This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Ukrainian blonde had the smell of trouble. She had perched herself, along with her mute friend, in a restaurant across from the famed South Melbourne Market. On arriving at the modish, glorious bit of real estate known as Tipsy Village, a Polish establishment famed for accented French cuisine, she shrieked: “Why do you have Ruskie dumplings on your menu?”
The Polish host, a man of butter mild manner and infinite tolerance, covered in stout glory, took it in his stride. “That is what they are called where I come from and that is what we serve,” Peter Barnatt stated with serene clarity. (Such wickedness! Such a radical disposition!) The blonde shrieking wonder continued to invest in the dumplings some satanic quality, as if each one had been a shell, soldier, a weapon massed and launched against her pristine homeland which she had, it seemed, abandoned. “We would just like coffees,” she demanded. His temper finally disturbed, the host insisted that, as the two were not intent on dining, might just as well leave.
In a luxurious huff, they exited. Such behaviour was fascinating for being irresolvable – no dining establishment worth its salt and cutlery should ever change that aspect of things. But for them, the issue had been decided, a prejudice firmed up and solid.
Names on the menu are a signature of a restaurant’s worth. Besides, dishes do not invade countries in tanks nor bomb cities. The episode was also strikingly, amusingly moronic. Food had been made out as somehow guilty, disgusting, revolting – all because of a name, an identity. The sin had moved in the dough, the mixture and the potatoes, dumplings with agency. The restaurateur was all the more guilty for hosting them.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the gastro-culture war on serving dishes with a Russian name, be it with hint, flavour, or substance, has been total. Hatred of the Kremlin has become bigotry towards the dish. In Madrid, Sergiy Skorokhvatov, himself Ukrainian and an owner of a restaurant called Rasputin serving both Russian and Ukrainian cuisine, sensed trouble. He ventured into the thorny world of online discussions to clarify the nature of what he was serving, which was considered wise given what has happening to other restaurants serving Russian fare.
This method of insurance was not full proof. “I thought that changing things would help us, but then people started posting similar stuff about us – ‘Don’t go to Russian restaurants’ – and pictures of blown-up buildings in Ukraine.”
When politics ventures into the field of gastronomy, imbecility is sovereign, its crown heavy. The French restaurant chain Maison de la Poutine, specialising in the combination of chips, cheese curds and gravy (poutine, you might say), was harassed for having a name vaguely approximating to the Russian president. This was strikingly reminiscent of the semi-literate mob that vandalised the home of Dr Yvette Cloete, a specialist paediatrician who had been confused for being a paedophile.
All of this presents itself in rather darkly hilarious fashion. In Poland, the Ruskie pierogi have been given a battering and vanishing, reincarnated with new names, emerging from kitchens reborn and de-Russified. The idea of Ukrainian pierogi is all the rage. The cheese and potato-filled wonders have again come to commandeer such interest in the food wars. Those who buck the trend end up receiving tongue lashings from the virtuous. Never mind that the idea of ruskie has little to do with the modern state machine that is Russia than the geographic mash which featured Kievan Rus.
The mighty fine diplomats of the kitchen could point to other origins in a peaceful overture. The first dumplings of this sort were a Chinese invention, and Marco Polo was good enough to bring them across to Europe. In Poland, the Polish bishop Jacek Orodw?? is said to have been key in introducing the dumpling in the 13th century. Having had a snack of them in Kyiv, the taste was sufficiently delightful to convince him to bring the recipe back to the homeland. But it took till 1682 for the first known pierogi recipe to make its way into a cookbook – Poland’s oldest, in fact – known as the Compendium Ferculorum by Stanis?aw Czerniecki.
As with so many food varieties now celebrated in their various forms from the cheap mundane to the scandalously extortionate, the original pierogi came to be seen as a nourishing weapon against famine and starvation. It did what it had to. All else is refined exaggeration, with a sense, where needed, of aesthetic pleasure.
Unfortunately for those in the restaurant business, the patron can be an unpredictable sort. For many who enter the premises, the ego of the person who eventually sits down to the meal becomes sprightly, and bad behaviour comes to the fore. One acts as one would not at home. Bigotry sings darkly; prejudice hollers in a jarring register. “Care for another vodka?” the tolerant host can only say to such conduct. Then comes the priestly gobbet of wisdom: “It makes the fish you eat swim.”
The other side of this fraught equation is that the restaurant with fine service and conversational owners is a place of sheer pleasure, conciliation, understanding. Over food, bread broken, dessert consumed, the labels of hatred disappear into musings and mutterings, even if only momentary. Take the vodka; let the fish swim.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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COMMENTARY: By Gavin Ellis
Own goals by two of our top news organisations last week raised a fundamental question: What has happened to their checking processes?
Both Radio New Zealand and NZME acknowledged serious failures in their internal processes that resulted in embarrassing apologies, corrections, and take-downs.
The episodes in both newsrooms suggest the “second pair of eyes” that traditionally acted as a final check before publication no longer exists or is so over-worked in a resource-starved environment that they are looking elsewhere.
- LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘No stone is going to be left unturned in this review’ – RNZ board chairman Jim Mather
- RNZ appoints panel to investigate inappropriate editing of online stories
- ‘I think it’s really important that we preserve the editorial independence of an institution like RNZ’ – PM Chris Hipkins
- LISTEN TO RNZ NINE TO NOON: ‘I am gutted. It’s painful,’ says RNZ chief executive
- Prime Minister responds to questions on RNZ investigation into pro-Russian editing
- Other RNZ inquiry reports
The RNZ situation is the more serious of the two episodes. It relates to the insertion of pro-Russian content into news agency stories about the invasion of Ukraine that were carried on the RNZ website.
The original stories were sourced from Reuters and, in at least one case, from the BBC. By today 22 altered stories had been found, but the audit had only scratched the surface. The alleged perpetrator has disclosed they had been carrying out such edits for the past five years.
RNZ was alerted to the latest altered story by news watchers in New York and Paris on Friday. It investigated and found a further six, then a further seven, then another, and another. This only takes us back a short way.
A number of the stories were altered only by the inclusion of a few loaded terms such as “neo-Nazi” and “US-backed coup”, but others had material changes. Some are spelt out in the now-corrected stories on the site. Here are two examples of significant insertions into the original text:
An earlier edit to this story said: “Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February last year, claiming that a US-backed coup in 2014 with the help of neo-Nazis had created a threat to its borders and had ignited a civil war that saw Russian-speaking minorities persecuted.”
An earlier edit to this story said: “The Azov Battalion was widely regarded as an anti-Russian neo-Nazi military unit by observers and western media before the Russian invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the nationalists of using Russian-speaking Ukrainians as human shields.”
Hot water with Reuters
The scale and nature of the inappropriate editing of the stories is likely to get RNZ into very hot water with Reuters. The agency has strict protocols over what forms of editing may take place with its copy and even the most cursory examination of the altered RNZ versions confirms that the protocols have been breached.It is unsurprising that RNZ’s chief executive Paul Thompson has told staff he is “gutted” by what has occurred.
Both security analyst Dr Paul Buchanan and AUT journalism professor Dr Verica Ruper have cautioned against speculating on how the material came to be appear on the RNZ website and I agree that to do so is premature. Clearly, however, it amounts to much more than a careless editing mistake.
Paul Thompson has acted promptly in ordering an external independent enquiry into the matter and in standing down the individual who apparently handled the stories. It is likely that the government’s security services are also taking an interest in what has occurred.
What we can speculate on is the possibility that RNZ’s internal processes are deficient to the point that there is no post-production vetting of some stories before publication — that “second pair of eyes”.
We might also speculate that the problem is faced by The New Zealand Herald newsroom, following the publication of an eight-line correction at the top of page 3 of the Herald on Sunday, and carried equally sparingly on the Herald website.
“A story published last Sunday about a woman who triumphed over a difficult background to become a lawyer had elements that were false. In publishing the article, we fell short of the high standards and procedures we hold ourselves to.”
Puzzled by correction
Many readers would have been puzzled by the correction, which gave no details of the story concerned, nor did it identify those elements that were false.There may have been legal reasons for omitting which details were incorrect, but not for leaving readers to puzzle over the story to which they referred.
It appears to relate to a three-page story in the Review section of the previous Sunday’s edition that was headed “From mob terror to high flyer”. The story related to the daughter of a woman jailed for selling methamphetamine. The daughter had gone on to a legal career in the United States.
I recall having some undefined concern about the story when I read it and still can’t quite put my finger on why the old alarm bell in the back of my head tinkled. Perhaps it was that — apart from previously published material — the story appeared to rely on a single interview. There also appeared to be a motive in telling the story to the Herald on Sunday — a forthcoming book.
The article seems to have been removed from the Herald website, but the short correction suggests that checks were missed. The same seems to have been the case with RNZ.
It is, of course, sheer coincidence that both RNZ and the Herald on Sunday should face such shortcomings in the same week. However, the likely root causes of their embarrassment are issues that all news media face.
First, the pressure on newsroom resources has increased the workload of all staff, from reporters in the field to duty editors. Time pressures are a daily, and nightly, reality and multi-tasking has become the norm.
Checking comes second
In such an environment, checking the work of other well-trained staff may come second to more pressing demands.As an editor, I slept better knowing that each story had passed through the hands of a news editor, sub-editor and, finally, a check sub with a compulsive attention to detail who checked each completed page before it was transmitted to the printing plant. I fear our newsrooms are now too bare for that multi-layered system of checks.
If the demands of newspaper deadlines are tough, the pressures are manifestly greater in a digital environment where websites have become voracious beasts that cry out to be fed from dawn to midnight. New stories are added throughout the protracted news cycle, pushing older stories down the home page, then off it to subsidiary pages on the site tree.
