A flurry of activity
The ongoing Russia mess (for lack of a better term), including a summary of a talk last night at IWM with Timothy Snyder & Ivan Krastev. An update from Vienna re Ukrainian kids and school.
I followed this weekend’s circus in Russia sporadically. I took an early morning flight to Belgrade on Saturday morning, and literally have not had a free moment to sit down and write until now. Which is a gift, in a way, so many smart minds have told you all what to make of the Prigozhin coup-that-was-not-a-coup and Putin’s response that I will refrain from adding my name to that list. If you would like to read what are, in my humble opinion, very decent summaries of what happened and what that might mean for the future, I would recommend this Economist piece
and also this thread by Dmitri Alperovich. I read it and kept nodding my head in agreement.
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1673048859025584128?s=20
I also just now listened to this podcast with Julia Ioffe, and while I do not agree with her conclusions across the board (I personally think Putin looks very weak right now, and never thought Prigozhin was a serious contender for power — he wanted to be heard, not to rule Russia), she does a good job of brining you to speed as of last evening. Things, remember, are still moving by the hour.
The Kremlin just posted this ridiculous video reel of Putin walking down red-carpeted stairs inside the Kremlin complex to trumpets playing and ancient rifles being fired. I would not exactly call that confidence-inducing footage in 2023. But he is not in 2023 in his head, and that will be lead to his demise. The whole series of events reminds me of a rock that starts rolling, slowly, down a rather flat hill, and then someone gives it a kick, and the rock starts picking up speed, its course unpredictable.
About the only thing we can all agree on at the moment is that no one knows what is coming next, and Russia is in for a bumpy ride. Over the course of the weekend, all sorts of folks who have no idea about Russia emerged, like mushrooms after rain in a forest, to tell us what is going to happen next. You can tell the real “Russia experts” (an obnoxious term which should not be used to describe anyone, really) apart because they will be the first to tell you that no one knows what will happen. We know the outcome: Putin must go and Russia must unravel from within for this horrible war to finally, truly come to an end. But how that will happen? Your guess is as good as mine or anyone else’s.
Yesterdays talk at IWM (you can see the whole thing on YouTube here) was nominally entitled “The Russo-Ukraine War and the Future of the World” but in reality it was a fascinating conversation between Timothy Snyder and Ivan Krastev, moderated by Misha Glenny, about the events of the weekend and what we do, and don’t, know.
I will try and paraphrase, and all misquotes are 100% my fault entirely.
T.S.: Don’t be surprised by the events of the weekend in Russia, it was more or less expected. In Ukraine they are laughing but also taking it deadly seriously. The leader of this “revolt” committed war crimes and is too a fascist. Russians do not protest anymore like they did in 1991. All political opposition is now in exile/prison/absent. There is no viable alternative to Putin although Putin himself is not popular. Russia is at the moment characterised by its lack of a reaction.
I.K.: Prigozhin is a chef and now he will be cooked. He didn’t get to meet with Putin, so he did this. Russia now has a medieval army that is not a single force. 5000 men marched with Prigozhin against the Russian army. The CIA claimed it briefed U.S. leadership one day in advance, were they really better informed that Putin himself? Prigozhin even went so far as to blame Russia for starting the war. Would be curious to hear what they said in Mali (where Wagner troops are) when this all started. How does this affect Wagner globally? The chef is theoretically in Belarus. The “collective” Putin was not visible this weekend. No one fought back. No one arrested Prigozhin. The president now looks weak, no matter what he does. What do weak people do? Something spectacular to make the world pay attention.
T.S.: Prigozhin told the truth about the war in his videos. That was a rare thing. He said Putin started the war in Ukraine because his man, Medvedchuk, did not become president of Ukraine. Money must have been involved this weekend. Everyone involved came out humiliated.
I.K.: Russia has a huge prison population, the country has more prisoners than it has citizens with international passports. Prigozhin bets on re-integrating ex-prisoners and ignores those who left the country. He seeks some kind of anti-elite justice, like in the police movies. Prigozhin felt like his guys did not get their share, after taking Bakhmut. That the generals are not sharing. He has criminal world ethics. He operates “based on understandings”. No one took to the streets. Like in the last line of Boris Godunov - “the people are silent”.
