Russian President Vladimir Putin says an “armed mutiny” by the Wagner Group is treason, adding that “decisive action” will be taken against them.

The authorities in Moscow and the surrounding area say they have declared a “counterterrorism” state of emergency after Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed his forces were in control of military sites in Rostov.

Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has accused the Russian military of attacking his advancing troops.

In a previous post (below), we reported on a Wagner convoy that was spotted north of Voronezh, a city in which Wagner has reportedly seized military facilities.

“We were fired upon: first artillery strikes, and then from helicopters,” Prigozhin said in a Telegram post, without giving evidence or specifying where the alleged attack happened.

Wagner took city without firing a single shot – Prigozhin

We’ve been reporting that the rebelling Wagner Group mercenaries have claimed they now control Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia.

In a new audio message posted on Wagner’s Telegram page, Yevgeny Prigozhin claims his troops took the city “without a single shot being fired [by us]”.

He also claims residents of Rostov-on-Don were supporting his troops because of their continuing “justice march”.

Russia’s state-run media has broadcast footage apparently showing Rostov residents arguing with Wagner troops and urging them to obey orders by President Vladimir Putin.

The claims have not been independently verified.

Our BBC Verify team has verified a video showing a Wagner convoy of armed vehicles travelling on the M4 motorway, which links Voronezh and Moscow through the region of Lipetsk. The picture above is taken from the video.

As we’ve mentioned, the governor of the Lipetsk region has asked residents to stay home and avoid travelling, either with public vehicles or on public transport.

Regional authorities in Lipetsk have said that all bus services in the region are cancelled until further notice.

Voronezh is one of two cities – the other being Rostov-on-Don, further south – in which Wagner mercenaries have reportedly seized key sites.

The situation in the region is fast moving, and we’ll bring you more updates shortly.

We’ll return to the latest developments from the ground in a second, but first, let’s take a step back.

In February, David Aaronovitch and guests discussed the Wagner group in detail in an episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Briefing Room.

The mercenary group has been responsible for much of Russia’s military success in Ukraine.

Earlier this year, the group took control of Soledar, a salt mine town in the east of the country.

But the battle for Soledar also showed the first signs of an emerging rift between Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the Kremlin.

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L’article Russian mercenaries seize military sites as Putin vows to punish rebellion.. Video est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Ukrainian soldiers have been welcomed into Kherson by jubilant residents, after Russia said it had fully withdrawn from the key southern city.

Video showed locals on the streets, flying Ukraine’s national flag and chanting as Kyiv’s troops arrived.

Some sang patriotic songs around a large camp fire well into the night.

Kherson was the only regional capital taken by Russia after February’s invasion. The retreat has been seen as one of its biggest setbacks of the war.

Moscow said 30,000 personnel had been taken out of the area – as well as around 5,000 pieces of military hardware, weaponry and other assets.

The White House hailed what it called an “extraordinary victory”, while Ukrainian President Zelensky called it an “historic day”.

But Ukraine’s foreign minister said the “war goes on”. Speaking in Cambodia on the sidelines of a summit of Asian countries, Dmytro Kuleba said: “We are winning battles on the ground. But the war continues.”

An evening update on Friday from the Ukrainian side said troops had pushed as far forwards as the western bank of the Dnipro river.

Images also emerged showing that the main river crossing – the Antonivsky Bridge – had partially collapsed. It remains unclear how the damage was caused.

The Russian troops who occupied Kherson are thought to be taking up new positions on the eastern side of the river.

A Kherson resident described his “overwhelming” emotions as people emerged singing and dancing onto the streets.

Alexei Sandakov revealed his full name to the BBC, having previously referred to himself only as “Jimmy”. He said Kherson was “free now. It’s different. Everyone is crying since this morning”.

He added that “everybody wanted to embrace” the arriving Ukrainian soldiers.

The city’s change of control followed a rapid Ukrainian counter-offensive in recent months, in which Kyiv said it had recaptured 41 settlements near Kherson.

In his evening address, President Zelensky said the people of Kherson “were waiting” and “never gave up on Ukraine”.

He added that residents had been working to remove “any traces of the occupiers’ stay” from the streets, including Russian symbols.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin denied the move represented a humiliating defeat.

For weeks, the Kremlin has regarded Kherson and its locality as its own territory, after running so-called “referendums” in four occupied provinces of east and south Ukraine.

These votes were widely discredited by the international community, and Ukraine kept up its efforts to take back the affected land.

Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson was announced on Wednesday by the country’s commander in Ukraine, who said it was no longer possible to supply the city.

Although there was little evidence of any Russian retreat on Thursday, Ukraine claimed advances of up to 7km on two axes as its troops pushed forwards.

Events continued to move quickly on Friday. Initial reports that the Russians had abandoned Kherson came from locals.

Crowds of flag-waving civilians were later filmed in Freedom Square, greeting Kyiv’s soldiers and chanting: “Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine!”

