Tag Archive for: Russia

Norway is a Ukraine War profiteer

When Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine in February 2022, he surely did not expect that one of Russia’s neighbors would be the main beneficiary of his war. Yet as Russian hydrocarbon exports to Europe cratered in the wake of the invasion, Norway emerged as the continent’s largest supplier.

Owing to the steep increase in gas and oil prices that followed the outbreak of the war, Norway ultimately enjoyed a massive financial windfall. In 2022 and 2023, it reaped nearly 1.3 trillion kroner ($111 billion) in additional revenue from gas exports, according to recent estimates from the finance ministry.

Why, then, has Norway allocated only a little more than $3.1 billion for support to Ukraine in its 2025 budget? Combined with what it contributed in 2024, Norway’s support for Ukraine amounts to less than 5 percent of its two-year war windfall. For comparison, Germany, Europe’s largest single contributor, provided $16.3 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian support for Ukraine from January 2022 until the end of October 2024, and the United States has contributed $92 billion. But while Norway’s two-year windfall is larger than the US and German contributions combined, Norway’s support for Ukraine as a share of GDP, at 0.7 percent, ranks only ninth in Europe, far behind Denmark (2 percent) and Estonia (2.2 percent).

Not only does Norway have the capacity to be making far more of a difference to the outcome of the war and the subsequent civilian reconstruction; it has an obvious moral obligation to do so. Given that its excess revenues are a direct consequence of Russia’s war, surely a greater share of them should go to those fighting and dying on the front lines to keep their country free.

Instead, Norway’s government has effectively decided to be a war profiteer, clinging greedily to its lucky gains. To their credit, opposition parties have proposed higher levels of support for Ukraine, ultimately pushing up the sum that the government initially proposed. No party, however, has come anywhere close to suggesting a transfer of the total war windfall to Ukraine.

The Norwegian government’s position is puzzling, given that Norway shares a border with Russia and has long relied on its allies’ support for its defense. Its own national security would be jeopardised if Russia wins the war or is militarily emboldened by a peace agreement skewed in its favor.

Moreover, it is not as though Norway would be immiserated by transferring its war windfall to Ukraine. This windfall represents about 6 percent of its sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, with assets valued at $1.7 trillion—or $308,000 for every Norwegian.

True, Norway channels all government revenue from oil and gas production to its sovereign wealth fund, and no more than 3 percent of the value of the fund can be drawn down and transferred to the government budget each year. This rule helps limit the effects on inflation and the exchange rate, and ensures that the fund exists in perpetuity.

But as a macroeconomic and national savings instrument, the drawdown rule was not designed with wartime demands in mind. It therefore should not be seen as an obstacle for a larger transfer to Ukraine. Since such a transfer would not enter the Norwegian economy, it would have no domestic inflationary or other macroeconomic implications. (With the 2025 budget largely set, it would need to be an extrabudgetary measure justified by the wartime circumstances.)

This is not the first time that Norway’s hoarding of its war windfall has been an issue. But it is the first time that we have been given an official estimate of the windfall’s value. The finance ministry has assigned a number to natural-gas export revenues in excess of what they would have been had gas prices remained around their five-year pre-invasion average. Although such counterfactuals will always be subject to uncertainty and debate, the official estimate is the closest we will get to a value for Norway’s war windfall. In fact, the actual number is probably much higher, as the estimate does not include excess revenues resulting from higher oil prices following the invasion.

With Europeans wringing their hands about the implications of Donald Trump’s return to power, Norway’s government and parliament should transfer the windfall to Ukraine in the form of military and financial support. Norway has a powerful national-security interest in doing the right thing.

After a rocky year in Northeast Asia, prepare for another

2024 proved to be an unexpectedly dynamic year for Northeast Asia, and we must be ready for an equally unsteady 2025. Changes in political leadership, evolving ententes and uncertain policy trajectories may all contribute to confrontation, or they could open policy windows to de-escalation and cooperation. Both risk and opportunity await in the new year, and it will be up to policymakers to recognise them and take deliberate steps towards desired outcomes.

To prepare for the new year, it is essential to set the scene for the current political-military situation among the major Northeast Asian players: Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan. This builds a foundation for tackling the regional issues that await.

Immediate attention will fall to Russia, whose war of aggression against Ukraine has gained from participation by North Korean soldiers. Although both Pyongyang and the Kremlin disavow formal North Korean involvement, its personnel and materiel support reflects deepening ties, that were formalised in what they called the ‘Treaty of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ signed during Vladimir Putin’s visit to the North Korean capital in June. An outstanding question heading into the new year is what North Korean soldiers will be bringing back from the Ukrainian front lines, be it tactics, techniques, and procedures; Russian equipment and technology; or all of the above.

Another lingering question is how deepening Russo-North Korean ties will affect each country’s relationship with China. North Korea has demonstrated its capacity for deftly playing the Kremlin and Beijing off one another, and while China still maintains substantial economic leverage over the North Koreans, financial and resource support from Russia shifts the power dynamics.

China has also expanded outreach and contact with other governments since the last meeting of the National People’s Congress in March, including resumption of the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement mechanism meetings with the United States, a trilateral summit with South Korea and Japan in Busan, and a stated ‘turnaround’ in relations with Australia in 2024. While Russia seems unfazed by this outreach, its impact on Sino-North Korean relations bears observation.

