There's a lot of chatter about yet another “peace plan” for #Ukraine from #Russia and the #USA, which now seems to be just a repetition of old maximalist demands with no room for compromise.

Before I say any more, I want to make one thing clear: We should not cry betrayal when Ukraine eventually agrees to a ceasefire on terms that will please no one. This simply means that Ukraine's defence capabilities have been exhausted, and the only option left is harm reduction.

Russia's strategy here is hundreds of years old and very simple: it imposes attrition on its victims until they surrender. They've done that with the Circassians, the Chechens, the Poles, and so on. Their methods are very dirty, but they work because too many leaders still want to shake hands with the Russians.

This strategy has one fundamental weakness: in the first place, Russia made a huge mistake by engaging with an enemy of comparable strength. It's not 1:100, as with Afghanistan or Chechnya for example; it's more like 1:3. Russian is not, and never was, good at fighting comparable enemies.

At the same time, Putin has bet everything on one card: his maximalist goals. Moreover, he has set a trap for himself by publicly announcing his maximalist goals (annexation of four regions). However, attrition affects not only Ukraine, but Russia too. Because Putin has bet everything, he risks losing everything: the economy and social consensus.

Putin has built an entirely dysfunctional system of governance, the main weakness of which is a positive feedback loop of natural cognitive biases. 'Positive' here does not mean anything good — it means they reinforce themselves in the process. Russia lacks the European practice to be cautious and discuss everything, -a feature that is annoying, but helps to reduce cognitive biases. Putin's apparent decisiveness only reinforces these biases, as we saw in 2022 and still see today in his persistence with maximalist goals, despite the growing number of military experts warning that the Russian army is also close to collapsing offensively.

As one historical figure said (I read this in a book, but I've forgotten who it was), it's not that Russians are entirely unable to resist government abuse; they just have a very high threshold and poor communication skills in this area. In practice, this means that their protests take an unexpected, large-scale and violent form, as Arkhipova, a sociologist, has also stated. That's pretty much what Putin is risking.

However, he is literally and personally fighting for his survival, and this, combined with the traditional perception of Russia as the Tsar's private property, is putting the whole country at risk. It's a case of “if I'm going to die anyway, I'd better die with a bang”.

Russia is one part of the equation. The other part is Ukraine. Europe can and does support Ukraine's economy and defence capabilities, but it can't help one thing: manpower. The state of Ukraine's military reserves has been one of its key strategic uncertainties — few people really know how large they are.

We are in a period of high uncertainty, in which the attrition curves of each opponent are approaching the point of no return. We just don't know where either side is on that curve. Russia is likely to walk into that state of no return without noticing, due to the aforementioned cognitive biases and general political culture.

Ukraine, on the other hand, is much more cautious and rational in this respect. So, if one day we hear that an ugly ceasefire has been agreed, that will simply mean the Ukrainian leadership made the best choice given the resources at its disposal.

To be clear, even in the worst-case scenario, I don't think full occupation or political control over Ukraine is possible, nor a reduction in army forces. It might mean de facto losing the whole of the Donbas, for example, which would generate endless infighting and a blame game inside Ukraine. But dealing with such traumas is something that any society has to deal on its own.

However, the worst-case scenarios for Russia outlined above are much uglier, and I don't think there's any appetite — or even perception — among the Russian elite that they may be imminent. After all, the famous Russian prayer of self-delusion is “they see better from the top”.

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

Alexander Pomazuev, head of International Advocacy, The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), about the US sanctions that were introduced in regard to “just two” #Russia oil companies. I have only translated the text from Russian:

Two of Russia's largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, were hit with comprehensive US sanctions last night, which will significantly hamper their operations on the global market. Although Lukoil and Rosneft themselves were the headline names, 34 other companies associated with them in the oil sector, including oil refineries, field development, production and others, were also included in the long list. The full list is available here: https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20251022

The sanctions affected approximately 50% of oil production (about 30% — Rosneft, about 15% — Lukoil) and approximately 50% of exports. This is a colossal amount.

In fact, all companies that are not directly listed by the US Treasury but are more than 50% owned by sanctioned individuals are also subject to sanctions. The worst thing for companies is that these are US sanctions, which are global in nature. Lukoil and Rosneft's counterparties around the world are forced to comply with them. If their counterparty ever intends to conduct transactions in dollars, which remain the world's main currency, the US considers itself entitled to compel such a company to comply with the restrictions.

A hypothetical oil refinery in India can afford not to comply with EU sanctions, closing itself off from the European market. But it cannot exist without coming into contact with dollars and the US financial system.

US Presidential Executive Order 14024, adopted by Biden and used for sanctions, prohibits any transactions with sanctioned companies, financial transactions, and the provision of services. Organised exchange trading in company shares and debt instruments is effectively blocked. Companies are forced into a grey area, deprived of the opportunity to operate under their own name, and will be forced to use intermediaries and pay them for additional risks.

The companies' assets in the US will be blocked, and outside the US and Russia, the companies' assets will become toxic. They cannot be sold without risking secondary sanctions, they cannot be operated normally due to problems with counterparties, but they will have to be maintained with enormous problems due to the risks for contractors.

The bigger the victim of the sanctions, the more sensitive the blow. A fly-by-night company will disappear, and a new one will appear in its place. Giant production complexes cannot disappear and reappear elsewhere. This applies both to Lukoil and Rosneft themselves and to their contractors who process their oil abroad. The US Treasury Department has given a month to complete all transactions with sanctioned companies, issuing the relevant licences.

The sanctions will hit refining (which is already suffering from the fallout) and production very hard. In both cases, the technology and equipment required are one-off items, and there are only a handful of companies that supply them. Some of them remained in Russia even after the war began, but no one will work with those under US sanctions. Not even China. These are not parts for drones that cannot be tracked. This is a market where everyone knows everyone else, and the fate of equipment is tracked.

Let's be honest, even US sanctions will not stop Russian oil exports or the operations of Rosneft and Lukoil. The origin of the oil will be concealed, and the chain of intermediaries will become longer. As a result, companies will have to spend a significant portion of their revenues on circumventing restrictions. Profits will fall, and so will budget revenues. This is exactly what the US is aiming for.

It should be noted that this is the first significant action taken by the Trump administration in the area of sanctions since the start of his second term. Even under Biden, in the last year of his administration, sanctions were imposed not against first-tier players, but against those who helped companies already on the lists to circumvent sanctions.

However, Trump did not lift any sanctions, extending the restrictions imposed by the previous administration. At the same time, Trump, willingly or unwillingly, eased the pressure of sanctions in another way. Due to cuts in the government apparatus caused by this chaos and a shift in foreign policy priorities, the US became much less active in prosecuting violations of existing restrictions. And their sanctions began to be circumvented more actively. Even the pressure on India has recently been exerted not in the form of sanctions, but in the form of politics and Trump's favourite tariffs.

