Thursday, 24 February 2022

United States to sanction Russian banks

President Joe Biden on Thursday said the United States would sanction major Russian banks and impose export controls on Russia to curtail Russian high-tech imports as part of a coordinated effort with allies to penalize the Kremlin for its military attack against Ukraine. 

However, the latest round of sanctions did not move to kick Russia out of the SWIFT international banking system, despite pleas from Ukraine and some members of Congress.

Biden condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for ordering the attack against Ukraine and said that his actions would cost Russia dearly’.

“Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences,” Biden said. 

“Putin will be a pariah on the international stage,” Biden said later. 

Biden said the sanctions would target Russian banks holding a combined US$1 trillion in assets, including Russia’s two largest financial institutions, Sberbank and VTB Bank. He said the US would also impose sanctions on additional Russian elites with links to the Kremlin.

The Treasury Department said in a release that the administration would impose sanctions on VTB and Sberbank, cutting them off from processing payments through the US financial system.

The Biden administration is also imposing sanctions on three other Russian financial institutions: Otkritie, Novikom and Sovcom. 

The sanctions also target 10 Russian individuals, including those close to Putin and elites working in the financial sector, according to the Treasury Department. 

The export controls will restrict Russia’s ability to import sensitive US technology – like semiconductors, lasers, and sensors – and particularly target Russia’s defense, aviation, and maritime sectors, according to a White House fact sheet. Biden said that the restrictions, coupled with actions by European allies, would cut off more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports. 

 “It will be a major hit to Putin’s long-term strategic ambitions,” Biden said.

 “I will not be diplomatic on this. Everyone who now doubts whether Russia should be banned from SWIFT has to understand that the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted in advance of Biden’s remarks.

Biden cited concerns among some European allies about taking that step but argued the penalties being put in place were severe enough to make a difference. He indicated that kicking Russia out of the system could be a possibility in the future. 

“The sanctions we imposed exceed SWIFT,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question about excluding the penalty. “The sanctions we imposed exceed anything that’s ever been done. The sanctions we imposed have generated two-thirds of the world joining us. They are profound sanctions. Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working.”

Nor did the sanctions package target the Russian oil or natural gas industries, which are major drivers of the Russian economy. European countries are dependent on Russia for gas.

White House Deputy national Security Adviser Daleep Singh told reporters at a briefing later Thursday that the administration intentionally scoped the sanctions to deliver a severe impact on the Russian economy while minimizing impact on the US and European allies.  

He said the administration would not do anything that causes an unintended disruption in global energy markets, including the flow of gas from Russia to the world.  

The Biden administration also announced plans to impose sanctions on individuals and entities in Belarus, accusing the nation of supporting and facilitating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden made the announcement of new sanctions as the Russian assault on Ukraine was very much underway.

On Putin’s orders, the Russian military attacked Ukraine from multiple directions overnight Wednesday. The Pentagon has warned that the assault is only the first part of a multistage invasion.

“It is likely that you will see this unfold in multiple phases. How many? How long? We don't know. But what we're seeing are initial phases of a large-scale invasion,” a senior defense official told reporters on Thursday, before Biden spoke to the nation.

“They’re making a move on Kyiv,” the official said. 

The Biden administration has been working for weeks to develop a comprehensive sanctions package in the event of a Russian invasion, threatening harsh penalties as a means of deterring Moscow from launching a renewed invasion of Ukraine. 

But the threats, coupled with US and European diplomatic overtures, did not convince Putin to deescalate the situation. 

Biden imposed a first tranche of sanctions after Putin recognized two regions in eastern Ukraine as independent earlier this week.

Biden said Thursday it would take time for Putin to feel the economic pain of the penalties and suggested that it could cause the Russian leader to change course on his military campaign.

“He’s going to begin to see the effect of the sanctions,” Biden said. “It will so weaken his country that he’ll have to make a very, very difficult choice as to whether to continue to move toward being a second-rate power or, in fact, respond."

Biden condemned the assault in a statement late Wednesday, but his comments Thursday were his first extended remarks on the events unfolding in Eastern Europe. 

The announcement of new sanctions mirrored penalties unveiled by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson roughly an hour before Biden’s address. 