Meanwhile, North Korea began the year with its most important policy declaration since its announcement in 1993 that it was withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The government said in January that it was abandoning its decades-old unification policy with South Korea and, for the first time in its history, would recognise two sovereign states on the Korean peninsula. Steps to implement this policy soon followed, including dismantlement of inter-Korean related organisations and infrastructure. It also made substantial efforts to harden the boundary between the two Koreas with fences, walls and landmines.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula were low throughout 2024. While Pyongyang employed tactics such as propaganda broadcasting and delivering trash into South Korea with balloons, it took measures to mitigate risk of runaway escalation. This was evident in early October when North Korea notified the US-led United Nations Command before dismantling roads and railways in the northern half of the demilitarised zone, as well as by its muted response to South Korea’s unexpected political turmoil in December. The forthcoming end-of-year Workers’ Party of Korea meeting will offer insight into its policy priorities for 2025, including possible signals to foreign governments—particularly the incoming US administration. Given its policy trajectory since abandoning unification with the South, North Korea may seek to normalise its status as a separate sovereign state in the coming year.

Elsewhere on the Korean peninsula, South Korea will enter 2025 in political disarray. Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived declaration of martial law led to his swift impeachment. While this demonstrated the strength of South Korea’s democratic institutions, the saga is not yet over. There is still a constitutional process to determine Yoon’s fate, which could take up to six months, including for deliberations in the country’s constitutional court. If it confirms Yoon’s removal, final resolution of the crisis with a general election may take a further two months.

While the exact date is unknown, observers should expect a new presidential administration in South Korea in 2025. Assuming the transition happens, a shift in power from the country’s conservatives to its progressives will be all but certain. As it stands, the current conservative platform, which champions South Korea’s role as a ‘global pivotal state’ and embraces multilateral security ties, will likely give way to a platform that returns the government’s focus to rekindling engagement with North Korea. While those two lines of effort are not mutually exclusive, past progressive administrations in South Korea have treated them as such, leading many observers to wonder what may come of the country’s outreach to NATO, its increased joint training with foreign partners such as Australia, and its improving relations with Japan.

In Japan, meanwhile, the Liberal Democratic Party will enter the new year as a minority government for the first time in decades. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru won his spot atop the government by a narrow margin in a surprise victory over intraparty opponents, further complicating the political landscape. Ishiba’s administration must navigate fraught political waters when attempting to pass legislation in the parliament, and the prime minister must do the same to build consensus within his own party.

Political discord and uncertainty tend to reinforce Japan’s foreign and security policy trajectory. In other words, formulation and implementation of those policies falls back to the historically strong bureaucracy that continues to move forward under the standing legislation and guidance. While this offers some stability, it presents challenges for championing new initiatives or adjusting to rapidly evolving situations. This may make it difficult for the Japanese government to respond to the changes that come with new US and South Korean presidential administrations or to any sudden shifts in Russian, Chinese or North Korean behaviour.

These conditions demand an agile approach to security decision-making in 2025. A new trilateral alliance forming between Russia, China and North Korea is not a foregone conclusion. Once-in-a-generation political conditions in South Korea and Japan should be given particular consideration by states looking to engage and respond to security issues. Those hoping for success must be ready to anticipate, assess and adjust to tackle the challenges that await in the new year.

How Assad’s fall hurts Russia and Iran

It’s access to Syrian territory that Russia and Iran will miss most after the fall of their friend Bashar al-Assad, the president ousted on Sunday by rebels whom both of those outside powers had fought against.

Russia may lose use of an air base in Syria and, most importantly, a naval base there, limiting its ability to project force in the Middle East and Africa. Iran meanwhile has presumably lost an important ally as Israel increases the pressure on Hezbollah and other Iran-linked forces across the Middle East.

These losses will constrain Russian and Iranian ambitions beyond Syria.

On Sunday, as rebels took control in Damascus, Russian news agencies cited a Kremlin source as saying a deal guaranteeing the ‘safety’ of the bases had been agreed. It’s unclear whether that means they have any future in Russian hands.

The naval base is at Tartus on the Syrian coast near Lebanon. It’s Russia’s only warm-weather port, inherited from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union used the base from 1971 for force projection at the height of the Cold War—notably, during the nuclear weapons scare of the Yom Kippur War.

More recently, Tartus has been instrumental in Russia’s naval operations, used for intervention in the Syrian civil war, for force projection into Africa and for sanctions evasion. Russia easily resupplied the private military company Wagner Group (now called Africa Corps) through Tartus.

Still supported through the base, the mercenary organisation helps prop up juntas in Africa and siphon resources for the Kremlin. Without the naval base in Tartus, supporting mercenaries in Africa would become increasingly hard and expensive.

The diplomatic prestige of Russian ships operating in the Mediterranean also depends on use of Tartus.

Turkey has closed the Bosphorus to naval warships and seldom allows Russian military aircraft across its airspace. Russia’s major ports outside the Black Sea are Vladivostok on the Pacific and Kaliningrad on the Baltic. Putin reportedly has plans for a new naval base in Libya, so Russia may shift its focus to interference in that country.