The technology to satisfy the hunger has advanced to the point where reporters publish direct to the web using Twitter-like feeds. We saw it last week during the Auckland City budget debate when news websites were recording the jerk dancing minute by minute.
Clay Shirky, in his influential 2008 book Here Comes Everybody, popularised the term “publish, then filter”. It referred to a change from sifting the good from the mediocre before publication, to a digital environment in which users determined worth once it had been published.
However, increasingly, the phrase has taken on additional meaning. The burden of work created by digital appetites has seen mainstream media foreshortening the production process by removing some of the old checks and balances because they can always go back later and make changes on the website.
The abridgement may, for example, mean a pre-publication check is limited to headline, graphic, and the first couple of paragraphs. Or, in the case of “pre-edited” agency or syndication content, it may mean foregoing post-production text checks altogether (I hasten to add that I do not know whether this was the case with the RNZ stories).
Editorial based on trust
Editorial production has always been based on trust. It works both down and up. Editors trust those they rely on to carry out processes from content creation to post-production, and those responsible for one phase trust their work will subsequently be handled with care.Individual shortcomings should not erode trust in the newsroom, but such episodes do point to a need to re-examine whether systems are fit for purpose.
Over a decade ago, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel wrote a book called Blur. It was about information overload. In it they state that, as journalism becomes more complicated, the role of the editor becomes more important, and verification is a bigger part of the editor’s role.
Incidents such as those that came to light last week reinforce that view. They also suggest that mainstream media organisations should leave Clay Shirky’s mantra to social media and bloggers. Instead, they should (thoroughly) filter, then publish.
Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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RNZ has appointed a group of experts to carry out an investigation over how pro-Russian edits were inserted into international stories online.
An RNZ digital journalist has been placed on leave after it came to light he had changed news agency stories on the war in Ukraine.
RNZ has since been auditing hundreds of stories the journalist edited for its website over a five-year period.
- LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘No stone is going to be left unturned in this review’ – RNZ board chairman Jim Mather
- ‘I think it’s really important that we preserve the editorial independence of an institution like RNZ’ – PM Chris Hipkins
- LISTEN TO RNZ NINE TO NOON: ‘I am gutted. It’s painful,’ says RNZ chief executive
- Prime Minister responds to questions on RNZ investigation into pro-Russian editing
- Other RNZ inquiry reports
RNZ board chairman Dr Jim Mather speaking to a select committee in 2020 . . . “Policy is one thing but ensuring it’s put into practice is another.” Image: Dom Thomas/RNZ Twenty-one stories from news agency Reuters and one BBC item have so far been found to be inappropriately edited, and have been corrected. Most relate to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but others relate to Israel, Syria and Taiwan.
Media law expert Willy Akel, will chair a three-person panel. The other members are public law expert and former journalist Linda Clark, and former director of editorial standards at the ABC, Alan Sunderland.
RNZ board chairman Dr Jim Mather told RNZ’s Morning Report the board had also agreed on the review’s terms of reference.
“The terms of reference are specific about reviewing the circumstances around the inappropriate editing of wire stories discovered in June 2023 identifying what went wrong and recommending areas for improvement.
Specific handling of Ukraine complaint
“We’re also going to look at the specific handling of the complaint to the broadcasting minister from the Ukrainian community in October 2022 and then it’s going to broaden out to review the overall editorial controls, systems and processes for the editing of online content at RNZ.”The review would also look at total editorial policy and “most importantly” practice as well, Mather said.
No stone would be left unturned, he said.
“Policy is one thing but ensuring it’s put into practice is another.
“We have specifically and purposefully decided not to limit it in any way shape or form but to allow it to broaden as may be required to ensure we restore public confidence in RNZ.
“We’re prepared as a board to support the panel going where they need to, to give us all confidence that we are ensuring that robust editorial process are being followed.
“I’m making no pre-determinations whatsoever, I’m waiting for the review to be conducted.”
The investigation was expected to take about four weeks to complete.
Dr Mather said he retained confidence in RNZ chief executive and editor-in-chief Paul Thompson.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Russia has resumed supplying oil to North Korea after a 27-month hiatus due to international sanctions, data from the United Nations showed.
Experts told Radio Free Asia that the resumption likely coincided with Pyongyang supplying Moscow with weapons for use in its war against Ukraine.
The UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea on June 9 published data on Russian oil shipments to North Korea, which indicated that in December 2022, Moscow supplied 3,225 barrels of refined oil to Pyongyang.
In January, the total number of barrels sharply increased to 44,655, then sharply decreased over the next few months, with only 3,612 barrels sent in April.
It was the first time that Russia sent oil to North Korea since August 2020, when Pyongyang suspended international trade to counter the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Oil tankers are stationed at the Okeanskaya railway station ahead of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s arrival for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the border at Russia’s far East, April 23, 2019. Credit: Alexander Khitrov/AP In September 2022, Georgiy Zinoviev, head of the Russian foreign ministry’s First Asia Department, said that Russia would be willing to resume trading oil products with North Korea if Pyongyang would lift the ban.
North Korea’s opening gives Russia a much needed market for oil at a time when its main markets in the European Union enacted a partial embargo on Russian oil due to the war in Ukraine.
Through April, Russia has sent nearly 99,473 barrels of oil to North Korea, which is around 19% of the amount permitted by U.N. sanctions meant to deprive Pyongyang of resources that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs.
Oil for weapons
Two U.S.-based experts said that it was likely that the refined oil exports to North Korea resumed in return for supplying weapons to Russia, which is at war with Ukraine.
In June, a State Department spokesperson told Reuters news service that the U.S. was able to confirm that North Korea had sent arms, including infantry rockets and missiles to a Russian-backed mercenary group in November 2022, despite denials from Pyongyang.
“I would guess that [the oil shipments] may be Russia fulfilling its end of the deal in exchange for North Korea providing weapons and lethal aid to the Russian troops in the ongoing war with Ukraine,” Soo Kim, policy practice area lead at Virginia-based LMI Consulting and a former CIA analyst, told RFA’s Korean Service.
“At this stage, Russia is in need of military support to offset its deficiencies in its battle against Ukraine,” said Kim. “North Korea is willing to provide lethal aid probably because [North Korean leader] Kim [Jong Un] can receive energy and food assistance in exchange.”
She also said that Pyongyang and Moscow working closely together could undermine U.S. interests.
North Korean soldiers participate in a military parade to mark the 65th anniversary of the country’s founding in Pyongyang, North Korea. Credit: Image grab/KRT via AP Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution also told RFA that refined oil may be a payment for weapons aided by North Korea.
In addition to oil, Russia is exporting more than 1,000 tons of wheat flour to North Korea, according to a recent press release from Moscow’s Federal Veterinary Customs Agency.
North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported Monday that Kim Jong Un sent a congratulatory message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, affirming his willingness to increase close strategic cooperation between the two countries.
Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Cho Jinwoo for RFA Korean.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson says the New Zealand public has been let down after pro-Russian sentiment was added to a number of its online stories without senior management realising.
It comes after readers noticed the text of a Reuters story about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine published on RNZ was changed.
It has since come to light that a staff member altered the text, and Russian propaganda has been found on more than a dozen other stories.
So far, 250 stories published by RNZ have been audited, with chief executive Paul Thompson saying thousands more would be checked “with a fine-tooth comb”.
Fourteen of the 15 altered articles were from the Reuters wire service, and one was from BBC.
An independent review of the editing of online stories has been commissioned by RNZ.
On Monday, Thompson told RNZ’s Nine to Noon it was a “serious breach” of the organisation’s editorial standards and “really, really disappointing”.
One area of operation
It was one area of the company’s operation and one staff member was under an employment investigation for alleged breaches to RNZ’s policy, he said.Thompson apologised to RNZ’s audience, the New Zealand public and the Ukrainian community.
“It’s so disappointing that this pro-Kremlin garbage has ended up in our stories,” Thompson said, labelling the act inexcusable.
Thompson said it raised issues with RNZ’s editing process of online news, and showed they were not as robust as they needed to be.
When asked how it happened and no one noticed, Thompson simply said: “I don’t know.”
Most wire copy was only edited by one person, Thompson said, and most of the stories found to have issues only had one or two words changed, making it “very hard” to detect.
However, all added material was “really, really serious”.
‘We have to get to the bottom of what happened’
“I am gutted. It’s painful, it’s shocking and we have to get to the bottom of how it happened,” he said.Since the weekend, Thompson said a new policy had been put in place where all wire copy needed to be checked twice before publishing, as RNZ required for any other stories being published on its website.
Thompson said he expected to be able to give further information about the external review in the coming days.
He confirmed it would be entirely independent to the organisation and the finding of the review would go straight to RNZ’s board – not him.
Findings would then be released to the public to keep everything fully transparent – as RNZ was doing with its current audit.
Thompson said the situation was a “blow” to RNZ’s reputation.
“We are responding as well as we can and as openly as we can. The really sad thing is how much great work that we do.
‘Fierceness’ of RNZ editorial standards
“The best part of working in RNZ is the fierceness with which we defend our editorial standards and it’s galling that the activity in a very small area of the organisation can affect us all.”Thompson confirmed RNZ received the complaint from Michael Lidski in October last year, but the email was directed at Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson. The company was cced in, as well as other media organisations.
He confirmed RNZ does not typically respond to complaints directed at the minister.
In hindsight, Thompson said the organisation could have done something about it at the time.
Thompson said he had contacted both Reuters and BBC and was keeping the organisations updated as to its audit.
Neither had asked anything of him at this time.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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A Ukrainian man who complained about an RNZ story last year having Russian propaganda says his concerns are only now being noticed.
It comes after the revelation a staff member altered Reuters copy to include pro-Russian sentiment.
Since Friday, 250 articles published on RNZ back to January last year have been audited.