Everyone has become accustomed to ignoring Trump's latest disappointment and the fact that he has once again changed his position. But now, finally, patience has run out. The US Treasury Department has written about this in no uncertain terms.

I do not think this will fundamentally change Putin's position. Moreover, as previous experience of his relations with Trump shows, whatever symbolic steps Putin has taken towards the US have never led to a relaxation of sanctions. The US is increasing the reward for ending the war, but is not trading sanctions for trifles. For now.

The question is whether the US will return to a policy of actively prosecuting sanctions evasion and whether it will have the strength to do so in the context of the shutdown, staff cuts and endless vacillations from ‘we'll agree tomorrow’ to ‘disappointed again’.

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

Rulings of the courts in #Italy^1 and #Poland^2 to deny extradition of suspects in Nord Stream bombing case to Germany triggered a specific segment of commentators who complained about “rule of law” somehow degrading in these countries or even “tolerance for terrorism”.

The problem with this argument is that at least the Polish court clearly indicated what is wrong with the German extradition request – it was issued by a country whose elites for decades tolerated #Russia state terrorism in the form of 2014 covert invasion on #Ukraine, and not only tolerated it but actually awarded it by granting the massive Nord Stream profits. And it did so in blatant violation of its own laws, international laws and fundamental values, but let's see how that happened.

European energy disputes with Russia

The fundamental problem was that Putin's Russia never intended to play simple fair trade with Europe – that is, we supply you with gas and oil, you pay money, everyone is happy. If it did, it would simply ratify European Energy Charter Treaty which regulated fair rules for all participants of energy trade, including arbitration of disagreements. Russia never ratified it, because it would hinder its ability to use energy as weapon. As of 2007, Swedish Defense Research Agency counted 55 incidents^3 of Russian violations of large trade contracts, primarily against Eastern European countries. These usually constituted temporary oil pipeline closures under some made-up pretext while making rather aggressive political demands, for example giving away ownership of critical infrastructure companies to Russia in countries such as Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova or Baltic countries.

The second problem was that European political elites developed a specific doublethink in regard to Russia – a behaviour that would be entirely unimaginable e.g. from other commercial suppliers such as Norway or Quatar, was somehow treated differently when it was exhibited by Russia.

That included absolute lack of transparency of companies such as Gazprom, which was not fixed when they came to Europe, but the other way around – Europe tolerated that these companies were e.g. incorporated in Switzerland. And they continued happy trade with Putin's gas and oil companies, possibly because the disputes mentioned above did not impact them directly. At least, not yet.

All that was accompanied by German elites patronizing everyone else not only about the “energy security” provided by Russia but also about how EU buying fuel from Putin guarantees Russia's stability and peaceful attitude, a political narrative broadly described as Wandel durch Handel. That was most notably expressed by the 2007 speech by Germany's foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier^4

My impression is that, especially in the generation that now, 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, bears responsibility in Russia, many –not just President Putin – want to bind Russia closely to Europe. (...)

We want a Russia that prosper and that – based on the values to which Europe is committed and taking into account its own traditions – successfully copes with the change to a stable democracy based on the rule of law. This requires a partnership that goes far beyond oil and gas, that includes our civil societies and that is open to dialogue, even on issues on which we do not always agree. That is why there is no contradiction between our interest in expanding economic relations and compliance with constitutional and human rights standards. Precisely because of our interest in the closest possible exchange with Russia, we will not forego an open word between partners.

As we saw since, Russia indeed did “bind closely too Europe”, just not the way Steinmeier childishly imagined.

Nord Stream 1

The first Nord Stream agreement was signed in 2005 against massive criticism to the Nord Stream AG, whose head was Matthias Warnig, former STASI officer. Shortly after Schröder stepped down and himself jumped on a lucrative position in Nord Stream. Such a blatant political corruption resulted in lukewarm criticism in Germany and some investigations^5 which ended nowhere. There were also many other environmental and ethical concerns and violations raised, all of which were duly dismissed by German government.

So... “rule of law”, they said?

Okay, one could argue Nord Stream 1 happened in the general spirit of Russia-US-EU reset and high hopes that Putin actually will turn towards democracy. But in 2007 Putin did the very opposite – he delivered his infamous, openly hostile 2007 Munich Speech and in 2008 started the Russian invasion on Georgia. Oh, and in the meantime started murdering political opponents in Russia and around Europe (Litvinenko, Politkovskaya and many others).

Nord Stream 2

The argument of “high hopes” was however no longer valid in case of the second pipeline, as it happened after Georgia, during continued series of Russian assassinations, after annexation of Crimea and during Russian limited military intervention in Donbas... and in the middle of a massive EU anti-trust investigation into Gazprom due to its abusive practices.^6

In 2017 investigative reporters drew attention to alleged bribery and opaque payments involving suppliers used on Nord Stream 1 (reporting focused on a German supplier group, offshore companies and Caribbean intermediary payments). German prosecutors were reported to have been alerted / to have opened inquiries into aspects of these allegations. The reporting by Stern/OCCRP painted a picture of complex offshore flows connected with equipment suppliers active during the Nord Stream build.^7 In response, German law enforcement... did nothing.^8

What did they say about “rule of law”, again?

Gerhard Schröder, after he signed key agreements while chancellor, continued to work at Nord Stream and lobbied heavily in Germany for the interests of Russian Federation. Apart from some lukewarm media criticism, no criminal or political investigations had been started against him... until 2022, when the full-scale war started and a state parliamentary inquiry was finally opened against him.^9 But did anything change in the definition of political corruption in Germany between 2005, 2017 and 2022? No, it was just the political climate that prevented such inquires prior to 2022. By the way, Schröder first for months ridiculed the commission by pretending that “burnout syndrome” prevents him from attending it (it did not prevent him from attending other events)^10 and then said he does not regret anything.^11

But the activities most devastating for the German rule of law happened in 2021, when the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern set up a foundation described as the Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation MV with the stated aim of supporting local measures and, explicitly in some documents, helping completion logistics around the Nord Stream 2 landfall. The foundation accepted significant funding and in public reporting Nord Stream 2-linked money and resources are shown to have been channelled into the foundation. The foundation’s close ties to Nord Stream 2 AG (Gazprom) and its refusal to reveal certain ownership/contract details triggered NGO complaints and parliamentary questions.^12

The German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern became a gold mine for such cases its minister president Manuela Schwesig ran Gazprom PR through her company and was caught modifying her press statements per instructions from Russia.^13 Schlesig worked with known GRU operative in Germany, Oleg Eremenko^14, and manually intervened in declaratively “independent” report about the above Climate Protection Foundation, erasing paragraphs which implied its harmful activities.^15

In spring 2022 a finance-office employee admitted that she had destroyed original tax documents relating to the Foundation by burning them in her house fireplace. The incident became publicly known as “Kamin-Gate”, fed a major political scandal about the foundation’s ties to Nord Stream 2 donors, and was examined by the state parliamentary investigation committee. The criminal investigation against the civil servant was later discontinued.^16

All of the above should under any rule of law system trigger dozens of criminal and parliamentary investigations. In Germany, almost none happened and if they were reluctantly started, they were closed without any convictions. Where's that much advertised “rule of law” here?