In 2020, Yuri Borisov, Russia’s deputy prime minister said the Kremlin would invest $500 million in grain facilities at the port. Assad’s fall will now make it harder to Russia to export grain to African junta allies.

The Hmeimim air base, 50 km up the coast from Tartus, was another asset of force projection for Moscow. Hmeimim is a large airfield that can support operations by heavy military cargo planes, such as the IL-76.

Assad’s major counteroffensives began thanks in part to availability of air power at Hmeimim, from which  the Russian air force pounded Assad’s enemies with Su-35, Su-25 and Su-24 aircraft.

Helpfully for Russia, it had access to the air base free of charge.

Loss of the bases would at least temporarily end half a century of Russian military presence in the Middle East.

The fall of Assad is a blow to Iran’s attempts at promoting Shiite theocracy in Sunni-majority Syria. During the Iranian intervention, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps sent Shiite militiamen from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon to Syria to supplement Assad’s war-battered forces. The Revolutionary Guards encouraged them and their families to settle in Syria.

Also, militias affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards mustered near the Israeli border.

Loss of Assad also means loss of land supply to Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon. Iran could formerly send weapons, ammunition and other supplies across Iraq and then Syria by truck. That was already risky, having been at times noticed and bombed by Israeli intelligence. But it’s presumably impossible now that Syria is not controlled by Iran-friendly forces.

Hezbollah, already battered by escalated fighting with Israel from September to November, is thus weakened and, with it, so is Iran’s influence in Lebanon.

Hezbollah will now come under more pressure to disarm by the Lebanese army, which will have the backing of the United States, France, and the United Nations.

From the bookshelf: ‘Great Game On’

Over the past decade, a major power shift has been taking place as China has advanced in displacing Russia as the dominant power in Central Asia, according to Geoff Raby in his new book, Great Game On: The contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy. And this power shift has only accelerated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as Russia has been depleted militarily and lost prestige and influence.

Raby is a well-known former Australian ambassador to China. His previous book, China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order, focused on another power shift, involving China’s rise, the emergence of a multipolar world order and the passing of America’s post-Cold War ‘unipolar moment’.

According to Raby, it used to be said that China and Russia had a division of labour among the five stans of Central Asia, namely Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Russia provided military assistance and security, while China’s role was economic. But the rise in China’s power has brought it much closer to these countries.

It is significant that China’s Belt and Road Initiative was launched in Astana, Kazakhstan in 2013. The initiative has played an important role in elevating China’s power and influence in Central Asia. China has become the region’s biggest source of infrastructure construction and is the biggest creditor of the region. In 2023 Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted the inaugural China-Central Asia Summit in Xi’an, a historic Chinese city. The heads of state of the five stans attended, but Russia was not invited.

Raby sees in China’s emergence as the preeminent power in Central Asia an uncanny historical analogy with the US. By the end of the 19th century, the US had consolidated its territory and secured its borders, and by the early years of the 20th century had established hegemony over the Western hemisphere. It was then free to project power globally, which it did. China’s historic security concern has been its western, inland frontiers. By becoming the dominant power in Central Asia, it is similarly freer to project power globally.

Raby has severe doubts about the ‘friendship without limits’ announced by Xi and President Vladimir Putin on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022. Cooperation between China and Russia may have expanded greatly in response to Western sanctions. They are also drawn together by their shared sour attitude towards the US-led world order, which they see as an existential threat to their authoritarian rule. And the two leaders appear to have a genuine affection for each other, having met 43 times since 2012.

But there is no evidence that Putin warned Xi of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, the Chinese government found it had to evacuate 6000 Chinese students in Ukraine. And the timing of the invasion made China look complicit in the violation of one of the most fundamental principles of international law and the cornerstone of China’s foreign policy, namely the sanctity of international borders.

Raby argues that China and Russia’s newly minted friendship without limits has feet of clay. The expression ‘friendship without limits’ disappeared from Chinese official media or propaganda almost as soon as it was uttered. Raby believes that the relationship will likely be judged by history as a ‘concert of convenience’, though for the moment it is one of the most consequential of our times.

Fundamentally, the relationship between China and Russia is riddled with mistrust and grievances, according to Raby. For example, during a period of weakness in the 19th century, China was forced to cede vast territories to Russia in unequal treaties, something that is not forgotten. Moscow supported Delhi in its 1962 war with Beijing. Today, Russia’s elite feels uncomfortable at their country being China’s junior partner and would certainly be displeased with China’s moves in Central Asia. And Putin is now strengthening relations with India, North Korea and Vietnam to remind China that Russia has other options.

Raby is dismissive of concerns among the commentariat that an axis of authoritarians or an alliance of autocrats is challenging the West (‘Chussia Anxiety’). Rather, he sees the world bifurcating into two ‘bounded orders’, one led by the US-led West and the other by China. He proposes a ‘reverse Kissinger’ whereby the West would join forces with Russia to balance China, despite Russia’s horrific behaviour in Ukraine—though this may have to await the passing of Xi and Putin and will require Europe playing a strong role in ‘Europeanising’ Russia.

Raby’s new book is of particular interest as he challenges much conventional wisdom and offers realistic perspectives on very complex issues—even if there are questions about some of his speculative analysis and prognostications.

