The countries of the collective West, led by the United States, have been providing military aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation in February 2022 in the amount of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Canada may transfer CRV7 air-to-surface missiles to Ukraine that were developed in the 1980s and taken out of service in the early 2000s, according to Canadian broadcaster CBC, citing a representative of the country’s Defense Ministry.
“The federal Conservatives are demanding that the Liberal government donate to Ukraine tens of thousands of surplus air-to-ground missiles that were scheduled to be scrapped,” the material said.
At the moment, Canada has about 83,300 missiles in its arsenal, part of them already without warheads, according to CBC.
The leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, also demands that these munitions be sent to Kiev. According to him, it is better to give these weapons to Ukraine than to make Canadians pay millions of dollars to decommission them.
Earlier, on January 1, Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, thanking him in particular for the delivery of additional NASAMS air defense systems and shells. However, later, on January 9, CTV News reported that Kiev had not received the NASAMS air defense missile system that Canada had promised to purchase from the US for the needs of the Ukrainian military.
The CRV7 air-to-surface missile, an outdated weapon from the past, is no longer in use due to advances in technology and the development of more sophisticated missiles. Designed for use during the Cold War, these missiles have been replaced by more accurate, faster, and more versatile ones with greater range, payload capacity, and precision guidance systems.
European Union (EU) member states have agreed on a €50 billion ($54 billion) support package for Ukraine over four years, overcoming Hungary’s resistance. But where will the EU get that money?
The EU could commandeer interest paid on frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine during its war with Moscow.
Europe’s economy is facing stagnation, with zero economic growth for October-to-December period reported by EU statistics agency Eurostat.
The Eurozone inflation rate has yet to fall below the target two percent threshold, with consumer prices still remaining high.
Against that backdrop EU member states are cutting subsidies, reducing energy consumption and diminishing industrial production. Protests by farmers have rocked the continent since early January.
Nonetheless, Brussels has found €50 billion ($54 billion) to support the embattled Kiev regime for four more years. But where will this money come from?
According to the European Council, the bloc has set up the so-called Ukraine Facility for the period 2024-2027 to “contribute to the recovery, reconstruction and modernization of the country, foster social cohesion and progressive integration into the Union, with a view to possible future Union membership.”
To that end the EC has allocated €50 billion, of which:
€33 billion ($35.9 billion) comes “in the form of loans guaranteed by extending until 2027 the existing EU budget guarantee, over and above the ceilings, for financial assistance to Ukraine available until the end of 2027,” the document sets out.
€17 billion ($18.5 billion) comes “in the form of non-repayable support, under a new thematic instrument the Ukraine Reserve, set up over and above the ceilings of the MFF 2021-27.” The EC document specifies that revenues “could be generated under the relevant Union legal acts, concerning the use of extraordinary revenues held by private entities stemming directly from the immobilized Central Bank of Russia assets.”
On February 1, CNN claimed that the EU had taken a step towards seizing billions of dollars in interest payments generated by Russian assets frozen in European accounts. Media reported that roughly €200 billion ($218 billion) remain in the EU, mainly in Euroclear, a Belgium-based financial services company.
The media outlet highlighted that the EU approved the €50 billion Ukraine package as it “came closer to finalizing a plan” of using the profits from the Russian Central Bank’s sequestred assets — indicating that it has yet to gain access to the funds. Euroclear revealed on Thursday that the frozen Russian assets had yielded €5.2 billion ($5.6 billion) in interest on income assets since 2022.
On Monday, EU member states “agreed in principle” that profits from the Russian assets will be set aside and not be paid out as dividends to shareholders until the bloc’s members decide to set up a “financial contribution to the [EU] budget that shall be raised on these net profits to support Ukraine”, according to a draft document quoted by Euroactive.
The document claimed that the levy will be “consistent with applicable contractual obligations, and in accordance with [EU] and international law.” After that the EC would transfer the money to the EU’s accounts and then to Ukraine, the media noted, specifying that the proposal targets future profits and would not be applied retrospectively. It is believed that Russia’s frozen assets in the EU could generate an estimated €15-17 billion over four years, which would be transferred to Ukraine, according to the press.
Speaking to Sputnik last October, Jacques Sapir, director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, argued that any attempt by the EU to grab Russia’s frozen assets or revenues from them could turn into a legal nightmare for the EU leadership and particular member states where the money is being stored.
“As a matter of fact, if assets belong to the Russian state legally, you will have to prove that this state is a ‘failing state,’ something impossible,” Sapir told Sputnik on October 29, 2023. “If assets belong to private persons, you need a legal conviction against these persons. If you can’t do both and that you take away revenues to divert them to a third party (Ukraine) this is no less than a theft. Then you will be liable to legal action. But, what is even more important, you will probably discourage all foreign investors from investing in the EU.”
Brussels Wants European Farmers to Tighten Belts
While allocating tens of billions of euros for Ukraine, Brussels has yet to solve its farming crisis caused by inflation, a spike in production costs, economic slowdown, politically-motivated decoupling from Russia’s energy market, an influx of cheap agricultural goods from Ukraine and the bloc’s aggressive climate policies.
Farmers’ protests have been gaining pace since early January, engulfing France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands.
