German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russian President Vladimir Putin has never threatened him or Germany, following claims by Boris Johnson that Putin threatened the former U.K. prime minister with a missile strike.
“Putin didn’t threaten me or Germany” in the phone conversations the chancellor has had with the Russian leader, Scholz told German newspaper Bild in an interview published Sunday.
In a British documentary that aired last week, Johnson revealed that Putin threatened him in a long phone call in February 2022 just before Russia invaded Ukraine. “He said ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ — something like that,” Boris said in the documentary, referring to Putin.
Johnson said he took the Russian leader’s threat to be “playing along” with attempts to get him to negotiate over Ukraine. The Kremlin has denied any threat.
Pushed in the Bild interview on whether Scholz had also received similar threats during phone calls with the Russian leader, the chancellor said “no.”
In his phone calls with Putin, “I make it very clear to Putin that Russia has sole responsibility for the war,” Scholz said. “In our telephone conversations, our very different positions on the war in Ukraine become very clear,” he said.
The chancellor also denied that Germany’s decision to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine was a threat to Russia.
He said that Germany is delivering battle tanks to Ukraine, along with other allies including the U.S., so that Kyiv “can defend itself.”
“This joint approach prevents an escalation of the war,” Scholz said.
Scholz’s comments come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that “the situation is getting tougher” on the front lines of the war in the east of the country. Moscow is throwing in “more and more of its forces to break our defenses. Now, it is very difficult in Bakhmut, Vuhledar, near Lyman, and other directions,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address late Saturday.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that Bakhmut “is increasingly isolated” following Russian advances in the area. “The two main roads into the city for Ukrainian defenders are likely now both threatened by direct fire, following the Russian advances,” the ministry said in a tweet.
As battles rage in eastern Ukraine, an early mediator between Russia and Ukraine at the start of the war — former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett who served for just six months last year — revealed that Putin early in the invasion had promised not to kill Zelenskyy. In an interview with the Associated Press published Sunday, Bennett said that during a visit to Moscow in March 2022 he asked Putin if the Kremlin was planning to try to kill the Ukrainian leader.
“He said ‘I won’t kill Zelenskyy.’ I then said to him ‘I have to understand that you’re giving me your word that you won’t kill Zelenskyy.’ He said ‘I’m not going to kill Zelenskyy,’” Bennett told the AP. Bennett said that after his meeting, he called Zelenskyy to inform him of Putin’s comments.
The Kremlin has previously denied Ukrainian claims that Russia intended to assassinate Zelenskyy.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MOSCOW — Malika sobbed as she laid flowers at the foot of a statue of a Ukrainian poet in the center of the Russian capital.
In addition to her sorrow — the act was a commemoration of the victims of a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro — she had two reasons to also feel unease.
The first was the flashing blue lights of the police car parked a few meters away. In Russia, any expression of sympathy for Ukraine can be considered to discredit the Russian Armed Forces, and in the days before Malika’s visit, several people had been arrested.
“I despise them,” she said of the officers mulling around the memorial.
Her second reason for concern was her fellow Muscovites walking by. “Someone could overhear that I am playing Okean and notify the authorities,” she said, referring to the Ukrainian rock band playing through her headphones whose music has become the unofficial soundtrack of those who oppose the war.
According to Russian media, the police were first alerted to the makeshift memorial by nationalist vigilantes.
“That’s the country we live in now,” Malika said. “I look around me at these people who go about their lives as if nothing is happening, and I’m horrified.”
Even Malika’s ex-husband, with whom she shares a son, is “on the other side of the divide” when it comes to his views on the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine has severed his country from the Western world. It’s also created a rift within Russian society, pitting countrymen against each other and siloing them more than ever into information bubbles.
Although the accuracy of polling in Russia is often questioned, the survey results — whether from independent, state-financed or leaked secret surveys by the Kremlin — all suggest a majority of the Russian population supports the war, or at least is prepared to accept it as a fact of life.
From exile, independent Russian-language media continue to produce critical news, taking advantage of platforms such as YouTube and Telegram. Though they claim to cater mainly to people still inside Russia, they admit that in doing so they are mostly trying to retain their old audience.
Expanding that audience to pro-Kremlin Russians is a Herculean task: Just as opposition-leaning Russians eschew state television, those who support the Kremlin consume state-funded media as their main source of news, or follow a selection of pro-war channels on social media.
A woman embraces a Russian soldier in Moscow | Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images
In real life, however, the bubbles overlap. The fault line runs through families, friends and workplaces.
