Russia

For me, the big takeaway on this one is that when you put real pressure on Putin, he dives for cover behind his negotiators, and his first move will likely be to buy you off.

Bluff-n-Bluster. But then the problem is: If Putin is exposed as a paper tiger, who's going to step up to take his place? And will that guy be more reasonable and easier to deal with, or will he be determined to show everybody what a hard-ass he can be because that Putin guy turned out to be such a total pussy?

It would seem Mr Putin isn't able to impose his will with anywhere near the certainty everybody (including me) had thought - not anymore anyway.

One other little detail that popped up in the last coupla days: Russian cops raided Prigozhin's HQ in St Petersburg, finding some gold bullion, several passports with aliases, and more than $40M in cash. Now that's probably just one of his bug-out stashes, so maybe it's not that big a deal, but it's not something you leave behind to throw off the bloodhounds either. Mr Prigozhin's exit seems to have been quite a bit more frenzied than I had thought.

If this follows the usual pattern, it's bound to be an Either-or-Neither proposition.

Dictators can't operate for long with a viable - and very popular - challenger waiting in the wings, so Mr Prigozhin is a prime candidate for Peter Pan lessons in the relatively near future.

But Putin has been shown up as having a potentially fatal flaw.

So the "smart play" is to wait for (and to help) Putin as he tries to snuff Prigozhin, then move against Putin - possibly using Putin's "illegal" elimination of the heroic Wagner leader as pretext.

To be sure, I DON'T KNOW - and nobody else knows either. I'm just Magic-Eight-Ballin' here.

Officials question whether truce will hold in Kremlin, Wagner standoff

Many are watching to see if Vladimir Putin sacks his military leadership — and if Yevgeniy Prigozhin remains quietly in exile

As the dust settled on the most serious challenge in decades to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority, Washington and its allies struggled to make sense of a head-spinning series of historic events that saw mercenary forces race up a highway to within 120 miles of Moscow on Saturday, then abruptly turn back after their leader, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, agreed to stand down and go to Belarus for an uncertain exile.

On Sunday, intelligence officials and diplomats — unsure if they had just witnessed an aborted coup or a thwarted mutiny — were left to parse official Kremlin statements and re-watch blurry videos posted on Telegram, the social network that Prigozhin has used to try to convince the Russian people that the war in Ukraine has been a strategic disaster led by incompetent commanders and political sycophants.

Publicly, U.S. officials have highlighted the possible benefits to Ukraine from the chaos in Russia. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the brief Wagner revolt, and how it was ultimately if tentatively resolved, showed “cracks in the facade” of Putin’s authoritarian leadership.

“Think about it this way: 16 months ago, Russian forces were on the doorstep of Kyiv in Ukraine, believing they would take the capital in a matter of days and erase the country from the map as an independent country. Now, what we’ve seen is Russia having to defend Moscow, its capital, against mercenaries of [Putin’s] own making,” Blinken said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”

“Certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead,” Blinken added.

Officials in the United States and around Europe said they were unsure of what comes next and were concerned about the instability that could follow an effort by Putin’s rivals, including Prigozhin, to unseat the president at a vulnerable moment.

High on the list of questions policymakers are now putting to their intelligence analysts is whether Prigozhin has managed to shake the foundations of the Kremlin so strongly that Putin will feel compelled to sack top generals or ministers leading the war, as Prigozhin has repeatedly demanded.

Putin rules by showing strength. Russia’s crisis exposed his weakness.

More immediately, though, there’s another question: What just happened? One minute, Prigozhin had taken over a key military headquarters in the south running Russia’s war machine in Ukraine. The next, he had agreed to a truce brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who’s more accustomed to playing second fiddle to Putin than intervening between warring factions.

“Why did it calm down so quickly, and how come Putin’s puppet Lukashenko got the credit?” asked one senior European diplomat, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. “What impact will it have on Russia’s defenses, and are there going to be any personnel changes in the military leadership?”

Western officials also were unsure about what terms had been reached between Putin and Prigozhin to end the rebellion, and whether the peace would hold.

One Western intelligence official was skeptical that Prigozhin would remain quietly in Belarus, echoing speculation that he will either be killed or will continue to challenge Russia’s military establishment from abroad.