Of those articles, 15 are now known to have been altered, and an RNZ employee has been placed on leave. Fourteen of the articles were from the Reuters wire service, and one was from BBC.
An independent review of the editing of online stories has been commissioned by RNZ.
Michael Lidski, who wrote the complaint, signed by several Ukrainian and Russian-born New Zealanders said the article he complained about appeared not only on RNZ, but The New Zealand Herald and Newshub as well.
Lidski said it took some time after the article was published to send the complaint letter to RNZ to make sure everyone who signed it was happy with what it said.
It was received by RNZ on the evening of Labour Day, October 24.
Russian ‘behavior similar to Nazi Germany’
“Obviously Russia is the aggressor and behaving very similar to what the Nazi Germany did in the beginning of the Second World War,” Lidski said.“Luckily”, he said, Russia was much less “efficient” and “successful on the front” but not so luckily, they were “very efficient” in their propaganda.
Lidski said he also sent the complaint to Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson and other media outlets – but Jackson was the only one to provide any response.
Lidski said Jackson’s response essentially said the government could not interfere with the press and refrained from “taking sides”.
One of the 15 online articles that have been the subject of RNZ’s audit on coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine . . . originally published on 26 May 2022; it was taken down temporarily this week and then republished with “balancing” comment. Image: RNZ screenshot APR As part of the audit, RNZ reviewed the story published on rnz.co.nz on May 26, 2022 relating to the war in Ukraine, which it said was updated later that day to give further balance after an editorial process was followed.
When Lidski sent his letter, he said he received no response from RNZ.
Awaiting external review
He said he would be waiting to see what comes of the external review.“I just want to stress that we are not dealing with a situation where someone just made a mistake.
“We are in the war, the enemy is attacking us, it’s very important that, you know, we take it seriously.”
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson declined to speak with Morning Report today, describing the breaches of editorial standards as extremely serious.
In a statement, Thompson said it was a “very challenging time for RNZ and the organisations focus is on getting to the bottom of what happened and being open and transparent”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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As Russian oil and gas imports fell petrostates including UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia increased exports to UK
UK fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates surged to £19.3bn in the year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it can be revealed.
Efforts to end the purchasing of oil and gas from Russia appear to have resulted in a surge in imports from other authoritarian regimes, including Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to data from the Office for National Statistics analysed by DeSmog.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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Ukrainian president’s remarks echo previous remarks about international bodies’ failure to intervene more decisively
Volodymyr Zelenskiy – well schooled in chiding the west for being slow in providing help – has shifted his line of criticism from the pace at which arms has been reaching his country to the slow international response to the humanitarian and ecological disaster caused by the breach of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.
Before visiting the flood-affected areas on Thursday, he used his nightly address to say: “Large-scale efforts are needed. We need international organisations, such as the International Committee on Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help the people in the occupied part of Kherson region. Each person that dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organisations that have forgotten how to save lives. If there is no international organisation in the area of this disaster now, it means it does not exist at all and that it is incapable of functioning.”
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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Secret service decided backstory of purported Russian security service officer was not credible
Poland has deported a purported former Russian FSB officer who sought asylum in the country back to Russia, accusing him of lying about his past and background.
Emran Navruzbekov claimed to have been a senior officer in Russia’s FSB security service in the southern region of Dagestan, and had recently given numerous media interviews about FSB operations and alleged misdeeds. He was handed over to Russia at Poland’s land border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on Tuesday.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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Already heightened concerns about the operational safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine intensified further on Tuesday after a major downriver dam was destroyed, forcing thousands to evacuate as water surged through the breached structure. The wrecked barrier held back a body of water equal in size to Utah’s Great Salt Lake, and the reservoir supplies water for the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The United States is ready to engage in bilateral nuclear talks with Russia and China “without preconditions,” according to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. “Rather than waiting to resolve all of our bilateral differences, the United States is ready to engage Russia now to manage nuclear risks and develop a post-2026 arms control framework,” Sullivan said in a wide-ranging speech at the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The thing about NATO is that it’s only possible to support it uncritically if you’ve never been anywhere near it. And sadly for me, I have. I find myself back here again, well over a year after writing this piece on why picking a side from NATO or Russia is a mug’s game for big babies.
Let’s be clear, being critical of NATO isn’t to accept the arguments of the Twitter conspiracists who flood the Canary’s mentions each time we criticise one of their faux-anti-imperialist favourites. Yes, that would be the ‘Gaddafi/Assad/Putin/Insert Authoritarian was actually just misunderstood’ crowd. Rather, it’s a call for a serious analysis of what NATO is and what it does. I extend the same call in regard to Putin’s Russia.
In truth, the pro- and anti-NATO camps are united in a key aspect of their politics: fervent anti-intellectualism. For them, politics seems to be a sort of real-world game of Warhammer or Dungeons and Dragons. In their minds, they push pieces around a tabletop battlefield. There’s lots of partisan emotion, as if they’re supporting a football team. It involves little by way of even-handed analysis.
Tantrums
I can’t imagine formulating a political identity around an indifferent military alliance, or around a version of anti-imperialism which exists only in my own head. It would be hard not to look at all this and feel a bit sad for them, if they weren’t such vacuous arseholes.
On numerous occasions, I’ve seen even mild critiques of NATO attacked. On two occasions in person, I’ve had grown adults melt down when it’s been suggested they exercise reason over emotion in the context of Ukraine. But unthinking fanboying and fangirling doesn’t cut it for me. You see, I’m not a centrist, liberal, or a social democrat. I’m not that easily taken in. And I know NATO’s record in Afghanistan and Libya, and it’s Cold War era dalliances with fascism.
Nor do I have a hard-on for a fantasised anti-imperialist version of the Soviet Union. I’d hope my politics are a bit more sophisticated than cosplaying Uncle Joe Stalin down the pub with my two clammy mates or, God forbid, on Twitter to a large audience. Please, all of you, bear in mind that your poor mum might see this stuff.
This is because I’m on the anarchist end of politics. I distrust all states and their military alliances. I ended up in these positions precisely because I took part in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. So if you expect me to morph into some kind of NATO-shagger over Ukraine, you’re set for a rude awakening.
Recruited
Many people have been pulled into uncritical support for NATO on the basis of emotion. And that’s understandable. The constant images and stories which have emerged from Ukraine are shocking. There’s no doubt Russia is the aggressor, just as the US and UK were in Iraq. But emotion alone doesn’t cut it. If you subtract rationale and reason from your analysis what you have left is good-old fashioned war fever.
Of course, people are pulled into NATO fandom for slightly different reasons. Most prominently, the brand of simpering centrists who made up the FBPE (Follow Back, Pro EU) cohort on Twitter. For them, solidarity starts and ends at adding the Ukraine flag next to the EU one in their bio.
It’s not for nothing I accuse them of mistaking NATO for ‘FBPE with Guns’, though in fairness it could just as easily be ‘Eurovision fans with F-16s’. In the end though, these are low-calibre people with low calibre politics. Anyone to the left of Tony Blair should hold themselves to a higher standard.
For my part, I’ll continue to view NATO with critical eye born out of hard experience. But keep on vacuously stanning your team, by all means.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/US Gov, cropped to 1900 x 1000.
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on Canary.
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We spent nearly 20 days in Russia, including 5 days in Crimea. During our journey, we spent around 70 hours in trains riding in close quarters with Russians who we had never met before but who freely shared food and drink with us. Indeed, throughout our travels, we were treated invariably with kindness, generosity and hospitality. When people realized that we spoke English and were from the States, they tried very hard to communicate with us and to make sure that we, as visitors in their land, were comfortable and taken care of. In short, it was clear to us that while many Americans may hate Russia and even Russians themselves, this hatred is not returned in kind.
One anecdote is illustrative of such treatment. About half an hour into our 27-hour train ride from Crimea to Moscow, Rick realized that he had left his money belt, with around $2000 in cash, back in his Moscow hotel room safe. This hotel had a quaint name in English – the Sunflower Avenue Hotel – and is located around the corner from the biggest mosque in Europe. Rick called the hotel and informed them of what had happened, and, after some back and forth to make sure that Rick was the true owner of the money, the hotel management said they would give it to anyone we designated to retrieve it. We got a hold of a friend in Moscow, Yulia, who went to the hotel and took possession of the money belt. And, because our plan was to travel back from Crimea directly to St. Petersburg, and not to return to Moscow, Yulia also arranged for a friend of hers to bring the belt to St. Petersburg – a city located at least 4 hours by train from Moscow. Within a few hours of our returning there a week later, this friend drove up to the hotel and handed the belt to Rick outside of our hotel. And, not a dollar was missing. Obviously, this could have turned out much differently given how many times the money belt had to change hands before getting back to Rick and given that all involved knew that if we never saw some or all of the money again there would have been little we could do about it given that we were not returning to Moscow and would soon be leaving for the United States. Our faith in humanity remained intact from the experience.
The other place where we witnessed that the hate goes only one way is in Crimea – a peninsula on the Black Sea which has changed hands from Russia to the Soviet Union to Ukraine and back to Russia and which has three main distinct ethnic groups. These three ethnic groups are Russians which make up around 65% of the Crimean population, Ukrainians which are 16 percent of the population and Tatars who are around 13 percent. While there are these different ethnic groups, over 80 percent of the Crimeans speak Russian on a daily basis.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 and Ukraine’s taking control of the peninsula in spite of a January 1991 referendum in which 94% of Crimeans voted to become an autonomous Republic, Ukraine moved quickly to try to “Ukrainize” Crimea along with the Russian-speaking Donbas region of Ukraine. What this meant in practice was outlawing Russian as a national language and as a language taught in schools, and attempting to eradicate Russian culture and historical monuments. This process accelerated after the 2014 coup in Kiev which brought to power a right-wing government quite hostile to Ukraine’s own Russian population. It was this open hostility which led Crimeans to hold a referendum to rejoin Russia – a referendum in which, with an 83 percent voter turnout, 97 percent of the voters cast their vote for Russian reunification.
