Dictators are invincible - until they aren't. And the collapse can come with little or no warning.
I call it Political Slope Failure - when gravity (aka: reality) overcomes friction (aka: police state tactics and puffed up bullshit propaganda about how the strong man has the powers of a god).
So NATO backs Ukraine, which sucks Putin into a quagmire, which weakens him to the point where he can't be nearly as much help to his client states as they need. So those states are greatly weakened.
Meanwhile, Biden makes the Hobson's choice to stick with Netanyahu, who beats the fuck out of Hamas and Hezbollah for us, neither of which can get the help they're used to getting from Iran, because Iran has been sending all their shit to Russia, which also makes it nearly impossible for Tehran to keep al-Assad in place. So now, Russia is destroying all the gear they can't take with them as they exit their bases on the Syrian coast, even as they beg the new guys in Damascus for permission to stay in those bases, because they can't continue their shit in Africa without them.
And it goes on. That's just the shit that I can see. There's more - because there's always more.
The thing is collapsing, and it's either total dumb luck, or Biden is as good at this shit as his reputation implies.
Don't think for a minute that Putin wouldn't engineer a famine in Africa and then use use it as leverage against the west in order to push for a settlement that's favorable to him in Ukraine.
Geopolitics is an unbelievably shitty game.
Starting at about 6:42
Famine has been a favorite tool of Russian authoritarian assholes for a mighty long time.
Invading Ukraine was, in itself, a war crime, and you assholes are committing thousands of other war crimes wrapped up in that one big war crime - and now you want us to believe we should do what, shudder at the thought of losing you as a partner in diplomacy?
You're like that a drunk jerk with a swastika neck tattoo who shows up at the wedding reception, dry humps the mother of the bride, ass-plants in the cake, punches the DJ because he won't play Deutschland Über Alles, and then claims that if he leaves, it'll spoil the party?
I realize this is something that has to be considered, and handled with some care because you never really know what a guy like Putin is up to. And we have to wonder if there's a signal here that we need to pick up - like maybe he understands what a tight spot he's in - or maybe somebody else on the inside is trying to signal that Putin's all but done in - I don't claim to know, but
seriously - what the fuck are you guys even talking about?
Russia mulling downgrading ties with West, Kremlin says
Kremlin says West is hostile
No decision yet taken on downgrading ties
MOSCOW, June 27 (Reuters) - Russia is considering a possible downgrading of relations with the West due to the deeper involvement of the United States and its allies in the Ukraine war, but no decision had yet been taken, the Kremlin said on Thursday.
A downgrading of relations - or even breaking them off - would illustrate the gravity of the confrontation between Russia and the West over Ukraine after an escalation in tensions over the war in recent months.
Even during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Cold War is thought to have come closest to nuclear war, Russia did not sever relations with the United States, though Moscow did break off ties with Israel over the 1967 Middle East war.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Izvestia newspaper that ambassadors fulfilled a difficult but important job that allowed a channel of communication to operate in troubled times.
But Ryabkov also said that a possible downgrading of ties with the West was being studied. When asked about the possibility of such a move, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that given the West's current approach to Russia it was one of several options that was being considered, though no decision had yet been made.
"The issue of lowering the level of diplomatic relations is a standard practice for states that face unfriendly or hostile manifestations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"Due to the growing involvement of the West in the conflict over Ukraine, the Russian Federation cannot but consider various options for responding to such hostile Western intervention in the Ukrainian crisis."
President Vladimir Putin, who ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, presents the war as part of a wider struggle with the U.S., which he says ignored Moscow's interests after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and then plotted to split Russia apart and seize its natural resources.
The West and Ukraine have cast the war as an imperial-style land-grab. Western leaders, who deny they want to destroy Russia, say that if Putin wins the war then autocracies across the world will be emboldened.
With Russia gaining the upper hand in the biggest land war in Europe since World War Two, the Ukraine crisis has escalated in recent months.
After the United States allowed Ukraine to strike Russia with some U.S. weapons, the Kremlin sent signals that it viewed this as a serious escalation.
Putin has ordered drills to practise deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, suggested Russia could station conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its allies, and sealed a mutual defence pact with North Korea.
The United States and its European allies still have embassies in Russia, and Russia has embassies in Washington and European capitals, though diplomats from both sides say they are experiencing the most hostile conditions in decades.
"Moscow has given up on repairing relations with the West," said Geoffrey Roberts, a historian of Josef Stalin and Soviet international relations at University College Cork.
"It would signal that Putin thinks he can usher in a Brave New Multipolar World, whilst at the same time keeping the West at arm's length," he said. "But maybe its a just a gesture, a protest, a sign of frustration with the West and/or a sop to Russian hardliners who want to escalate the war in Ukraine."