Last but not least, German political circles were always very much concerned about environment, especially as it came to German and French nuclear power plants or gas terminals in Poland. In case of Nord Stream, that concern miraculously disappeared, even when tested in courts. Environmental NGOs (e.g. DUH) brought lawsuits against federal and regional authorities and permitting decisions related to pipeline work in German waters — challenging construction timing (breeding-season restrictions, maritime/avian protections) and approvals granted by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) and local mining/plan authorities. These cases resulted in some delays, but were ultimately all dismissed by German courts.^17

If you think German “rule of law” in environmental protection had just reached it bottom, that was not yet the best part. In 2011 a German environmentalist Jochen Lamp, head of WWF Germany, was also head of Conservation Foundation German Baltic. While WWF headed by Lamp has been actively blocking the project using court cases, Nord Stream reached “an out-of-court agreement” with the Foundation involving transfer of 10 million EUR... after which WWF withdrew the case.^18

“Rule of law”, anyone?

Summary

One could say, in its naive Wandel durch Handel policy Germany believed it will convert Russia to democracy, but as always the opposite process happened – German political elites became infected by Russian corruption and nihilism.

P.S. it must be noted that German foreign minister Johann Wadephul responded to the ruling of the Polish court by simply stating he “respects [it] because we recognise the division of powers”^19

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

A fantastic textbook example of the misery of Western “political realism” as voiced by Dr. Ricardo Duchesne^1

The liberal West is incapable of grasping the necessity of realism in geopolitics. Putin will never back down because, as John Mearsheimer argues, Ukraine represents an “existential issue” for Russia due to its critical geopolitical importance to Russian national security and strategic interests.

Losing influence over Ukraine to NATO or allowing the West to integrate this nation within its liberal sphere threatens Russia's security and identity as a great power. Capitulating would signal weakness and invite further encirclement by NATO.

Why do I call it misery? Because this approach has nothing to do with realism, a term literally meaning is “the state of being actual or real”.

To see how much “realism” is in that “theory of realism”, let's just take apart these wisely sounding statements and check how much in common they have with the physical reality:

Ukraine represents an “existential issue” for Russia due to its critical geopolitical importance to Russian national security and strategic interests

Apart from a chain of vague claims, what does it really mean? Are they really claiming that 2m km2 #Russia with 138m population is going to collapse without controlling 0.6m km2 #Ukraine with 30m population? Or what they mean?

Then, what exactly are Russia's “strategic interests”? How exactly Ukraine threatens them? How does it exactly threaten Russia's “national security”? What does exactly this “geopolitical importance” mean? And here emerges the primary problem – apparent wisdom of these “realist” statements relies exclusively on their vagueness.

In the physical reality, Russia does anything from Ukraine. Russia has significantly more territory, population and resources and was able to grow its economy without Ukraine for decades (1991-2014) without any problems. Moreover, Russia obsessively diminished and continues to diminish the role of Ukraine, calling it “country 404” (non-existent), “red necks” (селюки) and other rather infantile insults, only to suddenly exclaim – as if in some kind of bipolar disorder – that Ukraine is the crown jewel without which Russia will what... collapse?

In the physical reality, sovereign Ukraine does not impact Russia's economy, security, politics – Russia can afford not to care about Ukraine at all in any of these aspects. That's the physical reality.

There's however another reality where Ukraine indeed is the crown jewel. It's the imaginary world of “tsar Putin, collector of the Russian lands”, invented by the likes of Dugin and Medinsky as part of the flattery mandatory on their career path, which at some point resonated with the wannabe tsar and his entourage, and made it into the new political theory of Russia.

And that's the only world, where Ukraine is really the crown jewel – Putin failed to deliver any of his past promises in the sphere of social and economic progress^2, so the current hope is that he can deliver the goal of at least capturing Ukraine, even as burnt out wasteland. If everything else failed, that would be at least something. And that's the only part where Ukraine is really “existential issue” – not for Russia as a nation or the state, but for Putin personally and the model of governance he chose for Russia – the kleptocracy. Ukraine's relative success outside of the Russia's zone of influence serves as a stunning demonstration that Putin is the brake, not the leader.

What Western political scientists calling themselves “realists” are doing is therefore the very opposite of realism – they simply uncritically internalise unfounded axioms invented by Russian political class, assume they are true because they sound nice, and build whole own theories on top of them. The funny part is that they have already done exactly the same thing 100 years ago, when they just as uncritically internalised Marxism-Leninism and took all of its nonsensical “laws of dialectics” for granted, simply because Soviet philosophers said a lot of wise-sounding words.^3

Footnotes:

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

Page 492 of the 2002 edition of Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 by William L. Shirer. Shirer reported for US media from Germany since 1934, including the initial period of the World War 2. His official reporting was subject to German censorship, so when he was leaving Germany in December 1940 he had to smuggle his notes, which were published later.

Here's an entry from 31 August 1940 whose language bears shocking resemblance to the modern times. The highlighted fragments are verbatim clones of today's statements from Russian state media and diplomats...

Berlin, August 31. Laid up with the flu for a bit. When the maid came in last night just before the bombing started, I asked: “Will the British come over tonight?”

“For certain,” she sighed resignedly. All her confidence, all the confidence that five million Berliners had ‘that the capital was safe from air attack', is gone. “Why do they do it?” she asked.

“Because you bomb London,” I said.

“Yes, but we hit military objectives, while the British, they bomb our homes.” She was a good advertisement for the effectiveness of Goebbels’s propaganda.

“Maybe you bomb their homes too,” I said.

“Our papers say not,” she argued. She said the German people wanted peace. “Why didn’t the British accept the Führer's offer?” she wanted to know. This woman comes from a worker's family. Her husband is worker, probably an ex-Communist or Socialist. And yet she has fallen a complete victim to the official propaganda.