The White House has been closely coordinating with allies on the response to Russia’s military buildup and subsequent invasion of Ukraine.

 “Our actions, taken in coordination with partners and allies, will degrade Russia’s ability to project power and threaten the peace and stability of Europe,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

“We are united in our efforts to hold Russia accountable for its further invasion of Ukraine while mitigating impacts to Americans and our partners.  If necessary, we are prepared to impose further costs on Russia in response to its egregious actions.”

 

Data wiping malware hits Ukraine computers

A newly discovered, destructive piece of software found circulating in Ukraine hit hundreds of computers, according to researchers at the cybersecurity firm Eset. 

That was just a part of what Ukrainian officials said was an intensifying wave of hacks aimed at the country’s tech infrastructure in the lead up to Russia’s invasion on Thursday morning.

In a series of tweets, cybersecurity firm Eset said the data wiping program had been "installed on hundreds of machines in the country". The attack, it said, had likely been in the works for the past couple of months.

Cybersecurity experts are racing to pick apart the malicious program. Researchers found it appeared to have been digitally signed with a certificate issued to an obscure, year-old Cypriot company called Hermetica Digital, which doesn’t appear to have a website.

Because operating systems use code-signing as an initial check on software, such a certificate might have been designed to help the rogue program dodge antivirus protections.

Getting such a certificate under false pretences – or stealing it – isn't impossible, but it's generally the sign of a sophisticated and targeted operator, said Brian Kime, a Vice President at US cybersecurity firm ZeroFox.

Who is responsible for the wiper is unclear, although suspicion immediately fell on Russia, which has repeatedly been accused of launching data-scrambling hacks against Ukraine and other countries. Russia has denied the allegations.

Ukraine has been repeatedly hit by hackers in the past few weeks as Russia massed troops around its borders. Earlier on Wednesday the websites of Ukraine's government, foreign ministry and state security service were down in what the government said was the start of another denial of service (DDoS) attack.

Twitter said it had mistakenly suspended around a dozen accounts that were posting about Russian military movements, and said the action was not due to a coordinated bot campaign or mass reporting of the accounts by other users.

"We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violation of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. "We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts."

Bitcoin slumped to its lowest in a month on Thursday after Russian forces fired missiles at several cities in Ukraine and landed troops on its coast, sparking a sell-off of riskier assets. The world’s most popular cryptocurrency fell by as much as 7.9% to US$34,324, its lowest since January 24 this year. Smaller coins that typically move in tandem with bitcoin also fell, losing as much as 10.8%.

Germany accused of weakening Ukraine

According to a Reuters report, the north German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where former Chancellor Angela Merkel was born, ties to Russia run deep – so deep, in fact, its leaders have defended a Kremlin project that the United States says helped cripple Ukraine.

At issue is a new gas pipeline project, which Germany halted on Tuesday in retaliation for Russia's decision to recognize two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, shortly before it invaded and brought Europe to the brink of a major war.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is the landfall site for the line, Nord Stream 2, which bypasses the former Soviet Republic. The United States long argued the line would weaken Ukraine; Germany and Russia insisted the project was purely commercial. Nonetheless, in 2019 Washington set sanctions on some companies and individuals who were helping to build it, maintaining the line is a tool for Russia to support aggression against Ukraine.

Last January, the regional premier, Manuela Schwesig, took action to support the Russian project. At her initiative, the state parliament voted to set up a special foundation whose charter said it could acquire, manage, own, provide or let land, tools and machines to help the completion of the pipeline.

"We believe that it is right to build the pipeline," Schwesig told reporters in January 2021. Advocating for the pipeline in the state parliament last January, Schwesig said the US sanctions were self-interested. "Nobody who is working on building the pipeline is doing anything wrong," she said. "The ones doing something wrong are those who are trying to stop the pipeline."

Nord Stream 2 would double the amount of gas Russia can pump directly to Germany, its biggest customer for gas, make Germany and Europe less vulnerable to supply interruptions caused by disputes between Russia and Ukraine, and bring economic benefits to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a relatively deprived region that used to be in the German Democratic Republic.

But this year as Russia stepped up pressure on Ukraine, questions mounted around the Foundation, called Klima-und Umweltschutz MV (Climate and Environment Protection Foundation). It would not reveal who was running its sanctions-busting operation beyond saying that the person was appointed by Nord Stream 2 AG, a company owned by Gazprom PAO, which is fully controlled by the Russian state.