On Friday afternoon, Alexei Sandakov appeared to be still adapting to the new situation on the ground, commenting: “No-one is going to sleep tonight.”

The local television service in Kherson was also reconnected to Ukrainian broadcasts.

Shortly after 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT), a Ukrainian official said his troops were “almost fully in control” of Kherson, as well as the wider tranche of land to the west of the Dnipro river.

Troops were treading carefully amid fears of Russian traps, said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the defence minister.

Mr Sak told the BBC that some enemy soldiers were believed to be lingering in the city, had cast off their uniforms and were trying to disguise themselves as civilians. He urged them to surrender.

He hailed Kherson’s recapture as a major win comparable to his side’s successful efforts earlier in the war to drive Russian troops away from other urban centres – namely Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv.

But he said he remained “cautious”, citing the possibility of Russian retaliations, and referring to a missile attack in Mykolaiv earlier in the day, which allegedly killed at least seven people.

Mr Sak vowed to retake further territory from Russia, including land that has been occupied by the neighbouring country since 2014.

In Russia, the exit from Kherson has been played down by officials and styled as a “redeployment” – despite criticism from pro-war commentators on social media.

Mr Putin was notably absent from Wednesday’s announcement by the military that Russian forces were leaving the city they had snatched, virtually unopposed, in the early stages of the war.

World Opinions – BBC News

L’article Ukraine. Celebrations as Kyiv takes back key city Kherson est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Putin’s message to the West, East and South is to focus on the global crises they face and let him have Ukraine.

As Vladimir Putin was finishing his first term in office in 2004, he sought to develop modern channels of communication with the world, especially the West. That is why the Valdai Club was launched, along with its annual conference in which the president would participate. It became one of the main venues where Russia’s leader would address the rest of the world.

From the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, he would spend hours at the conference answering the questions of top Russia experts, talking about the country’s unique democratic development and openness to the world.

What we heard on October 27, at this year’s Valdai event, was a radically different rhetoric.

Ahead of the event, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov promised that people “will read and re-read” Putin’s Valdai speech. This was likely what the president wished would happen, as he finds himself in a moment in history that will define his legacy and in which he certainly believes he is not going to be the loser.

But that was not how many saw his speech. Most of the address was full of complaints about the West, which led some Russia watchers to dismiss it as yet another rant by a bitter leader who is out of touch with reality.

But it is important to dig through Putin’s quite direct and at times vulgar rhetoric to understand what his global strategy is. He delivered several messages directed at different audiences, trying to drive one key idea through: it is not about Ukraine, it is about much more than that.

Putin’s main and most popular narrative directed at the international audience is the “end of the unipolar moment” and the “coming of multipolarity”. He has been preaching about it for most of his presidency, picking it up from the writings of Russia’s former prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, the late Yevgeny Primakov.

Unsurprisingly, it dominated much of his speech at Valdai. He accused the West and the United States of triggering crises and sowing chaos around the world, and reiterated his conviction that the rise of other powers necessitates respect for their interests and participation in drawing the rules of how the world is governed.

His key message – directed at other powers like China and India – was that the end of American hegemony should lead to the end of the Western promotion of democracy and institutions of governance, universality of human rights and what has become known as the “liberal world order” in general.

It should also give space for a non-Western financial architecture to emerge – an idea that Russia has been running with for at least a decade. That is already taking place to a certain degree in the form of dedollarisation, but clearly not at the pace that Putin needs to fight the negative consequences of Western sanctions.

The Russian president also addressed the Global South with an updated version of Soviet messaging: that Moscow respects the sovereignty and the right of every nation to “follow its own path”, unlike Western colonial powers which historically have not. He also drew attention to continuing Western economic dominance and exploitation of developing countries through “neocolonial” globalisation.

Putin also did not miss the opportunity to talk about the “ills” of Western societies, seemingly directing his words to those who oppose their governments in the West or disagree with mainstream cultural and societal norms.

He specifically seemed to play on the sentiments of Western conservatives, bringing up “cancel culture” and presenting it as a despotic erasure of what is deemed wrong or no longer tolerable by liberal elites. He spoke about the traditional, Christian core of the Western civilisation, dismissing “strange ideas” like “dozens of genders and gay pride parades”. Putin emphasised that his problem is with the Western “elites” not the people of the West.

The Russian president even tried to appeal to environmentalists, proclaiming that because of conflict with Russia, the West is ignoring climate change.

In a nutshell, he gave everyone in the West, East and South a broad enough reason to think of their own problems and of global crises and to see the war in Ukraine through that prism: it is not about Ukraine; it is about much more.

This is the message Putin and the Kremlin are trying to convey to the world and especially the West – the cost of supporting Ukraine is too much, and its importance – too negligible, when compared with what the world is dealing with. It can be resolved simply with “dialogue on an equal footing”.