T.S.: Prigozhin used Putin’s system against Putin. He created his own spectacle. He is a war criminal, but also a smart guy. He speaks in a language people understand. Putin banned Russian state media from creating a “hero general”, he feared a “Zhukov effect”. The end result is Prigozhin filled that void himself.
I.K.: Prigozhin helped the war effort, and it will be unlikely that Wagner can be fully integrated into the regular Russia army. What starts in conspiracy can end in paranoia. We are witnessing the process of decay (which can last a long time), while collapse requires momentum. Ivan noted what happens on the battlefield is important for this, and he was in Kyiv yesterday, and “the Ukrainians were not unhappy” about recent events.
T.S.: Russia has not been winning on the ground in the war for over a year. Yet Russia cannot imagine losing a war. Putin has to change the subject. In 2014, he didn’t stick to his goals, so in 2015 he changed the subject to Syria. The war will end when pressure is felt inside Russia.
I.K.: How do you hide a loss? This was sold as a special operation. Now Putin is fighting a war against the west, and for him to win, the west must lose. During the first year of the war, Ukraine looked like it was winning by simply not losing, during the second year, the world sees Ukraine as losing if it isn’t pushing Russia back. Important to remember the scale: 15 million Ukrainians are not living where they were on February 24, 2022. Artillery shells are being fired on par with the volumes of 1943. Donbas is now the most mined place in the world after the DMZ between North and South Korea. At the rate of current de-mining, it will take 700 years to clear the front which stretches 1000 kilometres. Putin wants to be judged on the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, not on the battlefield.
T.S.: Biden is a historically good president, despite not getting enough credit for it. Although he has been critical at times of Biden’s performance (e.g. too slow to aid Ukraine), important to point this out. Putin wants to break the U.S. political system, remember their success in 2016, and it was Prigozhin who ran the troll factory. Biden now understands he must help Ukraine win the war to win the 2024 election. The Europeans now understand they need Ukraine for their future security.
I.K.: Why were Europeans so reluctant to believe war in Europe was possible? The war is a challenge to the European security doctrine. The idea behind European security was built around the idea of economic interdependence as a deterrent. Spending on military, especially post-2003 Iraq, was seen as wasteful. When the war began in Ukraine, Ukraine had only 6 weeks of artillery shells, Germany had 3 days worth! Therefore it was mentally hard to believe war was possible. No one could imagine Ukraine would do so well and resist for as long as it has. The U.S. at the beginning hesitated to give Ukraine some powerful weapons as it feared “the Russians would capture them”. Europe is also obsessed with institutions. And it stopped believing in the transformative power of defensive nationalism. Europe was a post-national experiment. They totally underestimated Ukraine’s willingness to defend itself. So now EU flies Ukraine flags and vice-versa. Yet Europe is not homogenous in this regard. Bulgaria supplied 1/3 of the shells used in the conflict, but 60% of its population is against the war. The old imperial maps start to become important again. Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks tend to be against the war, “Habsburg” territories somewhere in between, while Poland and the Baltics are very pro-Ukraine as they share a common fear of being occupied by Russia. Germany and France fear nuclear war above all else. We are also witnessing the rise of “middle powers”: Turkey, India, who don’t want to take sides.
T.S.: If you ask about China, you have to see it in the context of an imperial framework. Who is the victim? Empries always want to play victim. Russia has a strong sense of this. Yet it is a post-imperial power. The nuclear war argument is nonsense. We see from the events of this weekend that when Putin is put in a corner, he runs away, and writes a check. Therefore the nuke argument isn’t an excuse not to act. Empires confuse peace with victory. But think back to World War II. Germany did not get peace. Germany was defeated. Therefore the world needs to think about how to help Russia to lose. The empire must be defeated. The war in Ukraine will teach China against offensive operations if Russia is soundly defeated, if Russia is not allowed to win. How do you define victory? The absence of war is not peace. We have to imagine a post-war Europe. Does China walk away with the lesson of do not start a war, or do not wait too long to start a war? E.g. Putin could have achieved more in 2014. Taiwan has now had time to get ready. What will Russia look like after Ukraine wins?