For decades, Dmitry, a 45-year-old director who opposes the war, would gather with his longtime friends around Christmas time. This year he wasn’t invited to the reunion. “They know how I think, so in their own way they were trying to avoid an uncomfortable situation,” he said.
Similarly, a young female designer who asked to remain anonymous said she cut contact with her mother for months because the latter kept sending her links to pro-war YouTube videos.
“My family is like a microcosm of Russia as a whole and I don’t know how to live with it,” she said. “There is a complete lack of understanding between us, as if we’re from different planets.”
For Russian authorities, the societal divide is cause for celebration, as the result of their years-long concerted effort to marginalize opposition sentiment.
On Thursday, the Kremlin branded Meduza, by far the most-read independent news outlet among young Russians, an “undesirable organization.” Russians who share a link to an article now risk a fine or even criminal prosecution.
Nevertheless, there is still room for isolated acts of protest, as long as they stay within strict parameters.
In recent weeks, improvised memorials like that at the statue in Moscow to the victims of the strike on Dnipro, which killed аt least 46 civilians, have popped up in cities across Russia. Those like Malika who bring flowers or toys are largely left alone.
But the moment the sentiment is put into words, allowing bystanders to catch on to the message and perhaps even join in, the authorities move in.
A video widely circulated on social media showed a young woman named Yekaterina Varenik as she was detained by police after holding up a handwritten sign at the Moscow memorial. Before she was escorted off, she was allowed to deposit a red carnation at the statue, but not the sign.
On the video, a police officer can be heard repeating the words on the sign — “Ukrainians are not our enemies, but our brothers” — into his phone, presumably informing his superiors on the other end of the line.
A Moscow court later handed Varenik a 12-day prison sentence and a fine.
Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst whom authorities have labeled a “foreign agent,” said Varenik’s fate was illustrative of where Russia stands today.
“In the context of the war and at risk of prosecution, the simple expression of compassion has become an act of civil resistance,” he added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
It appears it’s only a matter of time before the Kremlin orders another draft to replenish its depleted ranks and make up for the battlefield failings of its command.
This week, Norway’s army chief said Russia has already suffered staggering losses, estimating 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since February — a figure much higher than American estimates, as General Mark Milley, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, had suggested in November that the toll was around 100,000.
But whatever the exact tally, few military analysts doubt Russian forces are suffering catastrophic casualties. In a video posted this week, Russian human rights activist Olga Romanova, who heads the Russia Behind Bars charity, said that of the 50,000 conscripts recruited from jails by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s paramilitary mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, 40,000 are now dead, missing or deserted.
In some ways, the high Wagner toll isn’t surprising, with increasing reports from both sides of the front lines that Prigozhin has been using his recruits with little regard for their longevity. One American volunteer, who asked to remain unnamed, recently told POLITICO that he was amazed how Wagner commanders were just hurling their men at Ukrainian positions, only to have them gunned down for little gain.
Andrey Medvedev, a Wagner defector who recently fled to Norway, has also told reporters that in the months-long Russian offensive against the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, former prisoners were thrown into battle as cannon fodder, as meat. “In my platoon, only three out of 30 men survived. We were then given more prisoners, and many of those died too,” he said.
Of course, Wagner is at the extreme end when it comes to carelessness with lives — but as Ukraine’s deadly New Year’s Day missile strike demonstrated, regular Russian armed forces are also knee-deep in blood. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed at Makiivka — the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has acknowledged since the invasion began — while Ukraine estimates the death toll was nearer 400.
Many of those killed there came from Samara, a city located at the confluence of the Volga and Samara rivers, where Communist dictator Joseph Stalin had an underground complex built for Russian leaders in case of a possible evacuation from Moscow. The bunker was built in just as much secrecy as the funerals that have been taking place over the past few weeks for the conscripts killed at Makiivka. “Lists [of the dead] will not be published,” Samara’s military commissar announced earlier this month.
To make up for these losses, Russia’s military bloggers, who have grown increasingly critical, have been urging a bigger partial mobilization, this time of 500,000 reservists to add to the 300,000 already called up in September. President Vladimir Putin has denied this, and Kremlin press spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also dismissed the possibility, saying that the “topic is constantly artificially activated both from abroad and from within the country.”
Yet, last month, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called for Russia’s army to be boosted from its current 1.1 million to 1.5 million, and he announced new commands in regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia, on the border with Finland.
Meanwhile, circumstantial evidence that another draft will be called is also accumulating — though whether it will be done openly or by stealth is unclear.