“The British gave us a good strafing last night and even German officials admitted that the damage was greater than ever before. A German friend dropped in to tell me the great Siemens works had been hit. The Bersen Zeitung headlines tonight: “BRITISH AIR PlRATES OVER BERLIN!”

I’ve turned down the Propaganda Ministry’s offer to take me along with other correspondents on a conducted tour each morning after a raid to see the damage. I know the German military authorities have no intention of showing us any military objectives that may be hit. To make an honest check-up would take several hours of motoring over the vast area of Berlin.

For comparison, check:

• Peskov as always says the opposite of truth as it comes to attacks on civilian infrastructure
• Vasily Nebenzya on civilian casualties caused by Russian rockets in Ukraine
• Compilation of Russia's statements of “not targeting civilian objects” and the hits on civilian objects they conducted

#Russia #Ukraine

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

Why are Western communists/socialist almost always aligning with genocidal and imperialist regimes while claiming the opposite

@markhburton@mstdn.social led me to Morning Star – a British media describing itself as “socialist and pacifist”, while in reality being a fantastic mine of abundant Russian propaganda which, as he claimed, “condemned the invasion of Ukraine but sees the bigger picture.”

Let's have a look at one such “bigger picture”, a very recent MS article^1 which not only engages in fierce victim blaming, but also repeats almost every single Russian fake that exists on that subject:

[what would] have happened if Russia had trained and helped organise a mission that attacked a nuclear weapons base in Britain or the United States

As a reminder, Russia had already conducted countless sabotages and assassinations on the territory of UE and UK since 2006, including ones conducted with weapons of mass destruction – potent military chemical weapons, radioactive isotopes. As a bonus, it had also blown up ammunition depots on NATO countries – Czechia and Bulgaria. What happened? Well, nothing.

it now seems that there were between three and five strategic bombers damaged

Satellite imagery now indicates 10-13 aircrafts completely destroyed and 20-40 damaged^2 What's the point of repeating Russian lies on even such a petty detail?

Most experts believe that the level of sophistication was such that it could not have been carried out by the Ukrainians alon

Where's those “most experts”? Who are they and why everything Ukraine has published about the details of the operation indicates it was conducted 100% on their own means?

It also came after seven people were killed and dozens injured after two bridges were targeted by the Ukrainians.

Once again, there's no evidence Ukraine targeted these bridges and the only reason why train passengers were killed was that nobody in Russia cared to stop the train during 30 minutes between the bridge collapse (22:20) and its arrival (22:50).^3

Ukrainian drones targeted the [Putin] helicopter during an unannounced late night flight over the tense border region of Kursk

Why does MS repeat verbatim Russian sensational posts on that subject a month after (!) Putin's visit to Kursk oblast', whereas contemporary coverage of that visit showed him traveling exclusively by cars, not by helicopter?^4 And that leaves out the primary question – why would the leader of Russia enjoy some kind of immunity, when Russian army continuously targeted president of Ukraine since 2022?

The enormity of the attack is entirely reckless. The bombers were on the tarmac and unprotected in line with the requirements of the New Start Treaty requirement, from 2010.

There's so much falsehoods here that they need to be unpacked one by one:

• Russia suspended its New Start Treaty membership, on its own will, in 2023, so its neither bound by its requirements, nor are its other members bound to any favours towards Russia.^5
• Ukraine is not a member of New Start Treaty and thus not bound by its requirements. One reason for that is that Ukraine in 1994 voluntarily gave away its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees, which Russia
• The treaty does not even require strategic aviation to be “on the tarmac and unprotected”
• Russia routinely uses its “strategic aviation” to bomb Ukraine with conventional warheads, which obviously removes the “strategic” (=nuclear) component from its usage pattern
• There's no treaty that says that offers an immunity to aggressor's aviation because it formally nominates is as “strategic” but routinely uses for daily bombing.

one of the fundamental reasons for the Russian invasion — the eastward expansion of the Nato military alliance.

Once again, verbatim Russian talking points:

• Ukraine was not in NATO when Russia invaded in 2014, and it had a neutral status enshrined in its Constitution. Ukraine only removed that status in 2019 after numerous failures of securing peace with Russia through Minsk Agreements, which were all violated by Russia.
• There is no treaty between Russia and NATO that prevents new countries acquiring membership in NATO – or CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) run by Russia, for that matter
• #NATO never “expanded” on its own – it was Eastern European countries applying for NATO membership in response to Russian threats and intimidation, just as #Sweden and #Norway did after 2022

The answers to these questions are important because the attack on the Russian bases has largely destroyed the New Start Treaty

Once again, Russia suspended the New Start Treaty in 2023 and it's quite embarrassing the Morning Star author clearly has no clue about it.

In summary, one of the main British “socialist” media engages in an angry apology of Russia's invasion, literally repeats numerous fakes Russian media have created without even minimal verification, all that in order to eventually blame Ukraine for... defending its territory against Russia's continued attacks.

Morning Star presents here a classic line of some Western left which formally declares a lukewarm condemnation of Russian aggression, but at the same time largely justifies it. And, most importantly, it attempts to create an impression that the attacked country should somehow throttle its own defense effort to avoid “escalation” while they do not require or expect Russia to comply with any limitations in the means they use to achieve their military objectives.

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

Russian military reporter Dimitriev has recently posted a grim commentary about the current state of #Russia's war in #Ukraine, to which another channel, “Teni Rusi” [Shadows of Rus'] has replied^1 with the following extract of quotes. I'm sure the readers will appreciate stunning similarity of these 40 years old discussions of Soviet leadership, then top secret, with today's situation.

As a reminder, on 25 December 1979 Soviet Union started military intervention in Afghanistan which also followed a decade of covert operations and meddling or, as we would say today, “hybrid operations”. I will post original Dimitriev comment at the end, for comparison.

Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 13 November 1986

GORBACHEV: My intuition tells me that something is troubling. ... ‘A strange war!’ — soon they will pin this term on us. ... People are asking: are we going to sit there forever?! Or should we end this war? Otherwise, we will disgrace ourselves in every respect. The strategic goal is to end the war and withdraw our troops in one, maximum two years.

Remember, in 1986 this “quick intervention” was already going on for almost 7 years, and USSR ultimately manages to withdraw only in another 4 years, and then it will start falling apart.

Gromyko (Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR) [acknowledges that there was a miscalculation of the circumstances when ‘agreement was given for military support’ to Karmal. Proposes to persuade the United States to join forces and go to London]. The situation is worse than it was six months ago. We cannot delay any longer. Time is not on our side. Our goal is for Afghanistan to be a neutral state, not a hostile country. (...) The main thing is to end the war and withdraw the troops.