Watching the Wagner column head toward Moscow on Saturday, the official had predicted that Russian troops were unlikely to put up much resistance if they had been persuaded by his arguments that military leaders were to blame for the disastrous war. Prigozhin had said on social media that the Russian public hadn’t been told the truth about the setbacks in Ukraine, including about the extraordinarily high number of dead Russian troops. U.S. military figures have estimated casualties in the hundreds of thousands.

Bob Seely, a member of British Parliament who serves on the foreign affairs committee that has been investigating Wagner for two years, wondered if Putin feared his own military might not carry out his orders to stop Wagner forces from entering the capital. Earlier on Saturday, before the truce, Putin had described the Wagner fighters as traitors during a televised address to the nation.

“Would Putin have been able to order a lethal airstrike?” Seely asked. “Could Putin have actually killed Prigozhin on route? Or was it so bad for Putin that he couldn’t,” meaning that his grip on power was too tenuous? If Putin demanded that Russian forces attack and the answer was no, Seely said, “then Putin was in a desperate stage.”

“I can’t see this peace lasting,” Seely added, “because either Prigozhin is unstable and will continue to attack and seek to finish Putin off, or Putin will silence him in some way — financially, politically or physically.”

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group on a street in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday, seen leaving an area of the headquarters of the Southern Military District. (AP)
A Ukrainian intelligence official, who was likewise unsure why Prigozhin had stood down, saw signs that the mercenary leader may not have been confident in his prospects.

“I think he miscalculated in his expectations of military support,” the Ukrainian official said, taking a different view than some of his European counterparts. The revolt Prigozhin may have hoped for in Moscow failed to materialize, the official noted.

He added that there were indications Prigozhin may even have tried to phone Putin directly but received no answer. This sent a “very strong signal” to Prigozhin, the Ukrainian official believes: Putin would not simply acquiesce to his demands.

Another senior European diplomat said that allies hope to understand what Putin will do domestically in response to the unrest, especially with respect to any next steps in the stalemate on the Ukraine war front. The diplomat joked that even as Ukraine’s Western backers raced to decipher what had occurred, Russian intelligence probably did not have much of a head start.

“I think even Russian services are scratching their heads,” the diplomat said. “We will need some time to digest and also to see where things are moving.”

On the Sunday morning talk shows, Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed that the events had weakened Putin and strengthened the United States’ resolve to continue supporting Ukraine. Later on Sunday, President Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the current counteroffensive against Russia and committed to continue U.S. support for Ukraine, the White House said in a statement.

But intelligence officials cautioned that it remains to be seen whether Prigozhin’s challenge truly weakened Putin — and if the Russian leader believes it did. U.S. and Western analysts have long described Putin as isolated, surrounded by yes-men and blind to the challenges his forces face.

The Russian intelligence agency primarily responsible for understanding Ukraine, the FSB, failed to neutralize the government in Kyiv and foment any pro-Russian opposition to disrupt Zelensky’s hold on power, The Washington Post previously reported, based on intelligence material obtained by Ukrainian and other security services.

Putin has been misguided by advisers who may now try to convince him that he won in a standoff with Prigozhin, some officials said. That may only embolden the Russian leader, even if he is not as strong as he thinks.

Officials said that, in the near term, they will watch closely for any signs that Putin may replace two of the top leaders who have been the targets of Prigozhin’s Telegram rants: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff. Prigozhin had demanded an audience with both men as his forces marched across Russia.

Sacking the military bosses might not mean that Putin is giving in to Prigozhin, but rather that he realizes the Russian elite have lost confidence in their leadership. Prigozhin, some Western officials said, was only saying out loud what many around the Kremlin privately think.

“If Putin replaces Shoigu, it will not be because Prigozhin demanded it, but because Shoigu is weak,” the Ukrainian official said.

As for Prigozhin’s next move, U.S. and Western officials were keenly interested in whether the rift with Putin will prompt him to distance the Russian government from Wagner and withdraw support for its extensive operations in Africa and the Middle East, where the group offers security and military assistance and tactics on campaigns to influence governments facing rebellions or instability, in return for resource contracts such as gold in regions that are too unstable to attract Western corporations.