Moscow is, of course, playing an important role in stoking these crises: from waging a gas war on the European Union to undermining the United Nations grain deal, curbing Ukrainian wheat exports and exacerbating food shortages in the Global South. The goal is to distract the world from the war in Ukraine, to present it as a small, regional – if not domestic – issue.

Indeed, for those that do not follow the war in Ukraine closely, who do not understand the context and who mistrust the news of war crimes, what Putin is saying may seem reasonable enough. But unfortunately, what he envisions as a “dialogue” or a “solution” is, in fact, a full surrender of Ukraine – the West agreeing to step back and turn a blind eye to the horrors of the Russian war and occupation.

This is the multipolarity Putin is preaching – a world order that enables those that have the power to do what they want and to bend international laws.

And while Putin wants the world to forget Ukraine, he is obsessed with it. For him this is a personal affair; it is about delivering “historical justice” in his Russian imperial understanding of it.

Anton Barbashin – Political analyst / Aljazeera

L’article Analysis. Putin wants the world to forget Ukraine est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Unlike those that return to base once missiles are launched, suicide drones are destroyed in an attack.

A new wave of deadly Russian air strikes on Ukraine has killed more than 25 people and wounded over 100, according to authorities in Kyiv, in the most extensive attacks since the early days of the war.

The current strikes, which began on October 10, have targeted at least 10 regions across the country and have been carried out using Russian missiles as well as Iranian-made drones, Ukrainian authorities have said.

Swarms of explosive-laden, unmanned aircraft called “kamikaze” drones targeted Kyiv on Monday, killing at least four people and targeting energy facilities.

Among the victims was a young couple expecting a baby in three months, according to the mayor of Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Air Force said it destroyed at least 37 drones in one day.

For their part, officials in Tehran deny supplying Russia with the weapons.

Why are they called ‘kamikaze’ drones?

Unlike drones that return to base once missiles are launched, “kamikaze” or “suicide” drones are destroyed in an attack.

Al Jazeera’s defence analyst Alex Gatopoulos said these munitions can hover above an area to identify a target before diving to destroy it.

Like cruise missiles, they can strike targets hundreds of kilometres away, but cruise missiles are expensive, and Gatopoulos said “kamikaze” drones are a cheaper yet precise alternative.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had bought 2,400 “kamikaze” drones but its fleet is being depleted quickly.

Where do they come from?

Ukraine says Russia imported the drones from Iran, where they are known as Shahed-136, which could be translated as “witness of faith” but also as “martyr”.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, accused Tehran of being responsible for the “murders of Ukrainians”. The Kremlin did not comment.

Iran, which has called NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe the root cause of the war, has denied supplying Russia with arms.

Gatopoulos said the drones are unlikely to be Russian-made because Moscow “has been behind in developing low-end tactical drones, especially armed ones”.

Samir Puri, an analyst at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that some form of a sales agreement is likely to have taken place between Moscow and Tehran.

These drones were “bought off the shelf from Iran, moved to the war zone and being used, I think, very much as a weapon that will continue to confuse Ukrainian air defences by adding something else in the mix,” Puri said..

World Opinions + Al jazeera News

L’article What are the ‘kamikaze’ drones Russia is reportedly using?.. Video est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Those whom the Russian president may perceive as allies do not seem to be eager to back his brutal war in Ukraine.

On September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed a cri de coeur, a simultaneously blistering and blathering speech. Quoting fascist philosopher Ivan Iyin, Putin cast himself as the hero leading a global fight against the West in general, and American hegemony in particular. But rather than mark the start of a new epochal conflict, the speech instead laid bare the extent to which the Russian president has lost touch with reality.

The declaration was intended to mark a high point in the “success” of his “special operation” against Ukraine, namely the attempted annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions – though Russian forces are not in full control of any of them. What Putin planned in February as a blitzkrieg has instead come to be mocked as а bly*tkrieg, substituting blitz, the German word for lightning, with a Russian curse word whose translation is not publishable here.

While the horrors of the conflict are no laughing matter, that Putin is blind to the tragicomic reality of the fighting was made clear when Ukrainian forces retook the city of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast within 24 hours of his diatribe. Lyman has been of strategic importance due to its position as a railway juncture, but now it has also taken on a symbolic significance – all thanks to the fact that Putin could no longer keep his anger to himself.

A week later, an explosion struck the Kerch Bridge which Putin had ordered built to link the Russian mainland with the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. The bridge was arguably the project which the Kremlin had used to propagandise its occupation regime more than any other and which pro-Kremlin media had previously painted as impervious to attack.

Putin has long been critical of the so-called “rules-based order” and US hypocrisy on the use of force abroad. He first brought up these ideas in his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference. Back then, he was still willing to call the US and other Western states “partners” – language he has now explicitly cast aside. His descent into hyperbole continued with two essays, published in 2020 and 2021, reimagining World War II to blame the West for Hitler’s attacks on Eastern Europe while absolving Russia of sin for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and denouncing Ukrainian nationhood.