For its part, the Ukrainian government moved to punish the Crimean people for their decision to return to Russia. Thus, Ukraine dammed a canal which fed Crimea with fresh water and cut off electricity to Crimea, resulting in Crimeans suffering from a lack of electricity for months. While Zelensky and the US are escalating their threats that Ukraine will somehow “recapture” Crimea, this type of spiteful mistreatment of Crimea, combined with the periodic drone attacks against civilian targets in Crimea, have guaranteed that Crimea will never willingly go back to Ukraine.
Ukraine dammed the canal supplying Crimea’s reservoirs with fresh water.Despite this ill treatment, neither Russia nor the Crimean local government have treated the Ukrainians in Crimea as Ukraine had treated their Russian population. Thus, far from outlawing the Ukrainian language, the Crimean parliament as far back as 1998 passed a law memorializing Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar as the official languages of Crimea. This was passed in response to Ukraine’s 1998 law designating Ukraine only as the national language. Even after the 2014 referendum, the Crimean law respecting and protecting all three national languages continues to be the law of Crimea. In addition, while Ukraine moved to destroy Russian and Soviet monuments in Crimea, there was no retaliation to do the same to Ukrainian monuments. As just one example, Irina Alexiava pointed out to us the statue of famous Ukrainian poet, Lesya Ukrainka, which still stands in a prominent spot in Yalta, Crimea and which had fresh flowers laid at it.
Crimeans honor Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka. Photo Dan Kovalik.As for the Crimean Tatars, the Russian government moved swiftly to try to make good relations with this group after the 2014 Crimean referendum. As many may know, the Tatars had been persecuted during WWII as suspected collaborators and forcibly removed from Crimea to other Soviet Republics. However, many have moved back to Crimea, and, as noted above, make up about 13 percent of Crimea’s population. One of the first things President Putin did after Crimea returned to Russia in 2014 was to officially “rehabilitate” them from the claims of collaboration made by the Stalin government, give them land they protested for in Crimea, provide them with modest monetary reparations and build a new Mosque for them in Crimea. This Mosque, once completed, will be one of the biggest in all of Russia.
Still, readers may fairly ask about Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, and whether this shows antipathy on the part of the Russian government and the Russian people towards Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. What we found in talking to people throughout our journey was that while nearly everyone believes that the current war, while regrettable, was necessary to defend both Russia and the Russian-speaking population within Ukraine, they nonetheless do not bear ill-will toward either Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. Rather, their issue is with the right-wing government in Kiev, the government’s neo-Nazi allies and above all NATO which they perceive as the puppet master of these forces.
The people with whom we met during our journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Crimea made it clear that the Ukrainians are their “brothers and sisters,” and many Russians have friends and family within Ukraine. In addition, Russia has welcomed more Ukrainian refugees (over 5 million since February of 2022) than any other country. Many refugees have resettled in Crimea.
The Russians we met spoke quite somberly about the war, regretting the huge loss of life on both sides of the conflict, and expressing frustration and concern about how long the war is lasting and how many more will die as a result. In addition, Russians are reasonably fearful that the war may expand into something greater and something more terrible – for example, a world war that might involve nuclear weapons. This fear was magnified when a drone attack, which the US government has now admitted was most likely launched by Ukraine, damaged the Kremlin during our stay.
May 9 Victory Day in Russia was subdued because of terrorist threats but on the streets, many families still remembered their family members who died in WW2. Having been invaded many times, Russians are much more fearful of war than Americans.The overwhelming sentiment we heard is they want the Ukraine conflict to end and “peace and friendship” with the US.
Families honor their relatives who died in WW2. Photo Rick Sterling.In the end, whatever one thinks of the war which is taking place in Ukraine and which is now bleeding into Russia as well, we believe that the primary goal of those living in the US must be to do everything we can to prevail upon our government to de-escalate this situation which is at grave risk of spiraling out of control and threatening humanity itself. Instead of fueling the flames of war with more weapons and munitions to Ukraine, our government should encourage instead of opposing a negotiated solution to the conflict and the offer to help broker negotiations by countries like China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
One of the first steps in helping achieve peace is being willing to look at the world as our adversaries, including Russia, do, and being willing to make concessions to their legitimate security concerns. This is how the Cuban Missile Crisis was solved, for example, and this is how the current crisis can be solved.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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David Barsamian: American Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He made an opening statement to the Tribunal on November 21, 1945, because there was some concern at the time that it would be an example of victor’s justice. He said this: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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May of this year, we took the long, 27-hour train ride from Moscow to Crimea to see how life is there and what the sentiment of the people are as the US and Ukraine sharpen their threats to “recapture” this peninsula from Russia. And, while we were there, these threats were backed by a series of terrorist drone attacks in Crimea which, while doing little serious damage, signaled an escalation in the US/Ukrainian assault on Crimea.
Despite such threats and attacks, what we found in this historic peninsula on the Black Sea was a beautiful, almost idyllic place with a bustling economy and a general sense of prosperity and hopefulness. We also found a people who seem quite content to remain a part of Russia just as Crimea has been, except for a brief interval, since 1783.
During our trip, we visited the three major cities of Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta.
Crimea has rugged but beautiful coastline.The Capital Simferopol
Simferopol is an inland city with about half a million residents. There are universities as well as Crimea’s parliament and industry. When we visited it, most people were enjoying the holidays. We saw multiple groups of teenagers singing patriotic songs on the street and in front of memorials. It is difficult to imagine something comparable happening in the US or Canada. The difference may be partly the result of education but it also shows the different consciousness and experience. Approximately 1 in every seven citizens died in WW2 so every family in the Soviet Union lost family members. The Nazi invasion and occupation were horrible, real and impacted every one.
Theater students sing patriotic songs on the street, 6 May 2023.In Simferopol we met two women, Larisa and Irina, who described in detail what happened in early 2014. Confrontations started when a small group of ultra-nationalists tried to demolish the statue of Lenin in the capital center. Seeing this as an attack on their Soviet and Russian heritage, a much larger group gathered and stopped them.
Then, three police who were residents of Crimea were killed in Maidan protests. As their corpses were brought home, there was increasing fear that the violence in Kiev could come to Crimea. Volunteers formed self-defense battalions.
Hundreds of Crimeans went to Kiev on chartered buses to peacefully protest against the Maidan chaos and violence. The violence climaxed with the killing of police and protesters by snipers located in opposition controlled buildings on February 20. The Crimeans realized that peaceful protests were hopeless and departed back to Crimea on the chartered buses. At the town of Korsun, the convoy of eight buses was stopped by a gang from the Neo-Nazi “Right Sector”. Dozens people were beaten and seven Crimeans killed.
Crimean Bus Passengers were beaten with seven killed on 20 February 2014.On February 22, the elected Ukraine government was overthrown. On its first day in power, the coup government enacted legislation to remove Russian as a state language. These events provoked shock, fear and the urgent desire to re-unify with Russia. According to Larisa and Irina, there was a huge popular demand to hold a referendum to secede from Ukraine.
The Crimean parliament agreed and first proposed to have the referendum in May. The popular demand was to have it much sooner. Larisa says that on February 27 the Russian flag was flying over parliament. She does not know how, but says, “It was like a miracle.” People sensed then that Russia might accept Crimea. Suddenly there were Russian flags all over the city.
Crimea Parliament in the capital SimferopolThere was still the fear of violence. Soldiers in green uniforms without insignia, known as the “polite men” appeared at key locations such as the airport and parliament. It is generally understood these were Russian special forces. They were heartily welcomed by nearly all and events proceeded without violence. Larisa laughed at western journalists who used the photograph of a WW2 tank in a park, to suggest that Russian tanks were in the capital.
There was no involvement by Russia in the referendum; it was organized and carried out by the traditional election council on March 16. The results were decisive: with 83% voting, 97% voted to rejoin Russia.
Two days later the Crimean parliament appealed to the Russian Federation. Two days after that the agreement was signed in Moscow. Larisa and Irina say, “Everyone was happy”; they call it “Crimea Spring”.
Nuclear Submarines Museum
We visited many amazing places in Crimea. In the port town of Balaklava, we visited a museum which reminded us of the increasing danger of nuclear war. The first class museum is located in the site where Soviet submarines were repaired, refitted and nuclear missiles installed. The site is a tunnel at sea level under a mountain. The tunnel goes from the open Black Sea to the protected Balaklava harbor. Under the mountain, the submarines could survive any attack and respond if necessary. When we visited, many school children were also there, learning about the dangers of nuclear war, how and why Russia felt the need to develop their own nuclear capacity. The educational graphics start with the fact that the US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan, and why Russia must be prepared to defend itself. Today this site is an educational museum. We don’t often think about nuclear weapons and the likelihood they could be used if war was to break out between Russia and the US. The museum shows they take this very seriously. Russia’s active nuclear armed submarines are located in Vladivostok and elsewhere.
Nuclear submarine base under mountain in Balaklava (now a museum).The Valley of Death
Driving north from Balaklava, we paused at a memorial overlooking a valley that was scene of an important battle in the Crimean war of 1854. It was immortalized in Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” where British cavalry charged embedded Russian forces and suffered many losses. The poem says “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.” A famous photograph taken by one of the first war time photographers shows a barren hillside strewn with cannon balls which mowed down the British attackers.
The great Russian author Leo Tolstoy was a volunteer fighter in the Crimean War, and he himself documented his experiences in battle. As one Crimean told us in making the point that Crimea has been part of Russia for a very long time, “the Crimean War was a Russian war; it wasn’t a Ukrainian war.”
Today those valleys have grazing sheep and vineyards with premier wineries comparable to those in Napa Valley, California. Visitors do wine tasting just like in California. The past war and bloodshed seem far away.