War and appeasement: why a deal with Putin will backfire

US president-elect Donald Trump’s boast that he will quickly negotiate a deal with Vladimir Putin about Russia’s war with Ukraine is likely to fail. This will be the case even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed last month that the war ‘will end sooner’ under Trump.

The question is: in whose favour will it end?

My central concern here is that all this is occurring as the military outlook for Ukraine is grim. How long Ukraine can keep going militarily is uncertain and Kyiv may be unable to resist a demand for a Trump deal. This uncertainty is made worse by nobody knowing what Trump will actually do.

Trump grievously underrates Putin’s determination to win his war at all costs. And Putin will not allow peace talks to get in the way of eliminating Ukraine as a nation-state. He continues to assert that there is no such country as Ukraine. He also makes it brutally clear that Ukraine can never be allowed to be a member of NATO.

Last month, in reaction to the United States allowing Ukraine to use longer-range missiles (such as the 300km-range Army Tactical Missile System) to strike deeper into Russia, Putin has promised ‘an appropriate and palpable response’. But this is not the first time Putin has promised, in effect, a nuclear response.

As NATO’s former secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has noted, if Putin wants to escalate with the use of weapons of mass destruction, he can create all the excuses he needs but ‘so far, we have called his bluff’. And the Pentagon has just announced there are no increased signs of a higher level of Russian nuclear alert.

There are, however, different opinions on this contingency. Kim Darroch, Britain’s former national security adviser, warned that allowing Britain’s long-range Storm Shadow missiles to be fired by Ukraine into Russia ‘risks a major escalation of the conflict’.

So, after almost three years of war, Putin’s views are in fact even more—not less—expansive. According to Anne Applebaum, a leading Russia expert, Putin is fighting not only to destroy Ukraine as a nation but he also wants to show that America, NATO and the West are weak and indecisive, regardless of who is the US president.

Putin believes he and his ‘closest friend’, Chinese President Xi Jinping, are the world’s leading authoritarian powers, increasingly powerful militarily and attractive not only to North Korea and Iran but also to many of the so-called global south countries.

More than 70 percent of Russians now are apparently of the view that the West, led by NATO and the US, is seeking to fundamentally destroy Russia. A large majority of Russians allegedly now see the West as an existential threat to the Russian motherland. So, Putin is about winning much more than a war with Ukraine.

Then there is the question of Putin’s personality. Unlike Trump, Putin has been Russia’s dominant authoritarian leader for practically a quarter of a century now. And there is no sign—at least foreseeable—of any credible opposition to him. He recently has implied that China and Russia have created a new geopolitical concept for world order that is stronger than a confused and inward-looking US.

As a former KGB officer, Putin was trained to believe the ‘correlation of world forces’ is logically moving towards Russia’s national interests because of the collective weakness of the West.

According to Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, ‘The sad truth is that the fight against the West has become the organising principle of Putin’s regime and has created too many beneficiaries to be abandoned any time soon. Trump or no Trump, Russia’s foreign policy will be guided by anti-Americanism for at least as long as Putin is in the Kremlin.’

Gabuev goes on to argue that mistrust between Russia and the West will outlast the Trump era. He also argues that while the Kremlin remains guarded in its official expectations of the new US administration, the hope in Moscow is that Trump’s presidency will be ‘a gift that keeps on giving’.

This is because Trump has pledged to end the war in Ukraine quickly and the main fear in Western capitals is that he will drastically reduce military support for an embattled Ukraine—greatly to Russia’s advantage.

But Trump’s anxiety to reach some form of a deal on Ukraine next year will not eliminate the root causes of the Kremlin’s confrontation with the West.

Rather, it will only confirm in Putin’s mind the lurch of the US to be inward-looking with Trump’s preoccupation to ‘make America great again’.

This brings us to what form such a Trump deal might involve. Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, appears to be toying with the idea of an exchange of Ukrainian territory for a ceasefire. This might involve acknowledging Russia’s current occupation of 18 percent of the territory of Ukraine—which includes not only Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk but also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—in exchange for a ceasefire that will be internationally supervised. By whom? Presumably, Putin will categorically reject the presence of any NATO troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine.

In my view, such a ceasefire and territorial settlement would leave Putin with the freedom to rearm the Russian military with a view to a massive attack when he is ready, which might be aimed at occupying the entire eastern half of Ukraine along the Dnipro River from Kyiv to Odesa.

But as Gabuev’s colleague Tatiana Stanovaya observes, no Western leader—including Trump—has a plan for ending the war that would be remotely acceptable to Putin. She says none of the mooted solutions comes close to meeting Russian demands for a pro-Russian government in Kyiv and a NATO that will never admit Ukraine to its membership. There are also many in Moscow who argue that Russia should not squander its current battlefield advantage for the empty promise of talks with Washington.

There are other options being toyed with in Europe. For example, there is the model of West and East Germany after World War II. The latter was a Soviet-occupied puppet regime called the German Democratic Republic, which few countries in Western Europe recognised. It existed cheek by jowl with an independent Federal Republic of Germany, which—unlike the GDR—was internationally recognised and was a key member of NATO. That model existed for more than 40 years until the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The problem with extrapolating that model to today’s Europe is that at that time the US continued to support NATO through its large Cold War military presence in West Germany for more than a half-century and the US was also undoubtedly the strongest military power in the world. Arguably, neither of these facts exist right now.