How unhinged Putin has become from reality has also been laid bare by one particular point of emphasis in his latest speech, namely: his claim that Russia is leading the charge to resist US hegemony and that the rest of the world is choosing to side with it. But some of the countries that he perhaps perceives as allies – those that have refused to “bow” to US pressure and made the “reasonable choice to cooperate with Russia” – may not be so eager to align with the Kremlin.

Take Iran, which itself is now facing a wave of anti-government protests. The current hardliners in charge in Tehran have not stopped engaging with the West. In fact, they are negotiating with the US and its Western allies a deal to lift the sanctions that former US President Donald Trump unilaterally – and thus hegemonically – re-imposed on the regime.

Meanwhile China – another power that Putin has sought the support of – is also distancing itself from Russia’s war effort. It has no interest in joining Putin’s attempt to upend the global international financial order, dominated by the US dollar, which suits Beijing just fine. It seeks to ultimately displace the US as the dominant player whereas Putin hopes to collapse the present system entirely.

And though Chinese President Xi Jinping too is a fierce critic of the US’ geopolitical power, Beijing has not only been circumspect in its approach to the conflict in Ukraine but has refused to endorse Putin’s position on annexing Ukrainian territory. While the Kremlin often likes to invoke the US-Chinese disagreement over Taiwan as akin to its invasion of Ukraine, there is little chance that Beijing will do the same, let alone recognise Russian sovereignty over the “annexed” territories.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has his own issues with the West that he blames for the 2016 coup attempt against him, has so far refused to join Western sanctions on Russia. But of late Turkish banks – some of which have been accused of skirting the sanctions on Iran – have begun to think better of skirting US sanctions on Russia.

A day before Putin’s speech, it was reported that Turkish state banks were no longer willing to use Russia’s MIR payment system, an alternative to the Belgium-based SWIFT interbank messaging system from which most of Russia’s largest banks have been barred.

Ankara has rejected Putin’s annexations explicitly as well, labelling it a grave violation of international law. Meral Aksener, leader of Turkey’s opposition IYI party – which is currently polling third – has also ramped up her rhetoric against the Kremlin, lambasting Putin as destabilising the wider region in the aftermath of his speech.

A similar situation is found in India, which has been willing to boost its imports of Russian oil and other commodities in recent months, but has increasingly shown signs that Moscow’s demands it go further in its support are grating. Oil companies and the Indian government have reportedly been reluctant to adopt a rouble trade mechanism for oil imports. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made his most significant criticism of the war to date at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Uzbekistan on September 16, stating that “today’s era is not an era of war”.

Putin even stands at risk of losing what had been one of Russia’s closest security allies – Armenia – after the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) refused to support Yerevan following border clashes with Azerbaijan and attacks on its territory. Some senior Armenian officials have even hinted at leaving the bloc altogether.

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has sought to distance himself from Putin as well, although Russian forces intervened in the country just this January to help put down a series of protests that were labelled a coup attempt. As some 200,000 Russians have fled Putin’s draft for Kazakhstan over the last two weeks, Tokayev called the crisis in Russia a “hopeless situation”. Meanwhile, amid Russian efforts to draft guest workers from Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have warned their nationals against fighting in the conflict.

Even Tajikistan, whose president was just awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland in the third degree by Putin himself, has shown reticence to risk violating Western sanctions on Russian payment systems.

Nor are Putin’s military atrocities and economic mismanagement winning him friends in Africa and the Middle East, where countries have heretofore largely abstained from inveighing on the conflict. But there are signs that the horrors of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine are pushing this neutrality to its limits.

In the Middle East, two large energy exporters, Qatar and Kuwait, have condemned the use of force to settle disputes between countries and have called for respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In Africa, too, there has been criticism of Russian aggression. In late September Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo told the UN that “Every bullet, every bomb, every shell that hits a target in Ukraine, hits our pockets and our economies in Africa”.

Despite his hopes, Putin fights alone. That may make him even more dangerous. But that in turn will only isolate him further. His war in Ukraine is no civilisational or epochal struggle for the future, but one man’s maniacal desires brought bare because he has systematically and often brutally eliminated the ability for any voice in Russia that speaks out against him to rise up. But his desire to intimidate the world into acquiescing to his barbarity and craven worldview is nothing more than a fantasy. And therein lies hope.

By Maximilian Hess – Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute / Aljazeera

L’article Analysis. Putin is fighting alone est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Ukrainian forces have seized even more territory from Russia as they continue their counter-offensive, the country’s president has said.

Volodymyr Zelensky said troops have now retaken more than 6,000 sq km (2,317 sq miles) from Russian control in September, in the east and the south.

The BBC cannot verify these figures.

Russia has admitted losing key cities in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, in what is seen by some military experts as a potential breakthrough in the war.

Moscow describes its troop withdrawal from the region in recent days as a “regrouping” with the aim of focusing on the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine’s east.