Though Prigozhin’s company seeks to turn a profit wherever it operates, its action often advances a Kremlin agenda and undermines Western interests. For those reasons alone, some Western officials believe Putin will probably continue supporting Wagner’s operations, but recent events may set back its future potential.

“I think Wagner will have their wings curbed heavily,” said a senior European intelligence official. That may come at a cost for Putin. “Prigozhin has been the gateway for Moscow in many places in Africa, and Moscow counts on African support more than ever,” the intelligence official said. But, he acknowledged, the Russian president has more pressing concerns, such as political survival.

“Faced with last weekend’s events, issues like Russian influence in Africa have a secondary weight for Putin.”

What Coup?

I've been trying to do two things

1. Wait for more info - early reports are always wrong
2. Figure out what some of the different alternative story-lines might be

Jake Broe asks a coupla perfect questions:

What the fuck just happened? 

Why Lukashenko?

Warthog Defense

The Butcher Of Bakhmut is celebrated as a conquering hero.

Some Beau On A Sunday

Bad guys telling us good guys are doing bad things, and good guys telling us bad guys are doing good things.

... or any combination of good guys, bad guys, good things, bad things.

When it's this difficult to figure out who's who or what's what, then you know there's some big-time fuckery going on, and it's going to be a while before we can settle on any reliable conclusions about anything.

Beau Of The Fifth Column

Falling In Real Time (?)

I'm thinking maybe the headline should read:

Russian army shells Russian city to stop Russians fighting to liberate Russia

Russia fights alleged incursion from Ukraine for second day, reports more drone attacks

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops and security forces fought for a second day Tuesday against an alleged cross-border raid that Moscow blamed on Ukrainian military saboteurs but which Kyiv portrayed as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region on the Ukraine border, said forces continued to sweep the rural area around the town of Graivoron, where the alleged attack on Monday took place. Twelve civilians were wounded in the attack, he said, and an older woman died during the evacuation.

Gladkov urged residents of the area who evacuated to stay put and not come back to their homes just yet. “We will let you know immediately ... when it is safe,” Gladkov said. “Security agencies are carrying out all the necessary actions. We’re waiting for the counterterrorism operation to be over.”

It was impossible to independently verify who was behind the attack or what its aims were. Disinformation has been one of the weapons of the almost 15-month war.

Today's Press Poodle

No, CNN, you have to stop reporting on this in a passive neutral way.

At the very least, the headline editor should be fired yesterday. Because you cannot find defensible middle ground between democracy and dictatorship, which is exactly the inference that headline invites - as well as the first four paragraphs.

Four fucking paragraphs before you mention Russia's brutality, and Xi's belligerence towards practically everybody in Asia.

These assholes are assholes, with asshole ambitions and asshole intent. Say that or STFU.

Russia and China hit back at a G7 that saw them as a threat

Moscow and Beijing lashed out against the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, where leaders of major democracies pledged new measures targeting Russia and spoke in one voice on their growing concerns over China.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday slammed the G7 for indulging in their “own greatness” with an agenda that aimed to “deter” Russia and China.

Meanwhile China’s Foreign Ministry accused G7 leaders of “hindering international peace” and said the group needed to “reflect on its behavior and change course.”

Beijing had made “serious démarches” to host country Japan and “other parties” over their decision to “smear and attack” China, it said.

Both Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine and how to handle an increasingly assertive Beijing have loomed over the three-day gathering of the world’s leading industrialized democracies taking place in Japan – just across regional seas from both countries – where Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise, in-person appearance.

G7 member countries made the group’s most detailed articulation of a shared position on China to date – stressing the need to cooperate with the world’s second-largest economy, but also to counter its “malign practices” and “coercion” in a landmark joint communique Saturday.

Leaders also pledged new steps to choke off Russia’s ability to finance and fuel its war, and vowed in a dedicated statement to ramp up coordination on their economic security – a thinly veiled warning from members against what they see as the weaponization of trade from China, and also Russia.

The G7 agreements follow a hardening of attitudes on China in some European capitals, despite differing views on how to handle relations with the key economic partner, deemed by the US as “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order.”

Countering China’s ‘coercion’

Beijing’s retort later Saturday urged the G7 “not to become an accomplice” in American “economic coercion.”

“The massive unilateral sanctions and acts of ‘decoupling’ and disrupting industrial and supply chains make the US the real coercer that politicizes and weaponizes economic and trade relations,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“The international community does not and will not accept the G7-dominated Western rules that seek to divide the world based on ideologies and values,” it continued.

G7 member countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union also joins as non-country member.

A number of non-G7 leaders also attended the summit, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Albanese on Sunday said he has been concerned “for some time” over China’s activity, including its military activities in the South China Sea, and called for “transparency” by Beijing over the detention of Australian journalist Cheng Lei.

China’s image in Europe has taken a severe hit over the past 15 months as leaders there have watched China’s Xi Jinping tighten ties with fellow authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as Moscow’s invasion sparked a massive humanitarian crisis and Moscow’s leader was accused of war crimes by an international court.

Beijing’s increased military aggression toward Taiwan – the self-ruling democracy the Chinese Communist Party claims as its territory but has never ruled – and economic penalties against Lithuania following a disagreement over Taiwan have also played a role in shifting sentiment.

Concern about such incidents was reflected in the G7 statement on ensuring economic security and countering economic coercion, which did not explicitly mention China.

The G7 leaders’ ability to sign on a statement “so specifically directed at Beijing” would have been “hard to believe” two years ago, according to Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

“The bottom line is that the G7 has shown it will increasingly focus on China and will try to maintain a coordinated policy approach. That’s a major development,” he said.

War in Ukraine

The G7 agreements land as China has been marshaling its diplomats in a concerted attempt to repair ties with Europe, largely by recasting itself as a potential agent of peace in the war in Ukraine, even if that claim has been met with widespread skepticism among Western nations.

Last week as European leaders headed to Asia, Chinese special envoy Li Hui began his own European tour billed by Beijing as a means to promote peace talks.

Li, who was dispatched after Xi late last month made his first call to Zelensky since the Russian invasion, visited Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday, where he fronted China’s vision of a “political settlement.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the G7 Summit at the Grand Prince Hotel on May 20, 2023 in Hiroshima, Japan.
G7 talks culminate Sunday with in-person appeal from Zelensky
That calls for a ceasefire but not for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory first – a scenario which critics say could serve to cement Russia’s illegal land grab in the country and runs counter to Ukraine’s own peace plan.

Zelensky’s travel to the G7 in Asia is also “a way of putting pressure on China,” according to Jean-Pierre Cabestan, an emeritus professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

The message to China is for it “to be more more outgoing in its support for a solution” that aligns with Kyiv’s interests in terms of its territorial integrity and Russian troops pulling out from Ukraine, he said.

When asked about the possibility of China playing a role in ending Russia’s war, a senior White House official on Saturday said the US hopes that Xi views this week’s summit as a signal of “resolve.”

“We would hope that what President Xi and the (People’s Republic of China) extract from what they’ve been seeing here … is that there’s an awful lot of resolve to continue to support Ukraine … and that China could have a meaningful role in helping end this war,” the official said.

Glimmers

War is for losers.

I'm not talking about it the way Trump did. He took a giant dump on anybody who answered the call and served honorably in uniform. He actually called the dead and the wounded suckers and losers.

And while I'll continue to make the argument that the warriors are in fact ultimately responsible for the war (ie: you don't have much of a war if nobody shows up to fight), that's not my point.

When you're responsible for your own actions no matter the circumstances, we all need to be very careful, and not get fooled by the cynical manipulations of asshole politicians who'll never have to do any of the fighting and the bleeding and the dying in the name of some noble cause their PR team came up with.

When I say 'war is for losers', I mean it at the base level. Nobody wins a war. When the killing stops and the smoke clears, the "winner" is the side that lost the least, or was able to stand losing more than the other guys.

Nobody wins. Everybody loses. War is about loss. War is for losers.

There's no better example of that than what's going on in Ukraine, and the "good news" - for lack of a better way to say it - is that it kinda looks like the example of Putin getting his dick knocked in the dirt is making the Chinese a little more reasonable.

Opinion In Vienna, the U.S.-China relationship shows signs of hope

As the United States and China veered toward confrontation in recent years, both sides gave lip service to the idea that they seek cooperation on issues of mutual interest. Little came from that rhetoric until last week in Vienna, when top Chinese and U.S. officials actually seemed to be creating a framework for constructive engagement.

After two days of intense meetings Wednesday and Thursday between national security adviser Jake Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, the two nations used identical language to describe the meetings: candid, substantive, constructive. For diplomats, that amounts to a rave review.

Talking about resets in foreign policy is always risky, and that’s especially true with Washington and Beijing. These two superpowers might be “destined for war,” as Harvard professor Graham Allison warned in a book with that title. What they’ve lacked, in their increasingly combative relationship, has been common ground. But some shared space seems to have emerged during the long, detailed discussions between Sullivan and Wang.

The U.S. and Chinese officials are said to have talked for hours about how to resolve the war in Ukraine short of a catastrophe that would be harmful for both countries. They discussed how each side perceives and misunderstands the other’s global ambitions. They spoke in detail about the supremely contentious issue of Taiwan.

The frank discussion in Vienna was important because both sides have been running hard in the opposite direction in recent years. The Biden administration has concentrated on rebuilding U.S. military alliances and partnerships but has had little constructive engagement with Beijing. China has proclaimed a “no limits” partnership with Russia and has fostered an alliance of the aggrieved but, in the process, has rebuffed the superpower that matters most to its future.

What was different in Vienna? From accounts that have emerged, it was partly a matter of chemistry. Sullivan and Wang are both confident enough to talk off script. Over nearly a dozen hours of discussion, they threw schedules aside. They have the confidence of their bosses, Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping, to engage in detailed discussion about sensitive issues. They appear to have found a language for superpower discussion, like what once existed between the United States and both Russia and China but has been lost.

Sullivan and Wang are said to have discussed the Ukraine war at length. China insists it won’t abandon Russia, its longtime partner. China seems to understand that this conflict won’t be resolved on the battlefield but through diplomacy. As Ukraine prepares a counteroffensive that could push back the Russian invasion, China fears a cascading series of Russian losses could destabilize President Vladimir Putin.

China has proposed a peace plan for Ukraine and is sending a special envoy this week to Kyiv, Moscow and other key capitals. U.S. officials expect that China’s role won’t be as a mediator but a check on Russia’s actions. If Xi decides it’s time for this war to end, Putin has few alternatives. That’s why the Kremlin is said to have viewed last week’s Sino-American engagement with dread.

In the background of the Vienna discussions were two ruthlessly pragmatic questions for China. These issues form the context for a new stage in the relationship in which, as China’s foreign ministry spokesman put it, “China-U.S. relations should not be a zero-sum game where one side outcompetes or thrives at the expense of the other.”

The first baseline issue might be described as the “inevitability” question. Is the United States in inevitable decline while China is moving toward inevitable ascendancy? Xi’s policies have been premised on both outcomes, but the past several years have raised questions in Beijing. The U.S. economy and social framework have shown surprising resilience, and its technology remains supreme.

China might have imagined that it was dominant in artificial intelligence, for example, until the explosive impact of GPT-4. China, meanwhile, has faced economic and political head winds. Its global dominance is far from certain.

The Chinese leadership appears to be debating, behind the scenes, this question of America’s staying power. U.S. officials noted a blog post this month by Fu Ying, a prominent Chinese former diplomat, questioning in veiled terms whether one country should question another’s power. The post was removed from the website of the university where she teaches, and U.S. officials say they believe Fu was reprimanded. What’s evident is that the issue is being debated.

A second essential question for China is whether prolongation of the Ukraine war is in Beijing’s interest. Some Chinese officials are said to have argued that a long war is good for China, because the United States is bogged down in the conflict and Russia’s ties to China are reinforced. But there’s apparently a growing counterargument that the war strengthens America’s alliances in Europe and Asia and creates long-term trouble for China. U.S. officials say they believe the latter argument is gaining force in Beijing.

For the Biden administration, the fundamental question has been whether it is in America’s interest to accept China’s growing global role and work with Chinese leaders to accomplish mutual goals. Sino-American engagement had been focused on “soft” issues such as health, food and climate change. But Biden encouraged Sullivan to engage on core security issues such as Ukraine.

The U.S. message in Vienna is said to have been an emphatic “yes” on engagement. Sullivan praised Wang’s mediation of the bitter rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example, explaining that the United States could not have played a similar role because of its mutual antipathy with Iran but welcoming China’s effort to de-escalate conflict in the region.

Biden’s opening to China has been motivated by one simple idea: The United States doesn’t want to start a new Cold War. Biden took too long to implement this insight, bowing to the new conventional wisdom in Washington that the more strident the confrontation with China, the better. But he seems to have found his voice.

A few green sprouts don’t guarantee blossoms in spring, let alone a ripe summer. But based on Chinese and American accounts, what happened last week in Vienna was the beginning of a process of regular, direct engagement that will benefit both sides.

Then throw in the stories coming out now about Prigozhin trying to make a deal with Kyiv to help him pull his own fat out of the fire, while fucking over Putin, and the picture gets pretty sharp.

"I don't care who wins or what it costs, I just don't wanna be the loser."

Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says

THE DISCORD LEAKS
Secret documents reveal that Yevgeniy Prigozhin said he would tell Ukraine where to attack Russian positions if it pulled back from Bakhmut, where Wagner mercenaries were taking heavy losses.

In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer.

Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord.

Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal.

The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose.

Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous.

A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

- more -

So in the midst of the madness, there can still be little rays of hope that we're nearing the part where assholes like Putin and Prigozhin end up as corpses smoldering in a ditch somewhere.

Couldn't happen to a nicer coupla guys.

Prigozhin Goes Hard

It's impossible to tell what's real when somebody like Yevgeniy Prigozhin seems to go Full Karen.

Prigozhin showed fresh losses of Wagner PMC and blamed Shoigu and Gerasimov for them.

He says the ammunition shortage has reached 70% and seems to be on the verge himself. pic.twitter.com/lRiGjApC5n

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 5, 2023

• Is he worried that his influence is waning?
• Is he laying down the pretext to save face as he turns tail and runs?
• Is it meant to bluff Ukraine into getting cocky and tipping their hand?
• Is he facing a revolt - possibly outright mutiny - within the Wagner PMC?
• Is he well-enough versed in Sun Tzu to be handing Putin a dilemma?

If that last bit is the case, we could be seeing both the beginning of a potentially rapid collapse of the Russian effort in Ukraine, and the end of Mr Putin.

Of course, we may never learn the truth here, but something's happening that is definitely not according to the original plan.

Wagner boss threatens to pull out of Bakhmut, slams Russian military

In a sharp escalation of the rivalry between Russia’s disparate military forces fighting in Ukraine, the head of the Wagner mercenary group announced Friday that he would withdraw his forces from the still raging battle for Bakhmut because of insufficient ammunition.

Yevgeniy Prigozhin published a statement and video on his Telegram channel, demanding that the Ministry of Defense sign an order indicating when they would replace Wagner forces in Bakhmut. He said he would withdraw May 10, the day after Russia’s hallowed Victory Day celebrations.

“I am withdrawing the Wagner PMC units from Bakhmut, because in the absence of ammunition they are doomed to senseless death,” Prigozhin said, wearing camouflage and a helmet, with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. He stood with a group of dozens masked Wagner fighters, some wearing full face skull masks.

Spike in Russian combat deaths fuels fears of worse carnage to come

Prigozhin said his forces had no choice but to withdraw to rear bases to “lick the wounds.” It remains to be seen if he will indeed withdraw his forces — a move that would be catastrophic for Russia’s long and bloody military campaign to take control of Bakhmut and would likely leave the influential oligarch tarnished politically.

“Of course, I foresee criticism. After a while there will be some smart guys who will say that it was necessary to stay in Bakhmut even longer. Whoever has criticisms, you’re welcome to come to Bakhmut and stand with weapons in your hands instead of our killed comrades,” he said.

Pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov, however, said Prigozhin was so popular in Russia and irritation at political and military officials over the mistakes and inertia of the “special military operation” in Ukraine was so pronounced that it was “political suicide” to criticize him.

“It seems to society, the bureaucracy is afraid to defeat the West in Ukraine, afraid to fight for real … many are afraid to criticize the Ministry of Defense. But no one has yet dared to seriously criticize Wagner,” he said.

Overnight, an extraordinary video was posted on Telegram, in which Prigozhin displayed dozens of corpses of Wagner fighters killed in Bakhmut on Thursday, before launching a furious, obscenity-laden tirade, blaming Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, for supplying Wagner with only 30 percent of the ammunition it needed.

Prigozhin’s main accusation was that military officials, jealous of Wagner’s battlefield successes, were intentionally depriving it of ammunition to prevent it from conquering the city before the symbolically important Victory Day on May 9.

His letter on Friday went further, asserting that Wagner was only getting 10 percent of required ammunition, not 30 percent.

The bitter public recriminations over ammunition appear to be a new sign of Russia’s difficulties in increasing its military production to match the challenges on the battlefield, as it braces for an expected new Ukrainian counteroffensive in coming weeks.

Prigozhin’s outburst may also be an effort to shift the blame for Wagner’s failure to seize Bakhmut before Victory Day, which would have given President Vladimir Putin something to celebrate in his speech in Red Square.

Wagner has been battling to seize Bakhmut since last summer with massive losses, and Prigozhin’s open struggle with Russia’s military leaders has continued most of this year.

Russia needs more troops but is wary of public anger, leaked documents say

His letter also painted a picture of chaos and miscommunication on the battlefield, claiming that Russian military forces that were supposed to support Wagner’s flanks in Bakhmut were ineffective and deployed in lower numbers than officially claimed.

“Instead of tens of thousands there are tens and seldom hundreds of fighters,” he said.

According to Western intelligence estimates, Wagner deployed some 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, many of them prisoners who were offered pardons in return for fighting.

U.S. National Security spokesman John Kirby said Monday that nearly half of the 20,000 Russian soldiers killed since December were Wagner fighters pitted in the brutal struggle to take Bakhmut.

Prigozhin has frequently clashed with Russia’s Ministry of Defense over supplies to Wagner, and he renewed his pressure for more ammunition on Monday, saying his forces needed 300 tons of artillery shells to complete the assault on Bakhmut.

Prigozhin has shared videos of dead Wagner fighters before on Telegram, but his open rage, publicly confronting Russian military officials in the graphic video posted overnight, was highly unusual. The video of the bloodied corpses was crammed with bleeped-out obscenities directed at Shoigu and Gerasimov.

“These are the guys of the PMC Wagner. They were killed today. Their blood is still fresh,” he said. “Film them all,” he told an assistant, who panned across the dozens of bloodied bodies laid out in rows. If Wagner was given enough ammunition, its losses would be 80 percent lower, he said.

“Shoigu, Gerasimov,” he shouted. “These are these are somebody’s [expletive] fathers and somebody’s sons. And those [expletive] who don’t give us ammunition will be in hell eating their guts.”

Ukrainian soldiers fire a cannon near Bakhmut, where fierce battles against Russian forces have been taking place, Wednesday. (Libkos/AP)
Accusing the officials of sitting in expensive clubs, he continued, “your kids are enjoying life and making YouTube videos.” Pointing at the corpses, he said “you think that you are the masters of this life, and that you have the right to rule over their lives.

“They came here as volunteers and are dying for you so that you can have a wealthy life and sit in your redwood offices. Keep that in mind,” he said glaring furiously into the camera.

Ukraine defended Bakhmut despite U.S. warnings in leaked documents

Prigozhin, the most visible Russian battlefield leader, frequently posts videos showing himself clad in military gear, traveling in vehicles through the war zone, meeting his fighters like a general, or standing on the battlefield making announcements amid background explosions.

His willingness to take personal and political risks to support his fighters likely inspires loyalty among members of a force who see themselves as the most competent elite unit in the war on Ukraine. It also contrasts vividly with Shoigu, Gerasimov and Putin, who are rarely seen in the combat zone.

Prigozhin’s letter bluntly pointed at Russian military failures, and claimed credit for saving Russia’s military operation.

He said “a series of failures of the Russian Ministry of Defense in various parts of the front” last year led to an October decision for Wagner to conduct “operation Bakhmut meat grinder” to divert Ukrainian forces, claiming this was “extremely effective” because it allowed the Russian army “to take advantageous defensive positions and continue the offensive.”