WaPo puts the usual razor blades in this apple, but one thing that sticks out for me that's barely hinted at here:
Pressure from "conservatives" to get the US to retreat - and to hide from both the opportunities afforded by a global economy, and from the responsibilities that the US needs to shoulder because of our "dominant" position - makes their shitty little plans a bit more obvious.
So I think maybe I see why there is such a strong push for isolationism. If we back off, it may push our allies to step up their game (not a bad thing in general), but it leaves them out there on a limb, while at the same time giving Putin and Xi a better shot at recovering just as we've got those two biggest assholes on the planet kinda pinned against the ropes. MAGA and MAGA-like dickheads all over the world would love to see us pull back.
Surprising U.S. economy is powering better global outlook, World Bank says
High interest rates and trade tensions pose risks to a newly upbeat forecast, though.
The global economy is in better shape than it was at the start of the year, thanks largely to the performance of the United States, the World Bank said in its latest forecast Tuesday. But the sunnier outlook could cloud over if major central banks — including the Federal Reserve — keep interest rates at elevated levels.
Global growth is expected to reach an annual rate of 2.6 percent this year, up from a January forecast of 2.4 percent, the bank said. The global economy is drawing closer to a “soft landing” after recent price spikes, with average inflation dropping to a three-year low amid continuing growth, bank economists said.
While Americans’ unhappiness with high prices remains a key vulnerability for President Biden’s reelection bid, the World Bank now expects the U.S. economy to grow at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, nearly a full percentage point higher than it predicted in January. The United States is the only advanced economy growing significantly faster than the bank anticipated at the start of the year.
“Globally, overall things are better today than they were just four or five months ago,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist. “A big part of this has to do with the resilience of the U.S. economy.”
The bank credited “U.S. dynamism” with helping stabilize the global economy, despite the highest interest rates in years and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Employers added 272,000 jobs in May, topping analysts’ estimates, the Labor Department reported last week.
Expected global growth this year and next, however, will remain below the pre-pandemic average of 3.1 percent. Three out of four developing countries are now expected to grow more slowly than the bank forecast in January, leaving them little hope of narrowing the income gap with richer nations.
Despite their mostly upbeat tone, bank officials warned that central banks including the Fed are likely to move slowly to begin reversing the past two years of interest rate increases. That means global interest rates will remain high, averaging around 4 percent over the next two years, roughly twice the average recorded during the two decades before the pandemic.
Global inflation should ease to 3.5 percent this year, before dropping to 2.9 percent next year. But the decline is proving more gradual than the bank anticipated. And any deterioration that causes monetary authorities to delay cuts in borrowing costs could strip 0.3 percentage points from the forecast growth rates.
“This is a major risk confronting the global economy — interest rates remaining higher for longer and an already weak growth outlook becoming weaker,” Gill said.
Bank officials also flagged global trade — which is on course this year to complete its weakest half-decade since the 1990s — as a concern. Trading nations in 2024 have implemented more than 700 restrictions on merchandise trade and nearly 160 barriers to services trade.
“Trade restrictive measures have skyrocketed. They have more than doubled since the pre-pandemic period,” Gill said.
Rising protectionism risks becoming a drag on the global economy’s already modest pace of growth. Popular support in many countries for tariffs on imported goods and industrial subsidies that favor domestic production could further constrict trade flows that are already under pressure from the U.S.-China rivalry and other geopolitical risks.
“The world might become stuck in the slow lane,” said Ayhan Kose, the bank’s deputy chief economist.
Among those likely to suffer if key interest rates stay higher for longer are the 40 percent of developing countries at risk of a debt crisis. Many borrowed heavily to fund pandemic-related health care and subsequently to cover food and fertilizer bills that soared following the war in Ukraine.
They have little immediate prospect of securing debt relief and now risk losing out on trade gains as larger economies turn inward, Gill said.
We have to keep working on the wealth equity problem. A booming economy doesn't mean we're all enjoying a nice ride that's just getting better for everybody. The plutocrats are working hard to get an even bigger advantage over normal people.
That bit about "a rising tide lifts all boats" is just peachy as long your boat isn't chained to the fuckin' bottom.
In the middle of "No aid is going to Ukraine until the Republicans get their heads outa their asses", Biden sneaked a few ATACMS to Kyiv, and Zelensky used them to knock the shit out of a Russian airbase in Crimea.
And then the White House lets it slip that, "Yeah, we did that - we told you guys not to fuck with our friends."
We just got another $61B to buy stuff that's even better than the ATACMS (and all the other stuff) we're sending to Ukraine
Ukraine continues to gut the Russian military for us
Putin's position in the Kremlin is weakened - which in turn makes Erdogan and Orban play nice
Xi has to slow his roll on Taiwan - cuz he has to see we're not fuckin' around, and besides, now he can look at taking pieces of eastern Russia (eg)
Iran, you idiots watching?
NATO gets stronger and more secure - and more likely to go along with practically anything Biden wants
Biden's message with all this: "We can be really nice guys, and we can be really great friends. But don't try to push us around. We will fuck you up."
The US quietly shipped long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine
WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - The United States in recent weeks secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine for use in its battle to fight off Russian invaders, and Ukraine has now used them twice, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
The missiles were contained in a $300 million military aid package for Ukraine that U.S. President Joe Biden approved on March 12, said the U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official would not say how many of the missiles were sent.
The missiles were used for the first time in the early hours of April 17, launched against a Russian airfield in Crimea that was about 165 km (103 miles) from the Ukrainian front lines, the official said.
The official said Ukraine used the weapon a second time overnight against Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine.
Whether to send the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) with a range up to 300 km was a subject of debate within the Biden administration for months. Mid-range ATACMS were supplied last September.
The Pentagon initially opposed the long-range missile deployment, fearing the loss of the missiles from the American stockpile would hurt U.S. military readiness. There were also concerns that Ukraine would use them to attack targets deep inside Russia.
Russia's use of North Korean-supplied long-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine in December and January, despite U.S. public and private warnings not to do so, led to a change in heart, the U.S. official said.
Also a factor in U.S. decision-making was Russia's targeting of Ukraine's critical infrastructure, the official said.
"We warned Russia about those things," the official said. "They renewed their targeting."
In late January the U.S. military found a way to satisfy their concerns about military readiness, which enabled the administration to move forward. They began acquiring new missiles coming off the Lockheed-Martin (LMT.N), opens new tab production line.
Biden met with his national security team in mid-February and agreed to accept the unanimous recommendation of his advisers to send the missiles to Ukraine. Involved in the discussion were national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown.
The challenge at that point was to figure out how to pay for the missiles. The United States had exhausted all of its funding options and congressional gridlock stymied further aid.
An opportunity arose in March, when several Pentagon contracts came in under bid. Biden was able to use the difference to send $300 million in assistance to Ukraine.
Biden told his team to include the long-range ATACMS in this funding package, but to do so secretly in order to maintain operational security and the element of surprise for Ukraine, the official said.
All of Crimea, BTW, is now untenable. The Russians could be leaving abruptly and rapidly. And they need to do that before Zelensky takes down what's left of the Kerch bridge.
b) don't count on ending the shit in Ukraine any time soon (it could happen, but don't count on it, cuz Russia will go on fucking with everything as long as Putin stays in place
Geopolitics is a giant life-or-death poker game. There are 195 players, they're all cheating, and they all know they're all cheating.
There's no way that I can keep a lot of it straight, so I have to rely on finding people who know way more than I do. That's not the hard part - the hard part is figuring out who to listen to and who to discount or dismiss altogether.
I've posted at least one of his YouTube commentaries before, and I'm thinking this Peter Zeihan guy is a fair-to-good bet. He talks a good game anyway. We'll see.
There's a reason - or many reasons - why Prigozhin's march on Moscow met with practically no resistance, and then halted as abruptly as it started.
I think the big one could be that the Russian general staff have had enough of Putin's little war.
The longer it goes on, the more they look like the incompetent bozos many of them are
...the more it's revealed just how deep the corruption runs
...the more damage is done to the overall "prestige" of the Russian military
...the more likely it is that whole big bunches of them will be integrated into the Siberian biome
So I think one of the weird little wrinkles is that some commanders told their guys to stand down and not interfere with the Wagner gang.
If that's how it went, it had to come as a very loud and very clear message that Putin and Shoigu are not the only power-holders. Putin has the FSB and GRU, and the reason he keeps Shoigu around is that Shoigu has always been willing to pledge his troth to Putin, using Putin's guys to coerce the military.
Now it looks a whole lot like Shoigu's hold on the Russian military is either badly weakened, or that maybe it's all but gone. And that could mean Putin will have to expend even greater time and effort to keep people in line and to re-establish the illusion of his omnipotence.
Like I've said - nobody knows what all is going on, including me.
Russian General Knew About Mercenary Chief’s Rebellion Plans, U.S. Officials Say
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, may have believed he had support in Russia’s military.
A senior Russian general had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership, according to U.S. officials briefed on American intelligence on the matter, which has prompted questions about what support the mercenary leader had inside the top ranks.
The officials said they are trying to learn if Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the former top Russian commander in Ukraine, helped plan Mr. Prigozhin’s actions last weekend, which posed the most dramatic threat to President Vladimir V. Putin in his 23 years in power.
General Surovikin is a respected military leader who helped shore up defenses across the battle lines after Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, analysts say. He was replaced as the top commander in January but retained influence in running war operations and remains popular among the troops.
American officials also said there are signs that other Russian generals may also have supported Mr. Prigozhin’s attempt to change the leadership of the Defense Ministry by force. Current and former U.S. officials said Mr. Prigozhin would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power would come to his aid.
If General Surovikin was involved in last weekend’s events, it would be the latest sign of the infighting that has characterized Russia’s military leadership since the start of Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine and could signal a wider fracture between supporters of Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Putin’s two senior military advisers: Sergei K. Shoigu, the minister of defense, and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of general staff.
But the infighting could also define the Russian military’s future on the battlefield in Ukraine, as Western-backed troops push a new counteroffensive that is meant to try to win back territory seized by Moscow.
Mr. Putin must now decide, officials say, whether he believes that General Surovikin helped Mr. Prigozhin and how he should respond.
What happens next? In their first remarks since the revolt ended, Putin tried to project unity and stability as questions swirled about his grip on power, while Prigozhin claimed he wasn’t trying to overthrow the Russian president. With Wagner’s future in doubt, it is unclear if the mercenary army will still be a fighting force in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, the Russian domestic intelligence agency said that it was dropping “armed mutiny” criminal charges against Mr. Prigozhin and members of his force. But if Mr. Putin finds evidence General Surovikin more directly helped Mr. Prigozhin, he will have little choice but to remove him from his command, officials and analysts say.
Some former officials say Mr. Putin could decide to keep General Surovikin, if he concludes he had some knowledge of what Mr. Prigozhin had planned but did not aid him. For now, analysts said, Mr. Putin seems intent on pinning the mutiny solely on Mr. Prigozhin.
“Putin is reluctant to change people,” said Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “But if the secret service puts files on Putin’s desk and if some files implicate Surovikin, it may change.”
Senior American officials suggest that an alliance between General Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin could explain why Mr. Prigozhin is still alive, despite seizing a major Russian military hub and ordering an armed march on Moscow.
American officials and others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. They emphasized that much of what the United States and its allies know is preliminary. U.S. officials have avoided discussing the rebellion publicly, out of fear of feeding Mr. Putin’s narrative that the unrest was orchestrated by the West.
Still, American officials have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Surovikin, whom they view as more competent and more ruthless than other members of the command. His removal would undoubtedly benefit Ukraine.
The Russian Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
General Surovikin spoke out against the rebellion as it became public on Friday, in a video that urged Russian troops in Ukraine to maintain their positions and not join the uprising.
“I urge you to stop,” General Surovikin said in a message posted on Telegram. “The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country.”
But one former official called that message akin to “a hostage video.” General Surovikin’s body language suggested he was uncomfortable denouncing a former ally, one who shared his view of the Russian military leadership, the former official said.
There were other signs of divided loyalties in the top ranks. Another Russian general — Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev — made his own video appeal, calling any actions against the Russian state a “stab in the back of the country and president.” But hours later, he surfaced in another video, chatting with Mr. Prigozhin in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where Wagner fighters seized military facilities.
“There were just too many weird things that happened that, in my mind, suggest there was collusion that we have not figured out yet,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said in a phone interview.
“Think of how easy it was to take Rostov,” Mr. McFaul said. “There are armed guards everywhere in Russia, and suddenly, there’s no one around to do anything?”
Independent experts, and U.S. and allied officials said that Mr. Prigozhin seemed to believe that large parts of Russia’s army would rally to his side as his convoy of 8,000 Wagner forces moved on Moscow.
Former officials said General Surovikin did not support pushing Mr. Putin from power but appears to have agreed with Mr. Prigozhin that Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov needed to be relieved of duty.
“Surovikin is a decorated general with a complex history,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. “He is said to be respected by the soldiers and viewed as competent.”
General Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin have both brushed up against Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov over tactics used in Ukraine. While the Russian military’s overall performance in the war has been widely derided as underwhelming, analysts have credited General Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin for Russia’s few successes.
In General Surovikin’s case, that limited success was the professionally managed withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson, where they were nearly encircled last fall and cut off from supplies. Based on communications intercepts, U.S. officials concluded that a frustrated General Surovikin represented a hard-line faction of generals intent on using the toughest tactics against Ukrainians.
Similarly, Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries achieved some success in taking the eastern city of Bakhmut after a nine-month slog in which, by Mr. Prigozhin’s own count, some 20,000 Wagner troops were killed. U.S. officials and military analysts say tens of thousands of troops died in the fight for Bakhmut, among them Wagner soldiers who were former convicts with little training before they were sent to war. Mr. Prigozhin frequently complained that senior Russian defense and military officials were not supplying his troops with enough weapons.
Russia’s entire military campaign in Ukraine has been characterized by a musical chairs of changing generals. Last fall, when General Surovikin was put in charge of the Russian Army’s effort in Ukraine, he was the second man to get the job, replacing a general who had lasted barely a month. General Surovikin did not last much longer, but performed far better during his weeks at the helm.
Nevertheless, by January, General Surovikin was demoted, and Mr. Putin handed direct command of the war to General Gerasimov, who promised to put Russian forces back on the offensive. General Surovikin’s demotion, military and Russia analysts say, was widely viewed as a blow to Mr. Prigozhin.
This Peter Zeihan guy gets a lot right. He indulges himself in his own hype sometimes, but he's a smart guy and knows some real stuff.
The first rule of the Nordstream attack is you don't talk about the Nordstream attack.
It looks a lot like the US and European allies had a pretty good idea about what was about to happen with Nordstream.
That doesn't mean they could've done anything to stop it, and it doesn't mean they didn't try to keep the Ukrainians from do it - if it was Kyiv that did it - and it probably was.
What it tells me is that there's nothing new: geopolitics sucks, and somebody's always fucking with somebody, who's fucking with somebody else.
Throw in an actual war, and we've got a very bad thing that just gets worse. Wanna talk about the dam at Nova Kakhova? - yeah, me neither, but we'll have to eventually.
U.S. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline
The CIA learned last June, via a European spy agency, that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to sabotage the Russia-to-Germany natural gas project
Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.
The European intelligence report was shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira. The Washington Post obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.
The intelligence report was based on information obtained from an individual in Ukraine. The source’s information could not immediately be corroborated, but the CIA shared the report with Germany and other European countries last June, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence operations and diplomatic discussions.
The highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack, show that for nearly a year, Western allies have had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage. That assessment has only strengthened in recent months as German law enforcement investigators uncovered evidence about the bombing that bears striking similarities to what the European service said Ukraine was planning.
Officials in multiple countries confirmed that the intelligence summary posted on Discord accurately stated what the European service told the CIA. The Post agreed to withhold the name of the European country as well as some aspects of the suspected plan at the request of government officials, who said exposing the information would threaten sources and operations.
Ukrainian officials, who have previously denied the country was involved in the Nord Stream attack, did not respond to requests for comment.
The White House declined to comment on a detailed set of questions about the European report and the alleged Ukrainian military plot, including whether U.S. officials tried to stop the mission from proceeding.
The CIA also declined to comment.
On Sept. 26, three underwater explosions caused massive leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, leaving only one of the four gas links in the network intact. Some Biden administration officials initially suggested that Russia was to blame for what President Biden called “a deliberate act of sabotage,” promising that the United States would work with its allies “to get to the bottom of exactly what ... happened.” With winter approaching, it appeared the Kremlin might have intended to strangle the flow of energy, an act of “blackmail,” some leaders said, designed to intimidate European countries into withdrawing their financial and military support for Ukraine, and refraining from further sanctions.
Zelensky, in private, pushed for bold attacks inside Russia, leak shows
Biden administration officials now privately concede there is no evidence that conclusively points to Moscow’s involvement. But publicly they have deflected questions about who might be responsible. European officials in several countries have quietly suggested that Ukraine was behind the attack but have resisted publicly saying so over fears that blaming Kyiv could fracture the alliance against Russia. At gatherings of European and NATO policymakers, officials have settled into a rhythm; as one senior European diplomat said recently, “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.”
The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.
Keeping Zelensky out of the loop would have given the Ukrainian leader a plausible way to deny involvement in an audacious attack on civilian infrastructure that could ignite public outrage and jeopardize Western support for Ukraine — particularly in Germany, which before the war got half its natural gas from Russia and had long championed the Nord Stream project in the face of opposition from other European allies.
While Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas conglomerate, owns 51 percent of Nord Stream, Western energy companies, including from Germany, France and the Netherlands, are partners and invested billions in the pipelines. Ukraine had long complained that Nord Stream would allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian pipes, depriving Kyiv of huge transit revenue.
A map showing the Nord Stream leaks in the Baltic Sea. The neighboring countries are labelled, and it is indicated if they are an E.U. or NATO member. The intelligence summary says that the Ukrainian military operation was “put on hold,” for reasons that remain unclear. The Ukrainians had planned to attack the pipeline on the heels of a major allied naval exercise, known as BALTOPS, that ran from June 5 to 17, 2022, according to the report.
But according to German law enforcement officials investigating September’s Nord Stream bombing, key details emerging of that operation line up with the earlier plot.
For instance, the Ukrainian individual who informed the European intelligence service in June said that six members of Ukraine’s special operations forces using false identities intended to rent a boat and, using a submersible vehicle, dive to the floor of the Baltic Sea and then damage or destroy the pipeline and escape undetected. In addition to oxygen, the team planned to bring helium, which is recommended for especially deep dives.
German investigators now believe that six individuals using fake passports rented a sailing yacht in September, embarked from Germany and planted explosives that severed the pipelines, according to officials familiar with that investigation. They believe the operatives were skilled divers, given that the explosives were planted at a depth of about 240 feet, in the range that experts say helium would be helpful for maintaining mental focus.
Investigators have matched explosive residue found on the pipeline to traces found inside the cabin of the yacht, called Andromeda. And they have linked Ukrainian individuals to the rental of the boat via an apparent front company in Poland. Investigators also suspect that at least one individual who serves in the Ukrainian military was involved in the sabotage operation.
A collaboration of German media organizations previously reported the suspected involvement of the Ukrainian military service member.
The June plot differs from the September attack in some respects. The European intelligence report notes that the Ukrainian operatives planned to attack the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but it makes no mention of Nord Stream 2, a newer line. The intelligence report also says that the saboteurs would embark from a different location in Europe, not Warnemünde, a German port town on the Baltic, where the Andromeda was rented.
The CIA initially questioned the credibility of the information, in part because the source in Ukraine who provided the details had not yet established a track record of producing reliable information, according to officials familiar with the matter. The European service, a trusted U.S. partner, felt that the source was reliable.
But despite any reservations the CIA might have had, the agency communicated the June intelligence to counterparts in Germany and other European countries, officials said. The European service also shared it with Germany, one person said. German intelligence personnel briefed lawmakers in Berlin in late June before they left for their summer break, according to an official with knowledge of the closed-door presentation.
Officials familiar with the European report conceded that it is possible that the suspected Ukrainian plotters might have been apprised that the intelligence was shared with several countries and that they may have changed some elements of the plan.
But the report from the European intelligence service isn’t the only piece of evidence pointing to Kyiv’s role in the pipeline bombing.
The Post previously reported that governments investigating the explosions uncovered communications that showed pro-Ukrainian individuals or entities discussed the possibility of carrying out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Those conversations took place before the attack, but were only discovered in its aftermath, when spy agencies scoured data for possible clues, a senior Western security official said.
Despite waiving Trump-era sanctions on the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline as an attempt to mend fences with Berlin, the Biden administration had long harbored concerns about Nord Stream and did not shed tears over its September demise.
After months of pressure from Washington, the German government halted final authorization of Nord Stream 2 just days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, surprising many U.S. and European officials who had worried that Berlin would find Russia too important an energy source to sever ties. At the time of the attack, the pipeline was intact and had already been pumped full with 300 million cubic meters of natural gas to ready it for operations.
Nearly a month before the rupture, the Russian energy giant Gazprom stopped flows on Nord Stream 1, hours after the Group of Seven industrialized nations announced a forthcoming price cap on Russian oil, a move intended to put a dent in the Kremlin’s treasury.
Officials have said that the cost of repairing the pipelines would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
While U.S. intelligence officials were initially skeptical of the European reporting, they have long been concerned about aggressive operations by Ukraine that could escalate the war into a direct conflict between Russia and the United States and its NATO allies.
In February of this year, on the eve of the war’s first anniversary, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency agreed, “at Washington’s request,” to postpone planned strikes on Moscow, according to another intelligence document leaked on Discord. That incident illustrated a broader tension that has existed throughout the war: Ukraine, eager to bring the fight to Russia’s home turf, is sometimes restrained by the United States.
Officials in Washington and Europe have admonished Ukraine for attacks outside its territory that they felt went too far. After a car bomb near Moscow in August killed Daria Dugina, in an attack that appeared intended for her father — a prominent Russian nationalist whose writing had helped shape a Kremlin narrative about Ukraine — Western officials said they made clear to Zelensky that they held operatives in his government responsible. The attack was seen as provocative and risked a severe Russian response, officials said.
Ukraine has persisted with strikes inside Russia, including drone strikes on an airfield and on targets in Moscow that U.S. officials have linked to Kyiv.
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.”
Putin fucked up in various ways, aside from some pretty dumbass assumptions that the Ukrainians would just roll over and play dead.
He didn't bring enough guys
You need a 3:1 advantage in numbers of invaders-to-invadees
You need 1 Russian occupier for every 50 Ukrainian occupy-ees
He didn't think his own brand of corruption had taken hold in the Russian military almost top to bottom, side to side, and front to back
He didn't figure on his little excursion becoming a unifying force for NATO
As rich as he is, he hadn't stolen enough to survive what looks like it could be years of crippling economic sanctions
China is watching this clusterfuck closely, knowing it's practically a lead pipe cinch that Vlad will not survive it.
Xi would need at least 500,000 guys to invade (probably more because it's an amphibious landing), and he'd have to leave all of them on Taiwan for years as an occupying force.
Mike's Guess:
The need to reduce the number of occupation troops is what drives the inevitable slaughter of the occupied country's population, as well as the push to keep throwing more of your own people into the meat grinder. For the guy calling the shots, it becomes a fairly simple matter of "better them than me".
War has always been the stupidest fuckin' thing humans do. And it's even stupider now.
Grey Zone Tactics - Mar 2022
Question 1. How Does China View Competition in the Gray Zone?
Chinese analysts view gray zone actions as measures that powerful countries have employed both historically and in recent decades that are beyond normal diplomacy and other traditional approaches to statecraft but short of direct use of military force for escalation or a conflict. While Chinese scholars do not typically use the term gray zone to describe Chinese gray zone activities, the Chinese conceptualization of military operations other than war (MOOTW) is helpful for understanding how China may use its military for such activities. Chinese analysts characterize coercive or confrontational external-facing MOOTW as stability maintenance, rights protection, or security and guarding operations. China believes that MOOTW should also leverage nonmilitary actors and means.
Question 2. What Drives and Enables Chinese Use of Gray Zone Tactics?
Chinese activities in the gray zone support PRC leadership's overarching domestic, economic, foreign policy, and security objectives in the Indo-Pacific, which Beijing views as China's priority region. Gray zone activities balance China's pursuit of a more favorable external environment by altering the regional status quo in its favor with a desire to act below the threshold of a militarized response from the United States or China's neighbors. Recent developments have provided an increasingly varied toolkit for pressuring other countries across four key domains: geopolitical, economic, military, and cyber/IO. These developments are laws and regulations enabling Beijing to harness nongovernmental personnel and assets growing Chinese geopolitical, economic, and military power and influence vis-à-vis other countries increasing linkages between China's military development and economic growth the integration of military and paramilitary forces.
Question 3. How Does China Employ Gray Zone Tactics?
Overall, China tailors its gray zone activities to the target and has an increasing variety and number of more-coercive tools. Beijing layers the use of multiple gray zone tactics to pressure allies and partners, particularly on issues related to China's core interests. Combining multiple geopolitical, economic, military, and cyber/IO activities means that China no longer has to rely on significant escalation in any single domain and, if needed, can sequence actions to apply pressure in nonmilitary domains before resorting to use of military activity. China also appears to be more cautious and selective in using high-profile gray zone tactics against more-capable countries—for instance, employing a smaller variety of tactics against Japan and India than against Vietnam and the Philippines.
China has increasingly leveraged military tactics, and there is no evidence to suggest that China will use fewer military tactics as its overall military capabilities grow or that improved bilateral relations will discourage China from pressing its territorial claims. Likewise, there is little reason to believe that China will use fewer military gray zone tactics as its geopolitical or economic power increases. China has recently relied heavily on air- and maritime-domain tactics, for example.
China exercises caution in its use of high-profile, bilateral geopolitical and economic tactics and has become more active in wielding its influence in international institutions or via third-party actors. Since at least 2013, China has expanded its involvement on the ground in select regions, recruiting local proxies and engaging in various information efforts. In terms of nonmilitary tactics, China uses geopolitical and bilateral tactics most often.
Question 4. Which PRC Tactics Could the United States Prioritize Countering?
Given the wide range of PRC gray zone tactics and the diverse collection of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, the United States faces the difficult task of determining how to prioritize which PRC activities to counter. The U.S. government, experts, and academics do not currently agree on how to assess which PRC gray zone tactics are most problematic. Policymakers could consider aggregating across three different criteria: (1) the extent to which PRC tactics undermine U.S. objectives and interests in the Indo-Pacific region, (2) how difficult it is for allies and partners to respond to and counter tactics, and (3) how widely China uses specific tactics (against one or multiple allies and partners).
While there are many ways to combine the three indicators, the most balanced approach might be to weight U.S. objectives and interests equally with allied and partner concerns (40 percent each) and the prevalence of PRC tactics less (20 percent). Based on this aggregate method, ten of the 20 most-problematic PRC tactics are military activities that the People's Liberation Army or Chinese paramilitary actors engage in, with many of the tactics involving operations near or in disputed territories. Other military tactics include China engaging in highly publicized and large-scale, cross-service military exercises; establishing military bases or potential dual-use facilities in neighboring countries to threaten a target; and building up or acquiring PRC military capabilities against targets.
Geopolitical, economic, and cyber/IO tactics also ranked among the top 20. While the most-problematic PRC activities were international geopolitical and grassroots economic tactics, other PRC economic activities and grassroots cyber/IO activities in the targeted region were also problematic. Relative to the other tactics, grassroots geopolitical activities and bilateral cyber/IO activities have been less challenging. These findings suggest that the United States should devote significant effort to helping U.S. allies and partners counter PRC international geopolitical and economic tactics (particularly PRC economic activity in the target region or in disputed regions) and address grassroots cyber/IO activities.
Recommendations
The U.S. government should hold gray zone scenario discussions with key allies and partners to better understand their concerns, responses, and needs.
The National Security Council or the U.S. Department of State should identify a set of criteria to determine the most-problematic PRC gray zone tactics to counter via whole-of-government efforts.
The United States could prioritize countering Chinese activities in disputed territories and responding to PRC geopolitical international and economic tactics.
The U.S. Department of Defense should develop gray zone plans similar to existing operational plans but focused on responding to a range of more-escalatory PRC gray zone scenarios.
The U.S. Air Force should continue to build out intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and improve regional cyberdefense capabilities to increase domain awareness, identify and attribute PRC activities, and counter PRC cyber/IO tactics.
Janet Yellen speaks to the issue plainly and clearly.
Yellen Calls for More Ukraine Support and Warns China Against Helping Russia
Ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers, the Treasury secretary offered a dark assessment of Russia’s economy and warned China of the consequences of helping Moscow skirt U.S. sanctions.
BENGALURU, India — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Thursday that the United States would redouble its efforts to marshal global support to help Ukraine and warned that China would face repercussions if it helped Russia evade American sanctions.
She spoke as top policymakers from around the world gathered in southern India for a meeting that is expected to focus largely on accelerating a global economic recovery after three years of international crises. The warning to China underscores how the impact of the war continues to reverberate, straining ties between the world’s two largest economies as they were attempting to stabilize their relationship.
“We have made clear that providing material support to Russia or assistance with any kind of systemic sanctions evasion would be a very serious concern for us,” Ms. Yellen said. “We will certainly continue to make clear to the Chinese government and the companies and banks in their jurisdiction about what the rules are regarding our sanctions and the serious consequences they would face for violating them.”
Ms. Yellen declined to describe specific U.S. intelligence about Russian attempts to avoid sanctions but the Treasury Department has pointed to attempts by Russia to seek assistance from China to supply it with items such as semiconductors which face trade restrictions.
Trade data shows that China, along with countries including Turkey and some former Soviet republics, has stepped in to provide Russia with products that civilians or armed forces could use, including raw materials, smartphones, vehicles and computer chips. Biden administration officials have expressed concern that China could provide Russia with lethal weapons, however China does not appear to have done so yet.
The United States has cracked down on some of the companies and organizations supplying goods and services to Russia. In January, it imposed sanctions on a Chinese company that had provided satellite imagery to the Wagner mercenary group, which has played a large role in the battle for eastern Ukraine. In December, it added two Chinese research institutes to a list of entities that supply the Russian military, which will restrict their access to U.S. technology.
On Thursday, Ms. Yellen made clear that the United States would crack down on sanctions evasion. “We are seeking to strengthen sanctions and to make sure we address violations of sanctions,” she said.
The effectiveness of sanctions on Russia continues to be a subject of intense debate, as recent forecasts from the International Monetary Fund suggested that its economy is performing better than expected.
But Ms. Yellen offered a dark assessment of Russia’s economy, arguing that sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western nations were working to isolate the Kremlin, drain the country of talent and sap its productive capacity. Still, the United States continues to view the conflict as the biggest threat to the global economy, and Ms. Yellen made clear that the Biden administration is prepared to continue punishing Russia for its incursion.
Ms. Yellen said that the United States plans to unveil additional sanctions on Russia and that it is working with its allies to devise ways to tighten restrictions already in place.
“We will stand with Ukraine in its fight — for as long as it takes,” Ms. Yellen said at a news conference as finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations, which include Russia and China, convened for two days of meetings.
The Treasury secretary said that the United States had already provided more than $46 billion in security, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and that another $10 billion in economic support would be delivered in the coming months. Ms. Yellen also called on the I.M.F. to “move swiftly” with a fully financed loan package for Ukraine. The I.M.F. last year approved more than $1 billion in emergency financing to Ukraine to mitigate the economic impact of the war.
“Continued, robust support for Ukraine will be a major topic of discussion during my time here in India,” Ms. Yellen said.
The United States hopes to include a condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine in the joint statement, or communiqué, that the finance ministers are set to release later this week. However, it is not clear if a decisive statement will be possible because Russia is a member of the G20 and India, which is hosting the event, continues to buy large quantities of Russian oil.
Despite the urgency to address the crisis in Ukraine, Ms. Yellen offered an upbeat assessment of the global economy, which has begun to recover. While she acknowledged that headwinds remained, she said the world was on more stable footing than last fall, when many were forecasting a global recession.
“It’s fair to say that the global economy is in a better place today than many predicted just a few months ago,” Ms. Yellen said, pointing to a recent global growth upgrade from the I.M.F.
She added that the United States economy was proving to be resilient, with inflation moderating while the labor market remains strong.
During their meetings on Friday and Saturday, finance ministers are also expected to discuss ways to alleviate the debt crises facing many developing countries. Officials are also expected to put pressure on China, which has become one of the world’s largest creditors, to demonstrate more willingness to let more countries restructure their debt.
“I will continue to push for all bilateral official creditors, including China, to participate in meaningful debt treatments for developing countries and emerging markets in distress,” Ms. Yellen said.
It was unclear if Ms. Yellen would have any meetings with Chinese officials this week. She said that keeping lines of communication open about macroeconomic issues remained important.
“I certainly expect that we will resume discussions,” Ms. Yellen said, adding, “I don’t have a specific time frame in mind but I think it’s important to do so.”