Commenting on the provision of €50 billion to Kiev, French member of the European Parliament Thierry Mariani warned that the package could cost France at least €8 billion ($8.7 billion) in taxpayers’ money since Paris contributes 16 percent of the EU budget.
“Another €50 billion for Ukraine (17 in donations plus 33 in loans… which will never be repaid). Do the French realize that they will have to pay €8 billion since we contribute 16 percent of the EU spending? Eight billion that our farmers would dream of,” Mariani posted on X on Thursday.
By January 31, the number of farmers protesting across France against the Macron government’s agricultural policies had reached 10,000, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin admitted. French farmers are protesting against unfair competition from cheaper imports, draconian environmental rules and the government’s push to bring down food inflation by artificially suppressing prices.
In a bid to calm the protests, the French government has proposed €150 million in tax and social support — small change compared to the multi-billion aid for Ukraine paid for by Paris.
Will EU Money be Spent Appropriately or Wasted in Ukraine?
Aid to Ukraine would be provided under certain conditions, the European Council said.
“A precondition for the support for Ukraine under the Facility shall be that Ukraine continues to uphold and respect effective democratic mechanisms, including a multi-party parliamentary system, and the rule of law, and to guarantee respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. In implementing the Facility, the Commission and Ukraine shall take all the appropriate measures to protect the financial interests of the Union, in particular regarding the prevention, detection and correction of fraud, corruption, conflicts of interests and irregularities,” the document read.
Those rules have already been broken by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has refused to hold general elections this year under the pretext of the ongoing conflict, despite top US and EU officials repeatedly urging Kiev to go ahead with the vote.
Washington and its European allies have grown concerned by Ukraine’s endemic corruption, as Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh remarked in his latest op-ed on Substack. Washington and Western Europe want Zelensky to carry out financial reforms.
“According to the knowledgeable American official, the first step of the new concept is a long-standing issue: financial reform,” Hersh wrote. “Zelensky must be told: ‘You’ve got to get rid of corruption before we do anything more.’ The second step is something that does not exist today in Ukraine: a serious audit of all government funding. The official said Zelensky should consider the billions he needs ‘as our money, as an investment with all of the rules’ for its disbursement ‘to be laid out and followed’.”
The investigative journalist recalled that last year CIA Director William Burns secretly travelled to Kiev to warn the Ukrainian president that Washington was aware of his and his entourage’s corruption. Hersh noted that Burns reportedly also told Joe Biden that Zelensky’s subordinates were outraged by their leader personally taking too large a cut of the US aid.
In order to get Ukraine’s spending under control, “the Council will play a key role in the governance of the Ukraine Facility,” according to the EC press release.
“In this sense, a Council Implementing Decision shall be adopted by a qualified majority for the adoption and amendments of the Ukraine Plan and for the approval and the suspension of payments based on the relevant assessments and proposals by the Commission. On the basis of the Commission annual report on the implementation of the Ukraine Facility, the European Council will hold a debate each year on the implementation of the Facility with a view to providing guidance. If needed, in two years the European Council will invite the Commission to make a proposal for review in the context of the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).”
Time will tell whether the EU’s funds allocated for Ukraine at a time of economic stagnation and looming crisis would be used by the Kiev regime properly — or whether it will result in yet another economic and military failure.
Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops.
Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed.
It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack.
Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.
By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.
Biden was not speaking about the fatal IL-76 incident that occurred on January 24 when nine Russian servicemen and 65 Ukrainian prisoners were killed after their cargo plane was hit in mid-air with a warhead.
The president was responding to U.S. journalists questioning him about the deaths of three American military personnel at a base in Jordan that Iraqi militants attacked on January 28.
Biden said he held Iran responsible for the American fatalities and vowed to retaliate. Somewhat contradictorily, the president and his spokesmen have said the United States does not seek to have a wider war with Iran even though Biden said he intends to attack Iranian assets in a “tiered way at a time of his choosing”. If that’s not a wider war, what is?
Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. The strike was claimed by Iraqi militia known as Islamic Resistance which is allied with Iran.
Asked if he blamed Iran, Biden said he did “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Iran and the Iraqi militants are affiliated in a similar way to Tehran’s support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. All are motivated by staunch opposition to U.S. military occupation in the Middle East and Washington’s support for Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza. Collectively, Iran and its allies are known as the Axis of Resistance.
There is no evidence that Iran supplied the weapons to the militants who killed the three American troops. Iran contends that each resistance member possesses its own agency and decision-making.
By contrast, however, the supply of American and other NATO weaponry to the Kiev regime is publicly recorded. It is estimated that the West has funded Ukraine with a total of $200 billion since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. About half of that has been spent on weapons that include long-range missiles such as Patriot, Shadow Storm, Scalp and Iris-T systems. British and French cruise missiles have been repeatedly used to hit pre-war Russian territory such as Belgorod resulting in dozens of civilian deaths.
The strike on the IL-76 transport plane is believed to have been carried out with Western-supplied weapons.
Russian crash investigators have this week confirmed earlier claims that the cargo plane was shot down with a NATO weapon, either a U.S.-made Patriot missile system or a German Iris-T surface-to-air missile.
When the IL-76 was blown out of the sky on January 24 over Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian radars detected the launch of two anti-aircraft warheads nearly 100 kilometers away from the target. The missiles were allegedly fired from the location of Liptsy in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov province. It is believed that only NATO-supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces could have achieved that extensive range.
At the time of the IL-76 shoot-down, the Kremlin said that if it confirmed that Western weapons were responsible then Russia would deem the West to be complicit in the crime.
On January 26, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said: “According to preliminary investigation, Ukrainian armed forces carried out this terrorist attack using an anti-aircraft missile system. The missiles were launched from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov region.”
He added: “These could have been either American Patriot or German-made Iris-T missiles. If confirmed, this will make the Western suppliers of this ammo complicit in this crime. Just as they are complicit in shelling of peaceful neighborhoods of Russian cities that Ukrainian armed forces carry out with Western weapons.”
Russian crash investigators have now confirmed that Western weapons were the cause of the deadly crash.
The United States or one of its NATO allies supplied those weapons. That makes the U.S. or NATO complicit in an act of deadly aggression against Russia.
And by using the same logic as Joe Biden that culpability makes the U.S. or its allies accountable to Russia… “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Biden has made the case for Russia to directly hit American or NATO assets.
EU leaders have signed off on a €50 billion ($54 billion) package of economic aid to Ukraine, overcoming resistance from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The Hungarian leader accused Brussels of “blackmailing” him into accepting the deal.
European Council President Charles Michel announced the news on Thursday morning, minutes after the bloc’s leaders sat down for talks in Brussels.
“All 27 leaders agreed on an additional €50 billion support package for Ukraine within the EU budget,” Michel wrote on X. “This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine.”
The sum will be drawn from the EU’s collective budget and doled out over four years to Kiev, where it will be used to pay public sector salaries, keep government departments open, and prop up the beleaguered welfare system. The EU already agreed on a budget three years ago, which will have to be modified to include the mammoth aid package.
Any such budget modifications require the unanimous approval of all 27 member states. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned for months that he would veto the proposal, arguing that the EU has no idea how the money will be spent and no idea what will happen in Ukraine in the coming months. Orban has also argued that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on the battlefield, and that Western leaders should be pushing Kiev toward a ceasefire and peace talks.
Orban has described Ukraine as “one of the most corrupt countries in the world.” Transparency International ranks Ukraine 104th out of 180 in its Corruption Perceptions Index report, and over the weekend, the country’s Security Service (SBU) announced that it had uncovered a major scheme by high-ranking defense officials to embezzle money intended to purchase ammunition.
Earlier this week, the Financial Times revealed that the European Council had drawn up a plan to cut funding to Budapest and tank the Hungarian economy if Orban maintained his veto. Orban accused the “imperialist” EU of trying to “blackmail” him, and said that he proposed a “compromise deal” whereby Ukraine would receive a smaller transfer of aid every year, which any member state could veto.
Brussels rejected Orban’s proposal, he told France’s Le Point news magazine on Monday. “They say that if we behave like a sovereign country, Hungary will immediately face a vast financial blockade,” he said. “Knowing Brussels, they are capable of it.”
Under the terms of the deal agreed on Thursday, EU leaders will debate the implementation of the package annually, while the budget will be reviewed in two years. Speaking anonymously, multiple European diplomats told Politico that these measures were included to placate the Hungarian PM.
However, other anonymous officials said that Orban was given no concessions, and was pressured to accept that “there was no alternative than giving in on the money to Ukraine.”
Washington plans to ship its first batch of ground-launched long-range bombs to Kiev this week. The arms were designed for the Ukrainian military and will give Kiev another option for deep strikes.
The new weapon was developed by Boeing and Saab. It combines a 250-pound guided bomb intended to be launched by an aircraft and straps it to a rocket motor. Washington believes it has a range of 90 miles.
Boeing and Saab pitched combining the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor in November 2022. President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the long-range bomb to Ukraine in February 2023. However, the delivery of the munitions was delayed because it needed to be developed and tested.
Politico spoke with four officials who confirmed the first batch would arrive in Ukraine this week. The officials touted the weapons as giving Ukraine “a significant capability.” “It gives them a deeper strike capability they haven’t had, it complements their long-range fire arsenal,” the US official said. “It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more.”
The officials did not say how many bombs will be sent to Ukraine. At times, Washington has sent an extremely limited number of some types of arms to Kiev. Ukrainian forces recently conducted strikes deep in Russian-held territory on civilian targets. Earlier this month, at least 27 people were killed in a Ukrainian attack on a market on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk in the Russian-controlled portion of the Donetsk Oblast.
While the bombs may give Ukraine another option for deep strikes, it does not fill massive gaps in Kiev’s war needs. Ukraine is running short on manpower. Additionally, front-line troops lack artillery shells to fight back advancing Russian forces, and Kiev is short on air defense interceptors to protect its key infrastructure.
Ukraine’s Western backers are facing multiple hurdles to providing Kiev with more weapons. In Washington, the White House is gridlocked with Republicans in Congress on the supplemental defense spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. However, even if the legislation is passed, Western reserves of 155 mm artillery shells and air defense interceptors are nearly depleted.
American specialists may have been part of the crew that operated the US-made Patriot air defense system that shot down a Russian military aircraft carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war last week, TASS news agency reports.
The plane, a Russian Il-76, crashed over Belgorod Region last Wednesday while carrying 65 captured Ukrainian servicemen who were set to take part in a prisoner swap later that day. All of the POWs, as well as three Russian officers and six crew members, died in the crash.