Sevastopol: A Special City
Further north is Sevastopol, a thriving city and the base of the Russian Black Sea naval fleet. Sevastopol is known as “the most Soviet City in Russia and the most Russian City in Ukraine,” and even the City Hall continues to bear the hammer and sickle emblem on its gates.
When Ukraine seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia negotiated a long term lease for the naval port. The Russian military has been in this port for 240 years. Along with Russian navy ships, there are locals fishing from the docks. There is a laid back, casual air to the port although the war hit close to home when Russia’s naval ship “Moskva” was sunk early in the conflict.
Fishing from dock in Sevastopol….. Russian Navy vessels in distance.Tanya introduced us to former Soviet and Ukrainian Navy captain Sergey. He described how, when the decision was made to secede from Ukraine in spring 2014, many enlisted sailors and officers chose to be in the Russian rather than Ukrainian navy. Throughout our visit it was emphasized that Crimea has been Russian since 1783 and the large majority of the population have Russian as their native language and consider themselves Russian.
People in Russia are very conscious of war and fascism. They call WW2 the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet Union caused by far the most losses of Axis soldiers. The US, Canada, and other allies supported the war with troops and supplies but it was the Soviet Union that bore the brunt of the war and was the primary cause of victory over Nazi Germany.
Crimea was a major target of the Nazi Axis and was the scene of some of the bloodiest battles of WW2. Despite stiff resistance the peninsula was temporarily defeated. After 250 days of siege, Sevastopol was captured by the Germans in June 1942. Crimea was retaken by the Soviet Red Army in 1944.
This history may explain why Crimeans are adamantly opposed to ultra nationalist hate filled rhetoric and why they decisively chose to re-unify with Russia following the overthrow of the elected Ukraine government in February 2014.
In Sevastopol we visited the Partisan Museum which is a house where anti-fascist Crimeans organized resistance to the Nazi occupation. The house had a hidden basement where fliers were printed and partisans organized the sabotage campaigns.
Partisan Museum in Sevastopol.A few miles south of Sevastopol is the hilltop where Nazi German command was based. It has been converted into a memorial and during our visit on Saturday prior to May 9 Victory Day, there were educational exhibitions and military displays along with miniature tanks driven by kids in a 50 foot track.
Yalta
In a palace at Yalta, the leaders of the US, UK and Soviet Union negotiated the spheres of influence in Europe after the defeat of the axis powers. The three countries were allies in WW2 but in just a few years the Cold War emerged.
Yalta is a thriving tourist city. The palace where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met is open for visitors. During our visit, the hotels in Yalta were near capacity and the promenade and city streets were full of locals and visitors. Russians who used to travel to West Europe are now travelling about their own huge country and Crimea is especially popular.
Reflections on Crimea
Crimea is incredibly beautiful and historic. Today, despite occasional sabotage actions, the situation in Crimea is calm and inviting.
Following Crimea’s secession, Ukraine tried to punish Crimeans by cutting off the electricity supply to the peninsula. They were without power for five months. Next Ukraine blocked the fresh water supply.
Despite these hostile actions, Crimeans display no hostility to regular Ukrainians. They say, “They are our brothers and sisters.” Ukrainian is a state language in Crimea and Ukrainians are respected. There are statues honoring Ukrainian writers and artists. Many Ukrainian civilians have come to Crimea to escape the war.
Sergey says that Crimeans are sad about the conflict in Ukraine but will continue, slowly and patiently, to victory.
Irina says, “Zelensky will sooner take back the Moon than take back Crimea.”
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Kovalik and Rick Sterling.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The future of warfare is being shaped by computer algorithms that are assuming ever-greater control over battlefield technology. The war in Ukraine has become a testing ground for some of these weapons, and experts warn that we are on the brink of fully autonomous drones that decide for themselves whom to kill.
This week, we revisit a story from reporter Zachary Fryer-Biggs about U.S. efforts to harness gargantuan leaps in artificial intelligence to develop weapons systems for a new kind of warfare. The push to integrate AI into battlefield technology raises a big question: How far should we go in handing control of lethal weapons to machines?
In our first story, Fryer-Biggs and Reveal’s Michael Montgomery head to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Sophomore cadets are exploring the ethics of autonomous weapons through a lab simulation that uses miniature tanks programmed to destroy their targets.
Next, Fryer-Biggs and Montgomery talk to a top general leading the Pentagon’s AI initiative. They also explore the legendary hackers conference known as DEF CON and hear from technologists campaigning for a global ban on autonomous weapons.
We close with a conversation between host Al Letson and Fryer-Biggs about the implications of algorithmic warfare and how the U.S. and other leaders in machine learning are resistant to signing treaties that would put limits on machines capable of making battlefield decisions.
This episode originally aired in June 2021.
Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
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This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Finbar Cafferkey, Dmytro Petrov, and Cooper Andrews were revolutionaries from Ireland, Russia, and the US. All three of them joined the military defence of Ukraine, against Russian aggression. All three of them fell together on 19 April during the Russian offensive against Bakhmut.
It’s a sad fact that parts of the European left have shown little solidarity with the people of Ukraine, instead making apologies for Russian militarism and colonialism.
Finbar, Dmitry, and Cooper’s sacrifice should remind us what it means to be a revolutionary, and to support struggles against oppression everywhere.
Supporting anti-authoritarian resistance against Russia
Solidarity Collectives (SC) is an organisation supporting around 100 anti-authoritarian comrades fighting against the Russian invasion. When the Canary spoke to Anton, a member of SC about their work, they said:
SC has published statements about each of the three fallen internationalists so that people can remember them and understand their struggles better.
Finbar Cafferkey: From County Mayo, to Raqqa, to Bakhmut
Finbar Cafferkey was from Ireland. He was involved in the eco-defence campaign against Shell’s natural gas pipeline in County Mayo in the mid-2000s. Later, he volunteered to help defend the Rojava revolution in North and East Syria, and participated in the liberation of Raqqa from Daesh (ISIS) in 2017. Finbar went on to participate in Rojava‘s armed defence against the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 as part of the YPG (People’s Defence Units). He was given the name Çîya, meaning ‘mountain’, by his Kurdish comrades.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Finbar began to organise support. He worked with ACK Galicja and the XVX Tacticaid to bring humanitarian support from Poland to the front lines in Ukraine comrades said:
When asked why he did that, Çîya always answered: “Because I have time and I can be useful here.”
Later he decided to join a fighting unit with three comrades, supported by SC. According to SC’s statement:
Finbar taught others to look, listen, and learn carefully – and valued seeing with one’s own eyes. He moved easily through a complex world, comfortably with different people, competently in difficult situations, and calmly amid chaos.
They continued:
With his character, he defended the coasts of his homeland from pillaging corporations. With his understanding, he fought in the battle for Raqqa and showed compassion to everyone he met in the Rojava Revolution against Daesh and the Turkish regime. With his commitment, he embraced and served the Ukrainian resistance as it is.
Finbar’s comrades in the anti-Shell struggle posted a recording of him singing his rebel song about the campaign to defend County Mayo, which you can listen to here.
Cooper Andrews: ‘
Cooper believed passionately in self-defence. He joined the US Marines to gain the skills he would need as an internationalist fighter. Then, in March 2022, he joined with other anti-authoritarians in the struggle against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Cooper wrote a letter to his comrades a month before he died in Bakhmut. It said:
Willow Andrews, Cooper’s mother, wants to carry on his legacy. She has set up a memorial fund to support the causes he was passionate about. The money will go to several mutual aid projects in Cleveland. You can donate to the fund here.
Dmytro Petrov: Russian anarchist fighter against Putin’s invasion
Dmytro Petrov, aka Illia Leshyi, was a Russian anarchist. He was active in protests in Russia, in particular the Bolotnaya Square protests against Putin a decade ago. He also organised militant direct action against the state, and in 2014 he supported the mass protests in Kyiv’s Maidan.
He participated in the defense of the Bitsa Park in Moskow, in “Food not bombs”, fought against infill development and against building of incinerators, for the rights of workers in the ranks of the Anarchist union MPST and against police brutality.
He participated in the antifascist movement and fought Nazis on the streets of Moscow and other places.
In 2014 Dmytro decided to join and learn from the Rojava revolution. His comrades wrote:
As [a] revolutionary, Dima was internationalist. He fought against the atrocity of oppression everywhere he saw it, borders did not stop him. Besides activities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus he went to Rojava and trained there, took part in the liberation struggle of the Kurdish people.
Dmytro was one of the founders of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK). BOAK has carried out widespread sabotage operations in opposition to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. One of their focuses has been disabling train lines and other infrastructure inside Russia.
Dmytro realised that it was too dangerous to stay in Russia, and he moved to Kyiv. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he joined the military resistance. He gave interviews where he called on leftists from all over the world to support the struggle of Ukrainian people. Before he died, he was trying to organise an anti-authoritarian fighting unit.
SC made this statement about Dmytro:
Leshyi always rejected any kind of nationalism, he based his actions solely on anti-authoritarian values and ideals. And his personal qualities immediately made everyone fall in love with him, even those who had nothing to do with anarchism.
They continued:
Today everyone is remembering Dmytro. He is really impossible to forget. But we also encourage you not to forget his legacy. The ideas he believed in. Never give in to the mainstream and always be on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors.
Call for international solidarity
You can watch a video that Dmytro recorded in February 2023 here. In his video, Dmytro stresses:
We are here neither to defend any neoliberal policies or any state structures. We are here to defend this society which defends itself against the aggression, and against elimination and enslavement. Are we tired, of course yes! We are exhausted by this year, but still we think that we are obliged to gather all the forces that we have to continue this struggle, and we also call you to combine your forces together to support us.