That claim has been ridiculed even in Russia, with many social media users there describing the stated pull-out as “shameful”.

Speaking later on Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ukrainian forces had made “significant progress” in their counter-offensive, but added that it was too early to predict the outcome.

“The Russians maintain very significant forces in Ukraine as well as equipment and arms and munitions. They continue to use it indiscriminately against not just the Ukrainian armed forces but civilians and civilian infrastructure as we’ve seen,” Mr Blinken said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. Russia still holds about a fifth of the country.

In his late video address on Monday, President Zelensky said: “From the beginning of September until today, our warriors have already liberated more than 6,000 sq km of the territory of Ukraine – in the east and south”.

“The movement of our troops continues,” he said.

The counter-offensive appears to have been rapid. Last Thursday, President Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had retaken 1,000 sq km, but by Sunday that stated figure had tripled to 3,000 sq km.

Mr Zelensky thanked several of Ukraine’s brigades involved in the counter-offensive, describing their fighters as “true heroes”.

He did not reveal which Ukrainian cities and villages had been liberated.

Russia’s military earlier admitted that its troops had to leave the key cities of Balakliya, Izyum and Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. Russia now controls only a small eastern part of the region.

Significant – albeit slower – advances by Ukrainian troops have also been reported in the southern Kherson region, which borders with Crimea – a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

UK defence officials say the Ukrainian army’s recent successes will have “significant implications” for Russia’s overall operational design.

However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has insisted that military operations in Ukraine will continue “until all the tasks that were initially set” have been fulfilled.

Russia says its forces have been carrying out strikes in those areas retaken by Ukraine in recent days.

Valerii Marchenko, mayor of Izyum, told the BBC the Ukrainian army was in his city and the state flag had been raised.

The military is now engaged in cleaning up the war-torn city and Ukrainian forces are searching for Russian soldiers potentially hiding in people’s houses.

Mr Marchenko said that after “about 10 days”, residents who had to flee the city would be able to return “safely”.

Russia has been accused of targeting civilian infrastructure in revenge for setbacks on the battlefield.

A wave of missile strikes on Sunday caused massive power cuts across north-eastern Ukraine, leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity and running water for several hours.

World Opinions – BBC News

L’article Ukraine war: We’ve retaken 6,000 sq km from Russia, says Zelensky est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

The six-month anniversary of Russia’s war today coincides with the day Ukraine decided to break from the Soviet Union.

August 24 is a historic day for Ukraine, celebrated as Independence Day in recognition of the 1991 vote by the country’s still-Soviet legislature declaring independence from Moscow.

Today, however, it marks not just that anniversary, but the global struggle for national sovereignty: The date also coincides with the completion of six months of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s all-out-attack on Ukraine. It is a day that should matter to the whole world.

Back in 1991, competing visions for a post-Communist era in Moscow held up Ukraine’s drive for separation from Russia. Ukrainians would re-assert their desire for independence that December, with 92.3 percent of voters backing the legislature’s declaration, including a majority of residents of Crimea and the Donbas – regions that Putin today falsely insists are more Russian than Ukrainian.

Ukraine would achieve independence on December 26, when Mikhail Gorbachev formally dissolved the Soviet Union. If August 24, 1991, represented a key step in Kyiv’s long and drawn-out fight to secure its sovereignty from Moscow, August 24, 2022, marks an equally pivotal moment. The West’s role – like in 1991 – is critical as Ukraine tries to shape its future.

Although Russia’s then-president Boris Yeltsin pushed Gorbachev to break up the USSR, Yeltsin had not given up hopes of retaining Ukraine in some form of successor union, as detailed in Collapse, Vladislav Zubok’s recently-published critical history of the end of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the collapse of communism, Russian nationalist politicians pursued similar aspirations. Russian territorial claims were formally settled in 1994, via the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances that saw Kyiv formally renounce its nuclear weapons. In exchange, Russia promised to refrain from threatening to use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.

The last eight years have made a mockery of the document, to which the United States and the United Kingdom were guarantors. They failed to uphold the pledges to Ukraine after Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea, while Putin justified it by arguing that the Euromaidan Revolution at the beginning of that year had created “a new state” with which Russia had not signed any treaties.

This year, Putin has extended his war, ordering attacks north of Crimea, across the Donbas, and in Kharkiv, Sumy, Zhytomyr, and Chernihiv as well. Many of these attacks were launched from Belarus, which has seen its sovereignty deeply compromised, with President Alexander Lukashenko more beholden than ever to Putin after the regime in Minsk cracked down on pro-democracy protests in 2020.

Although Putin’s invasion army has been forced into a humiliating retreat from Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Russian troops remain in Belarus today. Ukrainian officials continue to warn that Russian forces could launch a new ground assault via Belarus, and Putin still uses Belarusian land to launch missiles and air raids across Ukraine.

Many Ukrainians have been unable to celebrate Independence Day for the past eight years, with Russia not only annexing Crimea but effectively administering half of Luhansk and Donetsk after sending its forces into those territories in 2014 as well. Fewer will celebrate this year. Celebrations have been suspended in the country’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, amongst others, for fear of Russian attacks.

Yet more cannot commemorate the occasion because Russia has expanded its occupation significantly since February, taking all but a sliver of Luhansk, nearly all of the region of Kherson, half of Zaporizhzhia and portions of northern and eastern Kharkiv. Russia also maintains a foothold in Mykolaiv and by mid-May had seized all of the coastal region of Donetsk, following the siege of Mariupol’s Azovstal.

Over the last month, the lines of control have hardly changed. Russian forces are threatening to take the key Donetsk suburb of Avdiivka and have pressed assaults on a line of Ukrainian cities – Siversk, Soledar and Bakhmut – in northern Donetsk. Ukrainian forces have for weeks been planning an offensive of their own in Mykolaiv and Kherson seeking to retake territory on the northern bank of the Dnieper River before winter, though it remains to be seen whether they can be successful. Russia has itself counterattacked in recent days near the village of Blahodatne just 35km (21.7 miles) away from Mykolaiv.

Nevertheless, six months after Putin vastly escalated the war, his forces appear stuck in a quagmire. He might have expanded Russia’s occupation and all but erased Belarus’ sovereignty in the process, but Ukraine has held on and continues to fight to repel the Kremlin’s military.

That is a reason to celebrate – but with caution. On August 24 this year, the opening stanza of Ukraine’s national anthem has never rung more true:
Ukraine’s freedom has not yet perished, nor has her glory,
Upon us, fellow Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more.
Our enemies will vanish like dew in the sun,
And we too shall rule, brothers, in a free land of our own.

Yet while the war might not have gone the way Putin had hoped, that won’t derail his long-term ambitions. While Ukrainians remain steadfast in their resolve to continue the fight, questions are growing about the West’s continued commitment to the economic war against Moscow: Countries that have imposed sanctions are once again increasing exports to Russia. Some sanctions have been relaxed slightly and Russia is using its own economic weapons – particularly natural gas – to attempt to break Western resolve.

The Kremlin remembers the West’s abandonment of its Budapest Memorandum guarantees and is counting on history repeating itself. That’s why, this August 24, Ukrainian sovereignty should be celebrated not just by Ukrainians, but all those who value freedom and independence. If the international community lowers its commitment to Ukraine and fails to uphold the universal values that Ukrainians are fighting for, the next anniversary may prove far bleaker.

By Maximilian Hess – Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute / Aljazeera

L’article Analysis. Ukraine is reliving a promise it made on this day in 1991 est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

African countries are innocent victims of the war in Ukraine and Russia should help ease their suffering, the head of the African Union has told Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Sochi.

After three hours of talks, Macky Sall said the Russian leader had promised to ease the export of cereals and fertiliser.

However, he did not give any details.

Prior to the conflict, more than 40% of wheat consumed in Africa came from Russia and Ukraine.

The war has exacerbated shortages caused by bad harvests and insecurity.

Food prices have shot up across the continent since Russian invaded Ukraine 100 days ago, pushing huge numbers towards hunger.

Chad has declared a national food emergency. A third of the population needs food aid, according to the UN and the government has appealed for international assistance

Mr Sall, who is Senegal’s president, told Mr Putin he should be “aware that our countries, even if they are far from the theatre [of action], are victims of this economic crisis” caused by the conflict.

He said he was also pleading on behalf of other countries like “Asia, the Middle East and also Latin America”.

Mr Putin said exports could either go through the Black Sea port of Odessa “which is difficult because Ukrainians have to clear mines” or via the Russia-controlled port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, the AFP news agency quotes Mr Sall as saying.

Ukraine’s ports in the Black Sea have been largely blocked for exports since the conflict began.

Russia’s defence ministry says that vessels carrying grain can leave Ukraine’s ports in the Black Sea via “humanitarian corridors”, with Russia ready to guarantee their safety, Reuters quotes the Interfax news agency as saying. However, it is not clear how these corridors would work.

Before the meeting, Mr Putin said he was always on the side of Africa, but didn’t explicitly mention the continent’s food crisis.

Like many African countries, Senegal has avoided taking sides in the conflict and the Senegalese leader also said food supplies should be “outside” the West’s sanctions on Russia. He said he had made this point when he spoke to the European Council earlier in the week.

On Friday, US President Joe Biden dismissed the idea that the West bore responsibility for the global price rises.

“This is a Putin price hike. Putin’s war has raised the price of food because Ukraine and Russia are two of the world’s major bread baskets for wheat and corn, the basic product for so many foods around the world,” he said.

World Opinions + BBC News

L’article Africa is victim of Ukraine war, Macky Sall tells Vladimir Putin est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Despite many setbacks and disappointments, Russia appears to be making significant progress with regards to the officially declared goals of its war on Ukraine.