Please especially note the above statement by Gromyko – replace “Afghanistan” with “Ukraine”, and it would be representing Russia's situation today almost 100% accurately.

CHEBRIKOV (Chairman of the KGB of the USSR). There will be no military solution; we must intensify the search for political solutions. (...) Instead of thinking about the main thing — how to end the war — we are preoccupied with trivial issues.

GORBACHEV (Addressing, as if to the Chief of the General Staff of the USSR, Akhromeev) We got ourselves into this mess, we miscalculated, we exposed ourselves on all fronts. And we failed to use military force effectively. And now we have to get ourselves out of this... We have to get out!

AKHROMEYEV: We have lost the battle. The majority of the Afghan people are now supporting the counter-revolutionaries.

It's fascinating – already in 1986 the Soviet leadership had a very clear understanding that 1) the intervention was a mistake, 2) it was a complete failure, 3) military intervention made things worse, not better, for Soviet interests in Afghanistan. But it took another four long years to actually make the decision to withdraw, for various reasons. I bet Soviet military commanders made the same promises as they do today – “the victory is just weeks away” and Party hardliners were furious about “the country losing face”. But read on, there were also other players here...

Politburo, 23 February 1987

This piece is interesting, as it indicated complex game of interests of external players in Afghanistan:

GORBACHEV. The situation is not easy. We got in, but how to get out is a headache. We could get out quickly, without thinking about anything, and blame the previous leadership for starting it all. But we can't do that. India is worried, Africa is worried. They believe that this will be a blow to the USSR's authority in the national liberation movement. (...)

Similarly, today you have at least China and North Korea with vested interest in the “Russia's authority” as the defender of the “multipolar world”. And here Gorbachev touches the “sunken cost dilemma” in the internal policy:

But the internal aspect is also important. A million of our soldiers have been through Afghanistan. And it turns out it was all for nothing. The job wasn't finished. We can't report back to our people. They'll say: you forgot about the victims, you forgot about the country's authority. It will cause bitterness — what did we sacrifice people for?!

There's a very simple rational answer here: how about asking this painful question of “victims” and “sacrifice” before you decided to start the intervention? But here comes the absolutely typical Russian cultural feature – phrase “maybe we made a mistake, but now we need to go till the end”. And then back to whining about “victims” and “sacrifice”, and the whole cycle repeats.

Politburo, 3 March 1988

GORBACHEV. (...) But in principle, the question is clear: we are withdrawing! There will be questions, and there will be questions in our country too. What did we fight for? Why did we make so many sacrifices? There will be questions in the ‘third world.’ They are already coming. They will say that the Soviet Union cannot be relied upon: it is abandoning its friends to the mercy of the United States. And here we must not waver. So we must act in such a way as to preserve the authority of the state both before our own people and before the outside world. We must support our friends. But we must withdraw — and that's it!

Speech at a meeting with regional committee secretaries on 18 April 1988

GORBACHEV. We've been there for eight years. And they've shown that there's no military solution. No moral justification can excuse us. Every life is a life. (...) The US would really like us to get bogged down there — in particular, so they can show the world: see, they say, that's what Soviet ‘new thinking’ is worth!

Note the repeated obsession with the “authority of the state”. Apparently, in Russian culture of governance the “authority” is preserved by sticking to the dumbest possible decisions rather than fixing them. That very well fits the Russian Orthodox perception of authority as a “sacred” phenomenon – and an authority that is “sacred” cannot make mistakes by definition, so persistence in error reinforces the idea of authority being “sacred”, at least in this perverted logic.

And we see the same pattern also today – admission that the “SVO [Special Military Operation]” was a mistake would imply that Putin made a mistake – on 24 February 2022 it was Putin who announced the start of the invasion by saying: “I made the decision”. But how could Putin make a mistake if he's now being portrayed on Orthodox icons and generally celebrated as a saint alive everywhere in Russia? This is the kind of dramatic dilemmas Russian leadership is facing today – once again, only because of the mythology they themselves created.

Back to today, what Dimitriev wrote

One important note: the consensus in the Russian military blogger ecosystem is that you can criticise mistakes of specifica individuals (commanders, politicians up to medium level etc), but you cannot dispute the purposefulness of the “SVO” itself. This consensus was established on Putin's meeting with military journalists in 2023 and is enforced by Investigative Committee. Several Russian bloggers whose criticism went too far were detained (e.g. “Moscow Calling”).

Now what Dimitriev wrote just on 3 May 2025:

I'm watching another wave of revelations from military correspondents: “the war cannot be dragged out, it is exhausting us. We need either a truce or a go-ahead with, mobilisation and nuclear weapons”. I am not sure about the sincerity of these statements; it is more likely that military correspondents are now allowed to say what they could not say yesterday.

Dimitriev alludes to the fact that Russian media rarely writes spontaneous opinions (see above) and much more frequently follow instructions (“metodichki”) distributed by the President's Administration. Why this change of heart, Dimitriev wonders?

But actually, nothing terrible or sobering has happened in recent days. Everything sobering and frightening happened in the first few days. Everyone who was in the Special Military Operation zone in those days, even before Mariupol, and who is capable of even minimally soberly analysing what is happening, understood that everything was screwed up — the Special Military Operation needed to be wound down with minimal losses and pretend that ‘nothing had started.’

Dimitriev means that the worst failure of Russian army was the 2022 – collapse of their siege of Kyiv and disgraceful withdrawal from northern Ukraine. Since then, in general, performance of Russian army has actually improved even if it happened at a huge cost of endless “human wave” attacks.

And here's a juicy paragraph:

And that the attempts of the leadership to maintain their authority and finish off Ukraine would only lead to greater loss of face, both politically and morally.

See? That's 100% the same obsessions with “maintaining authority” as in 1986. The following could be just as well written 40 years ago in respect to Afghanistan:

With each passing day, the price of this exit — reputational, economic, psychological — became higher and higher. But in the country, they deliberately created an atmosphere of ‘don't let up the fight, we're about to crush the Ukrainians’ — let's destroy a couple more villages, send a hundred “Shaheeds” [assault drones] somewhere to buzz over their heads, and they'll surrender. It is interesting that it was the military correspondents who created this atmosphere, although those who passed on the narratives they described also became victims. They themselves believed that they would pull through on morale and willpower alone and that everything would be as before — global authority and respect. As they say, ‘the kid said it, the kid did it.’

As a result, they dug themselves in so deep that it will be impossible to get out with minimal losses. No matter how many uplifting videos you show on the internet or how much you wave nuclear missiles around, everyone already understands everything.