The deaths of Finbar, Cooper, and Dmytro in Bakhmut are a huge loss for anti-authoritarians everywhere. Their memory and their revolutionary spirit should be treasured by all of us. All three of them were people who fought in many different ways against oppression, for liberation, and in defence of the natural world. Their internationalist spirit shows how strong we can be as revolutionaries, and how our struggles for freedom are intertwined globally.
Their deaths are a devastating blow, but their ideas, dedication, and commitment are a legacy which will inspire many more to continue fighting.
Featured image via Solidarity Collectives (with permission)
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on Canary.
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As calls grow for an end to the war in Ukraine, a number of recent developments indicate the war could instead be expanding beyond Ukraine’s borders. Russia has signed an agreement with Belarus to begin deploying tactical nuclear weapons there, and a group of pro-Ukrainian fighters from Russia has attacked sites in the Russian region of Belgorod using what appears to be U.S.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Energy colonialism was on full display at the latest meeting between seven of the world’s richest nations. Recently, the Group of Seven (G7) met in Hiroshima, Japan for its annual summit. There, the climate crisis and the use of fossil fuels were on the table for discussion.
As the Canary reported in part one of this series, critics have pointed out the blatant use of shock doctrine and fossil fuel profiteering in the wake of Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, this is fueling destructive gas expansionism in the Global South. In fact, the G7’s policy has already enabled fossil fuel majors to begin developing new liquid natural gas (LNG) production capacity in Africa.
Gas expansionism in the Global South
For example, multiple oil and gas companies (mostly from G7 nations) have restarted previously abandoned LNG projects across the continent. The US’s Exxonmobil and Chevron, the UK’s BP and Shell, Italy’s Eni, and France’s TotalEnergies have significant upcoming LNG projects in multiple countries across Africa.
Echoing this, a coalition of environment and corporate accountability groups found that in 2022, oil and gas companies were developing new LNG terminals in the region. The report Who is Financing Fossil Fuel Expansion in Africa revealed that companies had LNG facilities planned with a combined capacity of 90m tonnes per annum (MTPA). Moreover, it identified that 97% of this was being “built for export”, mostly to Europe and Asia.
Notably, multinational oil companies from G7 nations are developing four of the largest new LNG terminals. These new export facilities in Mozambique, Mauritania, Senegal, and Tanzania will generate over half the new gas capacity, with a combined 48.3 MTPA.
Public financing for fossil gas
G7 governments have also provided public finance to at least two of these facilities to date. The joint Exxonmobil and Eni Rovuma LNG terminal in Mozambique is the largest project at 15.2 MTPA. The US Development Finance Corporation has provided $1.5bn of “political risk insurance” to the project.
Meanwhile, the second largest project is French TotalEnergies’ Mozambique LNG, at 13.1 MTPA. Multiple foreign governments have funded the terminal. This includes $11.65bn from four nations in the G7.
Oil Change International found that between 2020 and 2022, the G7 provided fossil fuel projects with international public finance to the tune of $73.5bn. This was over two and a half times the amount they directed towards clean energy.
The largest single sub-sector of this financing was fossil gas. G7 nations funded the development of fossil gas by $10bn a year. That’s 28% of the total for fossil fuels as a whole. Significantly, they financed two thirds of this through LNG projects.
While G7 identified that it had directed 70% of this to wealthier G20 nations, it noted that:
Where G7 public finance for fossil fuels does flow to low-income countries, this often supports exports rather than domestic energy access.
In other words, the G7’s public finance of LNG capacity in places like Africa has historically focused on facilitating resource drain from the Global South to the Global North.
Pollution and soaring energy prices
Executive director of Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED) in the Philippines Gerry Arances said that the G7 fossil gas decision would have huge ramifications for climate-vulnerable communities in the Global South:
They cannot claim to be promoting development while subjecting our people to decades more of pollution and soaring energy prices.
Essentially, public finance to expand LNG will place the heavy pollution costs of oil and gas extraction on Global South communities. Meanwhile, it will do little to help those same communities out of energy poverty.
For example, the offshore oil and gas industry in Mozambique has decimated the northern Cabo Delgado region. The Who is Financing Fossil Fuel Expansion in Africa report stated that in the last decade:
the industry has left thousands of people displaced and without livelihoods, ruined the environment and fueled an ongoing violent conflict that has led to thousands of deaths and turned 800,000 people into refugees
Meanwhile, when European nations began scrambling for gas supply beyond Russia, prices soared. In mid-2022, companies hiked gas prices to 1,900 times the cost of their low in 2020. As a result, companies defaulted on contracts with poor countries in the Global South. Instead, they diverted their LNG cargoes to the wealthier, higher-paying nations. Of course, European G7 nations have been among the countries driving this energy supply injustice.
Moreover, fossil fuel firm Eni from G7 member Italy was one of the companies that failed to uphold its contractual obligation with Pakistan. A Greenpeace report explained how Europe’s gas rush compounded the impacts of the climate crisis there:
This arbitrary behaviour of the global gas companies saw parts of Pakistan experiencing planned blackouts of more than 12 hours, during the heatwave of 2022. In January 2023, a breakdown in the grid triggered yet another outage leaving 220 million people without electricity at the peak of winter. The electricity shortage added to the estimated €37 billion in damage caused by catastrophic flooding in 2022, a budget deficit, and a debt load that is bringing Pakistan to its knees.
Once a coloniser, always a coloniser
None of this should come as any surprise. The G7’s rush to support investments in fossil gas shows how the forum’s priority is and always will be its member nations. For all its rhetoric on achieving “a world that is human-centered, inclusive and resilient, leaving no one behind”, its remit remains one of maintaining global economic and political power.
In 2021, director of Global Justice Now Nick Dearden wrote that the precursor to the G7 was founded in 1975:
to discuss the threat to their control of world energy markets from Middle Eastern suppliers who had turned off the oil taps, and how to deal with their former colonies who were demanding economic liberation from the Western-controlled international economy.
Now, as its current fossil fuel hegemony is under threat, the G7 is using the global financial and trade systems it put in place to subordinate the Global South to its needs once again. This is nothing short of energy colonialism.
Feature image via the White House/Wikimedia, public domain, resized to 1910*1000.
This post was originally published on Canary.
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From 19 to 21 May, the Group of Seven (G7) met in Hiroshima, Japan for its annual summit. There, the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan held talks on global economic, energy, and security policy. Significantly, action to address the climate crisis and the approach to fossil fuels were among the critical topics discussed at the forum.
However, climate justice groups have criticised the outcome of the talks. In particular, they pointed out the hypocrisy of the G7’s intention to maintain the public financing of fossil gas.
Head of global policy strategy at Climate Action Network International Harjeet Singh said that the G7 leaders were “paying lip-service” to their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement. Moreover, he stated that:
continuing to invest in gas shows a bizarre political disconnect from science and a complete disregard of the climate emergency.
‘Shock doctrine’ politics
The G7 has argued that public finance for fossil gas is currently necessary as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war has disrupted major supply pipelines such as Nord Stream 1, which carries gas into Europe.
However, in a 2022 report, Greenpeace suggested that fossil fuel companies were driving this rhetoric. It described fossil fuel companies’ capitalisation on the gas supply crisis as “one of the most blatant examples of ‘shock doctrine’”.
Author Naomi Klein coined this use of the term in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In a 2017 article for the Guardian, she described the concept as:
the brutal tactic of using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock – wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes or natural disasters – to push through radical pro-corporate measures, often called “shock therapy”.
Weaponising disaster
In this instance, Greenpeace highlighted how gas corporations had weaponised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to influence Global North governments’ policy around fossil gas:
gas operators quickly shifted their public messaging and lobbying from “energy transition” to “energy security” and cynically used the opportunity to frighten governments into massive, unneeded investment into and expansion of fossil gas imports and infrastructure.”
The G7 leaders’ latest communique is a case in point of this shock doctrine operating in practice. It stated that the group stresses:
the important role that increased deliveries of LNG [Liquified Natural Gas] can play, and acknowledge that investment in the sector can be appropriate in response to the current crisis and to address potential gas market shortfalls provoked by the crisis.
‘LNG’ refers to fossil gas which has been cooled to liquid form for easier transportation. In short, gas companies and Global North governments are profiting off of this fossil fuel disaster capitalism.
‘Caving in to the gas industry’
Following a previous G7 meeting in June 2022, Oil Change International accused the group of “caving in to the gas industry”. Co-lead of the group’s global public finance campaign Laurie van der Burg said that the G7 had:
prioritized filling the pockets of the fossil gas industry over protecting peoples’ lives.
Little has changed. The G7 remain beholden to the interests of profiteering fossil fuel corporations. Moreover, the seven wealthy nations were more than content to extend their dependence on fossil gas and delay financing a global green transition. The war in Ukraine simply provided an opportune moment to shirk their responsibility to bring an end to the polluting, destructive gas industry.
Part two of this series on the summit will examine how the G7’s profiteering comes at the expense of the Global South.
Feature image via The White House/Wikimedia, public domain, resized to 1910*1000.
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Report implicates Wagner group fighters in Moura atrocity, including the torture and rape of civilians
First came a single helicopter, flying low over the marshes around the river outside the village, then the rattle of automatic fire scattered the crowds gathered for the weekly market.
Next came more helicopters, dropping troops off around the homes and cattle pens. The soldiers moved swiftly, ordering men into the centre of the village, gunning down those trying to escape. When some armed militants fired back, the shooting intensified. Soon at least 20 civilians and a dozen alleged members of an al-Qaida affiliated Islamist group, were dead.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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We speak with Joshua Yaffa, a close friend of Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter who has been jailed in Russia since his arrest last week, when he was accused of trying to obtain state secrets related to the Russian military — days after the United States indicted a Russian man in Brazil on espionage charges. Gershkovich’s parents left the Soviet Union for the United States before…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Finland has joined NATO, but campaigners warn that it will increase tensions internationally. Meanwhile, Turkey is still blocking Swedish membership as supposed allies jostle between themselves.