The state auditor, the Court of Auditors, told Reuters on February 09, 2022 it was concerned that Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had largely given up control over the Foundation's assets. This meant there was no guarantee that the Foundation would always work in the public interest, said Sebastian Jahn, the court's spokesman, in a telephone interview.

The Foundation said on Wednesday it would stop helping the pipeline project, but declined to say exactly what it had done to aid it so far. In an account of its first year on its website, it said that to complete the pipeline, "the illegal threats of United States had to be countered with a wide range of measures, which for obvious reasons cannot be made the subject of public explanation."

Public records show it purchased a ship which entered the Baltic last July and which a US State Department report to Congress last November said had engaged in pipe-laying activities, on Nord Stream 2 or another sanctioned project.

"We did what is necessary, the pipeline is practically completed," Foundation Chairman Erwin Sellering told German broadcaster NDR on Wednesday, adding that this involved helping small and medium-sized companies do their work. "We can say we fulfilled our mandate," he added.

As Russia continues to pressure Ukraine, other questions are mounting about the links between the pipeline, Germany's ruling Social Democrat Party (SPD), and Moscow. The regional premier Schwesig is, like Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a member of the SPD, which traditionally advocates rapprochement with Russia.

Gerhard Schroeder, a former Chancellor who has described himself as Putin's personal friend. One of his last acts in office in 2005 was to sign the deal creating the Nord Stream 2 project. Soon after, he became chairman of the company behind it – the first of several directorial positions he has taken at Russian energy companies.

In 2019, Scholz rejected the US sanctions as interference in Germany's affairs. On Tuesday, after Russia formally recognized the two breakaway regions, he decided to halt certification of the pipeline. But some analysts say the damage to Germany is already done.

"Russia has succeeded in using the personal interests of prominent German political figures against Germany," said Marcel Dirsus, Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University.

"All this is doubly dangerous for Germany: It allows an adversarial foreign power to influence decision-making and it raises questions about Germany's reliability among the country's allies."

Kazakh delegation visits Tehran

A Kazakh delegation visited Tehran to hold talks with the Iranian authorities on February 22, 2022. The delegation, consisted of over 50 members. These included Deputy Ministers of Trade and Integration, Industry and Infrastructural Development, Agriculture, Ecology, Geology and Environment, Chairmen of State Revenue Committee and the Committee of Technical Regulation and Metrology. 

Others included were heads of “KazTrade” State Company, Kazakhstan Institute of Standardization and Metrology, National Accreditation Center, Aktau Sea Port as well as representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Office of the General Prosecutor, SK-Pharmacy and others.

Among the delegation were 15 Kazakh exporting companies producing food, milling, meat, edible oil, chemical, metal, IT, telecommunication products and construction materials.

The Deputy Prime Minister together with the Minister of Agriculture of the Islamic Republic of Iran Seyed Javad Sadati Nejad co-chaired the 17th Meeting of the Intergovernmental Kazakhstan-Iran Commission of Trade-Economic, Scientific-Technical and Cultural Cooperation during which a wide spectrum of issues on the bilateral cooperation in the fields of trade, economy, investments, agriculture, health, banking, transportation and logistics including air, road, railway and marine transportation, industry, mining, tourism, culture, energy, customs, standards, accreditation and conformity assessment, education, labor, social security, legal and judicial cooperation, as well as collaboration between Free Zones and Chambers of Commerce were discussed.

The Meeting resulted in signing the final Protocol of the Commission a Protocol between State Revenue Committee of Kazakhstan and the Customs of Iran, a Memorandum of Understanding between “KazTrade” State Company and Iran Trade Promotion Organization as well as three Memorandums between Standardization Organizations.

The Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture of the Islamic Republic of Iran together with the President of Iran Chamber of Commerce opened a Trade Mission of Kazakhstan to Iran and Kazakhstan-Iran Business Forum which were attended by over 200 companies. 

During the Mission and the Forum business contracts amounted to US$14 million including export of Kazakh meat, food products, flour and others were inked.