The last of the Ukrainian defenders in the port city of Mariupol surrendered at the Azovstal plant on Friday. The fact that at least half of them belong to the Azov regiment, created by far-right militants in 2014, offers the Kremlin a chance to claim major progress with regards to one of the officially declared goals of its war on Ukraine – the “denazification” of the country.

Inevitably, the Russian propaganda machine is now excitedly parading all the tattoos and patches on the uniforms of the surrendering Ukrainian soldiers, which betray the far-right sympathies of their bearers. In violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, pro-Kremlin outlets are circulating videos of POWs, who are being forced to strip and expose their tattoos for the cameras of propagandist TV channels. Filming POWs, including scenes of their interrogation and torture, is practised by both sides in this war.

Officials in both Russia and Russian-backed unrecognised statelets in eastern Ukraine are now calling for a trial of Azov fighters. Right at the end of the Azovstal siege, the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office appealed to the Supreme Court to declare the Azov regiment a terrorist organisation. This would potentially allow Russia to try the members of Azov in its territory as terrorists. Alternatively, the Kremlin could stage that trial in the Donetsk and Luhansk statelets, which – unlike Russia itself – practise capital punishment.

The Russian effort to highlight Ukraine’s troubling tolerance of the far right would be more convincing if Russia itself weren’t coopting them as well. The infamous Wagner Group, a private army that now fights on the Donbas front near the town of Popasna, for example, includes the Rusich unit, which is made up of open neo-Nazis from St Petersburg.

But such facts are virtually unknown to the Russian public, so with the help of its massive propaganda machine, the Kremlin will be able to tick off the goal of “denazification” as achieved, given that Azov is by far the most symbolic example of Ukraine’s controversial relationship with the far right.

But what about the other goals?

While many in the West seem to think that Putin aims to occupy the whole of Ukraine, Russia’s territorial expansion goals officially declared at the start of the operation are not nearly as ambitious. They boil down to establishing control over the entire territories of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, which Russian-backed separatists have only partially controlled since 2014.

This is a rather daunting task in military terms because it involves taking over the best-fortified areas of Ukraine, which have been carefully preparing for this battle for seven years.

The Russian progress in Donbas has been steady so far, but very slow. The Russians are now close to establishing full control of Luhansk region, but Ukraine’s strongholds in Donetsk region will be a much harder nut to crack.

In terms of selling the war to the jingoist part of Russian society, any Ukrainian territory outside of Donetsk and Luhansk claimed by Russia is just a bonus. The Kremlin does not need to obtain any territory outside Donbas to convince its support base that it achieved its goals and declared victory.

The fall of Mariupol to the Russian military represents one of these bonus achievements. Russia now has a land corridor to Crimea, which it occupied in 2014. On top of that, it has ended Crimea’s water and power blockade, maintained by Ukraine all those years. The freshwater canal connecting the Dnieper River to the arid Crimean Peninsula is now in Russia’s hands. So is a nuclear power station to the north of the peninsula, not to mention the power grid in southeastern Ukraine which can be now connected to Russia.

Only historians looking into the Kremlin archives, years or decades from now, will be able to reveal the details of Putin’s original plan for Ukraine.

For now, all we know is that the first stage of the war included an ill-fated march on Kyiv and a failed attempt to encircle Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. Was it a part of the plan for a broad occupation or a way of distracting Ukrainian forces while Russia was establishing the land corridor to Crimea?

It may well be an example of what British political scientist Mark Galeotti once dubbed the Kremlin’s “adhocracy”. Perhaps there was not much of a plan – just a desire to punish Ukraine for refusing to implement the Minsk agreements, which ended the first war in Donbas in 2014-15 and envisaged autonomy for the Russian-backed parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions within Ukraine. A week before Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy had called the Minsk agreements “vapid” and designed to turn Ukraine into a losing side.

In that respect, the attack on Kyiv could have been more of a punitive raid than an attempt to seize territory. The atrocities exposed after the Russian army retreated from northern Ukraine suggest that they were not exactly fighting for hearts and minds in this part of the country.

If this is indeed accurate, what’s crucial for the Kremlin is that at the end of the current war, Ukraine is forced to agree to a truce that will be much more humiliating than what was envisaged by the Minsk agreements. If the war ends with Russia occupying all of Luhansk and Donetsk plus retaining control of the land corridor to Crimea, it will be more than enough for Putin to declare a spotless victory.

But to cement his victory, the Russian leader will need to convince Ukraine to agree to a truce under such conditions, and that’s a totally different story. Ukraine and its Western allies are hoping that under pressure from crippling sanctions Russia will eventually exhaust its military and economic potential and lose the battle.

This would be a desirable outcome, not only for Ukraine and Europe but Russia itself, as it would be beneficial for the country to leave this dark period in its history behind as quickly as possible and transform into something akin to post-1945 Germany rather than continue acting as an aggressive military dictatorship and further damage its economy.