Helsinki’s shift ended decades of military non-alignment. The move also doubled the length of the US-led alliance’s land border with Russia, and drew an angry warning of “countermeasures” from the Kremlin.
Finland’s foreign minister formally sealed Helsinki’s membership as the Finnish flag was raised outside NATO’s Brussels headquarters.
Dire warnings
Finland has a history of conflict with Russia, whose brutal war in Ukraine helped shift the country towards NATO membership. However, some campaigners warn that membership will increase tensions between the US and Russia.
As a full member, Finland will be subject to NATO’s Article Five. This means that any attack on a member state will be treated as an attack on all member states.
Stop the War Coalition’s Andrew Murray wrote:
NATO’s policy is set by Washington. US power underwrites the alliance’s every move. Ultimately, the US is responsible for the illegal NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999, the disastrous 20-year NATO occupation of Afghanistan and the equally catastrophic NATO attack on Libya in 2011.
While Britain and France played a prominent part in some of these aggressions, they would have been unable to act without US support.
So whether or not NATO membership protects Finland from Russia, the Baltic state’s future is now tied to the whims of the US.
He added:
Finland will now be committed to such policies in future. The list of NATO aggressions should remind us that it is not a defensive alliance, nor does it confine its military operations to the North Atlantic.
Slippery slope
NATO members are continuing to bicker among themselves about who can join. Sweden’s membership is being held back by Turkey and Hungary.
Sweden has upset Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban – one of Putin‘s closest allies in Europe – by expressing alarm over the rule of law in Hungary. It has also angered Turkey by refusing to extradite dozens of suspects that president Recep Tayyip Erdogan links to a failed 2016 coup attempt and the decades-long Kurdish independence struggle. Until these issues are dealt with, petty politicking will likely continue.
Internal friction is one thing. However, it is clear that Finland’s long border with Russia, Baltic location, and substantial military capacity could be a game-changer in Europe. And that’s before we consider Russia’s increased isolation and belligerent statements. If it is stability and security we want to see in Europe, it’s hard to see how NATO can deliver it.
Either way, Finland – and perhaps Sweden down the line – are now integrated into a rapacious US-dominated military alliance whose interests extend far beyond Ukraine.
Additional reporting by Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Levvuori, cropped to 770 x 403.
By Joe Glenton
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French leader sees Beijing as possible ‘gamechanger’ and will also discuss European trade on three-day visit
Emmanuel Macron has arrived in China for a three-day state visit during which he hopes to dissuade Xi Jinping from supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while also developing European trade ties with Beijing.
Shortly after arriving in the Chinese capital, Macron said he wanted to push back against the idea that there was an “inescapable spiral of mounting tensions” between China and the west.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
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Trump should have stuck to just doing legal things like assassinating foreign leaders, deliberately starving civilians, imprisoning journalists, and dropping military explosives on foreign nations.
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If you’re just tuning in, US dollar hegemony and diplomatic dominance are rapidly eroding while the US and its allies accelerate aggressions and provocations against Russia and China simultaneously in a desperate bid to quash the emergence of a multipolar world. I’m a bit less excited about the mounting threats posed to US hegemony than other anti-imperialists, only because a desperate unipolarist empire is a dangerous unipolarist empire. The deadliest time for a battered wife is right when she leaves.
A cornered animal is dangerous, especially when it has sharp teeth. A cornered empire is dangerous, especially when it has nuclear weapons. “If I can’t have you no one can” is a line that can be said to a partner or to a planet.
Abuse victims need to escape, but we may also be heading into the most perilous moment in all of history.
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How is this even debatable? The US Constitution explicitly says in the clearest terms possible that congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, and yet that's literally exactly the thing that congress is trying to do. https://t.co/Zt9DCMmUJF pic.twitter.com/TwFOJ0CpdC
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 29, 2023
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It’s so crazy that the immensely authoritarian RESTRICT Act is getting shoved through on a tidal wave of consent that’s based on literally nothing besides people’s fuzzbrained artificially-manufactured hysteria about China.
Consent for the PATRIOT Act was manufactured by planes crashing into American skyscrapers and killing thousands of people. Consent for the RESTRICT Act was manufactured by a few right wing pundits stoking a dopey moral panic about an app where kids post dancing videos.
It just says so much about the lies the west tells about itself and its values that the second any social media service becomes widely used you see the entire US security state converge upon it and demand control over it.
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The US needs to stop China’s rise by militarily encircling it and crippling nations who are aligned with it and waging economic warfare and staging proxy wars and saturating the world in propaganda and crushing free speech, because otherwise a tyrannical regime might take over.
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Russia, China and Brazil are the only three nations on the UN Security Council who want an independent investigation into the Nord Stream bombing, for some reason. https://t.co/lOOcYL6tnd
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 28, 2023
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In the year 2023 there’s really no excuse for ordinary Americans to believe any politician is on their side in either major party. The very best of them will only once in a while do the bare-minimum not-evil thing. Don’t make heroes of these scumbags. They’re not your friends.
Don’t celebrate on those rare occasions when one of them does the bare-minimum not-evil thing. Don’t “give them credit”. Don’t think it proves anything about who they are as people. All it means is a shitty empire manager did one bare-minimum not-evil thing. They’re still trash. Believing anyone in either mainstream party is your friend is believing that institutions which are explicitly designed to promote the interests of oligarchy and empire are going to help ordinary people like you. It’s like believing you can put out a fire with enough gasoline.
There are no solutions to America’s dysfunction in electoral politics. That doesn’t mean there are no solutions, it just means you can’t use something that’s specifically designed to perpetuate the thing you don’t like to end the thing you don’t like. Any time you’re being told that a major figure in mainstream politics is fighting for you, you’re being sold a psyop; you’re being sold the false belief that the system works and can be used to achieve positive change. This is done to keep you from dispensing with that system.
In 2016 you could be forgiven for thinking electoral politics had some hope, but after watching Trump facilitate every deep state agenda in the book and watching Bernie cave and capitulate at every turn year after year, there’s no excuse anymore. Stop buying into the puppet show.
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Imagine invading a nation on the other side of the planet and establishing an illegal military occupation controlling a third of the nation and then claiming "self defense" when you kill people in that nation who try to make you leave. https://t.co/vEo8BOI31M
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 31, 2023
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Western journalists are some of the most herd-minded, approval-seeking losers you’ll ever meet. Their entire lives revolve around seeking the approval of other journalists, when they should be doing the exact opposite: working to expose journalistic malpractice in the media.
Journalists should have an oppositional relationship with power, and that means all power. Not only should they have an aggressively oppositional relationship with their government and its oligarchs, they should have an oppositional relationship with the mass media itself. They should spurn the approval of other journalists and media institutions; all the best journalists do.
It’s not okay for journalists to let themselves become tools of power. It’s not okay for journalists to be friends with politicians and government officials. It’s not okay for journalists to have tribal loyalty to other journalists or seek to ingratiate themselves to them.
Journalists should have loyalty to the truth and the truth only. Not to the high-level people they schmooze with at the nation’s capital. Not to government officials in the name of maintaining “access”. Not to their government’s geopolitical interests. Not even to each other.
And of course everything I just described is career suicide to anyone who’s looking to make it anywhere in the mass media. If what you want is to have the story of “being a journalist” and all the social clout that comes with it, you’re going to do the exact opposite of what I said. That’s a big part of what makes western journalists such herd-minded, approval-seeking losers; that’s the only type of personality that can make it to any level of prominence in the mass media today. That’s a problem, and if we’re ever going to have a healthy society it’s going to have to change.
The only way to do real critical reporting and still keep your job is to go independent, but that means going without all the resources people have at mainstream news outlets to get their information. Nobody’s found a great solution to this yet, which is perfectly understandable because we live in a sick society where money and power are closely related and it takes money to produce good investigative journalism. So you’ll see things like “independent” media outlets cozying up with plutocrats to pay the bills, and they always run into problems down the track.
Really it’s a bit of a catch-22; we can’t have healthy media until we have a healthy society, and we can’t have a healthy society until we have healthy media. We just muddle through as best we can, telling the truth the entire time, come what may.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.
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The prospect of a nuclear holocaust has always been terrifying. But in the last years of the Cold War and the three decades that followed its end, the existential challenge of nuclear weapons became less of a clear and present danger.
Sure, in the post-1991 era, nuclear war could still happen by mistake. It could break out between two actively hostile nuclear powers like India and Pakistan. It could be triggered by a disgruntled new nuclear club member like North Korea. And, of course, a conflict between the superpowers themselves—United States, China, Russia—could escalate to a nuclear exchange because of miscalculation, misinformation, or simply a few missing synapses in the brains of the leaders.
But what had once been a front-and-center obsession during spikes in Cold War tensions—from backyard bomb shelters to films like The Day After—had become in recent years more like ominous but muted background music. Meanwhile, other existential crises stepped to the fore, like climate change, pandemics, and artificial intelligence run amok. Apocalyptic ends have still loomed large in the public imagination: not so much with a bang any more but a whimper.
Now, after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, nuclear war is once again competing to become the planetary catastrophe de jour. The Russian decision this week to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, possibly bringing them closer to deployment, has analysts in the West second-guessing the Kremlin’s calculations. Would Russian President Vladimir Putin actually go nuclear, either to gain battlefield advantage or to stop a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive from restoring the country’s pre-2014 borders?
This prospect of a nuclear war, however limited, has pushed quite a few peace activists in the West to urge a ceasefire and negotiations at whatever the cost. Policy analysts, too, have warned Ukraine not to overreach, for instance by threatening Russian control of Crimea, out of concern that the conflict could escalate to the nuclear threshold.