The Deputy Prime Minister met with the First Vice-President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Mokhber to discuss ways of enlargement of trade-economic cooperation between Kazakhstan and Iran. It was agreed to put joint efforts in reaching the trade-turnover of US$3 billion in the recent perspective. Cooperation in the field of SWOP exchange with a wide range of goods especially food products was suggested as the main way of achieving the said target.  

In the framework of the visit the Deputy Minister of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kairat Torebayev met with Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Mines of the Islamic Republic of Iran – President of Iran Trade Promotion Organization Alireza Peymanpak and discussed the ways for increasing trade turnover and solving existed impediments in the bilateral trade. 

The Deputy Minister of Industry and Infrastructural Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan Ruslan Baimishev had a meeting with Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Mines – President of IMIDRO company Vajiholla Jafari and discussed issues related to cooperation with Iranian companies in mining. He also received Iranian companies working in mining and discussed possibilities of investing in Kazakhstan mining.

The Deputy Minister of Ecology, Geology and Environment of Kazakhstan Talgat Momyshev met with the Deputy Minister and Head of Iran Geological Survey and Mineral Explorations Organization Alireza Shahidi during which disc issues of development of cooperation in Geological Science and Technology, Natural and Mineral Resources were discussed. As result of the meeting the side agreed to sign an agreement on exploration of non-ferrous and precious metals.

He also had a meeting with the Head of Iran Forests, Rangelands and Watershed Organization Masood Mansoor during which issues of cooperation in water field. 

The Chairman of State Revenue Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan Ali Altynbayev met with Head of Iran Customs Administration Alireza Moqaddasi. The main topic of that meeting was intensification of the bilateral cooperation in Customs.

The Chairman of the Committee of Technical Regulation and Metrology of the Republic of Kazakhstan Arman Abenov met with Iranian National Standard Organization Ehsan Sadeh and discussed some matters in the sphere of standards.

The Senior Assistant to the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Kazakhstan Zeinelgabden Kussainov met the Deputy Attorney General of the Islamic Republic of Kazakhstan Dr.Favaedi and the Director General of International Cooperation Office of the Ministry of Justice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Dr. Fallah. The both sides discussed issues in related matters. 

 

Wednesday, 23 February 2022

Biden imposes Nord Stream 2 sanctions

Joe Biden, President of United States on Wednesday announced sanctions against Nord Stream 2, the company behind Russian natural gas pipeline in response to Moscow's decision to send troops into eastern Ukraine.  

Biden said in a statement that his administration would put sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG, the parent company of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and its corporate officers.

"These steps are another piece of our initial tranche of sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. As I have made clear, we will not hesitate to take further steps if Russia continues to escalate," Biden said.

Last year, the Biden administration waived sanctions on the pipeline — generating pushback from Democrats and Republicans alike, who said it should take a harder line on Russia.

The administration’s decision to waive sanctions on the pipeline was widely viewed as a move meant to appease Germany after relations faltered under the previous Trump administration. 

But following Russia's incursion into breakaway regions in Ukraine this week, Germany also turned against the pipeline. On Tuesday, it announced that it would block its certification. 

The pipeline is completely built but was awaiting regulatory review before it could be operational. 

In recent weeks, Biden had promised to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, but German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had stopped short of explicitly promising to block the pipeline in an appearance at the White House earlier this month. 

Biden on Tuesday announced other sanctions against Russian financial institutions, elites and sovereign debt.

The administration also sent additional troops to Germany, Poland and Romania.

Biden administration officials have said the U.S. is prepared to impose more stringent sanctions if Russia launches a broader invasion of Ukraine.  

Domestically, the new sanctions against Nord Stream 2 move helped advance some of Biden's State Department nominees, as Sen. Ted Cruz said he would lift a hold he had placed on them in response to last year's waiver.

“President Biden made the right decision today," Cruz said in a statement. "Allowing Putin's Nord Stream 2 to come online would have created multiple, cascading, and acute security crises for the United States and our European allies for generations to come."

However, he also called for "additional steps inside the Biden administration and in Congress to permanently lock in sanctions."

The decision to sanction Nord Stream 2 AG also won Biden praise among Democratic critics of the pipeline. 

“I’ve long opposed NS2, which is why I wrote the bipartisan sanctions law to stop it,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen tweeted. “Every diplomatic lever must be pulled to punish Putin for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty & threatening Europe’s security.”  