But while Russia is expected to lose 11.2 percent of its GDP this year, Ukraine’s economy may shrink by 45 percent by the end of 2022, according to the World Bank. Ukrainian officials are bragging about a major counter-offensive later this year, fuelled by all the heavy weaponry Western allies have begun supplying in recent weeks. But it’s unclear if it has the human resources to mount it. Offensives lead to considerably higher human losses than defensive wars and even with all the state-of-the-art Western weaponry, Ukraine will still be facing a very formidable enemy. The odds are high that it will reach its pain barrier long before Putin’s Russia.

By Leonid Ragozin is a freelance journalist based in Riga + Aljazeera

L’article Is Putin achieving his goals in Ukraine? est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

When Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked, criminal invasion of Ukraine, he shot himself in one foot. When he threatened to use nuclear weapons, he blew off the other. His regime has chosen a path of self-liquidation. The only question is how much damage it will do before its demise.

Ukraine, of course, is now the main target of Putin’s barbarism. I salute the bravery of the Ukrainian people and their leadership. Ukraine, an independent sovereign democracy, is not a part of Russia; but, as is the case for many Russians, Ukraine is a part of me. My grandfather, killed defending Moscow from fascist invaders in 1941, was from Zhytomyr in Ukraine. Today the invaders attacking his homeland are Russian. My grandmother was from Kharkiv. When I see the bombing of her city, it rips my heart in two – my motherland bombing the land of my grandmother.

Putin’s war of aggression is a crime against Ukraine and a crime against humanity. But it is also a crime against the Russian people. The regime starves Russians of information and feeds them lies. It tells them this is not a war but a “military operation”. It tells them we are fighting “Nazis and drug addicts”, even as its bombs drop on the site of Babyn Yar. While Putin’s forces bombard innocent Ukrainian civilians, we need to bombard Russians with the truth. When the news breaks through that Russian boys are being sent to their deaths in their thousands to murder our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, then the regime’s position becomes untenable.

We, as Russians, must hold these criminals accountable for their actions. As a Russian citizen, I have opposed the regime for 20 years and paid a high price. I spent a decade in prison and could easily have lost my life, as many friends and colleagues have. But there is no price too high to pay if it means reaching the day when the Russian people make clear that Putin’s time is up. To reach this day, however, we need international help and support.

The global response has already been stronger than anything Putin envisioned or accounted for, but still more is required. Ukraine is fighting valiantly, but the west has a vital role to play in bringing Putin’s war machine to a halt by bringing the regime to its knees financially.

The sanctions must be tighter. There should be no holding back. Sanctions against the banking sector can and will have an impact, but it is time to stop pulling punches. If the banks are targeted as tightly as they should be, it will even nullify the value of the energy dollars on which the regime relies. Sanctions have been imposed on 70% of Russian banks. Leaving 30% of Russian banks intact gives the regime all the wriggle room it needs to squirm out of the vice.

His regime and all those complicit in war crimes must be held accountable – starting now. Ukrainians are fighting for their lives

It gives me no pleasure to write this, because I know innocent Russians will also pay a price. I also know that completely stemming the flow of money into Russia is the way to bring the Russian population out on to the streets to face down their enemy in the Kremlin and reclaim both their freedom and their wealth.

Sanctioning the banks is not enough. Sanctioning Putin is not enough. It’s time to step up the sanctions against the oligarchs who hold his money. We all know their names, however much they abuse the English courts to stop us using them. No one should be exempt. There is no moral legitimacy in half-baked, equivocal platitudes about how “war is not the answer” when you hold the money of the man waging it. The assets of these oligarchs must be frozen immediately before they fund yet more death and destruction on the streets of Ukraine. Eventually, plans should be put in place to return seized assets to the Russian people.

As for the so-called “Russian liberals” within Putin’s circle whom the west has long championed as an acceptable, softer face of the regime, more than a week after the criminal invasion, not one has resigned or publicly protested. The west can no longer give special treatment or have false hopes for these people. They tooare members of Putin’s criminal government, and should face the full force of sanctions.

For 20 years, Putin has plundered Russia and generously invited western elites to get fat at the feast. The west was too busy counting Putin’s money to comprehend the dangers. The invasion of Ukraine seems, finally, to have triggered an international moment of clarity. But if the west fails to take the full measures needed to stop Putin in his tracks, it may risk resuscitating a dying regime.

We need to start imagining a future without Putin. When I see my fellow countrymen taking to the streets to protest against the war in Ukraine, I believe that future is close at hand. But we will only see it come to pass if right now – today and not tomorrow – every legal and financial tool in the arsenal is brought to bear against Putin, his regime and those complicit in its war crimes. History demands this of the west – for Ukrainians fighting heroically for their lives and for the Russians who risk theirs when they dare to speak out against Putin’s regime. And it demands it now.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is founder of the Open Russia movement, former Yukos CEO and Amnesty prisoner of conscience / theguardian.com

L’article History demands the west deploy every legal and financial weapon against Putin est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.