Now we face a situation with an America that is decidedly turning inwards in focus. As Charles Kupchan (who was special assistant to the US president on the National Security Council from 2014 to 2017) argues in his book Isolationism: A history of America’s efforts to shield itself from the world, the central question is not whether the US retrenches but whether it does so by design or by default. He considers that the likelier outcome is retrenchment by default—an unplanned and perilous American retreat from global affairs.

In other words, a disruptive inward turn is now a real possibility for today’s America—more so than when Kupchan’s book was written four years ago. Trump’s clarion call of making America great again may mark ‘an unplanned and perilous American retreat from global affairs’. And there can be little doubt that Putin is about to test Trump’s mettle in this regard over Ukraine.

After congratulating Trump on his election, Putin implied he would have discussions only if the US initiated talks (he will not talk directly with Zelensky), dropped its economic sanctions and refused to offer any further support for Ukraine. In other words, Putin demands a Russian victory and the complete and utter destruction of Ukraine as a separate country.

And let’s not pretend that Putin’s ambition to restore Russia’s past empire in the ‘near abroad’—especially the Baltic countries and Poland—would be satiated if he wins in Ukraine. Far from it: this war in Ukraine is not just some distant territorial dispute, as some members of Trump’s inner circle assert. If things go horribly wrong in Ukraine, we could see a wider war in Europe.

Trump’s idea of negotiating a swift end to the war is unrealistic while Ukraine is fighting an outright invasion for its existence, not just a territorial dispute. Stopping the war now on Moscow’s terms will only further encourage Putin’s highly dangerous adventurism.

Putin’s march of folly

In a lengthy address at the annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to outline his view of the world. Rambling on about a global ‘minority’ that is stymying the ambitions of the ‘majority’, he would have us believe that Russia belongs to the latter. Yet when Russia attempted to derail the final communique at the United Nations Summit of the Future this fall, countries from across the Global South firmly rebuffed the attempt.

Throughout his Valdai appearance, Putin struggled to hide the fact that what he really cares about is avoiding a ‘strategic defeat’ in Ukraine. In fact, Russia has already suffered a strategic defeat, inflicted not by the West or even by Ukraine, but by Putin himself. For the past two decades, his own myopic, destructive policies have forced Ukraine to turn toward the West for support and solidarity.

One of Putin’s first blunders came after Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election, when his ham-fisted attempt to choose the winner ended up provoking the Orange Revolution, which swept the moderate former central banker Viktor Yushchenko into the Ukrainian presidency. Putin has been trying to exert influence over the country ever since.

But the pattern is clear: time after time, the Kremlin’s heavy-handed efforts have backfired, leaving Ukrainians even more determined to align themselves with the West. Contrary to what some Western commentators and Kremlin propagandists claim, this was never a case of the West expanding eastward as part of some malevolent plot. It was the Ukrainians who were making the strategic moves, which reflected Putin’s efforts to curtail their sovereignty.

In 2008, proposals to extend NATO membership to Ukraine clearly lacked the necessary support, as both France and Germany opposed the idea at the time. Ukraine took the hint and in 2010 reaffirmed its neutral status as a means of keeping Putin at bay.

But the situation changed again in 2013, after Putin pressured Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to reject an Association Agreement with the European Union. Closer trade ties with Europe would have boosted Ukraine’s economy and curtailed corruption by requiring it to adapt EU legal norms; but Yanukovych, in exchange for a $15 billion bailout by Russia and lower gas prices, acquiesced to Putin’s demands and abandoned the agreement. In response, Ukrainians took to the streets in what would become the Euromaidan uprising, and Yanukovych soon fled for Russia in the dead of night.

Putin’s response made his intentions all too clear. He deployed Russian special forces—‘little green men’ whose uniforms bore no identifying insignias—in Crimea, a part of Ukraine since 1954, and then illegally annexed it. Left with no other choice, Ukraine responded by ditching neutrality, seeking NATO membership and moving forward with the EU agreement. Moreover, NATO—itself feeling threatened by Putin’s brazen land grab—stationed forces in its Eastern European member states for the first time.

These were perfectly understandable responses to Putin’s acts of aggression. Again, the West was not trying to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia; Putin was doing it to himself. By the early 2020s, with Ukraine moving even closer toward the West, he recognized the grim consequences of his blunders and decided to put an end to the issue. His goal in launching a full-scale invasion was either to transform Ukraine into a Belarus-like satrapy or eliminate it as a nation-state altogether.

It soon became obvious that Putin had miscalculated yet again. He believed that a quick special operation would be enough to topple Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration and install a Kremlin-friendly regime in Kyiv. Instead, his forces encountered a determined nation that they were not prepared to fight. Almost three years later, Russia controls only around 10 percent more of Ukraine’s territory than it had in 2014, when it grabbed 7 percent. It is a pathetic result, especially considering that the occupied areas have largely been destroyed, with probably only half of their pre-2014 population remaining.

Putin’s aim is still to take full control of Ukraine and recreate Imperial Russia. But this effort will fail. Although Bolshevik forces re-established control of Ukraine after the Russian civil war in the early 1920s, even Vladimir Lenin understood that Ukraine is and must remain a separate political entity. And while Putin has rejected Lenin’s belief as a grave error, it was Joseph Stalin who made Ukraine a separate member of the United Nations.