Biden delivered a speech on Tuesday announcing the first tranche of sanctions on Russia, saying Putin’s moves against Ukraine represented the beginning of an invasion.

Asked whether the White House could say definitively that the pipeline would not move forward permanently, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday the pipeline is “not moving forward right now.”

 “It’s currently dead at the bottom of the sea,” she continued. “It is not happening. It’s not moving forward. It hasn’t been operational for some time.”

Despite recent hurdles for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Russia is still a major supplier of fuel to the rest of Europe — providing about 35% of the continent's natural gas.

 

China criticizes sanctions against Russia

China on Wednesday criticized the expansion of economic sanctions against Russia, saying that penalties were unlikely to solve the Ukraine crisis, on the contrary these can hurt common man as well as the interests of Beijing, The New York Times reported.

“The position of the Chinese government is that we believe that sanctions have never been a fundamental and effective way to solve problems, and China always opposes any illegal unilateral sanctions,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, said at a regular press briefing on Wednesday.

Member states of the European Union have given their green light, via their envoys in Brussels, to the first package of sanctions on Russia, an EU diplomat said.

The sanctions still need formal approval by the foreign ministers and will enter into force once these are published in the EU's official journal, a step expected later on Wednesday.

Ukraine on Wednesday urged the West to impose more sanctions on Russia that target the economy and the inner circle around President Vladimir Putin.

US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Wednesday that the US is prepared to respond to further aggression by withholding technology and resources.

"We're going to cut him off from Western technology that's critical to advancing the military, cut him off from Western financial resources that will be critical for feeding his economy and also to enriching himself," Adeyemo said in an interview with CNBC.

In a phone call, Erdogan told Putin that military conflict in the region would not benefit anyone and repeated his offer to help achieve a solution, his office said. Erdogan also said he valued Putin's close cooperation on regional issues and wanted to continue this.

"President Erdogan, who renewed his call for the matter to be resolved through dialog, stated that it was important to bring diplomacy to the forefront, and that Turkey continued its constructive stance in NATO as well."

Earlier, Erdogan was cited by media as saying Turkey cannot abandon ties with Ukraine or Russia.

"First decisive steps were taken yesterday, and we are grateful for them," Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet. "Now the pressure needs to step up to stop Putin. Hit his economy and cronies. Hit more. Hit hard. Hit now."

Ukraine's parliament on Wednesday approved imposing sanctions on 351 Russians, including lawmakers who supported the recognition of the independence of separatist-controlled territories and the use of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.

The sanctions restrict almost all possible types of activities, in particular, a ban on entry into Ukraine, prohibiting access to assets, capital, property, licenses for business. The Security Council was due to impose the sanctions after the vote.

One of Europe's worst security crises in decades was unfolding after Russia recognized two areas of eastern Ukraine as independent. Ukraine accused Russia of wrecking peace talks on ending an eight-year-old conflict in the region.

The sanctions began to be imposed against Russia on Tuesday after Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine and threatened to go further if Moscow launched an all-out invasion of its neighbor. 




 

Tuesday, 22 February 2022

Takeaways from Putin’s Ukraine speech

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a long and important speech on February 21 as tensions with the United States over Ukraine reached new heights. While the media focused on certain aspects of the speech, particularly Russia recognizing two separatist areas in Ukraine as sovereign independent states, there is much more there to unpack.

Let’s begin at the end. “I consider it necessary to make a long-overdue decision to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People's Republic [DPR] and the Luhansk People's Republic [LPR],” he said. These are two areas in eastern Ukraine that declared independence in April of 2014. Their decision was clearly motivated by a sense they had Moscow’s backing. They are in one of several small areas similar to this that have sought to become their own states with Russian backing.

Moscow usually does this as a way to keep its hands on the scales inside a former Soviet country. In Georgia, there is South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which sought independence in the 1990s – and there are other areas, such as Transnistria near Moldova.  

Putin’s decision was made after years of trying to manage a conflict in Ukraine. He claims the necessity of recognition now, apparently to do away with the pretense that these are just separatist areas. Russia cares about international laws and norms; even if it exploits them for its own needs, it cares to have an appearance of doing things by the book.