And here's Dimitriev absolutely perfect reflection on the general state of Russian statehood after three years of war:

People often ask me, ‘What should we do now?’ Three years ago, I would have said: get out and reform literally everything. But wars are not started to reform something, but on the contrary, to change nothing. And now what? Well, first of all, we need to stop lying, including to ourselves. Stop pretending to be someone we are not in reality. For example, a Great Power that brings light and prosperity and has never lost a war. We need to look in the mirror and see ourselves in a new role.

I had a few more points about internal reforms, but even with the first one, I realise that it is impossible to implement them. So all that remains is to observe and try to minimise the negative consequences as best we can.

Please note that this “we need to stop lying” is a recurring trope in Russian political circles, which was even reflected in newly nominated minister of defense Belousov words – “we can make mistakes, but we can't lie”. Everyone repeated these words for a while, and everyone continued to lie. Why? Because the example goes from the very top and people just do whatever Putin does. We're back to the “sacred authority” and the “do what I say not what I do” fallacy, which Putin has mastered.

If Russian military journalists or, God forbid, Putin would actually decide to “stop lying” they would need to first admit that their foundational myths – about “NATO expansion”, about “genocide of Russians”, about “second army in the world” and countless others – were all lies from the start.

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

In response to a recent #China ambassador in France comment about “unclear legal status” of the former #USSR states[^1] a number of Eastern European countries voiced their protest. For example, Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania MFA:

Lithuania never joined the USSR. Moscow illegally occupied our territory, so we resisted until we restored our independence and the Red Army went back home.[^2]

Why there's even a controversy around such an apparently obvious fact? It's due to how Soviet #Russia annexed these countries. And they did it quite cleverly, preserving a delicate balance of brute force, forgery and theatrical legitimacy, balanced enough to be practical for them but also to be acceptable to be used as a fig leaf for the international community. This allowed them for over half a century maintain a “consensus of ambiguity” in the West: when one historians would talk of occupation, others would refer to the “people's referendums and elections” or “Soviet reconstruction of Poland”, and other classic Soviet-constructed clichés in a “it was not black and white” spirit.

Can't speak for Lithuania as I don't know our friendly neighbour's history well enough, but in case of #Poland this is how it was done:

1. After Germany was defeated by the Allies who then already included USSR, the Soviet troops found themselves all over the territory of Germany-occupied Poland. Red Army was followed by NKVD. Massive looting of Polish territory by Soviet troops continued between 1946 and 1948. Under official orders of Kremlin Soviet troops took away everything they could, from private property to whole factories, farms and even rail tracks.[^3]
2. Soviets created a puppet Polish “Provisional Government of National Unity” and held 100% control of the territory with Red Army and NKVD, continuing purges, arrests, show trials and executions of former anti-German resistance who did not pledge allegiance to the Soviets. For example Witold Pilecki, the man who brought the first solid evidence of the genocide in Auschwitz and fought in Warsaw Uprising... was then accused by Soviets of being “Nazi collaborator” and executed.[^4]
3. In 1946 the puppet government organised a referendum on judicial reforms whose results were entirely falsified.[^5] Why bother? Because in Yalta in 1945 they declared independent and internationally monitored elections will be performed in Poland. The referendum was a delicate trial balloon on the reaction of the West. Apart from admitting the falsifications and “thoughts and prayers” there was none.
4. Consequently, in 1947 Moscow organised full-scale elections which were also entirely falsified.[^6] This way they kind of “legally” passed all authority over Poland to the single Polish and 100% Moscow-controlled communist party, which they only gave away in 1989.
5. Soviet looting of Poland continued all this time, as they weren't yet 100% certain if they will keep control. It reached such an extent that even the puppet Polish authorities protested in secret communications to Moscow that it undermines perception of Russians as “friends and liberators” of Poland. Moscow didn't care because anyone with “undermined perception” could be arrested or executed. Overall, Soviet plunder of Poland was estimated at $54 billion, a fraction of which was then returned in the form of Soviet investments in industries perceived necessary by Moscow, who then boasted massively about how they “helped a brotherly socialist republic”.[^3]

This is exactly how it happened in other Eastern European countries, with adjustments to local specifics.

And if you see some historical similarities to the 2014 “referendums” in 2014 Donbass, Crimea, 2022 in occupied regions of Ukraine, it's because it was the very same playbook they executed in Eastern Europe in 1946-1947: loot, kill, stage some fake referendums and elections, take 100% control and... pretend “they joined voluntarily”.

If Russia succeeded in #Ukraine in 2022, that's what they planned for the whole country. Was that a good plan? Judging by Western lukewarm reaction to 1946-1947, and then 2014, in long-term Russia's plan was good enough. Look, today only 9 years have passed since Russian invasion in 2014 but you can clearly see mainstream voices accepting occupation of Crimea as “not entirely legal but kind of OK”.

Today's absurdity of Russia-staged “referendum on joining Zaporizhzhia oblast' into Russia”[^7] when not a single Russian soldier even managed to enter the very town of Zaporizhzhia (!) is obvious to everyone who watch the conflict closely. Most people likely heard about these “not entirely legal” referendums but do not realize the full extent of the violation of laws and common sense. That's today. Do you think in 50 years anyone would care about that?

Therefore, if you are a bit unsettled by a rather dramatic reaction of Eastern European countries to Russia's or China's statements questioning or undermining their sovereignty today, it's precisely because we have seen first hand where these words lead...

References:

• [^1]: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/16199
• [^2]: https://social.kyiv.dcomm.net.ua/@rubrykaeng/110253606460301710
• [^3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_looting_of_Poland#The_Soviet_Union
• [^4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki
• [^5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Polish_people%27s_referendum
• [^6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Polish_legislative_election
• [^7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_annexation_referendums_in_Russian-occupied_Ukraine

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

When looking for some pre-war analysis of #Russia's foreign policies I found a 2016 article “Russia Today: Three Horsemen of the Russian Apocalypse”^1 by Dr Vladimir Pastukhov, an expert on Eastern Europe and Russia on University of Oxford. Back then the author predicted three scenarios of devolution of Russia, two involving one form of collapse or another, and an third one, moderately optimistic, where Russian elites somehow manage to replace rigid centralism and cult of personality with a true federation and democratic society.

Back in 2016 the author saw the origins of the decline in “thinning of Russia’s 'cultural layer' and consequent degradation of the elites”, but Russian society was notably absent from his analysis. This is understandable, as anyone who has ever been to Russia does realize the endemic and hopeless political passivity of vast majority of its society. I encourage reading the whole article, but I will just leave this final paragraph from the 2016 article here:

The sooner Russia breaks apart, the more painful this process will be. To a large degree, the newly formed states will find themselves under the protectorate of neighboring Japan, China, Iran and Turkey. Central “parent” Russia will remain a part of Europe, but for a long time it will be the continent’s “sick man.” For a long time to come, control over Russia’s remaining nuclear arsenal will continue to be the world community’s major headache. While undergoing this agony, Russia can provoke military conflicts of varying intensity.