The threat of nuclear war should never be treated casually, particularly when such weapons are in the hands of madmen like Nixon, Trump, or Putin. This January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight. It’s never before been so close.
All of this requires a sober assessment of the nuclear risks involved in the Ukraine war and what can be done to minimize them.
The Clock Strikes Almost Midnight
Back in 1991, the Doomsday Clock stood at 17 minutes before midnight. That’s the greatest margin of safety since the clock debuted in 1947. Subsequent U.S. presidents squandered an historic opportunity to rewind the clock even more. Despite the reassurances provided by Barack Obama that he was indeed committed to nuclear disarmament—if not during his presidency then at some undefined time in the future—the clock remained poised several minutes before midnight for most of his tenure in office. When Trump took office, the measurement switched from minutes to seconds. Then this January, the second hand ticked down from 100 seconds to 90.
The Bulletin’s well-reasoned decision to advance the clock places all the blame on Russia. The editorial discusses Russian threats to use nuclear weapons, its violations of international law, its false accusations concerning Ukraine’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased the risk of nuclear weapons use, raised the specter of biological and chemical weapons use, hamstrung the world’s response to climate change, and hampered international efforts to deal with other global concerns,” the editors write.
At the same time, the Bulletin stresses the need for the United States to keep open the option of “principled engagement” with Russia to reduce the risk of nuclear war. There is no recommendation that Ukraine or its supporters pull their punches to reduce this risk. Instead, the editors speak of “forging a just peace.”
Although the Doomsday Clock is a powerful visual suggestion that the threat of nuclear war has increased with the conflict in Ukraine, Western politicians and analysts have downplayed the actual risk of a nuclear attack. Here, for instance, is the assessment of the Institute for the Study of War, which produces an influential daily analysis of the military and political developments in Ukraine:
The announcement of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus is irrelevant to the risk of escalation to nuclear war, which remains extremely low. Putin is attempting to exploit Western fears of nuclear escalation by deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. Russia has long fielded nuclear-capable weapons able to strike any target that tactical nuclear weapons based in Belarus could hit. ISW continues to assess that Putin is a risk-averse actor who repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons without any intention of following through in order to break Western resolve.
It might seem counter-intuitive to argue that Putin is a “risk-averse actor.” Didn’t he invade Ukraine last year without sufficient preparation? Didn’t he put Russia’s economy at risk of serious damage because of the invasion? Hasn’t he cavalierly destroyed several decades of carefully cultivated relations with Europe and the West?
In fact, with the exception of the ill-prepared invasion itself, Putin has been quite careful. He took pains to sanction-proof the Russian economy and replace European oil and gas clients with Asian ones. He hasn’t shifted to a war economy. Nor has he declared an all-out aerial war on all parts of Ukraine (though that’s likely because of Ukraine’s air defenses).
Most importantly, he hasn’t risked direct confrontation with NATO powers. The most logical strategy for Russia at this point is to interdict Western shipments of arms to Ukraine. Back in March 2022, the Russian government warned that it would do so. But it has failed to do so. Partly that’s because Russia lacks capacity and military intel. But it’s also because Putin doesn’t want to draw NATO into the war. It’s been hard enough for Russia to fight against Ukrainian soldiers and a handful of international volunteers. The introduction of NATO battalions would be game over for Russia.
Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons could also draw NATO more directly into the conflict, which no doubt restrains Putin’s hand. The fact that Xi Jinping, on his recent trip to Moscow, explicitly warned Putin not to use nukes only reinforces the prohibition.
Not everyone believes that the risk of nuclear war is “extremely low,” as ISW put it.
Longtime security analyst Carl Conetta agrees that the likelihood of a direct Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine is low. But he identifies other nuclear options for Russia such as
a demonstration blast in remote areas of Russia. Such an action would be intended and likely to have a powerful psychological effect not easily mollified by official US reassurances to NATO allies and other countries. But such a gambit would also involve and/or provoke abruptly heightened levels of strategic force readiness on both sides of today’s strategic divide, and this would be uniquely dangerous.
Conetta also notes that Russia’s nuclear doctrine has shifted over the last year, and the Kremlin may well redefine what constitutes an existential threat to Russia to allow for the use of nuclear weapons. In the end, he concludes that “although the probability of a big power nuclear clash of any magnitude over Ukraine remains low, it would be irrational and irresponsible to act as though we can roll the nuclear dice and never come up ‘snake eyes.’”
Masha Gessen, the prolific critic of Putin, has also sounded a warning about Putin’s willingness to go nuclear. She grounds these fears in an analysis of Putin himself.
He believes that, on the one hand, he is facing down an existential threat to Russia and, on the other, that Western nations don’t have the strength of their convictions to retaliate if it comes to nukes. Any small sign of a crack in the Western consensus—be it French President Emmanuel Macron pressuring Ukraine to enter peace negotiations, or the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy criticizing what he sees as unconditional aid to Ukraine—bolsters Putin’s certainty.
She concludes that only the threat of massive conventional retaliation by NATO and the West stays Putin’s hand. Also note Gessen’s terrible irony: the more that peace activists call for negotiations to reduce the risk of nuclear war, the more Putin will interpret the successful pick-up of that message as a sign that he can use nukes with impunity.
The Politics of Good and Evil
Superpowers that do evil should not be allowed to continue doing so simply because they possess nuclear weapons. Those who have resisted the spread of U.S. empire in Asia, Africa, and Latin America didn’t lay down their arms or stop protests in the streets because of the threat that Washington would use nuclear weapons. They confronted the evil of U.S. occupation and, in many cases, they succeeded.
Oh, but Putin is different, you might say. The Russian leader is making actual nuclear threats. He is promising to move nukes closer to the front (as opposed to the United States, which hasn’t moved its 100 or so tactical nukes from storage facilities in Western Europe). He is a mad man and will stop at nothing to create his “Russian world” out of territory absorbed from countries on Russia’s borders.
But as should be clear from the above, Putin has stopped short at several junctures. He has committed war crimes, to be sure. But so far he has not listened to the right-wing critics at home who urge him to fight a total war in Ukraine. He hasn’t listened to them because the Russian military doesn’t have sufficient capacity and because he fears the consequences of such a dramatic escalation.
It should go without saying that the United States must keep open lines of communication with Moscow and pursue arms control negotiations. The Biden administration should be careful to focus on the importance of defending Ukraine and avoid any statements that call into question the existential status of Russia or Putin’s regime. Direct NATO involvement in the conflict, which could indeed trigger a world war, should be avoided.
So, it’s up to Ukraine—not only to defend itself but to prevent Putin from using nuclear blackmail to achieve his ends. That might also mean, paradoxically, that it will be up to Ukraine to show restraint in defeating Russia to prevent Putin from using actual nukes to forestall his own end. Ukraine thus must fight against two evils simultaneously: the reality of Putin and the possibility of nuclear war.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday claimed without evidence that his government needs to “safeguard” the Eastern European country from a looming Western invasion, saying he is seeking to station intercontinental nuclear missiles there to defend Belarus against the United States and other countries in the West.
In an hourslong speech to Parliament on the state of the nation, Lukashenko, who has been in office since 1994 and whose 2020 reelection was disputed by hundreds of thousands of Belarusians, said the West is planning to take over both Belarus and its neighboring Poland.
“Take my word for it, I have never deceived you,” said Lukashenko. “They are preparing to invade Belarus, to destroy our country.”
For this reason, he said, he may use so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons that Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week the Kremlin would deploy in Belarus, if Putin agrees to their use. In addition, Lukashenko said he would seek intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of destroying whole cities from thousands of miles away, on Belarusian soil.
“Putin and I will decide and introduce here, if necessary, strategic weapons, and they must understand this, the scoundrels abroad, who today are trying to blow us up from inside and outside,” Lukashenko told lawmakers and his constituents. “We will stop at nothing to protect our countries, our state, and their peoples. “We will protect our sovereignty and independence by any means necessary, including through the nuclear arsenal.”
“Don’t say we will just be looking after them, and these are not our weapons,” he added. “These are our weapons and they will contribute to ensuring sovereignty and independence.”
Putin said Saturday that the short-range nuclear weapons he plans to station in Belarus will remain under Russian control.
Belarus relinquished its nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Lukashenko noted in his speech that Belarus gave up the weapons under pressure from former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Russia’s announcement last week that it would deploy weapons in Belarus would mark the country’s first stationing of nuclear weapons outside its border in more than three decades.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the pending deployment is “worrisome.”
“Belarus hosting Russian nuclear weapons would mean an irresponsible escalation and threat to European security,” said European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell this week. “Belarus can still stop it, it is their choice. The E.U. stands ready to respond with further sanctions.”
Lukashenko and Putin have strengthened their cooperation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Belarus providing a staging ground for Russian troops.
The Belarusian leader’s comments came amid ongoing attacks in Ukraine, with multiple rocket strikes in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, the site of a nuclear power plant, on Friday. Lukashenko included in his speech a call for an immediate ceasefire “without preconditions,” warning Ukraine that “it is impossible to defeat a nuclear power” and that Russia will use “the most terrible weapon” if it is threatened.
Thijs Reuten, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, denounced Lukashenko as Putin’s “lapdog” and condemned his attempt to “blame the West.”
\u201cAfter Putin\u2019s empty nuclear blackmail we get his lapdog Lukashenka blaming the West.\n\nUkrainians \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 don\u2019t give in. Neither should we. \n\nTruly troubling: Each of these steps brings Belarus closer to full-blown occupation. The Belarusian people deserve so much better. \u26aa\ud83d\udd34\u26aa\u201d— Thijs Reuten \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udf39 (@Thijs Reuten \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udf39) 1680273101“Truly troubling: Each of these steps brings Belarus closer to full-blown occupation,” said Reuten. “The Belarusian people deserve so much better.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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