With Putin continuing his war of aggression, the casualties will keep mounting (probably to around ten thousand per week). But the only certain outcome of his misadventure will be the hatred that Ukrainians now bear toward Russia. This will have long-lasting consequences, and it already represents a major strategic defeat for Russia. Responsibility for the situation starts and ends with Putin. The West could never have achieved what Putin has: Ukraine’s total alienation from Russia.

From the bookshelf: ‘Who Will Defend Europe?’

Despite frequent US calls for NATO to lift defence spending, most of its European members kept pocketing a peace dividend in recent years by running down their armed forces and defence industries. They imagined that war would never return to Europe and that in any event they could rely on the US to defend them.

Both assumptions were illusory, as Keir Giles argues in a new book, Who Will Defend Europe? Giles is a senior fellow at Chatham House and director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre. He has been an active and prescient analyst of Russia, especially since the invasion of Ukraine, notably in his books Moscow Rules and Russia’s War on Everybody.

As Giles notes, many commentators argue that Russia can no longer be considered a major security threat. It has not been able to achieve its ambitious goal of conquering Ukraine despite its size advantage and has lost enormous numbers of troops and military equipment.

But this viewpoint is shortsighted, writes Giles. Russia has built back its land forces, offsetting losses. The rest of Russia’s military—its air force, navy and nuclear forces—is relatively unscathed. When hostilities come to a halt, Russia will be able to quickly rebuild its military for more adventurism. Indeed, according to off-the-record interviews with European defence and intelligence chiefs that Giles conducted, Russia will be preparing for its next attack on a European NATO member country in the coming few years.

The enormous challenge of countering Russia beyond the traditional battlefield was also highlighted by British MI5 Director General Ken McCallum in a recent speech, when he said: ‘While the Russian military grinds away on the battlefield, at horrendous human cost, we’re also seeing Putin’s henchmen seeking to strike elsewhere, in the misguided hope of weakening Western resolve.’ He said Russia ‘is on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more.’

Writing before the 5 November presidential election, Giles says that, regardless of the results, the US will likely be less committed to defending NATO’s European members. Through the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, it is apparent that the US is more committed to defending Israel than Ukraine, with fewer restrictions being placed on Israel’s use of American military equipment. US military leaders in the Indo-Pacific are also competing with NATO for resources as they consider the possibility of a conflict with China in 2027, widely deemed to be a greater priority than Europe.

Ukraine is a shield holding back Russian aggression from Europe, writes Giles, but European reactions are quite diverse. Frontline states such as Poland and Finland are taking the Russian challenge seriously and ramping up defence expenditure. Germany has announced a major increase in defence spending, but it will take a long time for this to translate into improved capabilities. Moreover, while most European NATO countries are now aiming to achieve the organisation’s defence spending target of 2 percent of GDP, it seems that much higher contributions will be necessary.

Giles is rather despondent about the state of the military in Britain, his home country, where it seems to be in a shambles. While the new Labour government’s strategic defence review is welcome, conducting it postpones the timing of reform of the military by one year, and the government has announced that it will not be increasing defence spending.

Another area of concern is Giles’ perception that, because of their soft and comfortable lifestyle, Britons may not come together to defend its nation and values, as it did during World War II. While the same concern would apply to some other European countries, the need to defend your country and values is a relatively easy sell in Sweden, Finland and Poland.

Giles also laments the reluctance of some leaders to speak openly about the gravity of Europe’s security situation. Most European economic and political systems have not woken up to the threat, or if they have, they are not doing anything about it. European populations are mostly unaware of threats to their countries’ security.

Overall, Who Will Defend Europe? is a well-written book, offering detailed insights and perspectives on the gravity of Europe’s security situation, which will have spillover effects worldwide.

To get the Global South on board with sanctions, understand its priorities

As Western policymakers seek to implement financial and trade sanctions on Russia, one thing is clear: engaging with the Global South is essential.

Without fostering dialogue and building trust through consistent engagement, sanctions become less effective. As things stand, many Global South countries are just not complying.

The reasons for non-compliance are complex. They include longstanding historic relationships, maintaining strategic autonomy, domestic challenges from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change, and economic disruption from the Russia-Ukraine war. These priorities can outweigh concerns about secondary sanctions applied on non-compliers. Yet, they remain poorly understood by Western policymakers, and consequently unaddressed.

As a result, growing ties between Russia and the Global South and their effect on Western sanctions remain overlooked.

Russia has recognised this divergence between the West and the Global South and is attempting to exploit it. It is expanding economic and diplomatic relations with the Global South and working to mitigate effects of Western sanctions. Russia has adopted this strategy before, following the annexation in Crimea.

In Africa, for example, it is exploiting rising economic opportunities and anti-Western sentiment to expand its influence, in part with arms exports. In 2019 to 2023, Russia was the largest arms exporter to sub-Saharan Africa. Its partnerships in the region also extend to energy exports, help with regime security in return for natural resources, and cooperation in information security and fighting terrorism.