Russian society as source of violence

Just recently I stumbled upon another analysis by Dr Pastukhov's, this time posted on his Telegram channel^2 in Russian, and I found it so interesting that I translated it to English. It very much seems like the author, after 24 February, lost all illusions and hopes of Russian society:

In an authoritarian (or, as it is also called, “police”) state, the primary source of unlawful violence is power, which spreads numerous metastases into the fabric of society. In totalitarianism, things are more complicated. Here, power plays only the role of a trigger, the primary link of the disease. It affects the fabric of society in such a way that practically every single cell becomes an autonomous isotope, radiating violence. The role of power is further reduced to a policy of two “P's”: provocation and populism. Power provokes with one hand a permanent demand for violence from society, and with the other it organises a populist response to this ever-increasing demand.

Note the switch of the paradigm: it's no longer “the elites” and their cultural deficit, it's the “fabric of society” and “every single cell” that contributes to the overall country's stance. I do agree with this diagnosis, because I have witnessed this cult of social Darwinism flourishing in Russia for over 20 years – it's always either you or them, win-win situation is a battle lost.

One way or another, the source of lethal radiation in the Putin-designed system is society as a whole, not the government. The power in this system is assigned the role of a dispatcher, which regulates the power and intelligently directs the flow of violence in the right direction. Therefore, if we simply tear down power (“remove Putin”, as many dream of doing), then globally it will only lead in the first stage to controlled chaos becoming unmanageable and organised violence becoming unorganised. We are dealing with a society which radiates violence like enriched uranium radiates radiation. So far it is a controlled reaction, which does not become a chain reaction only because the authorities skilfully dispose of the surplus “dark energy”.

That paragraph caused quite a stir among some of Russians I shared this article with. The paradox of those people is that they feel offended, yet themselves they do not watch the most aggressive Russian state TV shows, where hosts and guests routinely call to kill and torture civilians, eradicate whole towns, eradicate whole Ukraine, whole Europe etc, and they don't watch them... because they find them disgusting and violent!

Yet, they are apparently unable to notice that majority of their compatriots does watch them, and they do cheer their guests. It's the same majority they refer to as “cattle” (быдло), speaking of their rudeness in daily life, aggressive and dangerous driving... and all the other reasons why they fence their modern apartment with thick, steel door from the society outside. Yet, they are unable to step out of the collective Russian identity and admit the authoritarianism wasn't built in Russia overnight.

Future scenarios

Dr Pastukhov isn't particularly optimistic, to put that lightly:

Let's assume that this hand, clutched in its dead grip on the control panel, is cut off. Which scenario seems more likely: society miraculously organizes itself and suppresses the violence within itself, or a chain reaction of violence ensues that will eventually spawn a “new Putin” in a cloud of nuclear mushroom? There is no clear answer, but the second scenario seems more likely to me personally.

Anticipating the reproach that in talking about the inevitable challenges that Russian society will face in the event of a revolution I am giving larger chances to the existing regime, I want to say in my defense that I don't see the need to simplify the situation just because it might scare someone and make them grasp at the existing reality as the last straw. The fearful ones should not think about the future of Russia at all – it's a fairy tale for adults with a bad ending, which people with weak nerves shouldn't read at all. For the rest, I will say that there is already a dilemma that “decent people” prefer to remain silent about. Without a broad democratic movement Russia will not be pulled out of the worn-out rut of decivilization (chronic cultural deficiency) and any democratization under the existing conditions will lead to a flood of the most obscene, pogrom-type violence in the country. The natural and seemingly only possible response to this threat is the decision to lower the braking “lead rods” of the new dictatorship into the overheated, radioactive social mass. That is, having said “A”, it is necessary to agree to “B”. If we accept the inevitability of revolution in Russia, then we must also accept the inevitability of a revolutionary dictatorship in Russia. And if we accept the inevitability of a revolutionary dictatorship, then we must ask ourselves what mechanisms can be proposed to prevent the revolutionary dictatorship from turning into a reactionary one (and Russia from entering the third circle of “Stalinism-Putinism”)?

At this point, I would like to bring back Pastukhov's quote from 2016, which explains the position from which he's assessing the rationality of the Russian society and its elites:

The world community, in spite of its selfish instincts, will have to exercise great wisdom and careful consideration to be able to discern and support the seedlings of a new Russia, for the very simple reason that preserving manageability and stability across such an enormous space are in the vital interest of all humankind. Admittedly, the chances for the realization of this scenario remain very small. (...) For the world at large, preserving Russia’s unity remains without any doubt the least expensive and the least dangerous scenario.

Returning to the 2023 publication, Pastukhov is pessimistic specifically because you can't impose a mature democracy on a society that does not want it:

The guarantees of the rule of law and constitutionalism (and, of course, democracy) do not lie in the legal and institutional plane, but in the cultural and political planes. The only real guarantee against an eternal dictatorship is a constitutional-democratic social consensus, that is, a value-based (if you like, “conceptual”) unity among the elite. Everything else is a mirage.

Is this possible at all? I believe it's certainly not impossible: Russian elites tried one way (Dugin's anti-rationalism) and they may learn their lesson or may not. There's nothing preventing more optimistic scenarios for Russia... other than widespread belief that you can bully your neighbour, either on a shared stairway or on a shared continent, by mere brute force. Whether the lesson will be learned certainly depends on the outcome of the military stage of the war, because if Putin is given an opportunity to even pretend a victory, what's any lesson to learn here?

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl

For a few decades now there was an interesting model of #Russia statehood discussed inside the country, called the “theory of opers and operators”, created by Aleksandr Volkov.^2 Its name is a game of words: “operators” was allegedly term used by FBI to describe financial managers of KGB assets in the West. “Oper”, as in “operative”, is a Russian slang word for KGB officers.

Quoting directly from one of recent articles that describe the theory:^1

The gist of the theory is that in the early 1970s the KGB of the USSR set up a network of offshore companies to help foreign trade missions circumvent Western sanctions on the purchase of high-tech equipment. The oil crisis and the increase in the US discount rate to 20% under Ronald Reagan led to the accumulation of considerable sums in the accounts of #KGB offshore companies, which ended up in a grey area: the party organs no longer controlled them, while from the Western perspective they were normal capitals. Having both large sums and understanding of how they could be disposed of, officers in Soviet foreign offices began to invest money and make profits within the framework of Western economy. As a result, in the 1980s, the KGB's offshore capital rose to its feet and became independent of cash infusions from the [Soviet] Union.