I.K.: The west never had a Ukraine policy. Ukraine policy was always a part of Russia policy. Now we don’t know what a post-Putin Russia will look like. We cannot predict this, but we know it will be messy, and there will be side-effects. Therefore we need to craft a Ukraine policy based on the fact that we won’t know what we will be dealing with in Russia. We see the limits of what the west can offer, and its capabilities.
T.S.: He studied arms control, and notes nuclear powers can, and often do, lose wars. Colonial powers generally emerge the losers. Just look at the U.S., the Soviets in Afghanistan. So we should not respond nor give into nuclear blackmail. Focus of much of his work is the 1945 period being post-imperial. Putin is going to die at some point anyway. The transition of power was going to be a mess anyway. Now with the war in Ukraine, the world can no longer act surprised. We the west cannot influence Russia, but we can influence Ukraine.
What else? I was in Serbia this weekend (TL;DR Belgrade looks better than two years ago, clearly government/economy is enjoying playing west and Russia off each other, other than a few billboards proclaiming Russia-Serbian unity sponsored by Gazprom, things were very peaceful, local tabloids focus on Kosovo headlines rather than Prigozhin drama, no sight of the mass protests against violence in schools, although schools let out for summer one month early because of the school shootings, instead the city government sponsored a family weekend with balloons and free concerts, brand new airport but national carrier reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy, hence many cancelled flights — in short the usual Balkan (sorry) chaos but felt less chaotic than usual, and more hipsteresque, Russians in exile have opened many businesses, you hear Moscow accents a lot) and came back to a slew of activity.
One of our most loyal donors surprised me with €500 she raised at her own birthday party recently. Those ten cards are going out yesterday and today. As I have officially hit “pause”, I am being selective in whom I send these to: families with children, elderly, handicapped. I am still telling able-bodied adults that we do not have cards. Because I know how hard it is to raise funds at the moment, I want to ensure that we direct help specifically to where it is needed the most. Today I heard about a case via our VM4U chat, and I am sending a card specifically to that family who have had their state benefits cancelled.
There were also several media reports yesterday about the situation regarding the MIKA-D tests for Ukrainian students in Austrian schools, and the worrying situation hundreds of children are/were facing in that having past the German test, they still were not being let to move forward to the next grade due to a bureaucratic hurdle. In other words, teacher says it is ok, but Austrian education ministry legislation does not. Thanks to media reports, which actually resulted in pressure this time, the ministry has now promised a solution, and to look into the matter. Let’s hope that actually happens.
This TV report features Lena, my hairdresser, a single mom of three whose son was told her would need to repeat 4th grade for the third (!) time despite having good marks.
https://twitter.com/tanjamaier17/status/1673404867837063187?s=20
And this radio report also helped draw attention to a problem we in contact with Ukrainian kids and parents have been writing about for months. Finally, in this last week of school in the east of Austria, there appears to be some small signs of progress (I am too cynical to exhale just yet). In this case, media pressure from the national public TV & radio during prime time seems to have done its thing.
This morning, I hosted 9 Ukrainian teens to spend the morning with my daughter’s 7th grade class. It was an opportunity for them to practice their German with native speakers, and on the whole, I think it was a success, although you can imagine asking any group of 13 year olds to do something together on a rainy morning at 8am is a challenge in and of itself. I wrote a little thread about it here. The Austrian kids of course have no idea what the Ukrainians have been through. How could they? I walked away thinking about that, a lot. They were respectful, but of course they haven’t been hearing what I have been hearing for the past year and a half, so when Masha says she is from Mariupol, most of them have no idea what that means. My own kid included. They are still kids, except the Ukrainians had a large part of their childhoods stolen from them. They are now in a new city, trying to navigate school in a new language under challenging circumstances. Some are lucky. They have a talent, like soccer, and this builds a community around them. Others are not lucky. They live with their mothers in social housing where they are “fed” and receive €40 per month pocket money, so when I offer to go to Starbucks to pop out of the rain for a minute, for the Austrian kids it is normal, for some of the Ukrainian kids, it is their first time seeing the menu. They cautiously order a pink sugar drink which costs €5 only after I say twice that it is my treat.
Other than that, I will skip the insanity that has been Austrian political commentary this week. My blood pressure needs a rest.
Thanks for your patience as I have not been able to write as often as I would have liked to. Some weeks my own stuff takes over, and this is/was one of those weeks.