“After these events the Wagner PMC units fell out of favor with envious military bureaucrats. An artificial ammunition starvation began. An attempt was made to create an artificial shortage of personnel,” he said, referring to moves to prevent Wagner from recruiting prisoners as volunteers.

One prominent nationalist military blogger with the handle Zapiski Veterana posted on Telegram that if Wagner did withdraw it would one of the “cases in history when Russian troops are forced to leave earlier the cities occupied by them due to stupidity, sabotage, and possibly open betrayal on the part of Russian officials.”

The Kremlin has played down reports of the conflict between Prigozhin and defense officials in the past, even as the Wagner leader’s criticisms have become increasingly strident.

In January, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports of a conflict were “the product of information manipulation” that was “organized by our enemies in the information sphere.”

But he appeared to take a subtle dig at Prigozhin adding, “But sometimes our friends behave in such a way that we don’t need enemies.”

On Friday, Peskov said that the Kremlin was aware of Prigozhin’s statement but declined to comment on it.

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.”

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.

Poking

It grieves me to defend Rupert's Wall Street Rag, but sometimes, good reporting looks a lot like spying. And this is typical of Daddy State assholes like Putin, who have to hide their democracy-hostile bullshit behind false claims of "self-defense".

So yeah - gotta wonder what this is really about.

Russia arrests Wall Street Journal reporter on spying charge

The Federal Security Service said Thursday that Gershkovich was detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg while allegedly trying to obtain classified information.

The FSB, which is the top successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, alleged that Gershkovich “was acting on the U.S. orders to collect information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial complex that constitutes a state secret.”

“The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the newspaper said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”

The arrest comes amid bitter tensions between the West and Moscow over its war in Ukraine and as the Kremlin intensifies its crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and civil society groups. The broad government campaign of repression hasn’t been seen since the Soviet era.

Earlier this week, a Russian court convicted a single father over social media posts critical of the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to two years in prison while his 13-year-old daughter was sent to an orphanage.

Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since September 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB. He was released without charges 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s United Nations mission who was arrested by the FBI.

The FSB didn’t say when the arrest took place. Gershkovich, who covers Russia, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations as a correspondent in the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau, could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of espionage.

The FSB noted that he had accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry to work as a journalist, but ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Gershkovich was using his journalistic credentials as a cover for “activities that have nothing to do with journalism.”

Gershkovich speaks fluent Russian and had previously worked for the French agency Agence France-Presse and The New York Times. His last report from Moscow, published earlier this week, focused on the Russian economy’s slowdown amid Western sanctions imposed when Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year.

Gershkovich’s arrest follows a swap in December, in which WNBA star Brittney Griner was freed after 10 months behind bars in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Another American, Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have said are baseless.

Jeanne Cavelier, head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, said Gershkovich was the first foreign journalist who was arrested in Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine.

“It looks like a retaliation measure of Russia against the United States, so we are very alarmed because it is probably a way to intimidate all Western journalists that are trying to investigate aspects of the war on the ground in Russia,” Cavelier she told The Associated Press. “The Western powers should immediately ask for clarifications on the charges, because as far as we know he was just doing his job as a journalist.”

Russian journalist Dmitry Kolezev said on the messaging app Telegram that he spoke to Gershkovich before his trip to Yekaterinburg.

“He was preparing for the usual, albeit rather dangerous in current conditions, journalist work,” Kolezev wrote. He said Gershkovich asked him for the contacts of local journalists and officials in the area as he prepared to arrange interviews.

And BTW - what's up with that lady's hand gesture? If she's offering to fondle me, I'd like to pass on that please.

A Meduza Podcast

Meduza has been designated an "Undesirable Organization" by Putin's government.

The Russian army has a huge problem that's way bigger because of their corruption and their resultant abysmal performance in the field.

So the cycle is pretty well complete. Being riddled with corruption, a good army gets hollowed out, which leads to it being a bad army, which leads to lousy training, which leads to poor battlefield performance, which leads to discipline problems, which leads to more corruption, and so it goes.

Dissent In Russia

The beginning of the video shows the usual scenes of Ukrainians blowing up a bunch of Russian shit, but at about 1:34, a Man-On-The-Street interview shows us how Daddy State gaslighting doesn't stand up forever - people will find their way out of the darkness.

I just hope the guy doesn't get slammed too hard.

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.”