Russia encourages Global South countries to use currencies other than the US dollar in oil transactions, so they can to some extent insulate themselves from secondary sanctions. Recent examples include the use of the UAE dirham and the Russian rouble for sales of Russian oil to India and China, respectively. Furthermore, discussions in the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, also reignited debates on alternatives to dollar-dominated oil payments. Among them was creating cross-border payment systems to promote local-currency financial transactions between BRICS.

Moreover, Russia is deepening ties with other sanctioned states, such as North Korea and Iran. Imposition of sweeping restrictions on Russia has led it to seek alternatives for supporting its military-industry complex. It has acquired military equipment from North Korea and one-way attack drones from Iran, and supplied oil to North Korea in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Russia’s growing relationship with North Korea is a particular worry for the world, but not a prominent one for the Global South. Yet some Global South countries risk hosting activities from financial transactions or even supplying dual-use materials that Russia could trade with North Korea.

This is where Western policymakers can intervene. Developing countries would not want to violate UN Security Council sanctions and facilitate the development of weapons of mass destruction. The West can help with capacity-building programmes to strengthen public and private capacity in adhering to international obligations and disrupting evasion.

The West still has strong diplomatic ties with the Global South, providing an opportunity to initiate dialogue and establish a shared understanding of issues. Multilateral platforms such as the G20 serve as forums for promoting collaboration, where the Global South actively participates.

The West should also consider Russia’s limitations in boosting its relations with the Global South. Its ability to maintain long-term support in Africa is debatable. Low attendance at the Russia-Africa summit held in St Petersburg in 2023 suggests its influence has no deep roots. The West cannot take this for granted, however. It must work to displace Russian influence, and in doing so needs to understand and respond to African countries’ priorities.

Finally, the West must focus on bolstering the confidence of Russia’s trading partners to resist de-dollarisation. This could include providing assessment reports and briefing policymakers and business stakeholders of the Global South on the political compromises and economic risks associated with decoupling from the US dollar.

How and why Russia is conducting sabotage and hybrid-war offensive

Across Europe, we’re seeing more confirmed or suspected instances of Russian sabotage. It is part of a broader hybrid war campaign against NATO countries, aimed at eroding support for Ukraine and damaging Western cohesion.

In the US, Russia is refraining from sabotage, but it’s working hard on disinformation.

The head of MI5 warned in October that agents of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, had conducted arson attacks, sabotage and other dangerous actions ‘with increasing recklessness’. His MI6 counterpart said Russian intelligence services had gone ‘a bit feral’.

The chiefs of Germany’s three intelligence branches echoed these concerns, reporting a ‘quantitative and qualitative’ increase in acts of Russian-sponsored espionage and sabotage in their country. On 22 October, Poland announced it would close the Russian consulate in Poznan due to alleged sabotage attempts.

Russia has conducted arson attacks in Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia and Czechia. Other reported sabotage attempts include flying drones over Stockholm airport, jamming of Baltic countries’ civil aviation GPS systems and disruption of French railways on the first day of the Paris Olympics. Facilities linked to supplying Ukraine have also been targeted: a BAE Systems munitions facility in Wales, an air-defence company’s factory in Berlin and a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London.

Authorities have arrested suspects for plots to bomb or sabotage a military base in Bavaria and a French facility supporting Ukraine’s war efforts. Agencies disrupted a plot to assassinate the CEO of German arms maker Rheinmetall, a supplier of artillery shells to Ukraine. Latvian authorities tracked down saboteurs dispatched to several countries on paid missions. Norway’s domestic intelligence service warns of the threat of sabotage to train lines and to gas facilities supplying much of Europe.

This upsurge in sabotage activity is a rebound from initial setbacks that Russian intelligence suffered in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Its assessment of likely Ukrainian resistance and Western unity was lacking, affecting its ability to analyse and influence those factors. Some 750 Russians with diplomatic cover were expelled from Russian embassies and consulates across Europe, mostly spies.

Russia’s intelligence and security services rapidly regrouped. They have since managed to build new illegal networks and recruit criminals and other proxies through the dark web or social media platforms such as Telegram.

Sabotage operations are part of its larger hybrid war campaign. This is designed to cause fear and division in order to undermine support for Ukraine without going so far as provoking war. Russian hybrid warfare encompasses several tactics, most notably cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.

Another grey-zone tactic is weaponising immigration. Russian authorities direct migrants into neighbouring European countries without proper documentation, instructing them to claim asylum there. The aim is to destabilise those neighbours. European officials reported Russian plans to set up a 15,000-strong force comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants. Migration routes through Libya link to other places with Russian military or paramilitary presence, notably through Central African Republic and Sudan, as well as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Fostering irregular migration further supports right-wing European parties which oppose immigration and European integration and which Russia funds. These include AfD in Germany, National Rally in France and Reform UK, which all gained in recent elections and are mostly Russia-friendly and critical of support for Ukraine.

So far, Russia has refrained from sabotage in the US, although European officials have warned that uncovered plots to plant incendiary devices on planes in Europe could be test runs for similar plans in the US. Russian disinformation efforts in the US have stepped up since 2022 and expanded during the presidential election campaign. Donald Trump’s and MAGA Republicans’ reluctance to support Ukraine makes Trump the clearly preferred candidate of Russia.