While Soviet Union existed, the cash was kind of frozen – KGB officers couldn't spend it completely at their will, only steal fraction on various service-related expenses. But then comes 1991 and everything changed:

After the fall of the #USSR, these funds are partly returned home and used to buy up assets. In the framework of the theory, the nineties are a period of struggle between the KGBists, who have settled in the West, and the party-economic elite of the former USSR – a struggle for control of the assets of the communist empire. The Chekists, as a more consolidated group, having at their disposal large capitals, financial infrastructure and, most importantly, close ties with the security/law enforcement agencies on the ground – won this struggle by gobbling up both the “red directors” and the “new Russians” from the organised crime. By the late nineties and early 2000's, the process of redistribution of big business was complete. The offshore Chekists had taken control of the biggest assets and could have stopped their careers at this.

But history never stops at any given moment — the “old guard” could have earned billions by merely working in KGB/FSB, then why not us, thought young aspiring officers? The financial success of the KGB created a huge demand for jobs in the security services, but there were no longer any secret KGB stashes abroad. Another solution was found:

By that time, a mechanism had been developed for taking over businesses through quasi-legal mechanisms and, most importantly, a large layer of operatives had grown up who perceived racket as an organic part of their career development. Since the youngsters could not repeat the success their ancestors, they turned for the regular people: they started stealing first medium and then small businesses. In fact, the devouring of businesses by low-ranking Chekists (hungry operatives) is the main content of 2000-2010's. It is typical that during this period Putin systematically called for an end to the crackdown on business, but in fact did nothing about it, because he simply could not go against the backbone of the regime.

Widespread racket, takeover and stealing of businesses in Russia in 2000-2010's is a fact: all private media and TV stations were taken over this way — cases of Vladimir Gusinsky^3, VK^4, Hermitage Capital Management^5 were most reported, but there were thousands of other smaller and less known companies stolen.

The authors of the “theory of opers and operators” believe that this wave of cannibalistic takeovers, often carried out by people with zero experience in business, led to gradual decline of Russian economy and decline of its competitiveness.

There was nothing more valuable left to be taken over, but appetites of the “opers” were still high, and their cadres were still growing in numbers – I remember statistics where at some point ~15% of the working population in some regions was employed in some kind of security services.

Grab for Ukraine

The authors believe the conflict with #Ukraine that started in 2014^6 is largely influence by the economic motives among the Russian security apparatus running out of businesses to steal in their own country, as described above. Having said that, authors interestingly point out that while annexation of #Crimea logically seems to be an extension of this “economic grab”, they argue motivation behind specifically Crimea was entirely political.

If we stick to economic determinism, we can assume that the return of Crimea was dictated by a desire to expand the fodder base of the KGBists. In fact, this (inherently Marxist) assumption is flawed. If Putin had been guided by this consideration, he would have taken not a single (and very small) region, but all or a significant part of Ukraine, redistributing property there and distributing fodder. This, as we know, did not happen.

I cannot but notice, that the article contradicts itself in this specific part: the authors argue that “the new aristocracy” (FSB) had no motives to start the whole “Crimean affair”, thus hurting their own interests, only to satisfy the appetites of their younger colleagues. Firstly, the economic decline in 2010's Russia was a fact, as was declining ratings of Putin (record low 62% in 2013), and constantly growing security apparatus.

In 2013 there was a strong pressure on Ukraine for “economic integration” with Russia and the very direct cause for #Euromaidan was specifically the surprising decision of Yanukovych to turn away EU association agreement^7 and instead join Russian economic zone. If the latter happened, FSB could simply continue expanding their “fodder base” into Ukraine unhindered, as it did in Russia. But that was prevented by mass-scale protests of Ukrainians, by order of magnitude larger than Russian protests against Putin's “re-election” in 2012.^8

And as the fodder has been taken away from FSB, they had a strong motivation to at least grab Crimea, which would both provide some consolation to the hungry elites, punishment for Ukraine, and rating boost for Putin.

Crimea certainly provided a wealthy trophy, as wave of business takeovers demonstrated shortly after it was annexed, with plenty of new private, fenced beaches in the most attractive places.^9 How does war in #Donbass fit into this hypothesis? It's interesting case, because politically war in Donbass has been a complete failure, leading to no political wins and instead a lengthy, frozen conflict and plenty of troubles for Russia.

Was there anyone gaining from war in Donbass? Of course — only in the first two years of the war over 50% of large industrial enterprises have been looted by occupiers^10 and, noted by many people, the absurd separation into two — Luhansk and Donetsk — “People's Republics”, has no political purpose or explanation. But it creates perfect “zones of exclusive economic rights” between organized crime controlled by FSB and GRU respectively. And, as with every organized crime groups competing for resources, there were a number of assassinations of top LPR/DPR heads and even shootings between LPR and DPR militias.

FSB and the war in Ukraine

Returning to the Ukrainian extension of the “theory of opers and operators”, authors believe this orientation of Russian elites exclusively on its own wealth and welfare explains lukewarm attitudes towards the victory. Make no mistake, the authors represent 100% Russian nationalist view and definitely support the idea of forcible submission of Ukraine, they are just critical of how Putin does it.

They believe what others call “incompetence” is simply result of different than official actual goals of the conflict: they argue, the “economic vector” explains the vague and frequently changing official objectives of the “special military operation”, lack of any specific description of what “victory” would mean for Russia in this war, but also demoralisation inside Russia itself — widespread corruption in the army, theft of military equipment that would otherwise help war effort and even shutting down of specific military industries when they are most needed.

In essence, the Chekist regime seeks not so much to win as to adapt to conditions new to it (in fact, the conditions of a forced and unnatural confrontation between bees and honey). Within this logic, the population and the economy continue to be viewed solely as fodder (and hence there is nothing strange about the sawing up of a factory needed for the front), and the military defeat and destruction of Ukraine does not look particularly attractive.

The advantage of an extended war, for Russian “elites” following this logic, is not only the mobilization effort which allows continued theft on the generously allocated military budget (30% of overall state budget now!), mobilization of the poorest parts of the society (who had been likely kept in this state for the last decade for purpose) with the perspective of generous military compensations^11 but also unrestricted looting of the newly occupied territories.

Looting on mass scale allows to at least for a while satisfy not only individual “entrepreneurs” on all levels, from regular soldiers stealing electronics or jewellery from Ukrainian homes, large scale theft of Ukrainian grain and up to professionally organised theft of artwork from Kherson museum^12, but — most importantly — the FSB that likely takes share of every item brought back to Russia.

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl