https://www.foreignaffairs.com/eastern-europe-and-former-soviet-union/rightsizing-russia-threat

Since Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022, debates have raged in the West about how to properly respond to Moscow’s aggression. But those debates are limited by a lack of agreement about the goals of that aggression and, ultimately, what kind of threat Russia really represents. Arguably, understanding the Russia threat is a first-order priority: unless Western governments get that right, they risk either overreacting or underreacting.

Officials and scholars who have proffered their views of Russian goals tend to see them in quite stark terms. Many have made the case that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a maximalist whose ambitions go far beyond Ukraine. Others portray Putin as obsessed with Ukraine—or more specifically, obsessed with erasing it from the map. Such assessments of Putin’s intentions, however, are often unmoored from any consideration of his capabilities. If one accepts the formulation that a threat must be assessed based on an adversary’s intentions and capabilities, then the limits of what Putin can do establish which of his ambitions are relevant for understanding the threat posed by Russia—and which merely reflect the powers of his imagination.

Over the past 20 months, the world has learned much about what Putin can and cannot do. When one considers that evidence, a different view of Putin and the threat he represents emerges: a dangerous aggressor, for sure, but ultimately a tactician who has had to adjust to the constraints under which he is forced to operate.

WHAT DOES PUTIN WANT?

Some prominent Russia analysts have claimed that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is merely the first step in a much larger attempt at domination that will extend beyond Ukraine. Putin, in this view, is a maximalist. As the scholars Angela Stent and Fiona Hill argued in Foreign Affairs: “[Putin’s] claims go beyond Ukraine, into Europe and Eurasia. The Baltic states might be on his colonial agenda, as well as Poland.” In this view, Russia’s progressively greater use of military force in its foreign policy since the Russian-Georgian war in 2008 is part of a continual process that has yet to peak. Putin, accordingly, will not stop until he has restored some version of the Russian Empire or at least a sphere of influence that goes beyond Ukraine. As Hill and Stent put it in a different article: “If Russia were to prevail in this bloody conflict, Putin’s appetite for expansion would not stop at the Ukrainian border. The Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and many other countries that were once part of Russia’s empire could be at risk of attack or subversion.”

If Putin does harbor such imperialist ambitions in eastern Europe, his intentions would partly resemble those of Hitler and Stalin. Some leaders, particularly in parts of formerly communist eastern Europe that fell under Nazi occupation during World War II and Soviet occupation and control after it, have not shied away from making the analogy explicit. For example, in June 2022, Polish President Andrzej Duda criticized German and French attempts at diplomacy with Russia by rhetorically asking: “Did anyone speak like this with Adolf Hitler during World War II? Did anyone say that Adolf Hitler must save face? That we should proceed in such a way that it is not humiliating for Adolf Hitler? I have not heard such voices.”

Other analysts and policymakers have portrayed Putin as essentially a génocidaire—a man bent on destroying not only the Ukrainian state but also its people and culture. As the historian David Marples put it: “The Russian leadership seeks to depopulate and destroy the entity that since 1991 has existed as the independent Ukrainian state.” The writer Anne Applebaum concurs: “This was never just a war for territory, after all, but rather a campaign fought with genocidal intent.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described “an obvious policy of genocide pursued by Russia,” a charge backed by the odious practices of Russian forces: the mass killings of civilians, the torture and rape of detainees, the deliberate bombing of residential neighborhoods, and the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. In his September 2022 address to the UN General Assembly, U.S. President Joe Biden stated that “this war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a people.” The legislatures of Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have joined that of Ukraine in formally declaring Russia’s aggression in Ukraine a genocide.

It now seems patently obvious that Putin’s motives went far beyond defense.

The trouble with seeing Putin as a maximalist or a génocidaire is that it ignores his inability to be either one of those things—unless he resorts to use of weapons of mass destruction. When Russia’s conventional military was at the peak of its power at the start of the war, it was incapable of taking control of any major Ukrainian city. Since the retreat from Kyiv and the northeast, Russian forces have demonstrated little capacity to conduct successful offensive operations. Their last attempt—a winter offensive in the south of the Donetsk region—ended in a bloodbath for the Russian side. At this rate, Putin will never succeed at taking control of Ukraine by force, let alone wipe out its inhabitants, even if Western support for Kyiv wanes. If he cannot take Ukraine, it seems far-fetched that he could go beyond it. These Russian weaknesses are widely invoked, but they are usually ignored in assessments that focus on Putin’s intentions.

Moreover, Moscow’s soft-power instruments have been revealed to be equally ineffective as its hard power ones. Despite many fears to the contrary, German dependence on Russian natural gas has not allowed Moscow to stop Berlin from leading efforts to counter aggression in Ukraine. In addition, the shallowness of Russia’s capital markets and the general weakness of its industrial sector have driven former Soviet countries toward the West and China in search of trade opportunities and investments—despite elaborate attempts by Moscow to foster economic integration in the region. In addition, Putin’s Russia, unlike its Soviet predecessor, has no power of attraction with which to co-opt foreign elites into larger political projects. The Kremlin under Putin has neither a powerful, transnational ideology nor a developmental model that could attract elites outside its borders. Whatever soft power Russia wielded to attract elites through more banal means—say, bribery on a grand scale—has been largely squandered by now, thanks to the brutality of its war.

The Ukraine war has revealed that Putin does not have the resources—short of using nuclear weapons—to fulfill maximalist or genocidal objectives. The Russian military has improved its performance during the war; its destructive power should not be dismissed. And Putin’s intentions do matter. But it is now clear that his forces cannot defeat the Ukrainian military, let alone occupy the country. Perhaps he might dream of wiping Ukraine off the map or of marching onward from Ukraine to the rest of the continent. But his dreams matter little if he cannot realize them on the ground.

PAVED WITH BAD INTENTIONS

A smaller but vocal group of analysts takes a markedly different view of Putin’s intentions, claiming that he is a fundamentally defensive actor who seeks (like all leaders of major powers, this group alleges) to prevent threats to his homeland from materializing. Rather than trying to conquer Ukraine, let alone Europe, Putin has been waging a reactive war to keep the West out of his backyard. The political scientist John Mearsheimer, the most prominent exponent of this view, has argued that “there is no evidence in the public record that Putin was contemplating, much less intending to put an end to Ukraine as an independent state and make it part of greater Russia when he sent his troops into Ukraine.” He has also written that “there is no evidence Russia was preparing a puppet government for Ukraine, cultivating pro-Russian leaders in Kyiv, or pursuing any political measures that would make it possible to occupy the entire country and eventually integrate it into Russia.” In other words, Russia has been playing defense, and Putin is merely pushing back against Western encroachment. He seeks nothing more than security for his country.

But this portrayal of Putin clashes with the reality of Russia’s actions. It now seems patently obvious that Putin’s motives went far beyond defense. It is difficult to see the Russian attempt to take Kyiv in the first weeks of the war as anything other than a regime-change operation. And British, Ukrainian, and U.S. intelligence agencies have all judged that the Kremlin attempted to prepare various Ukrainian figureheads to lead a Russian puppet regime in Kyiv and steer the country back into Moscow’s orbit. (One such figurehead, Oleg Tsaryov, even directly confirmed his presence in Ukraine on the day the full-scale invasion began, declaring on the Telegram social media platform that “Kyiv will be free from fascists.”)

Still, to accurately assess the Russia threat, the clear evidence of Putin’s initially expansive intentions must be coupled with the equally clear evidence of Russia’s limited capabilities, which have been on vivid display since February 2022 and which appear to have forced Putin to adjust his aims. Putin may well have been seeking to conquer Ukraine in the initial stage of the war, but following the failure of that plan, he (at least temporarily) downsized his goals. He withdrew his forces from around the capital and other cities in the northeast of Ukraine in early April 2022; they have never returned. As Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, has testified to Congress: “Putin is likely better understanding the limits of what his military is capable of achieving and appears to be focused on more limited military objectives for now.” The best way to understand Putin, then, is not as an offensive maximalist, a génocidaire, or a wholly defensive actor, but rather as a tactician who adjusts his ambitions to accord with the constraints under which he operates. Analysis of the Russia threat should focus less on what he might aspire to and more on what he plausibly can get with the power he has.

DEALING WITH A TACTICAL ADVERSARY

An understanding of Putin as a tactician is not necessarily reassuring. His ambitions may well expand in the future just as they have contracted in the past—and if Russia’s power can enable that expansion, then threat assessments should change. Moreover, even with his current limited capabilities, Putin can still inflict major damage on Ukraine and its people. Russia has pounded Ukrainian ports and industrial and energy facilities and has mined many agricultural fields. Its naval blockade has obstructed exports of grain, steel, and other commodities on which the Ukrainian economy (and that of many other countries) critically depends. In 2022, the Ukrainian economy shrank by a third, and it is hard to imagine how a substantial recovery could take place before Moscow stops bombing major cities and infrastructure and lifts the blockade. Further, Ukraine is by far the most powerful of Russia’s non-NATO neighbors. In other words, even with his current capabilities and a tactician’s mindset, Putin could pose an insurmountable threat to Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and other former Soviet republics. U.S. allies in NATO might be safe, but that’s cold comfort to people in those countries.

For governments, rightsizing the Russia threat—that is, adopting an understanding of Putin as a tactician operating under significant constraints—should form the basis for determining appropriate policy responses to his actions. Policymakers should recognize that Putin’s goals might well be a moving target and avoid static assessments. Regularly testing the proposition that he might have adjusted to new circumstances would be a sensible approach.

Regardless, a proper understanding of the threat Russia poses must begin with an accurate appraisal of Russian power. Putin might harbor fantasies of world conquest. But at the moment, his military cannot even fully conquer any of the four Ukrainian provinces he claims to have annexed last year. Ultimately, those are the constraints that should bound the debate about the extent of the threat.

SAMUEL CHARAP is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and a co-author of Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia. He served on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State during the Obama administration.

KASPAR PUCEK is a Lecturer in International and Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University and an Associate Fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague.

Military intelligence: Special forces land in Crimea, conduct operation

by Elsa Court and The Kyiv Independent news desk October 4, 2023

Ukrainian special forces landed in Russian-occupied Crimea and conducted a combat operation, Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) announced via a video published online on Oct. 4.

The video shows special forces using boats to land on a beach at night, where they unfurl a Ukrainian flag with the HUR emblem.

The operation involved a battle with Russian forces, who suffered significant losses, and Ukrainian forces have already returned from the operation, Hromadske reported, citing a HUR source.

"Unfortunately, there are losses among Ukrainian forces" as well, though not on the scale of on the Russian side, HUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov told Ukrainska Pravda.

"The special operation aimed at the liberation of Crimea continues," he added.

When or exactly where the operation took place was not made public.

Since the summer, there have been increasingly damaging attacks on Russian military targets across the peninsular, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014.

One key target has been the Black Sea Fleet, which is currently based in occupied Crimea. The fleet has suffered a series of major attacks over the past weeks, including strikes on a command post on Sept. 20 and on its headquarters on Sept. 22.

HUR previously announced that Ukrainian forces landed in Russian-occupied Crimea, raised the Ukrainian flag, and engaged in combat with Russian forces on Aug. 24.

The choice to conduct the operation was notable as it was the same day as Ukraine's 32nd Independence Day.

How Ukraine is destroying Russian military in Crimea | This Week in Ukraine Ep. 27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8fiWEanlKI

“This Week in Ukraine” is a video podcast hosted by Kyiv Independent reporter Anastasiia Lapatina. Every week, Anastasiia sits down with her newsroom colleagues to discuss Ukraine’s most pressing issues.

Episode #27 is dedicated to the recent Ukrainian attacks in Russia-occupied Crimea.

Anastasiia is joined by the Kyiv Independent's reporter Igor Kossov.

Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine in 2022 because he feared NATO. He invaded because he believed that NATO was weak, that his efforts to regain control of Ukraine by other means had failed, and that installing a pro-Russian government in Kyiv would be safe and easy. His aim was not to defend Russia against some non-existent threat but rather to expand Russia’s power, eradicate Ukraine’s statehood, and destroy NATO, goals he still pursues.

Putin had convinced himself by the end of 2021 that Russia had the opportunity to safely launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine to accomplish two distinct goals: establish Russian control over Ukraine without facing significant Western resistance and break the unity of NATO. Putin has long sought to achieve these goals, but a series of events in 2019-2020 fueled Putin’s belief that he had both the need and a historic opportunity to establish control over Ukraine. Putin’s conviction resulted from the Kremlin’s failed efforts to force Ukraine to submit to Russia’s demands, Putin’s immersion in an ideological and self-reflective bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Western responses to global events and Russian threats in 2021. Putin had decided that he wanted war to achieve his aims by late 2021, and no diplomatic offering from the West or Kyiv short of surrendering to his maximalist demands would have convinced Putin to abandon the historic opportunity he thought he had.

Putin has long tried to accomplish two distinct objectives: breaking up NATO and seizing full control over Ukraine. Putin’s core objectives from the start of his rule have been preserving his regime, establishing an iron grip on Russia domestically, reestablishing Russia as a great power, and forming a multipolar world order in which Russia has a veto over key global events.[1] Establishing control over Ukraine and eroding US influence have always been essential to these core objectives.

Putin has sought to break NATO and Western unity, but not because the Kremlin felt militarily threatened by NATO. Russia’s military posture during Putin’s reign has demonstrated that Putin has never been primarily concerned with the risk of a NATO attack on Russia. Russian military reforms since 2000 have not prioritized creating large mechanized forces on the Russian borders with NATO to defend against invasion.[2] Russia deployed the principal units designed to protect Russia from NATO to Ukraine, which posed no military threat to Russia, in 2021 and 2022.[3] In 2023 - at the height of Russia’s anti-NATO rhetoric - Russia continued to withdraw forces and military equipment from its actual land borders with NATO to support the war in Ukraine.[4] Putin‘s fear of NATO manifested in his preoccupation with the West’s supposed hybrid warfare efforts to stage “color revolutions,” which Russia claimed the West had done in various former Soviet states including Ukraine.[5]

Putin has always been more concerned about the loss of control over Russia’s perceived sphere of influence than about a NATO threat to Russia. Putin’s actual issue with NATO and the West has been that they offered an alternative path to countries that Putin thought fell in Russia’s sphere of influence or even control. The “color revolutions” that so alarmed Putin were, after all, the manifestations of those countries daring to choose the West, or, rather the way of life, governance and values the West represented, over Moscow. NATO and the West threatened Russia by simply existing, promoting their own values, as Russia promoted its values, and being the preferred partner to many former Soviet states – which, in Putin’s view, undermined Russia’s influence over these states. Putin saw the ability to control former Soviet states as an essential prerequisite to reestablishing Russia as a great power, however. In simple terms, the West – and those in the former Soviet states who preferred to partner with the West even without fully breaking with Russia - stood between Putin and what he believed to be Russia’s rightful role in the world.

Putin therefore initiated policies attacking NATO unity and enlargement. Putin has made it a priority throughout his rule to prevent more former Soviet states and even other states, such as the Balkan countries, from joining NATO.[6] The Kremlin has also sought to undermine the relationships between the members of the alliance.[7] Putin accelerated his efforts to undermine Western unity and NATO following the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution that drove out Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought in a pro-Western government. Russia responded by illegally occupying Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The Russian occupation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 was driven by Putin’s perception of a need and an opportunity to expand Russia’s power and establish control over Ukraine. The Kremlin sought to preserve strategic naval basing for the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea – an anchor of Russia’s power projection in the region.[8] The Kremlin was concerned that a pro-Western Ukrainian government would end the lease agreement by which Russia had kept the Black Sea Fleet headquartered in Sevastopol. Crimea continues to provide strategic military benefits to Russia. Ukraine is rightfully focused on depriving Russia of these benefits by making Crimea increasingly untenable for the Russian forces.[9] The occupation of Crimea and the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 were also a stage of a larger effort to bring a significant portion of Ukraine under Russian control, effectively breaking the country up.[10] Putin perceived a strategic opportunity to do so in the spring of 2014, as Ukraine faced a moment of vulnerability during its government transition after the Euromaidan revolution and as the West was focused on dampening rather than resolving any potential conflict in Ukraine. That effort to establish control over Ukraine failed because Ukrainians, in 2014 as in 2022, proved much more opposed to the idea of Russian overlordship than Putin had expected. Putin’s decisions to invade Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 had a core similarity: in both cases, Putin seized what he thought was an opportunity to realize a long-term goal because he perceived Ukraine and the West to be weak.

Putin allowed his stalled military intervention to be “frozen” by the Minsk II Accords in February 2015 when it became apparent that he could not achieve his aims by force.[11] He secured an important diplomatic victory by getting Russia recognized as a mediator rather than as a party to the conflict in Minsk II despite the fact that Russian military forces had seized Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine, and remained in both areas actively supporting proxy forces that the Kremlin had stood up and fully controlled. He ensured that Minsk II imposed a series of obligations on Kyiv that gave Russia leverage on Ukrainian politics—and no obligations at all on Russia itself. Minsk II was the diplomatic weapon Putin had created to force Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit when his initial invasion had failed.

Putin turned, in the meantime, to disrupting NATO’s coherence. The Kremlin cultivated a partnership with Hungary - a NATO member - to block resolutions related to Ukraine’s NATO membership.[12] The Kremlin launched a deliberate campaign to coopt Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Putin took advantage of increasingly strained NATO-Turkey relations resulting from conflicting US and Turkish approaches to the Syrian Civil War by engaging Turkey in years-long negotiations to persuade Ankara to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems – prompting the US to sanction Turkey in 2020.[13] Putin repeatedly used the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline construction project to drive a wedge between the European Union (EU) and the US and appealed to Germany’s economic interests in Europe.[14] Putin sought to benefit from the fact that Germany and France--but not the US or any other NATO states--were parties to the Minsk II accords and then from the “Normandy Format” negotiations to drive wedges between the US on the one hand and Paris and Berlin on the other over the West’s policy toward Russia and Ukraine.[15] Putin fostered divisions among NATO and Western states to ensure that these states would not be united in their response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as well as to pursue his larger aim of breaking NATO. His approach had some success in the years leading up to 2022, but not enough to achieve either of his core objectives.

The prospect of Ukrainian NATO membership did not drive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia’s fulminations about a NATO expansion in 2022 were efforts to shape the information space ahead of the invasion, not reactions to NATO’s actions. The first NATO commitment to admitting Ukraine to the alliance came in the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, which promised Ukraine and Georgia paths to membership but took no concrete steps toward opening such paths.[16] Successive annual NATO summits generated no further progress toward membership for either country. Putin intensified the narrative that NATO was a threat to Russia over the years, alleging by 2021 that Russia feared NATO’s imminent expansion in Eastern Europe.[17] NATO had taken no meaningful actions to enlarge at the time, however.[18] Accession of new members to the alliance generally requires that they complete a formal Membership Action Plan (MAP) with specific measures agreed upon by the alliance and the prospective member state. NATO produced no MAP for Ukraine or Georgia, meaning that the formal process for their accession had not even begun.

NATO had taken no new formal steps toward Ukrainian membership by the time of the 2022 Russian re-invasion beyond restating the 2008 Bucharest Declaration promising Ukraine a path to NATO membership in a 2021 June communique that followed a massive Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s borders.[19] Ukraine enshrined the commitment to joining NATO in its constitution in 2019, and NATO recognized Ukraine as an Enhanced Opportunity Partner in 2020 facilitating Ukrainian efforts to bring Kyiv’s military closer toward NATO standards.[20] Neither of these events constituted formal steps toward NATO membership. The Enhanced Opportunity Partnership announcement, in fact, explicitly said that Ukraine’s new status “does not prejudge any decisions on NATO membership.”[21] The blocks on Ukraine’s accession to the alliance that Putin had helped establish remained firmly in place.

Russia had thus succeeded by 2022 in freezing any move to bring Ukraine into NATO in accord with the 2008 declaration, and there was no plausible argument to make that any further enlargement of the alliance was imminent. Hungary’s relatively pro-Russian position, tensions with Turkey, and NATO’s unwillingness to absorb a new member state with an unresolved military conflict with Russia meant not only had there been no meaningful progress toward Ukrainian NATO membership by 2022 but also that no progress was on the horizon. Putin had effectively blocked Ukrainian accession to the alliance by the time he launched his full-scale invasion—clear evidence that Russian fears of imminent Ukrainian NATO membership did not drive the invasion.

The prospect of Ukrainian NATO membership had most certainly not driven Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine pursued a non-alignment policy, the NATO Bucharest Declaration notwithstanding, from 2010 through 2014. Ukraine renounced its non-alignment status in December of 2014 as a direct result of Russia invading Ukraine and illegally occupying three of its regions in 2014.[22] This point is essential to keep in mind for those who argue that Putin’s goal is Ukraine’s neutrality.

The primary goal of the Kremlin’s anti-NATO rhetoric has been to justify Putin’s aggressive foreign policies that often had little to do with NATO. The Kremlin’s propaganda about NATO and the West has grown increasingly absurd over the years. Russian propagandists’ narratives about fictional US weapon-producing biolabs on Russia’s borders, NATO’s non-existent plans to establish a military base in Crimea, the supposedly imminent deployment to Ukraine of hypersonic missiles that did not even exist in NATO arsenals, or the “threat” of ‘NATO LGBT instructors’ proselytizing Russian youth are just some examples.[23] The Kremlin used these narratives as a tool to rally Russians against an external adversary to justify the Kremlin’s aggression abroad.[24] The Kremlin has been also using NATO as an excuse to justify its own failures. Russian propagandists have been trying to explain Russia’s repeated battlefield setbacks against Ukrainian forces over the past 19 months by claiming that Russia is fighting the ‘entire NATO’ when no NATO forces are fighting in Ukraine at all.[25]

The prospect of a Ukrainian attack on Russians did not drive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine either. The Kremlin did not believe in a real threat from Ukraine – certainly not in February 2022. Putin framed Ukraine as a threat to Russia and claimed that Ukraine was planning to attack Russian-occupied territories and Russia in 2022.[26] In reality, the Kremlin assessed Ukraine’s military capabilities and will to fight to be so weak that Russian forces would overrun the country in a matter of days.[27] The notion that Ukraine posed any meaningful military threat to Russia is incompatible with the contempt shown for Ukrainian military power and will by the actual Russian invasion plan.[28] The Kremlin began setting conditions to recognize the illegal Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) independence from Ukraine in mid-January 2022 to set conditions to justify its war on the basis of a supposed need to "save Donbas."[29] US intelligence pre-bunked a series of planned Russian false flag attacks in occupied Donbas and disinformation campaigns that aimed to create a pretext for the invasion in January and early February of 2022.[30] The false flag operations indicated that the Kremlin did not actually believe that a Ukrainian attack on Russia or on occupied Donbas was imminent. If there had been an imminent Ukrainian attack in preparation, then the Kremlin would not have needed a false flag attack. In reality, Kyiv was not preparing any attacks on Russia or occupied Donbas. These claimed fears for “Russia’s sovereignty” were a set of organized Kremlin information operations that aimed to create conditions for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They were never based in reality, and it is unlikely that Putin ever believed in them.

Putin’s NATO and Ukraine narratives in advance of the invasion often contradicted each other – likely by design. Kremlin officials repeatedly claimed that further NATO expansion is a “matter of life and death” for Russia while claiming that Ukrainian military escalation in Donbas supposedly would put Ukrainian statehood into question.[31] These narratives often contradicted each other as the Kremlin propaganda machine would switch from focusing on claims that NATO was the sole aggressor in Ukraine to claiming that Ukraine was planning an imminent attack on occupied Donbas or Russia.[32] The Kremlin propaganda machine also repeatedly claimed that Russia was not planning to invade Ukraine--even ridiculing the idea on the eve of the invasion--and framed its escalations as responses to the Western failures to give Russia adequate ”security guarantees,” simultaneously amplifying Putin’s theses on Russia’s historic right to Ukrainian lands. The narratives likely deliberately contradicted each other to mislead Western and Russian audiences’ understanding of Putin’s demands as well as to appeal to multiple different audiences at the same time.[33]

Putin may have feared NATO enlargement over the long term and may have believed that a US-led coalition was working to foster a “color revolution” in Russia to overthrow him, but those concerns cannot explain his decision to invade Ukraine in 2022. Russian fictional rhetoric notwithstanding, nothing about the NATO threat was more urgent in 2022 than it had been for years, and Putin could offer no plausible reason for thinking that it would become more urgent any time soon. We must look elsewhere for the explanation for the 2022 invasion, and therefore for Putin’s actual war aims.

Putin’s goals in Ukraine have always exceeded responding to some supposed NATO threat or conquering limited additional territory. Putin was not satisfied with illegally annexing Crimea and a portion of Donbas because territorial expansion was never his only goal. Putin sought to establish full control over Ukraine, including its foreign policy and even its internal political arrangements. Putin has been working on establishing control over Ukraine for years. He first tried to control Ukraine through economic influence and by attempting to establish pro-Kremlin political officials in the Ukrainian government, before turning to military means for the first time in 2014 when his previous efforts had backfired.[34]

By 2021, all the ways in which Putin tried to regain control over Ukraine – short of a full-scale invasion – had failed. Putin failed to get Ukraine to join Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union in the 2000s and failed to get pro-Kremlin leaders in charge of the Ukrainian government in 2004.[35] Putin failed to establish full control over Ukraine even when Yanukovych was in power.[36] Putin was able to solidify some of his territorial gains in Ukraine through the Minsk II Accords that froze the frontlines in Donbas, but he was unable to exploit those gains to achieve his full desired aims.

Putin tried to coerce Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019) and later Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (2019-present) to legitimize the Russia-created illegal DNR and LNR, and Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea in accord with Ukraine’s Minsk II commitments despite the fact that Russia and the proxies it created had not met their commitments.[37] These efforts, if successful, would have legitimized the principle of Russian military intervention in Ukraine and secured for Russia a permanent lever of influence over Ukraine’s politics. (ISW documented this deliberate Kremlin effort in detail in 2019).[38] Putin failed at that too.[39]

Putin’s convictions about Ukraine and the West had likely further solidified over the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Putin entered a state of isolation during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, largely confining his interactions to a small group of trusted idealogues. He reportedly began becoming ever more preoccupied with Russia’s need to control Ukraine and avenge itself against the West for “humiliating” Russia in the 1990s.[40] Sources familiar with Putin’s conversations revealed that Putin began to “obsess over the past” and ”completely lost interest in the present” during the pandemic.[41]

Putin had also just succeeded in a major domestic power play. Putin had faced a moment of vulnerability as the 2020 oil price crisis and the pandemic occurred in the middle of his campaign to retain power.[42] Putin was attempting to amend the Russian constitution so that he could run again in 2024.[43] Putin’s power play went unchallenged, however, and he successfully re-solidified his grip on power with constitutional amendments that effectively allowed him to rule for life. The success of this domestic power play also undermines the argument that Western “hybrid warfare” was somehow putting Putin’s own rule at risk. Putin’s domestic grip in 2021 was solid and faced no meaningful challenge.

Putin was likely emboldened by his false assessments of Ukraine’s capability and will to fight. Ukraine has fended off Russian attacks on its sovereignty over the years and grown in its resolve as a nation – a process that went largely unnoticed by Putin and his inner circle of advisors. Putin had told a European official in September 2014 that he could “take Kyiv in two weeks,” and had evidently maintained the same outlook since invading Ukraine in 2014 despite his military failures that year.[44] Putin misattributed Kyiv’s unwillingness to yield to Russia to a small group of Ukrainian politicians controlled by the West (which the Kremlin usually refers to as ‘the Kyiv regime’) rather than to the growing self-determination of the Ukrainian people to remain a nation--a determination ironically driven in part by the Russian 2014 invasion and continued pressure. Putin’s propaganda in the lead-up to the invasion reveals that he and his idealogues lived in an echo chamber dominated by an alternate reality in which Ukrainians would welcome the Russian forces liberating them from the supposed oppression of the ”Kyiv regime.”[45]

Putin did not see NATO or the West as a power that would counter his ambitions in Ukraine either. A former unnamed intelligence official revealed that Putin’s ”personal banker” and close friend Yuri Kovalchuk, with whom Putin spent considerable time during his isolation, argued to Putin that the West was weak and that the time was ripe for Russia to demonstrate its military capabilities and ”defend its sovereignty” by invading Ukraine.[46] Former US National Security Council official Fiona Hill stated that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was guided by his belief that the West was weak and distracted, and Western analysts argued that some of Putin’s elites supported his vision after concluding that the West was divided and in decline.[47] Putin likely concluded that the West would not have the will or the strength to deter a swift military operation that would collapse the supposedly unpopular Zelensky government within days.[48] This belief in the West’s weakness again undermines the Russian-created fiction that Russia had to act to preempt some Western aggression—a West too weak and divided to defend Ukraine was certainly not going to attack Russia out of the blue.

Putin, thus, likely made a decision to begin setting conditions for the invasion sometime in late 2020 or early 2021. Putin began amassing over 100,000 Russian forces on the Russian-Ukrainian international border and in occupied Crimea in March and April 2021.[49] Russia retained some of these forces and equipment in western Russia to later participate in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[50] Russia also began transferring several landing craft and gunships from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea in early to mid-April 2021.[51] The Kremlin explained away this troop buildup as a response to NATO’s Defender Europe 21 military exercises, while Ukrainian military officials revealed in March 2021 that Russia was amassing forces as part of its preparations for the Zapad-2021 (West-2021) joint strategic exercises in western Russia and Belarus set to take place September 2021.[52] Russian units began deploying to Belarus for the active phase of Zapad-2021 in late July 2021.[53] Zapad-2021 exercises allowed Russian forces to prepare and secure logistics for reportedly 200,000 troops and these logistics would be crucial in Russia’s offensive on Kyiv and northeastern Ukraine from Belarus and western Russia.[54]

Western responses to the Russian escalation on the Ukrainian border and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan likely reinforced Putin’s anticipation of a weak Western response. The West, including the US, signaled its intent to deter Russia via primarily diplomatic means during Russia’s military buildup on the Russian-Ukrainian international border in March and April 2021, taking military intervention off the table. US President Joseph Biden spoke to Putin on April 13, 2021, and offered to meet him at a Geneva-based US-Russia summit on June 16, 2021.[55] The call notably occurred on the same day the White House announced that Biden had decided to draw down the remaining US troops from Afghanistan and a day before Biden’s announcement that the US would complete the withdrawal by September 1, 2021.[56] The Biden-Putin summit in Geneva did not achieve any diplomatic breakthroughs, of course.[57] Washington's purely diplomatic approach to deterring a Russian threat against Ukraine and withdrawal from Afghanistan likely strengthened Putin’s convictions that the West would not resist his invasion by force.

Putin issued two ultimatums to Ukraine, the West, and NATO in 2021 in support of these objectives.

Putin first delivered an ultimatum to Kyiv in mid-July 2021. The ultimatum made explicit that there is no room for an independent Ukraine in Putin’s worldview. Putin published an essay on the “Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” on July 12, 2021, in which he noted that Ukrainians, alongside Belarusians, have always belonged to the Russian nation.[58] The essay, which reportedly became required reading for the Russian military, openly questioned Ukrainian territorial integrity and claimed that modern Ukraine was a ”product of the Soviet era” shaped ”on the lands of historical Russia.”[59] Putin reiterated theses that later became the focal points of his declaration of war against Ukraine in February 2022 - namely that Russia had been “robbed” of its “historic” lands, that Ukraine ”does not need Donbas,” and that ”millions of Ukrainians” are refusing the Kyiv-imposed “anti-Russia project.” Putin concluded the essay by stating “I am confident that the true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia... For we are one people.” The essay did not formally declare war against Ukraine, of course, but a Kremlin-affiliated outlet described the essay as Putin’s “final ultimatum to Ukraine.”[60]

Putin’s ultimatum implied that Ukraine’s existence and territorial integrity depended on its decision to align itself with Russia - a policy course that the Ukrainian people repeatedly and explicitly rejected. It was not a call for Ukrainian neutrality, but rather for Ukraine’s absorption into the Russian orbit if not into Russia itself. Putin also notably released this ultimatum after the US accelerated the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan on July 8, although he had obviously formulated it long before that.[61]

Putin then issued an ultimatum to the US and NATO in December 2021 that aimed to force the West into surrendering Ukraine’s sovereignty on its behalf and abandoning partnerships on NATO’s eastern flank. Putin’s November 30 “red lines” speech and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) December 17 ultimatum documents demanded "security guarantees” from the US and NATO that amounted to the destruction of the current NATO alliance.[62] The ultimatum demanded that NATO reverse its ”open door” policy, rule out eastward enlargement, and halt the deployment of forces or weapon systems to member-states that joined NATO after 1997 - among other things.[63] Putin explicitly demanded that Russia have an effective veto power over sovereign states’ ability to freely seek membership in NATO and over how the alliance operated militarily and politically. These demands would have required NATO to rewrite the North Atlantic Treaty that is its founding document and forced every NATO state to re-ratify a new agreement, a process that would almost certainly have broken the alliance. Putin’s ultimatum to the West also attempted to coerce the West into sacrificing Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Putin’s 2021 ultimatum to NATO and the West was an actual ultimatum, not the basis for a negotiation. Putin and his diplomats signaled that they were not interested in accepting any concessions short of forcing NATO to abandon its own principles and changing the framework of the world order. The “security guarantees” ultimatum was the Kremlin’s signal that it would no longer consider any compromises. The objective of the ultimatum was to weaken the alliance via internal friction, portray it as both weak and the aggressor, and legitimize the idea that Ukraine is part of Russia’s rightful sphere of control. The ultimatum also focused on preoccupying the West with the need to find a diplomatic solution – a solution that was no longer there and had not been for a while.

The behavior of the Russian Foreign Ministry (MFA) from October 2021 to January 2022 demonstrated Putin’s increasingly inflexible intent, as the Kremlin began to restrict Russian diplomats from pursuing meaningful negotiations in the lead-up to the invasion. The Russian MFA has never been independent of the Kremlin, of course – no foreign ministry is independent of its sovereign. But an August 2023 BBC investigation revealed that Russian top diplomats had lost the flexibility that makes meaningful diplomacy possible and begun acting like “robots,” reading scripted statements to Western officials as early as mid-October 2021 in contrast with their previous more normal engagement with their Western counterparts.[64]

Former adviser to the Russian mission at the United Nations in Geneva, Boris Bondarev, recalled that Putin’s ultimatum shocked many Russian diplomats and claimed that he immediately knew that the Kremlin’s "security guarantees” demands were ridiculous.[65] Bondarev claimed that the Kremlin issued this ultimatum in a way that gave Russian diplomats no choice but to adopt a new inflexible protocol.[66] Bondarev also recalled that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov screamed at US officials, including First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, stating that ”[Russia] needs Ukraine” and that Russia will not ”go anywhere without Ukraine” during a dinner amidst the bilateral US-Russian strategic stability talks in Geneva on January 10, 2022.[67] Bondarev added that Rybakov vulgarly demanded that the US delegation ”get out with [their] belongings [to the 1997 borders]” as US officials called for negotiations.

The US and NATO, however, remained committed to the hope that diplomacy would change Putin’s determination at this stage. The US, for example, responded to the Russian ultimatum by reaffirming its commitment to Ukraine and to NATO’s open door policy and offered to discuss the possibility of negotiations to address Russia’s issues with NATO predictability and transparency in Europe.[68] The US even offered to discuss a transparency mechanism that would confirm the absence of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland – if Russia offered reciprocal transparency measures on two ground-launched missile bases of America’s choosing in Russia.[69] Director of the Carnegie Berlin Center Alexander Gabuev recalled that Russian diplomats, with whom he had contact, were ”pleasantly” surprised with US proposals and thought that they could achieve agreements that would ”really strengthen [Russian] security.”[70] The Kremlin, however, was not interested. Putin was not, in fact, trying to counter a claimed NATO threat but rather was setting conditions for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The ultimatums were likely a perfect hedge from Putin’s perspective. NATO would have had to transform itself—including by rewriting its charter and basic rules—to meet the Russian demands, and Ukraine would have had to amend its constitution and abandon core principles of its sovereignty. Putin would no doubt have accepted such a full surrender with delight, but it was never on the cards, as he certainly knew. When the West predictably rejected his demands, Putin had established the superficial justification for launching a full-scale invasion with two goals in mind: conquering Ukraine and breaking NATO. Forcing the West to reject these ultimatums also provided the Kremlin with additional justification to blame the West for the war, as the Kremlin continues to do.

By 2022, no diplomatic offering from the West short of surrendering Ukraine’s sovereignty and abandoning NATO principles would likely have stopped Putin from invading Ukraine. Only the threat that the US or NATO would intervene militarily might have deterred Putin, but the US explicitly took such a threat off the table.[71]

Putin’s objectives have remained unchanged despite the failure of his initial full-scale invasion in 2022 and despite Russian losses and setbacks since then. Even recent statements by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, presented by some as the potential basis for a settlement of the war, are actually just restatements of Russia’s ongoing demands.[72] These demands include the removal of the Zelensky government and its replacement by a Russia-amenable regime, the “neutralization” of Ukraine which means both the permanent renunciation of possible NATO membership and the weakening of Ukraine’s military, abandonment of Ukrainian identity by Ukrainians, and the recognition of Russia’s de facto control over Ukrainian international and domestic policies and over Ukraine’s way of life – the type of control that the Kremlin has established on all Ukrainian territories Russia occupies. Russian officials and media have constantly repeated these demands, and Putin has offered no indication of any willingness to compromise on them.

Western discussions of the need to find a diplomatic resolution to the conflict on the assumption that it is stalemated are thus deeply misguided. ISW assesses that the conflict is not stalemated, for one thing.[73] More importantly for this discussion, however, is the fact that Putin began this war with maximalist aims vis-a-vis Ukraine and NATO. He has not changed those aims, nor has he indicated any willingness to accept a lesser outcome because of any supposed stalemate.[74] Even if he did show a willingness to negotiate some cease-fire along current lines, however, Ukraine and the West would be foolish to accept it. Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 with aims far beyond what his means could achieve. He settled for freezing the conflict on terms advantageous to him not because he had moderated his aims, but so that he could pursue them in other ways. When it became clear that he could not achieve his aims through the manipulation of the Minsk II or Normandy Format frameworks and as he came to believe that both the Ukrainian government and the West were weak, he restarted his invasion on a massive scale. This invasion has failed to secure Putin’s aims as the 2014 invasion had. Why should the West and Ukraine expect any new ceasefire agreement or negotiation to “resolve” the conflict that Putin has created and been stoking for a decade?

Past is prologue. A ceasefire or negotiation format freezing the conflict along the current lines, which are far more advantageous to Russia than the pre-2022 lines were, will be in Putin’s eyes nothing more than a kind of Minsk III—a new mechanism by which to continue to pursue the same aims. Such a “peace” will be no peace at all. It will simply be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild its military and economic power, allow the West’s attention to be distracted, and seek to regenerate and benefit from cracks within Ukrainian society until it can resume its attacks.

The idea of providing Putin with an “off-ramp” and a “face-saving” opportunity completely fails to learn the lessons of the past nine years. Putin created for himself a diplomatic “off-ramp” in 2015 not because diplomacy convinced Putin to abandon his pursuit of Ukraine, but rather because he realized that freezing the frontlines was his best option for continuing to pursue control over Ukraine. In 2014, the Kremlin overestimated support for Russia in Ukraine, underestimated Ukrainian resistance, and overestimated Russia’s ability to create a proxy force capable of achieving military objectives without a large-scale Russian deployment. As a result, Russia was able to secure only portions of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, instead of the originally planned six regions of Ukraine beyond Crimea.[75] Russia would likely have secured even less had it not deployed the Russian military to prevent Ukrainian forces from liberating more territory.[76]

Putin stopped in 2015 because he recognized that his military efforts had failed, that he had reached the limits of Russian power and his own risk tolerance, and that continuing the active conflict would have required the gamble of launching an unprepared and under-resourced full-scale invasion of Ukraine at the time.[77] Putin chose instead to accept a temporary setback to advance his larger objective. The West’s last ‘off-ramp’ for Putin did not secure peace. It led to the Kremlin’s eight-year-long campaign attempting to convert Russia’s limited military presence in Ukraine into political control over the country, and when that campaign failed, Putin resorted to full-scale invasion.

An enduring end to the current Russian war on Ukraine requires forcing Putin to accept defeat. He—and his successors—must be made to realize that they cannot impose their will on Ukraine and the West militarily, cannot suborn Ukraine politically, and cannot prevail diplomatically. As long as the Kremlin cherishes the hope of success—which any face-saving compromise settlement would fuel—it will continue to seek to overcome its setbacks in ways that make renewed war very likely.

Ukraine and the West should seek a permanent end to this conflict, not a temporary respite. Renewed war will likely be larger in scale and even more dangerous to Ukraine and the West. It will be extremely costly as well, since a renewed war once Moscow has rearmed and prepared will likely be far costlier and more dangerous. Demands to reduce the financial burden of supporting Ukraine now simply store up greater risk and expense for the future.

There is no path to real peace other than helping Ukraine inflict an unequivocal military defeat on Russia and then helping to rebuild Ukraine into a military and society so strong and resilient that no future Russian leader sees an opportunity like the ones Putin misperceived in 2014 and 2022. This path is achievable if the West commits to supporting Ukraine in the prolonged effort likely needed to walk down it. If the West instead is lured by the illusion of some compromise, it may end the pain for now, but only at the cost of much greater pain later. Putin has shown that he views compromise as surrender, and surrender emboldens him to reattack. This war can only end finally not when Putin feels that he can save face, but rather when he knows that he cannot win.

Grant Shapps to send UK troops to Ukraine Army will train Zelensky’s military on the ground and Navy may move into Black Sea

By Edward Malnick, SUNDAY POLITICAL EDITOR 30 September 2023

British troops will be deployed in Ukraine for the first time under plans being discussed with military chiefs, the new Defence Secretary has disclosed....

Special Report: How Cubans were recruited to fight for Russia By Dave Sherwood September 30, 2023

LA FEDERAL, Cuba, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Cuban seamstress Yamidely Cervantes has bought a new sewing machine for the first time in years, plus a refrigerator and a cellphone - all on Russia's dime.

She said her 49-year-old husband Enrique Gonzalez, a struggling bricklayer, left their home in the small town of La Federal on July 19 to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine. Days later, he wired her part of his signing-on bonus of about 200,000 roubles ($2,040) which she received in Cuban pesos, Cervantes told Reuters.

That represents a windfall on the economically stricken communist-run island. It's more than 100 times the average monthly state salary of 4,209 pesos ($17), according to the national statistics office.

Few places feel the pinch more than La Federal, a community of about 800 people on the outskirts of Havana where one in four residents are unemployed, government data for 2022 shows.

On the 100-meter dirt road where Cervantes lives, at least three men have left for Russia since June, and another had sold his home in anticipation of going, she said. "You can count on one hand those who are left," the 42-year-old said as she surveyed the street from a small terrace where she'd repurposed two broken toilet bowls as flower pots.

"Necessity is what is driving this."

Reuters traced the stories of those four men, together with more than a dozen other Cubans recruited to go to Russia from districts in and around the capital Havana, ranging from a builder and a shopkeeper to a refinery worker and phone company employee. Eleven of the men ended up flying to Russia while the other seven got cold feet at the last moment.

Interviews with many of the men plus friends and relatives, together with a trove of WhatsApp messages, travel papers, photos and phone numbers they provided to corroborate their accounts, paint the most detailed picture yet of how Cubans are flocking to shore up Moscow's war machine.

The Kremlin and Russian defence ministry didn't respond to queries about Cubans being recruited for their military. The Cuban government also didn't respond to queries for this article.

News of Cubans ending up in the Russian military hit headlines this month when the Havana government - a longstanding ally of Russia that says it is "not part of the war in Ukraine" - said it had arrested 17 people connected with a human-trafficking ring that lured Cubans to fight for Moscow. Reuters could not establish the identities of those involved in the alleged trafficking ring and when or whether they were arrested.

The recruits identified by Reuters volunteered to go to Russia to work for the military following overtures on social media from a recruiter who identified herself as "Dayana". In La Federal, for example, all nine recruits identified by Reuters signed up to fight in the war. In Alamar, an eastern Havana suburb, most of the five men signed up for non-fighting roles such as in construction, packaging of provisions and logistics.

Cervantes' husband Gonzalez, speaking via video call from a Russian military base outside the city of Tula, south of Moscow, told Reuters he was one of 119 Cubans training there. When he arrived in Russia, he said, he had signed a contract to work for the military, translated into Spanish.

"Everyone here knew what they were coming for," he said, smiling in military garb as he gave Reuters a digital phone tour of the camp, ringed by pine trees. "They came for the war."

Gonzalez said the 119 Cubans there were being trained to fight in the war, though still wasn't clear where they'd be sent.

"I have several friends in Ukraine, and they are in places where bombs are falling but they haven't actually been in confrontations with Ukrainians," he added. "Everything is good here, but when we go there, we will be in a war zone."

Reuters was unable to contact any of the other men who joined the military, though confirmed via WhatsApp messages and photos that they had flown to Russia and two are now in Crimea.

Contacted for comment on the recruitment of Cubans into the Russian military, Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said: "I can confirm that the Ukrainian embassy in Havana has reached out to the Cuban authorities on this matter."

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said the United States was monitoring the situation closely. "We are deeply concerned by reports alleging young Cubans have been deceived and recruited to fight for Russia," the spokesperson said.

DAYANA IN CAMOUFLAGE CAP The Cuban recruitment activity identified by Reuters began weeks after a May decree issued by President Vladimir Putin that allowed foreigners who enlisted with the military on year-long contracts to receive Russian citizenship via a fast-track process, along with their spouses, children and parents.

In La Federal, word of the army work began to spread in June, according to the residents interviewed. Offers to join up, shared via Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, became the talk of the town, with Dayana named as the contact.

More than two dozen young men interviewed by Reuters in and around Havana spoke of the scale of the exodus.

Cristian Hernandez, 24, broke into laughter when asked how many people had left the area around La Federal. "A ton of people," he said. "Almost all of our friends have gone over there."

Yoan Viondi, 23, who lives a few-minute bike ride up the road from the main drag, said he knew about 100 men in Villa Maria, the district that includes La Federal, had been recruited for the Russian war effort since June.

He said a friend gave him the WhatsApp contact for Dayana, a Cuban woman who he said bought plane tickets for recruits. Dayana was also mentioned as a key contact by most of the recruits and relatives Reuters spoke with.

Viondi wasted no time.

"Hi, good afternoon," Viondi said to her in a July 21 message, viewed by Reuters. "Please I need information."

Dayana, who appears in her chat icon as a dark-haired woman in a camouflage cap, responded with contract terms almost instantaneously, according to time stamps. The first line of the message states: "This is a contract with the Russian military by which you receive citizenship."

The contract was for one year and offered a signing bonus of 195,000 roubles followed by a monthly salary of 200,000 roubles, plus 15 days of vacation after the first six months of work.

Those terms are in line with those relayed to Reuters by other recruits and their families.

"If you're in agreement, you should just send (a copy of) your passport," Dayana's message read.

Within two minutes, Viondi had sent a digital copy of his passport. One hour later, Dayana responded in an audio message heard by Reuters: "Perfect, tomorrow I'll be able to tell you what day you will travel," she said.

Reuters was unable to reach Dayana for comment on the number used by Viondi and others, or to confirm her full name.

I WON'T DIE OF HUNGER In the end, despite his initial enthusiasm, Viondi became anxious about going to Russia and cut contact with Dayana. He stressed that the people who signed up in La Federal knew they would be going to fight.

"It's hard living here. Everyone said, 'If I choose this, I won´t die of hunger in Cuba," he said. "But they knew where they were going. I knew perfectly well where I was going too."

Viondi told Reuters neither Dayana, nor anyone else, had asked him to keep their interactions a secret.

He said he maintained contact with at least four friends who had signed contracts in Russia with the army and that, as far as he knew, "they were fine". Most, he said, were now in Ukraine.

Cuba is mired in its worst economic crisis in decades, with long lines for even the basics like food, fuel and healthcare, spurring an exodus of Cubans to the U.S., Latin America and Europe last year.

Alina Gonzalez, president of a neighborhood block committee in La Federal tasked with mobilizing support for the communist-run government, recalled the excitement stirred by the Russian military work.

Many men jumped at the opportunity in her neighborhood, she said, including her nephew Danilo.

"The one that lives over there? He went with his wife and two children. That one over there, with his wife. And the mother of another lives further down," she said.

Roberto Sabori told Reuters that many of the men who left - including his 30-year-old son, Yasmani - had done so in a hurry, keeping their plans secret from even their families.

"I heard he was leaving the same day he left," said the 53-year-old, who lives around the corner from Gonzalez, adding that his son had called him as he prepared to board a flight from the resort town of Varadero to Moscow.

"He never told me anything."

'MAMI, I CAN'T TAKE IT' Cervantes, the seamstress of La Federal, recalls the desperation her husband Gonzalez, now in Russia, had felt in the months before he left. "Work, work, work," she said of his life. "One day, he said to me, 'Mami, I just can't take it anymore'."

"One day he told me, 'I'm going to Russia. He showed me the photocopy of his passport, and had the ticket and everything. That was the 17th (of July) and he left on the 19th."

While Cervantes chose to stay behind, Reuters confirmed through WhatsApp photos and videos that at least three wives from La Federal had joined their husbands in Russia, as well as at least one child.

Cervantes said her cousin, Luis Herlys Osorio, had enlisted in the Russian army weeks after her husband departed, and that his wife, Nilda, was also now in Russia: "She went, and so did many of the women in the neighborhood."

Reuters reviewed photos on social media of Nilda, with two other wives from La Federal, at a rented home in the city of Ryazan in western Russia. Osorio is in Crimea, Cervantes said.

Cuba has sent mixed messages this month about its citizens fighting for Russia.

On Sept. 8, when it announced the trafficking-ring arrests, it also said it was illegal for its citizens to fight for a foreign army, punishable by life in prison.

Days later, though, Cuba's ambassador in Moscow said Havana didn't oppose Cubans "who just want to sign a contract and legally take part with the Russian army in this operation." Within hours, Cuba contradicted its envoy, reiterating that Cubans were prohibited from fighting as war mercenaries.

Gonzalez objects to being called a mercenary. The former bricklayer, who had received his Russian passport, likens his decision to fight with Russia to that of the Cubans who fought in a Soviet-backed war in Angola in the 1970s.

In that war in southern Africa, widely viewed as a Cold War proxy conflict, Cuba deployed tens of thousands of troops to fight for a communist guerrilla group supported by Moscow against a rival, U.S.-backed anti-communist movement.

"I'm following their example," Gonzalez said of those Cuban fighters in Angola, adding Moscow had been a steadfast ally of Cuba for decades and the Soviet Union had provided economic aid to the island.

"Russia helped to maintain my family."

Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Additional reporting by Alexandre Meneghini, Mario Fuentes and Carlos Carrillo in Havana, Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Tom Balmforth, Filipp Lebedev and Felix Light; Editing by Pravin Char

Gwara Media Wins the Human Rights First’s Zabel Award Yana Sliemzina - 27 September 2023

International human rights organization Human Rights First announced that the Zabel Award 2023 will be presented to Gwara Media, a team of independent journalists from Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Zabel Award is annually presented to organizations and leaders that fight against injustice and for “equality for those suffering persecution and violations of their rights.”

“There is clear alignment between Gwara Media’s mission and that of Human Rights First,” said Michael Breen, president and CEO of Human Rights First. “Presenting the Zabel Human Rights Award to Gwara Media gives us the opportunity to underscore the organization’s vital role in defending truth and human rights in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After connecting with Gwara when I traveled to Kharkiv, my respect for their work and their commitment is boundless.”

Since 1978, Human Rights First has worked in the USA and abroad to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law.

The William D. Zabel Award carries the name of a human rights activist, William D. Zabel. It’s given to “courageous activists and organizations on the frontlines of the struggle for freedom and dignity.”

