justice! They want to strangle us! We’ll go to Moscow!”

“I say, ‘Halfway there you’ll just be crushed like a bug.’”

“‘Think about it, I say.”

“No,” Prigozhin responded.

“I spent a long time persuading him,” Lukashenko said. He told Prigozhin that he could do whatever he wanted but Moscow would be defended, he said.

When Prigozhin complained about how hard his men had fought, Lukashenko said he soothed him: “I know.”

The conflict, Lukashenko said, was caused by unhealthy competition between Wagner and the military. “An interpersonal conflict between famous people escalated into this fight.”

Payback (?)

It's not like authoritarians to admit to the kind of failure that allows a foreign government to penetrate its air defenses and attack their capitol building from 300 miles away.

And when the drone is obviously of the small-n-slow variety, the thing did not come from "outa town".

So - 2 basic probabilities in my mind

1. Ukrainian Spec Ops got close in and did it as a kind of Doolittle Bombs Tokyo thing - but that has to raise the aforementioned question of failure on the part of Russian security forces
2. It was homegrown - Russian Resistance sending a message to Mr Putin that he's not going to survive this war. But Putin can't admit that possibility, so see #1 above - as the least bad option.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Video appears to show smoke over Kremlin after alleged drone strike

MOSCOW, May 3 (Reuters) - A video circulating on Russian social media on Wednesday appeared to show a plume of smoke over Moscow's Kremlin, after what the presidential administration said was a Ukrainian drone attack aimed at President Vladimir Putin, who has a residence in the walled complex.

The video was posted in the early hours of Wednesday on a group for residents of a neighbourhood that faces the Kremlin across the Mosvka River and picked up by Russian media, including the Telegram channel of the military news outlet Zvezda.

Separately, the Kremlin said that the May 9 Victory Day parade would go ahead in Moscow despite the incident, the state-run TASS news agency reported.

Second Year In A Row

It's kind of a bad look when you try to celebrate past glories in the context of current failures.

Red Square to be closed for two weeks prior to May 9 parade

Red Square will be closed to the public from April 27 to May 10 due to preparations for the parade in honor of the 78th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, said the Russian Federal Guard Service.

Red Square is closed every year in the run-up to May 9, and traffic on central streets is restricted due to rehearsals for the military parade.

In 2023, access to the Lenin Mausoleum will be closed from April 23 to May 15. The Kremlin will be closed to visitors on May 7 and 9.

On the evening of April 25, traffic on Tverskaya Street, Mokhovaya Street, Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street, and other central streets will be restricted due to the parade rehearsal.

A number of Russian cities have decided not to host Victory Day parades this year due to “security reasons.” There will also be no Immortal Regiment procession, in Moscow and elsewhere, this year.

Ukraine - Russia

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a fierce Putin critic, is handed a 25-year prison sentence

The Moscow City Court on Monday sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, to 25 years in a high-security penal colony after convicting him of treason over his criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an unusually harsh sentence that drew international condemnation.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s supporters said the length of the sentence evoked memories of Stalin’s terror, and the verdict will likely send a chilling message to remaining anti-Kremlin activists in Russia and beyond as the Kremlin continues to clamp down on dissent over the war in Ukraine.

Many Russian political activists have been prosecuted since the invasion, including Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison last year on charges of “spreading false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine — but the length of Mr. Kara-Murza’s sentence was the longest yet. Ivan Pavlov, an acclaimed Russian human rights lawyer, called it “unprecedented,” saying that even murderers receive shorter prison terms in Russia.

As they get more and more paranoid about the spread of resistance, Daddy State assholes like Putin come down harder and harder on dissidents. It could be a strong signal that Mr Putin is (or at least thinks he is) beginning to lose his grip on power.

“It is a terrifying but also very high assessment of his work as a politician and a citizen,” Maria Eismont, one of Mr. Kara-Murza’s lawyers, said outside of the court, according to Sota, a Russian news outlet. She said the verdict will be appealed.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s mother, Yelena, told Sota after the hearing that she felt like “she woke up in a Kafka novel.”

“We live in 2023, in the 21st century, what is this, what is happening,” she told Sota.

An activist, historian and journalist, Mr. Kara-Murza, 41, has for years been one of the most uncompromising voices against Mr. Putin and had long drawn the Kremlin’s ire, surviving what he characterized several years ago as two state-sponsored attempts to poison him.

Shortly after Mr. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Kara-Murza, who contributes to the opinion section of The Washington Post, gave a number of speeches in the United States and Europe strongly condemning the invasion.

Though many supporters advised him not to come back to Russia, Mr. Kara-Murza continued to work in the country. He was detained there last April while on a trip to Moscow and accused of disobeying police orders. He was sentenced to administrative arrest, during which the authorities charged him with spreading “fake” information about the Russian Army. He was later charged with taking part in an “undesirable organization” and treason. The verdict on Monday combined all of the charges into one sentence.

The trial, which human-rights organizations decried as politically motivated, took place behind closed doors. Neither the prosecutors nor the investigators presented any evidence in public that would support the treason charge. Vadim Prokhorov, Mr. Kara-Murza’s lawyer, said in a post on Facebook in October that the treason charge related to public statements made in the United States and Europe which criticized the Kremlin.

On Monday, the United Nations human rights office decried Mr. Kara-Murza’s sentencing as “a blow to the rule of law" while Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, called it “a travesty of justice.”

The U.S. State Department condemned the sentence and said Mr. Kara-Murza was “yet another target of the Russian government’s escalating campaign of repression.” Britain’s Foreign Office said it had summoned the Russian ambassador in London to protest what it described as a “politically motivated” conviction that runs “contrary to Russia’s international obligations on human rights, including the right to a fair trial.” In March, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned three individuals, including a judge and an investigator, involved in prosecuting Mr. Kara-Murza.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman refused to comment on the sentence.

During pretrial detention, Mr. Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dual national, said that he had been denied the right to call his family and his health began to deteriorate rapidly.

In his final address to the court before the verdict last week, Mr. Kara-Murza likened the current climate in Russia to the terror of the Stalin era.

“The day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate,” he told a Moscow courtroom. “When black will be called black, and white will be called white; when at the official level, it will be recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper.”

Today's Beau

My, how things do change. Main point: if this is the signal most everybody believes it too be, then Putin's illness (cancer?) is the least of his worries. He has his hands full of something autocrats always end up dying from.

And - about 50 miles WNW of Grozny, Chenya.

Reports: 2 senior Chechan cops killed, 5 wounded, and the rebels got away clean.

Armed clashes between russian forces and armed militants in zazikov-yurt 6-4-2023
by u/_TNT_- in CombatFootage

I Have A Question

Boris Epstheyn could be considered knowledgable in matters of finance law, so it's reasonable to think he's an asset for Trump's defense on charges of finance-type crimes.

But it's not unreasonable to think Boris Epshteyn could be on Vlad Putin's payroll - in some way or another - so it's also not unreasonable to think he's an asset to the Russians.

Maybe we should be asking why that guy's on Trump's team - a guy who was the top legal beagle at a boutique investment bank (West America Securities Corporation) that was expelled by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in 2013 - a guy who strikes me as being more than a little sketchy, and keeps popping up in roles that seem to be not fully in favor of truth, justice, and the American way.

A Wrinkle

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vlad Putin, and the world seemed to shrug.

And we shrugged with pretty good reason if our thinking stops at the point where we know there's nobody sending out the Belgian version of Dog The Bounty Hunter to drag Putin into the back of a pickup and speed away towards The Hague.

But what happens when Mr Putin's rivals know they'll get plenty of help from unseen hands if they decide it's time to make their move?

Xi's Bitch

I'll start with this: There's no such thing as a Left-Wing Dictatorship, so in spite of Xi Jinping's congratulating himself on "being elected" to what can only be termed Forever Chairman Of The CCP, he is not - and has never been - a communist. He's an authoritarian dictator - a Commie In Name Only - Joe Stalin's favorite long-lost nephew. He's a fucking autocrat. 

And Vladimir Putin is now his bitch, in much the same way Trump was made Putin's bitch.

Watch the body language. They both look pretty awkward - rarely looking each other in the eye - probably because these jagoffs hate having to do anything out in the open, so this is strictly political theater, but Putin looks like he loaded up on prunes and vodka for breakfast and is in need of an emergency bathroom break.

Xi meets Putin in show of anti-West unity, but there’s unease, too

It’s the most significant arrival in Moscow since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year. After weeks of diplomatic noise about a planned meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in the Russian capital for a three-day state visit. He’ll be feted Tuesday at state dinner hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin’s 15th century Faceted Chamber, the famed banquet hall of the czars where Ivan the Terrible celebrated his conquest of lands in Central Asia and Peter the Great hailed his 1709 victory over the Swedes at Poltava, in what’s now Ukraine.

It’s also the same room where former U.S. president Ronald Reagan softened his “evil empire,” anti-Communist bravura in 1988, toasting instead to “the art of friendly persuasion, the hope of peace with freedom, the hope of holding out for a better way of settling things” at a dinner with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The bonhomie between those two leaders prefigured the eventual end of the Cold War and the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union, an event that remains a source of grievance and regret for Putin.

While highlighting their own friendship, Xi and Putin are, to varying degrees, offering a joint front against a perceived shared adversary. The script surrounding the two autocrats’ confab is one of unity and umbrage with the West. Writing in China’s state-run People’s Daily ahead of Xi’s visit, Putin decried “the U.S.’s policy of simultaneously deterring Russia and China, as well as all those who do not bend to American dictation, is getting ever more fierce and aggressive.”

In Kremlin-run RIA Novosti, Xi took a subtler approach, elliptically pushing back against the democracy versus autocracy rhetoric touted by President Biden and his Western allies. “There is no universal model of government and there is no world order where the decisive word belongs to a single country,” Xi wrote. “Solidarity and peace on the planet without splits and upheavals meet the common interests of all mankind.”

Chinese leader Xi Jinping met Russia's Vladimir Putin in Moscow on March 20 to promote Beijing's role as a potential peacemaker in Ukraine. (Video: Reuters)
On one level, the meeting of the world’s two most prominent autocrats represents the hardening of an ideological axis. Both leaders see themselves hemmed in by a confrontational, meddling United States; both resent Washington’s grandstanding over the international order and rule of law, while their state mouthpieces routinely call out perceived American hypocrisy and double standards; and both have their own visions of a world order where supposed American hegemony is unraveled.

“The pictures of Xi and Putin together in Moscow will send a clear message. Russia and China remain close partners — linked by their joint hostility to America and its allies,” observed Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman.

High on the agenda is talk of peace. Beijing, which is nominally neutral on Russia’s war with Ukraine, recently issued its position paper on the conflict, itemizing a 12-point peace plan that could settle matters. While analysts largely dismissed it at as a sop to the Kremlin, China is nevertheless positioning itself as a potential broker for a future cease-fire. Xi comes to Moscow in the wake of China successfully ushering in a thaw in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a diplomatic feat the United States had little ability of its own to accomplish.

For now, most outside observers are skeptical. On Monday, U.S. officials warned against any Sino-Russian calls for a cease-fire in Ukraine, arguing that would only make concrete Russia’s illegal invasion. “All that’s going to do … is ratify Russia’s conquest to date,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said. “All that’s going to do is give Putin more time to refit, retrain, reman and try to plan for renewed offenses at a time of his choosing.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Xi’s visit, which came days after the International Criminal Court put out a warrant for Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges, suggested that “China feels no responsibility to hold the Kremlin accountable for the atrocities committed to Ukraine,” and would “rather provide diplomatic cover for Russia to continue to commit those very crimes.”

There’s no doubt China has sensed opportunity in the crisis. “Beijing refuses to condemn the invasion, has blamed the United States for the war and criticizes Western sanctions designed to starve Putin’s war machine of funds,” my colleagues noted. “With Russia’s economy under intense pressure, China last year kept it afloat, boosting trade with Russia — including a sharp increase in Chinese exports of electronic chips that Moscow needs for weapons production — and a steep rise in purchases of Russian oil.”

As the West seeks to isolate Russia, China’s leverage over Moscow has only grown. That’s a position of influence that Russian policy elites would have warned against before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but are in no position to thwart now. Some Chinese commentators reject the invocation of an ironclad “alliance” between the two countries, pointing to a deeper of history of friction, as well as current differences both in terms of strategic interests and political styles.

China and Russia may both believe “that the current international order is unfair, unreasonable, and imperfect,” said Zhao Long, a senior fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, in a recent interview with a Chinese outlet, but they approach this status quo in markedly different ways.

“China’s emphasis is on reform and improvement, not starting all over again,” Zhao added, gesturing to Putin’s border-smashing revanchism. “But it is obvious that Russia has already had an impulse before the war, hoping to carry out a ‘subversive’ reconstruction of the entire international system and international order. In the aftermath of this conflict, I am afraid, Russia’s desire to dismantle the current international order will grow even stronger.”

While Chinese officials and analysts may quietly disapprove of Russia’s conduct, they have found accommodation with Putin, who by necessity is consolidating Russia’s role as a junior partner to China on the world stage. Among other developments, because of sanctions, Russia is now trading its dependence on the dollar to reliance on the Chinese yuan.

“Russian leaders like to emphasize the unprecedented strategic cooperation between the two countries,” wrote Alexandra Prokopenko for Carnegie Politika, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s blog on Russia and Eurasia. “Yet in reality, this cooperation makes Moscow increasingly dependent on Beijing.”

Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and an authority on Sino-Russian relations, argued that the time may come when China will use its clout with the Kremlin to extract further political concession, especially as the West cuts its own economic ties to Russia. Beijing may expect Russia in the future to allow it access to Arctic naval bases or alter its own dealings with China’s regional rivals, like India.

“China is content simply to monetize its growing geoeconomic leverage over Russia by securing discounts on its hydrocarbon exports and conquering its consumer market,” Gabuev wrote in the Economist. “But it is probably only a matter of time before China demands more political loyalty for its help in keeping Putin’s regime afloat.”