On Thursday, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report claiming that the plane was brought down using two MIM-104A surface-to-air missiles launched from a Patriot missile system deployed at a staging area in Kharkov Region, Ukraine near the village of Liptsy, around 10km from the Russian border.
Following the Investigative Committee’s report, a source within Russia’s security services told TASS that it is very likely that the crew operating the Patriot system represented a mix of Ukrainian and American specialists.
The agency’s source explained that Ukrainian officers are likely placed in lower positions while “Western specialists, including Americans, sit at the control and missile guidance stations.” They added that Ukrainian servicemen are often only allowed to be involved with these systems as drivers or operators of transport-loading vehicles.
The TASS report noted that the Russian authorities are still in the process of identifying the exact people who were involved in the attack and were operating the Patriot system.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the use of a US-made system in the killing of Ukrainian POWs means that US President Joe Biden and his administration have made regular American citizens “complicit in the bloody tragedy.”
The US and its allies have shown little interest in launching an international probe into last week’s crash involving a Russian aircraft that was carrying Ukrainian captives, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday. President Vladimir Putin called for an investigation on Wednesday.
A Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft with 65 Ukrainian POWs on board crashed in Belgorod Region on January 24. All of the Ukrainians, as well as six crew members and three Russian military personnel, died in the crash. Moscow immediately blamed Kiev for the incident.
On Wednesday, Putin said Moscow had asked “for international experts to be deployed [here] to conduct an analysis, assess the existing material evidence” as part of an international probe.
According to Peskov, Western nations have demonstrated no interest in the Russian initiative. “The president stated it publicly and openly yesterday that we are ready for an international investigation,” he said, adding that the US and its allies were demanding official written requests and refusing to consider the issue without such documentation.
The West’s position came as no surprise for Russia, since it is a “direct participant” in the ongoing conflict, Peskov said. “It is clear that not one of them [the US and its allies] would be interested in conducting a probe and stumbling upon themselves as a result,” he added.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had disputed Moscow’s claims and called for an international probe into the incident as well.
On Thursday, the Russian Investigative Committee confirmed that the aircraft had been shot down by a US-made Patriot air-defense system. Such systems have been provided to Kiev’s troops by the Western backers.
In a blow to Ukraine, the World Court ruled Russia didn’t finance terrorism in Donbass and the court refused to blame Moscow for the downing of Flight MH17.
The World Court ruled on Wednesday that Russia did not finance terrorism in its defense of separatists in Ukraine and the court refused to find Russia guilty of downing Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 as Ukraine had asked.
The case was brought to the ICJ by Ukraine in 2017, three years after the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev overthrew the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
When Russian speakers in Donbass rebelled against the unconstitutional change in government that they had voted for, the coup leaders in 2014 launched what it called an “anti-terrorist” military operation to put down the rebellion.
Russia responded by helping ethnic Russians with arms and other military equipment. Ukraine claimed to the court that that was in breach of a treaty barring terrorism financing.
But the ICJ ruled on Wednesday that the treaty only covered cash transfers made to alleged terrorist groups. This “does not include the means used to commit acts of terrorism, including weapons or training camps,” the Court said in its judgement.
“Consequently, the alleged supply of weapons to various armed groups operating in Ukraine… fall outside the material scope” of the anti-terrorism financing convention, the Court ruled. The Court also said it had no evidence to show that any of the armed militias in Donbass fighting against the government could be characterized as terrorist groups.
The ICJ found only that Russia was, “failing to take measures to investigate facts… regarding persons who have allegedly committed an offense.” It added that the court “rejects all other submissions made by the Ukraine.”
The ruling is highly significant in undermining Kiev’s claim to be fighting a war against terrorists in Donbass, an essential part of the Ukraine’s and the West’s narrative in justifying its brutal operation that left more than 10,000 civilians dead.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 amid indications that Kiev was beginning a new offensive against Donbass. Ukraine and the West had failed to implement two peace agreements negotiated in Minsk and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.
Western and Ukrainian officials later admitted they never had any intention of implementing the deal and pretended to to buy time to build up its forces against Russia.
Rejected MH17 Claim
In its complaint to the Court, Ukraine had also claimed that Russia was responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, killing all 298 civilian passengers and crew on board. Kiev wanted Russia to pay compensation to the victims.
But the court refused to rule whether Russia was responsible and to order compensation. This ruling appears to contradict the results of the official investigation into the incident.
The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and a Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT) concluded in 2016 that the plane was shot down by ethnic Russian separatists using a missile supplied by Russia. Moscow has denied involvement in the incident.
The ruling on MH17 came two weeks after the European Court of Justice decided that the Dutch government was not required to release information it has about the incident. The Dutch news outlet RTL Nieuws had brought the case before the ICJ.
It wanted to know what reports the Dutch government had received about Ukrainian airspace before the plane was shot down. The government refused to release that data and the European court ruled it did not have to divulge information regarding aviation safety.
No Discrimination
Ukraine was also denied compensation for what it said was discrimination against ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.
The court only agreed that Russia failed to adequately protect Ukrainian language education in Crimea. This complaint came as Ukraine passed laws discriminating against the Russian language in the country.