That is why Russia’s Tass reported, “Putin later ordered the Russian Foreign Ministry to establish diplomatic relations with the DPR and LPR and the Defense Ministry to maintain peace in the republics. According to one of the presidential decrees, the Defense Ministry was ordered to make sure that the Russian Armed Forces maintain peace in the Donetsk People’s Republic until a treaty on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance is concluded. The Russian Defense Ministry received similar instructions in a decree recognizing the LPR.”

The point here is that Russia is exploiting the situation that it helped create in 2014 by now creating a legal fiction for sending troops into these areas. This will lead to the peacekeeping troops being on the line of potential contact with a Ukrainian army that Moscow says has sent 120,000 troops to the borders of these breakaway regions. Ukraine has called the operations against the separatists an anti-terror campaign.  

Let us look at how Putin has presented this to understand why it might matter far beyond Ukraine.

He began his 8,000-word speech by saying “the topic of my speech is the events in Ukraine and why it is so important for us, for Russia. Of course, my appeal is also addressed to our compatriots in Ukraine.” He said that the situation in the Donbas, where the breakaway areas are, has reached a critical stage.

For Russia, the area of Ukraine is what was once called the near abroad, a kind of buffer between Russia and the West. “Let me emphasize once again that Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space. These are our comrades, relatives, among whom are not only colleagues, friends, former colleagues, but also relatives, people connected with us by blood, family ties,” the Russian president said.

Putin looked to history to justify this. He said, “Inhabitants of the southwestern historical Old Russian lands called themselves Russian and Orthodox. So it was until the 17th century, when part of these territories was reunited with the Russian state, and after.”

He noted, “The 18th century, the lands of the Black Sea region, annexed to Russia as a result of wars with the Ottoman Empire, were called Novorossiya. Now they are trying to obliviate these milestones of history, as well as the names of state military figures of the Russian Empire, without whose work modern Ukraine would not have many large cities and even the very exit to the Black Sea.”

Putin claimed, “Modern Ukraine was entirely and completely created by Russia: more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia.” He accuses the Soviets of actually reducing Russia’s control of Ukraine by separating parts of this area and creating the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic. Indeed, Crimea was eventually given to Ukraine under this process. At the same time, Ukraine was brutally treated by Stalin, and millions starved. Later, after the Second World War and the Holocaust, Ukrainian resistance against the Soviets continued for years.  

Ukraine did indeed change during this period. Areas that were once more Polish and more Jewish, such as Lvov, became more Ukrainian. Other areas are Russian-speaking. That is the nature of history and of war and tragedy: countries and places change.

Putin puts out this history by saying “Stalin already annexed to the USSR and transferred to Ukraine some lands that previously belonged to Poland, Romania and Hungary. At the same time, as a kind of compensation, Stalin endowed Poland with part of the original German territories, and in 1954 Khrushchev for some reason took away Crimea from Russia and also presented it to Ukraine.”

The president wants to redress some of this history. In his analysis, he is correct in noting that much of the world’s borders today resemble things done in 1945 or in the period up to 1960s. That was an era when European powers redrew the world’s borders. After doing so, many of them have said international law prevents any borders from being changed. This is largely a colonial-era illusion.

The same colonial era has created conflicts all over Africa and Asia and is responsible for the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It was the British who created partition and it was the UN that created the impossible borders presented to Israel in 1948. It is a colonial-era design that placed the Golan in Syria and conjured up an international Jerusalem, which has led countries not to move their embassies to the Israeli capital.

Be that as it may, Putin’s argument about Ukraine is that Russia is reaching back to what was done in 1917 and 1922 for its rights to do things there. He mentions Stalin, “People's Commissar for Nationalities, proposed building the country on the principles of autonomization that is giving the republics – future administrative-territorial units – broad powers when they join a single state.”

What he is presenting is a blueprint for breakaway or autonomous regions to do as they please. “Why was it necessary to satisfy any, unlimitedly growing nationalist ambitions on the outskirts of the former empire?” he asks, noting attempts regarding arbitrarily formed areas and administrative units, “Huge territories that often had nothing to do with them at all…to convey them together with the population of historical Russia to Ukraine.” He’s arguing that what was done arbitrarily in the 1920s, can now be undone.  