“Our media platform underwent a profound transformation to endure the relentless Russian assaults on Kharkiv and Kharkiv region,” said Serhii Prokopenko, managing editor of Gwara Media. “The esteemed Zabel Award reminds us that our commitment to journalism must persist despite our numerous challenges and pressures. Reporting from the frontlines must remain steadfast, and we must keep amplifying the voices of local communities. Furthermore, we aspire to bring greater visibility to Russian human rights violations and the immense suffering endured by people in our region because of the Russian full-scale invasion.”

This year, Human Rights First will hold an award ceremony on October 17 in New York. A short documentary about Gwara Media’s independent reporting will premiere there.

Since February 2022, Gwara Media journalists have focused on documenting Russian war crimes, reports about the restoration of Ukrainian communities, and providing a platform for Kharkiv activists and artists. Journalists created a fact-checking bot called Perevirka, using which the audience can check if the news or posts in social media they encounter are trustworthy. Currently, Gwara Media team is a part of the International Fact-Checking Network. They consider fighting against disinformation a vital part of their work.

Russian Army Renewed Their Offensive on Lyman-Kupiansk Axis Yana Sliemzina - 30 September 2023

The Russian army is actively hitting Ukrainian positions with airstrikes.

The Russian army renewed their offensive on the Lyman-Kupiansk axis. The Defence forces are repelling the adversary’s attacks and hitting Russians’ ammunition depots and fuel storages. A spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, Ilya Yevlash, reported on it during a national telemarathon on September 30.

“The adversary renewed their offensive in the Lyman-Kupiansk direction. But, after they’ve tried to break through our defenses twice, with no results, [we] pushed [them] back with significant losses — and they stopped trying to advance,” Yevlash said.

Apart from that, the Russian army keeps using aviation heavily. During the past day, they hit Ukrainian positions 16 times on the Kupiansk-Lyman axis with airstrikes.

Armed Forces Will Receive More Than 1700 UAVs From the Army of Drones Project
Yana Sliemzina - 28 September 2023

Ukrainian Defence Forces received 1740 drones within the project Army of Drones. These are the drones manufactured by Ukrainian and foreign companies.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation reported about this on their Telegram channel.

“Army will receive support – [we’re] sending “birds” from Ukrainian manufacturers and drones that are a part of NATO arsenal. Vampire UAVs, Phoenix drones, Avenger and Leleka drones, and hundreds of other UAVs will become eyes and weapons for our heroes,” the Ministry’s message says.

“Army of Drones” is a shared project of the General Staff, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine. The project conducts systematic procurement, repairs, and replacement of the drones and organizes pilot training.

The American actor who played Luke Skywalker started supporting Ukraine and the Army of Drones project earlier. Gemini, Ukrainian Railways, and the Army of Drones launched a charity in which the money people pay for a specific tea traveling via Ukrainian trains will go to UAV procurement for the AFU.

Kharkiv Said Goodbye to Poet and Soldier Oleksiy Ivakin Denys Glushko - 29 September 2023

Kharkiv poet and soldier of the 82nd Air Assault Brigade Oleksiy Ivakin was killed in action in the Zaporizhzhia sector. He passed away on September 6. However, the body was brought to Kharkiv only a few days ago. “He was a true defender of the Motherland and a very bright man. We have never met anyone who had anything bad to say about Oleksiy. Not a single person,” the Litslam Telegram channel, of which he was a member, commented.

Oleksiy was an inspirer and participant of this cultural community in Kharkiv. He mostly wrote in Russian, although he also had pieces in Ukrainian in his repertoire. He was engaged in creative work almost all his life.

“God, I still don’t believe it. Lesha Ivakin, you were an excellent friend. I remember all the summer evenings, all the trips, all the meetings at your house. And of course your poems and the way you read. How we used to run around in the steppes somewhere in the Neighbouring World, in tents and poems.

Lesha Ivakin died. On the same damned road.

The family needs help.

Eternal Glory.

Honour,” Vlada Dumenko, a friend of the fallen soldier, wrote on Facebook.

The soldier, 35, is survived by two children and a wife. A fundraising campaign has been organized for the family of the hero. Look – the city melt in the sun. Smoke from the chimney, a glass of water. Friends gone, an excuse to get drunk. That’s how dreams dissolve

and my teeth gnaw on the stones. I spit bloody spit. Fog, wall, barriers, shutters. Make me a uniform, for the battle is coming soon.

There are revolutions, there are tanks… There’s a young soldier going grey. Look how the planes tango dancing inappropriately with the stars.

Such a pretty cadet, and you and I are alone again. I fell asleep at a party, as usual. No revolutions, no love.

The editorial team of Gwara Media expresses sincere condolences to the family and friends of the fallen Ukrainian defender.

MEDVEDEV THREATENS RUSSIA WILL SEIZE MORE UKRAINIAN REGIONS Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev issued a veiled warning that Russia intends to seize more Ukrainian regions in a Telegram post on Sept. 30.

In a Telegram message commemorating one year since Russia's illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Medvedev said "there will be more new regions within Russia."

Medvedev claimed Russia's war will continue until the Ukrainian government is "completely destroyed" and the "original Russian territories are liberated from the enemy."

Russia illegally annexed four regions of Ukraine in Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Kherson, and Luhansk oblasts on Sept. 30, 2022.

Debunking Fake News: “Ukrainians Liable for Military Service are Being Extradited from Ireland” Yana Sliemzina - 30 September 2023

Russian fake makers are doubling down on the disinformation campaign related to the information about the possible extradition of Ukrainians liable for military service from abroad.

Recently, they’ve been spreading the document that suggests a Ukrainian man is being forcibly extradited from Ireland. Let’s verify if it’s true.

What happened? Russian propagandist Ruslan Ostashko wrote a post in his telegram channel that suggested that a Ukrainian living in Limerick (a city in Ireland) got a letter from the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice about his extradition to Ukraine.

The reason for extradition, he says, is that a man is liable for military service. The propagandist adds that Ireland authorities refer to the European Convention on Extradition, 1957. He says the man meets conditions for extradition from Ireland, which are, according to the document:

an offence that is punishable by imprisonment in Ireland and in Ukraine for at least a year (draft evasion, he notes, is punishable by law in both Ireland and Ukraine); the offence is not a political offence or one connected with a political offence.

The former prime minister of Ukraine, Mykola Azarov, posted the same letter, emphasizing that the man will be imprisoned for a year in case he evades from the draft, both in Ukraine and Ireland.

The news reached the Russian media, too. EADaily publishes it, commenting, “[easy life] is over: Ireland sends all Ukrainians in the trenches or behind bars.”

Analysis For fact-checking, we took a relatively simple route: we sent an inquiry to the Ireland Ministry of Justice.

We received the following response:

“The Department can confirm that the letter in question was not sent by the Department of Justice.

If anyone is unsure of the authenticity of any correspondence they receive purporting to be from the Department of Justice, they can contact the Department on 1800221227.

Scams are common. They can happen at any time. Some of the most common types of scams involve the use of fake emails, calls or texts pretending to be from real companies and organisations.

October marks Cyber awareness month in which a number of campaigns take place to highlight the importance of cyber security education and current trends in all forms cyber fraud, phishing messages and disinformation.

I hope this is of assistance.”

We’ll note that the propagandist’s reference to the European Convention on Extradition is also inaccurate. The document outlines: “Extradition for offences under military law which are not offences under ordinary criminal law is excluded from the application of this Convention.”

We’d also like to note that Fedir Venislavskyi, the President’s representative in the parliament, stated that there will be no mass extradition of men from abroad.

Conclusion: Fake Author: Nazar Hlamazda