US Judge Votes Against Russia
Joan Donoghue, the American judge who is president of the Court, voted to protect Ukraine against several of the measures of the judgement.
For instance, she voted (in a 10-5 vote) against rejecting “all other submissions made by Ukraine with respect to the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.” She only voted for the point criticizing Russia for not properly investigating the charge and against rejecting Ukraine’s demands for compensation.
Donoghue also voted (in another 10-5 vote) against rejecting Ukraine’s charge regarding discrimination against Ukrainians and Tartars in Crimea.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe
The war in Ukraine is a complicated tangle of three wars in one. It is a civil war between Ukraine’s European leaning west and its Russian leaning east. It is a war between Ukraine and Russia. And it is a war between Russia and NATO.
Ben Abelow’s book, How the West Brought War to Ukraine, is a clear and valuable introduction to the decisions and events that led up to the war between Ukraine and Russia. Nicolai Petro’s The Tragedy of Ukraine is a comprehensive and masterful account of the history of the ethnic tension between the monist and pluralist visions of Ukraine that led to civil war and made Ukraine vulnerable to being caught up in the larger war between Russia and NATO.
Richard Sakwa’s new book, The Lost Peace, valuably fills the gap by addressing the larger war between Russia and NATO. It is a tour de force analysis of the wasted opportunity for peace at the end of the Cold War.
When Mikhail Gorbachev declared the end of the Cold War on December 7, 1988, a brief window for peace opened. But by the negligent failure to construct a new security structure in Europe that overcame the flaws of the previous one, the window Gorbachev opened was quickly closed. When Gorbachev received his peace prize in 1990, the Nobel Prize committee declared that “the two mighty power blocs, have managed to abandon their life-threatening confrontation” and confidently expressed the “hope that we are now celebrating the end of the Cold War.” But “The Cold War,” as U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has funereally said, “is back.”
How was that window of opportunity wasted? Why was the road from the Nobel Committee’s hope to the United Nations’ eulogy such a short one?
If the second cold war that we now find ourselves in is to end more hopefully, that failure will have to be deconstructed in order to find the clues for constructing a lasting and inclusive security structure upon which real peace can be built. Richard Sakwa, who has been called the preeminent Russia scholar of our day, provides timely help with his deconstruction of that failure.
There are two strengths that set The Lost Peace apart. The first is the wealth and depth of Sakwa’s knowledge. The second is that the book doesn’t just start with the shattering of the peace in Ukraine in 2014 that broke the dam for the new Cold War. In The Lost Peace, Sakwa analyzes the post Cold War world and identifies the conflicts and decisions that wasted the peace and led, once again, to war.
Sakwa argues that with the end of the first Cold War, there was a genuine chance for a very different world than the actual one being painfully played out in Ukraine; there was a genuine chance for a real peace.
But an arrogant America misunderstood Gorbachev’s offering of an international order that now transcended blocs and declared the victory of the American-led bloc and the dawn of a unipolar world. “By the grace of God, America won the cold war,” President George H.W. Bush arrogantly and misleadingly boasted in 1992. The young American hegemon, newly bloated with hubris, led the political West, hand in hand with NATO, on a global expansion that would soon close the cold peace and open the door to a new Cold War.
The U.S. rejected the opportunity it had been offered to build a new security structure. Instead, the U.S. declared not only the victory of the political West’s worldview, but its universality, and set out on a mission of enlargement that expanded to fill the whole world.
That is, the whole world but Russia, who alone was left out of the new security arrangement and ostracized as the new dividing lines in Europe moved ever closer to its borders and red lines until the whole strategy exploded in Ukraine, ending the possibility of peace and cementing the new Cold War.
Sakwa deconstructs the necessary security apparatus that was never constructed and demonstrates how, without that framework, the structure of the possible new peace so quickly collapsed. He identifies three crucial contradictions: sovereign internationalism versus liberal internationalism, international law versus the rules-based order, and freedom to choose versus indivisibility of security.
Russia was committed to sovereign internationalism, which emphasizes state sovereignty and the acceptance that different states develop different cultures and are at different stages of development of different forms of government. All are acceptable until they violate international law or human rights. The United States, however, took the perceived victory of the political West to mean the victory of the cultural West and set out on a mission to spread those values across the globe. They favored liberal hegemony over sovereign internationalism, asserting the universality of their beliefs. Russia, China, and the Global South resented that “great substitution” of the values of sovereign internationalism with liberal hegemony and the colonial missionary spread of the universal values of the West.
When the American policy of spreading Western values lacked the necessary approval of the Security Council, the U.S. enlarged the great substitution, usurping the authority of the Security Council and acting unilaterally without its approval. International resentment grew at this replacement of international law anchored in the UN with the rules-based order. The essence of international law is that written laws are applied universally. The rules-based order promoted by the West is composed of unwritten laws whose source, consent and legitimacy are unknown. To Russia and other countries not in the political West, they have the appearance of being invoked when they benefit the U.S. and its partners and not being invoked when they don’t. To those not in the political West, it appeared, disturbingly, that the U.S. and NATO had supplanted the U.N. as the arbiter of international law.
This belief was reinforced in Iraq and, especially, in Kosovo and Libya where the United States acted without Security Council approval in precisely the way they insisted that the rest of the world do not. Russia bristled at the double standard.
As long as liberal internationalism confined itself to the UN based international system, there was much about it that was attractive. But when the U.S. and NATO began their missionary project of spreading those universal values in ways that dismissed sovereign internationalism and international law, other nations felt their sovereignty and security being threatened.
And that led to the third contradiction. The U.S. insists on the free and sovereign right of states to choose their own partners and security alignments; Russia insists on the indivisibility of security, which insists that the security of one state cannot be purchased at the cost of the security of another. Both principles are enshrined in international law and in international agreements, and, with imagination and understanding, they could have been made compatible. But the United States, Russia argues, exclusively pursued the first in disregard of the second.
That conflict came to a head in Ukraine. American and NATO insistence, in violation of verbal promises made at the close of the Cold War, on NATO’s open-door policy and, especially, on Ukraine’s right to join NATO and NATO’s right to expand right up to Russia’s border was perceived by Russia as a security threat that crossed its reddest of lines.
The U.S. and NATO restated their promise of eventual NATO membership for Ukraine and increased military support. Russia felt that its security concerns were being ignored and that Ukraine was being built into a platform for threatening its existence. The U.S. overreached, Russia overreacted, and the second Cold War was a certainty.
If there is a weakness to Sakwa’s book, it is not in its argument nor in its evidence. It is in its reach to an audience. The Lost Peace is not an easy book. It is a book by a scholar steeped in the story that assumes at least a little of that knowledge by its audience. The Lost Peace is not a book for beginners. But for those with an interest in international relations, the book is an invaluable addition.
The Lost Peace despairs of the wasted opportunity to build a security structure that would have provided the architecture for a possible peace at the end of the Cold War. But it also ends with the hope that, having analyzed the contradictions, conflicts and failures to recognize the interests of others, we are able to find “new ways of thinking about old problems” and do better in the face of a new Cold War. Sakwa’s book is an invaluable contribution to that hope.
MOSCOW – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected Kiev’s claim to recognize Russia as an “aggressor state” and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) as “terrorist organizations,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, the ICJ rejected most of Ukraine’s claims against Russia under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in Crimea, Court President Joan Donoghue said.
“The International Court of Justice did not follow Kiev’s whim and refused to recognize Russia as an ‘aggressor state.’ The court also rejected Ukrainian insinuations that the DPR and LPR are allegedly ‘terrorist organizations,'” the statement said.
Kiev hoped to back up its demands for the transfer of Russian assets frozen in the West and the introduction of international restrictions against Russia with the court claim, the ministry added.
Ukraine filed the lawsuit with the ICJ in 2017, accusing Russia of violating international conventions on anti-terrorism and racial discrimination over actions in Donbass and Crimea.
The ICJ found that Russia had breached the anti-discrimination treaty by “the way in which it has implemented its educational system in Crimea after 2014 with regard to school education in the Ukrainian language,” and rejected all other claims.
The Hague-based court also found that Russia had faithfully fulfilled its obligations to cooperate in the fight against terrorism financing, including the obligation to identify and block funds used to finance terrorism.
The ICJ declined to rule on Kiev’s accusations of Russia’s alleged responsibility for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
When the General Staff have been discussing with President Vladimir Putin the timing of the Russian offensive to force the Kiev regime into capitulation, it has been agreed, understood, and repeated that the strategic reserves of the Ukrainian forces should be destroyed first, together with the supply lines for the weapons and ammunition crossing the border from the US and the NATO allies.
This process, they also agreed, should take as long as required with least casualties on the Russian side, as determined by military intelligence. Also agreed and pre-conditional, there should be no repeat of the political intelligence failures of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) which precipitated the failed special forces operation known as the Battle of Antonov (Hostomel) Airport from February 24 to April 2, 2022.
Taking account of the mistakes made then by the SVR director, Sergei Naryshkin, and the subsequent mistakes of military officers around Yevgeny Prigozhin, the General Staff has also accepted that their tactical operations must run least risk of Russian casualties through March 17, the final day of the presidential election.
Reinforcing these preconditions for the timing of the Russian offensive, General Winter and General Patience have joined the Stavka meetings.
This week military sources believe there has been a turning point – on the Ukrainian battlefield, and on the Russian clock.
The daily Defense Ministry briefing and bulletin from Moscow reported last Thursday, before the Friday weekly summary, that the Ukrainian KIA (killed in action) for the previous twenty-four hours totaled 795, with the ratio of offensive tactics to defence, 3 to 3. On Monday, the KIA total was 680, the ratio 4 to 3. On Tuesday, KIA came to 885, the ratio 5 to 1. The casualty rate is unusually high; the shift to offence is recognizably new, if not announced.
The “Stavka Project”, a military briefing which is broadcast by Vladimir Soloviev, confirms the positional breakthroughs this week on several of the fronts or “directions”, as the Defense Ministry calls them, along the Donbass line; click to watch (in Russian).
In Boris Rozhin’s summary of the Defense Ministry briefing materials, published before dawn on Wednesday morning, the leading Russian military blogger (Colonel Cassad ) identifies “small advances”, “slight movements”, some positional “successes”, other positional “counter-fighting”, and “no significant progress yet”. The adverb is military talk for timing.
According to a military source outside Russia, “the Russian breakthrough is beginning to happen now. It’s being coordinated with strikes and raids along the northern border. The commitment of the ‘crack’ Ukrainian brigades at the expense of other sectors shows how desperate [General Valery] Zaluzhny is to plug the holes. He knows that the target is the isolation of Kharkov, the establishment of a demilitarized ‘buffer zone’, as well as the development of a situation whereby all Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper are threatened with being cut off… and he’s quickly running out of ammunition, not to mention cannon fodder.”
“By the end of the winter,” the source has added overnight, “the Ukrainians will barely be able to move along the roads they use to feed the front due to the Russian drone, missile, conventional air, and artillery strikes. Once they can no longer plug the gaps with mechanized units acting as fire-fighting brigades, it’s just a matter of time before the big breakthroughs and encirclements begin. At the current burn rate of Ukrainian forces, I imagine we’ll start seeing Russian tanks with fuel tanks fitted for extended range appearing and Russian airborne troops making air assaults in the Ukrainian rear within weeks.”
In yesterday’s edition of the Moscow security analysis platform Vzglyad, Yevgeny Krutikov, a leading Russian military analyst with GRU service himself and GRU sources for his reporting since, published a report entitled “What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?” “Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region,” Krutikov concluded, “threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.” A verbatim English translation of this piece follows.
January 29, 2024 – 19:10.
What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?
By Yevgeny Krutikov
“The settlement of Tabayevka in the Kharkov region has been liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry says. We are not just facing the capture of a village: Russian troops are now hacking into the contact lines, which have not budged for a year. Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region, threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.
First, Krakhmalnoye, then Tabayevka – Russian troops have advanced in the Svatovo direction (Kharkov region), pushing the enemy to a new line of defence (to the village of Peschanoye). Slightly to the north, already close to Kupyansk, the enemy’s positions are also gradually moving to the west and southwest.
Along the way, forests are being cleared, which the VSU [Ukrainian Armed Forces] is turning into fortified areas, even giving them names (“Alligator” and “Woodpecker”). The enemy is losing the old lines of trenches, the first line of contact has been destroyed. Something similar is happening directly near Kupyansk, but there the advanced fortified lines in Sinkovka are being held still by the VSU, though the positions on the flanks have gradually begun to sink.
At first glance, we are looking at isolated episodes of positional warfare, since the big, iconic and recognizable geographical names do not appear in the information releases. But this is not quite true.
Firstly, even in this scenario as published so far, strategic threats arise for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for example, in the possible drive of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to the Oskol River which has far-reaching prospects. Notwithstanding, it is still impossible to predict when this will become possible in practice.
Secondly, the enemy has been demonstrating a systemic defence crisis in the Kupyansk direction during the past week. The defence of Kupyansk has been under construction by the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the spring of last year, when the decision was made in Kiev on a ‘counteroffensive’ in the southern direction. New brigades with western armoured vehicles were sent to the southern section of the contact line, and Kupyansk and the area around it were designated for defence with the rest of their forces.
In Kiev, they were convinced that Russian troops were forming an offensive group in the Kupyansk direction, and so the VSU began to wait there for a frontal assault. However, as a result, the Russian Army did not undertake anything of the kind in this area. Instead, the Ukrainian units were gradually ground down by the Russian army in positional battles, while the Kupyansk group of the VSU had to be replenished with whatever troops were left.
Now Ukrainian sources are complaining that as a consequence, a combination of lines has formed in the sinkhole areas (that’s the same Krakhmalnoye and Tabayevka). Into these lines the VSU has herded separate battalions from different units, with the result that unified management and command have been lost, and the performance quality of the troops has left much to be desired.
As a result, the VSU is considering the possibility of transferring the remnants of those forces which participated in the failed ‘counteroffensive”’ to Kupyansk from the southern direction. Before that, they had been sent in great haste sent to Avdeyevka.
But this is already a systemic problem for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since there is trouble in the southern sector. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have gradually regained some of the positions which were left during the so-called counteroffensive, and these forces continue to move forward. We are even talking about possible threats to Orekhov, a rearguard city for the VSU, from which all the communications and command of the ‘counteroffensive’ had been carried out.
Behind the defensive fortifications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, an open field for tens of kilometres opens up on a whole group of sites. Kiev’s military reserves are gradually being squandered, and there is practically no human materiel left to plug the holes. Related to these problems there are the panic campaigns in Kiev about total mobilization.
There is another problem: the attrition of officers. Western military personnel cannot replace this crucial resource — they can only be used to service technically complicated weapons systems such as air defence or long-range artillery. Along the line of contact, foreign officers are more likely to interfere due to their ignorance of the language and misunderstanding of the mentality of the [Ukrainian] subordinates.
There are other factors weakening the Ukrainian defence, but they are not directly related to military operations. For example, the Western sponsors are really concerned about the corruption of the Ukrainian leadership. The inspections and audits which are taking place in Kiev on this issue right now are preventing Ukraine from building new defensive lines swiftly enough.
Another non-military factor: political discord among the various factions of the Ukrainian authorities. The premonition of defeat is triggering a drop in morale, not only in the troops, but also in the elites.
All this in general creates a strategic opportunity for Russia to seriously change the situation on the line of contact.
Partial tactical successes must at some point turn into a major breakthrough in the enemy’s defence. Moreover, we are talking about such a breakthrough that will not stop in just two or three days at the next defensive line, but will lead inevitably, precisely, to the collapse of the front. This is exactly what the efforts of the Russian Armed Forces are now aimed at, probing for the weaknesses in Ukrainian defensive positions.
The liberation of Tabayevka is an example of just such an approach. Sooner or later, the VSU will not have time to create a new defensive line behind a particular settlement. And then we will see how the special operation will break the current positional deadlock.
The Pentagon plans to “field test” a new, ground-launched variant of its deadly Small Diameter Bomb design in real world battlefield conditions in Ukraine. What are these weapons? What dangers will they pose to Russian forces and civilians in frontline areas? How can Russia defeat them? Sputnik explores.
Sources told Politico on Tuesday that Ukraine is preparing to receive a delivery of the US’ new Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDBs) as soon as this week.
The deliveries will give Kiev “a deeper strike capability they haven’t had” and “complement” the Ukrainian military’s “long-range fire arsenal,” a US official familiar with the transfer boasted. The weapons, which even the US military doesn’t have in its arsenal yet, will serve as “an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more,” the official said, without elaborating.
What is the Small Diameter Bomb?
Developed in the mid-2000s by US aerospace and defense giant Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems division, the original GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb was envisioned as an air-dropped glide bomb designed to target an array of stationary ground targets, ranging from bunkers and electronic warfare jamming equipment to airfields, fuel depots, barracks, and troop concentration.
The GBU-39 is equipped with a 285-pound (130 kg) bomb and has a 206-pound (93 kg) penetrating blast fragmentation warhead – enough to punch through up to three feet of steel-reinforced concrete, and can be guided by a combination of active radar homing, laser guidance, GPS, and inertial navigation, depending on configuration and model. The system boasts a circular error probable of about one meter, and has a range of between 75 and 110 km.
The GBU-39 is a glide weapon, which, as the name suggests, means the bomb glides to its target along a pre-designated flight path at low speeds, without the assistance of rocket engines. The system’s comparatively low cost (as little as $40,000 apiece compared to $3.2 million for the Storm Shadows Kiev has been receiving from Britain and using to terror bomb Donbass, for example, combined with its small radar signature and comparatively short flight time makes it difficult to detect and intercept using traditional air defenses.
What is the Ground-Launched Variant of the Small Diameter Bomb?
With Ukraine’s Air Force hard pressed to get its aircraft into the skies due to the constant threat of Russian air defenses and interceptor warplanes, the US and its allies have committed significant resources to converting ordinarily air-launched weapons for launch from ground-based systems (for more information check out the US military-industrial complex’s “FrankenSAM” program for Ukraine).
Besides air defenses, another component of efforts to convert ordinarily air-launched weapons from the ground revolves around rocket artillery. That’s where the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb comes in. Unlike its air-launched cousin, the modified GBU-39 is fitted with an engine from the M26 rocket motor used by the M270 and HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to propel it toward its target.
Developed by Boeing and Swedish defense giant Saab in the mid-2010s, the GLSDB is said to have a range of up to 145 km, and has a reported price tag of about $100,000 apiece.
With the US and its allies having already sent dozens of MLRS artillery platforms to Ukraine over the past two years, the delivery of new ground-launched Small Diameter Bombs is expected to provide Kiev with an instantaneous new long-range strike capability.
How Many GLSDBs Will Ukraine Get?
With US funding for Ukraine running out in December and the Pentagon forced to dip into its own dwindling stockpiles to assist Kiev, it’s not clear how many of the newfangled ground-launched GLSDBs Ukraine will receive. When plans to deliver the weapons were first announced a year ago as part of a $2.17 billion arms package, US media mentioned a figure of two launchers and 24 weapons total.
That would be enough for Kiev to attempt strikes deep behind Russian lines, or to launch terror attacks against cities in Donbass or other Russian border settlements, but not enough to have any serious strategic impact – where quantity of available munitions has proven key.
Where Have Small Diameter Bombs Been Used?
Ukraine’s military will be the GLSDB’s first operator, with the Chinese breakaway island province of Taiwan expected to follow at a later date.
The original SDB was used by the US and its allies in conflicts across the Middle East and Asia, from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Syria and Gaza (where it has been used by Washington’s Israeli ally), and Yemen (deployed by members of the Gulf-led coalition against the Houthis). In each instance, GBU-39s successfully targeted forces fighting US or allied militaries, but in no case has their deployment resulted in or even contributed to a strategic victory for an aggressor power.
How Can Russia Defend Against Ground-Launched GBU-39s?
As mentioned above, glide bombs’ design characteristics and principle of operation makes them difficult to intercept and destroy, but that doesn’t mean the task is impossible. Russia’s response to GLSDB deployment by Ukraine will likely include:
continuing operations to target HIMARS and M270 fire positions, ammunition, supply, and repair depots using artillery and precision missile strikes.
deploying radio-electronic jamming equipment to degrade the weapons’ accuracy (although this will not affect onboard inertial guidance systems, without GPS the glide bombs are less precise).
shooting the glide bombs down using the dense array of conventional air defenses along frontline areas, from the Tor and Buk missile system to close-in anti-aircraft guns.
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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The war in Ukraine is a complicated tangle of three wars in one. It is a civil war between Ukraine’s European leaning west and its Russian leaning east. It is a war between Ukraine and Russia. And it is a war between Russia and NATO.
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