Of course, this opens up a big question about why other things that were done in the 1920s cannot be undone. Why should the Golan be part of Syria, a decision made at that time, which put the Golan under French and thus Syrian control? Why is Mosul part of Iraq and not Turkey? Why isn’t there an independent Kurdish state? Why is Hatay province part of Turkey and not Syria? We could go on and on and see how many areas in the Middle East were arbitrarily given to one country and not the other by colonial administrators, much as was done in Russia in the 1920s.  

What Putin argues is that the Soviets made a mistake in the 1920s. “At first glance, this is generally incomprehensible; some kind of madness. But this is only at first glance. There is an explanation,” he argues. He points out that the Soviets sought to remain in power by giving in to demands of various nationalities within the Soviet empire: Give them something for the great Soviet Union. Putin argues that the early Soviet decision was a mistake and this became obvious after 1991 with the wars and breakup of the USSR. 

Russian President suggests we speak about the events of the past with honesty. “This is a historical fact. Actually, as I have already said, as a result of the Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose.” He accuses Ukraine of being an entity created by Lenin. “This is fully confirmed by archival documents, including Lenin's harsh directives on the Donbas, which was literally squeezed into Ukraine.”

He says it is ironic that modern-day Ukraine has taken down Lenin’s statue, hinting with typical Putin humor that they might have kept Lenin since in his view he created modern Ukraine. “We are ready to show you what real decommunization means for Ukraine.”  

Putin next takes listeners through a tour of Soviet history and discusses how the Soviet Republics had no real power. “In practice, a strictly centralized, absolutely unitary state was created... under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, everything worked anyway, and outwardly it looked beautiful, attractive and even super-democratic.”

Now Putin claims that the “bacillus of nationalist ambitions has not disappeared.” This term, bacillus, is likely borrowed on purpose from Winston Churchill, who said that regarding the sealed train that took Lenin and his Bolsheviks back to Russia from Switzerland in 1917 was sent like a “plague bacillus.” Putin’s point apparently is that Lenin helped appease this nationalism, creating the problems Russia now faces in Ukraine.  

Nationalism became like a mine waiting to explode, he claims. “In the mid-1980s, against the backdrop of growing socio-economic problems, the obvious crisis of the planned economy, the national question – the essence of which was not some expectations and unfulfilled aspirations of the peoples of the Union, but primarily the growing appetites of local elites – became more and more aggravated.” This led to 1989 and the decision by the party elites that "the Union Republics have all the rights corresponding to their status as sovereign socialist states."

Let’s recall where Putin was in 1989. He was in East Germany in Dresden, watching Communism collapse. A KGP officer, he spoke German, and tried to defuse tensions. He says that while the Soviets had harmed Russia and its people through “robbery” of lands provided to other states, “the people recognized the new geopolitical realities that arose after the collapse of the USSR; recognized the new independent states… our country provided such support with respect for the dignity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”

Putin argues that Ukraine did not deal fairly with Russia in the 1990s and began to move towards the West. “I will add that Kyiv tried to use the dialogue with Russia as a pretext for bargaining with the West, blackmailed it with rapprochement with Moscow, knocking out preferences for itself: saying that otherwise, Russian influence on Ukraine will grow.”

He claims “Ukrainian society faced the rise of extreme nationalism, which quickly took the form of aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism. Hence the participation of Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis in terrorist gangs in the North Caucasus, and the increasingly louder territorial claims against Russia.” This is important because Putin came to power after Russia suffered failure in the Balkans when NATO bombed Serbia and after Russian setbacks in Chechnya.

From Putin’s point of view, Ukraine then became a tool in the hand of the West. In this complex history he argues that the West works with “oligarchs” in Ukraine. Putin meanwhile was busy in the early 2000s imprisoning or driving into exile the oligarchs who arose in 1990s Russia. “A stable statehood in Ukraine has not developed, and political, electoral procedures serve only as a cover, a screen for the redistribution of power and property between various oligarchic clans,” he says.

He then presents a picture of Ukraine as akin to the French revolution, swept over by “radicals” and Ukraine cities becoming victims of “pogroms of violence.” He says “it is impossible without a shudder to remember the terrible tragedy in Odessa, where participants in a peaceful protest were brutally murdered.”