In the aftermath of hurricanes Milton and Helene in the US, Russia-affiliated social media accounts pushed fake narratives claiming the Biden administration’s response had been incompetent, reflecting wider government failures and prioritisation of resources to Ukraine over domestic needs. The Justice Department has indicted two employees of Kremlin media propaganda arm RT for paying US$10 million to a media company in Tennessee to spread disinformation.

Anti-US campaigns are also active in developing countries. Some aim to discredit US-funded anti-malaria programs in Africa.

Western leaders have been reluctant to call for a more vigorous response to Russian sabotage, probably out of fear of escalation. Some media reports even suggest that fears of retaliatory sabotage actions, such as attacks on US bases, have fed into US reluctance to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles.

The West is running out of non-military options for response, since it is already imposing extensive economic and diplomatic sanctions against Moscow and has limited capacity or opportunity to retaliate in kind inside Russia. Still, a more strenuous response by Western governments is needed.

Former Finnish president Sauli Niinisto has suggested that the EU needs its own pan-European intelligence agency to help countries fend off threats, saboteurs and espionage. At the very least, the US and Europe should respond to Russian hybrid warfare by removing the shackles from Ukraine, allowing it to repel the Russian invaders from its territory.

From the bookshelf: ‘Engaging North Korea’

North Korea is again in the global spotlight. By providing first munitions and now troops to support Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has expanded the scope of the Ukraine conflict while driving its relations with the West to a new low. And, by aligning with Russia, sidelining long-time patron China and abandoning its goal of unification with South Korea, North Korea has escalated tensions in Northeast Asia.

The last time the hermit kingdom was this visible was in June 2018, when its leader, Kim Jong Un, met US president Donald Trump at a summit held in Singapore amid cautious optimism that North Korea might gradually open up to the West. But in a follow-up summit in Hanoi in 2019, the gaping differences between the two parties became clear and negotiations collapsed.

The Biden administration adopted a wait-and-see policy, paying little attention to North Korea. Most foreign missions in Pyongyang closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and have not reopened.

In 2022, however, Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine dealt the North Korea a fresh hand. With rapidly depleting military resources, Moscow turned to Pyongyang, which in 2023 began exporting artillery shells and weapons to Russia, in return receiving much-needed food, raw materials and weapons parts.

In January this year, Pyongyang relinquished its constitutional commitment to Korean unification and said it would consider the South to be its principal enemy. To underline the shift, in October North Korea blew up parts of two roads connecting it to the South. Munitions exports to Russia have accelerated, and now Pyongyang has sent troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

In Engaging North Korea, 12 international experts put their heads together to review experience in relations with North Korea and provide pointers on how to deal with it in the future. The contributors include leading Korea experts from Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the US and Vietnam, a director of humanitarian aid and a Swedish diplomatic envoy. The two last-mentioned have hands-on experience working inside North Korea.

The authors start from the widely divergent interests behind the six-party talks, which sought to address North Korea’s nuclear program and broke down in 2009. The United States, Japan and South Korea want denuclearization, North Korea wants to keep its nuclear capabilities and have economic sanctions lifted, while China and North Korea have a special relationship based on inter-party cooperation. Japan must also deal with the domestically sensitive issue of citizens abducted by North Korean agents. The sixth party in the talks was Russia.

Singaporean and Vietnamese viewpoints are also discussed in the book, as either country may be called on to facilitate future negotiations. Should the North Korea ever consider opening its economy, Vietnam might serve as a model. With the world focusing on geopolitics, the authors remind us of North Korea’s deep humanitarian crisis. Given the range of interlinked issues, the book highlights the need to deal with North Kora comprehensively rather than piecemeal.

A fascinating chapter reviews the special role played by Sweden in keeping the door to North Korea ajar, though sometimes only minimally. It was the first Western country to recognise North Korea, in 1973. In 1975 it set up an embassy that it has kept open, although since the Covid-19 outbreak staffed entirely with North Korean nationals.

In the early 1990s, after a change of government, Stockholm was about to shut its embassy when the US asked it to represent it as a diplomatic protecting power—a representative. Washington lacked official relations with Pyongyang and wanted Sweden to serve as a neutral go-between. Sweden kept the embassy open and now serves as the protecting power for Australia, Canada, Germany and the US. It also  represents several other countries in consular matters.

Engaging with North Korea is a daunting task but one that is essential for world peace. The authors liken it to the Sisyphean challenge of repeatedly pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again, but they consider the chances of success greater if countries work ‘collectively, patiently and purposefully’. They propose doing this through informal working groups rather than showy summits. However, North Korea’s recent policy shifts make even this unlikely, at least in the short term.

Its playbook consists of bluster, threats and unpredictability, which its leaders have used ruthlessly to gain strategic advantage. However, behind the enigmatic facade there is a method, usually opportunistic, to North Korea’s unpredictability.

Frustrated at being ignored by the Biden administration, North Korea predictably undertook missile launches in September and October in the run-up to the US presidential elections. We should remember that its warming relations with Russia are transactional and do not change the reality that China is North Korea’s closest neighbour and only major trading partner.

With North Korea sending soldiers to support Russia and with tensions on the Korean Peninsula at a new high, the search is on for fresh ways to deal with the hermit kingdom. Engaging North Korea is essential reading for diplomats and security specialists, especially those handling Northeast Asia and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Tag Archive for: Russia

Nothing Found

Sorry, no posts matched your criteria