Pro-Russia Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych was driven from power in a 2014 coup, he said, which is in fact the Maidan protests. Putin then gives a laundry list of failures in Ukraine, arguing that the country has not supported its people. “Tens and hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost.”  

Russia's president also delves into an issue that US President Joe Biden is likely familiar with from the Obama years. “There is simply no independent court in Ukraine. At the request of the West, the Kyiv authorities gave representatives of international organizations the pre-emptive right to select members of the highest judicial bodies - the Council of Justice and the Qualification Commission of Judges.” Biden was deeply involved in Ukraine policy under Obama and assured Ukraine that the US would back it despite initial attempts to “reset” relations with Russia.

Putin mentions the US Embassy’s efforts against corruption. “All this is done under a plausible pretext to increase the effectiveness of the fight against corruption. Okay, but where are the results? Corruption has blossomed as luxuriantly, and blossoms [now] more than ever.”

He then accuses Ukraine’s current government, which he sees as a government that was the result of a coup in 2014, as perpetuating corruption and being anti-Russian. He accuses it of persecuting the Russian language and Orthodox Church. He argues that Russia’s decision to annex Crimea from Ukraine was done to support the inhabitants of the peninsula. Then he accuses Ukraine of enacting a new military strategy against Russia. “The strategy proposes the organization in the Russian Crimea and on the territory of Donbas, in fact, of a terrorist underground.”

The real story of Russia’s claims are now laid out as Putin goes through a long list of weapons he is concerned will be used by Ukraine. He discusses Tochka-U operational-tactical missiles which have a range of 100 km, NATO presence in Ukraine, that “regular joint exercises have a clear anti-Russian focus,” airfields, and that “the airspace of Ukraine is open for flights by US strategic and reconnaissance aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles that are used to monitor the territory of Russia, and the possibility of missiles and hypersonic missiles being deployed in Ukraine."

Russia also objects to Kyiv joining NATO. He claims that while Moscow was open to working with the treaty organization, it has rapidly expanded. “The authorities of some Eastern European countries, trading in Russophobia, brought their complexes and stereotypes about the Russian threat to the Alliance, and insisted on building up collective defense potentials, which should be deployed primarily against Russia. Moreover, this happened in the 1990s and early 2000s, when, thanks to openness and our goodwill, relations between Russia and the West were at a high level.”

Putin even claims he spoke to former President Bill Clinton about Russia joining NATO. “I won’t reveal all the details of that conversation, but the reaction to my question looked, let’s say, very restrained, and how the Americans really reacted to this opportunity can actually be seen in their practical steps towards our country.”

Russia doesn’t want the NATO expansion trend to continue. Putin says there were already five waves of NATO expansion, most recently with Albania and Croatia; in 2017 Montenegro; in 2020 North Macedonia…. As a result, the Alliance and its military infrastructure came directly to the borders of Russia. This became one of the key causes of the European security crisis.”

So for Russia, this is apparently an existential crisis. “Many Ukrainian airfields are located close to our borders. NATO tactical aircraft stationed here, including carriers of high-precision weapons, will be able to hit our territory to the depth of the Volgograd-Kazan-Samara-Astrakhan line. The deployment of radar reconnaissance assets on the territory of Ukraine will allow NATO to tightly control the airspace of Russia right up to the Urals.”

Putin understands US national security strategy and defense documents warn of “near-peer” rivalry with Russia and he knows that Washington sought to pivot from counter-terrorism to challenging Moscow. Once the US left Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, it was no surprise that a Ukraine crisis followed.

For Putin this all adds up to assertions that the West has ignored his proposals and demands. “There is only one goal of the West – to restrain the development of Russia. And they will do it, as they did before, even without any formal pretext at all…. Russia has every right to take retaliatory measures to ensure its own security: That is exactly what we will do.”

Putin says, “International documents expressly state the principle of equal and indivisible security, which, as is well known, includes obligations not to strengthen one's security at the expense of the security of other states.” Now he wants to test this and recognize parts of Ukraine as independent states in order to move forces into these new buffer states.

The end goal will be to see if the US will match this move with its own chess-like deployment. This could provide a casus belli for actual conflict. Putin clearly thinks he must move now to prevent whatever might come in the years to come.