Along these lines, both the Kremlin and Russia’s political-military establishment have been redoubling propaganda efforts, attempting to shape a narrative that this war isn’t one of choice but of necessity, and that it amounts to an existential clash for the country.
General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” | Ruslan Braun/Creative commons via Flickr
In a recent interview, General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” and that course corrections are needed when it comes to mobilization. He talked about threats arising from Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Similarly, in his Epiphany address this month, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said, “the desire to defeat Russia today has taken very dangerous forms. We pray to the Lord that he will bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.” And the increasingly unhinged Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has warned that the war in Ukraine isn’t going as planned, so it might be necessary to use nuclear weapons to avoid failure.
As Russia’s leaders strive to sell their war as an existential crisis, they are mining ever deeper for tropes to heighten nationalist fervor too, citing the Great Patriotic War at every turn. At the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, which commemorates the breaking of the German siege of the city in 1944, a new exhibition dedicated to “The Lessons of Fascism Yet to Be Learned” is due to be unveiled, and it is set to feature captured Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles. “It’s only logical that a museum dedicated to the struggle against Nazism would support the special operation directed against neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” a press release helpfully suggests.
In line with Putin’s insistence that the war is being waged to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Kremlin propagandists have also been endeavoring to popularize the slogan, “We can do it again.”
At the same time, there are signs that local recruitment centers are gearing up for another surge of draftees as well.
Rumors of a fresh partial mobilization have prompted some dual-citizen Central Asian workers — those holding Russian passports and who would be eligible to be drafted — to leave the country, and some say they’ve been prevented from exiting. A Kyrgyz man told Radio Free Europe he was stopped by Russian border guards when he tried to cross into Kazakhstan en route to Kyrgyzstan. “Russian border guards explained to me quite politely that ‘you are included in a mobilization list, this is the law, and you have no right to go,’” he said.
In order to prevent another surge of refuseniks, Moscow also seems determined to put up further restrictions on crossing Russia’s borders, including possibly making it obligatory for Russians to book a specific time and place in advance, so that they can exit. Amendments to a transport law introduced in the Duma on Monday would require “vehicles belonging to Russian transport companies, foreign transport companies, citizens of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens, stateless persons and other road users” to reserve a date and time “in order to cross the state border of the Russian Federation.”
Transport officials say this would only affect haulers and would help ease congestion near border checkpoints. But if so, then why are “citizens of the Russian Federation” included in the language?
All in all, manpower will be crucial for Russia to mount a spring offensive in the coming months. And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers on the battlefield. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest are necessary for an attacking force.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
In the European bubble in Brussels, diamonds aren’t anyone’s best friend anymore.
The Belgian government’s reluctance to ban imports of Russian diamonds, which would hurt the city of Antwerp, a global hub for the precious stones, has outraged Ukraine and its supporters within the EU.
Ukraine has been pushing to stop the import of Russian rough diamonds because the trade enriches Alrosa, a partially state-owned Russian enterprise.
While such a crackdown wouldn’t inflict the same damage on Vladimir Putin’s economy as a prohibition on all fossil fuels, for example, the continuing flow of Russian diamonds has become a symbol of Western countries putting their national interests above those of Ukraine.
New plans for a fresh round of sanctions against Putin have now reignited the debate over the morality of Europe’s trade in diamonds from Russia.
Belgium is fed up with being scapegoated. According to Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Putin’s ability to sell diamonds to all western markets now needs to be shut off.
“Russian diamonds are blood diamonds,” De Croo said in a statement to POLITICO. “The revenue for Russia from diamonds can only stop if the access of Russian diamonds to Western markets is no longer possible. On forging that solid front, Belgium is working with its partners.”
The West’s economic war against Russia has already had an impact. Partly because of U.S. sanctions, the Russian diamond trade in Antwerp has already been severely hit. But those rough Russian diamonds are diverted to other diamond markets, and often find their way back to the West, cut and polished.
That’s why Belgium is working with partners to introduce a “watertight” traceability system for diamonds, a Belgian official said. If it works, this could hurt Moscow more than if Washington or Brussels are flying solo.
“Europe and North America together represent 70 percent of the world market for natural diamonds,” the official said. “Based on this market power, we can ensure the necessary transparency in the global diamond sector and structurally ban blood diamonds from the global market. The war in Ukraine provides for a strong momentum.”
Sanctions at last?
Belgium’s offensive comes just when its position on sanctioning Russian diamonds is under renewed attack — not just from other EU countries and Belgian opposition parties, but also within De Croo’s own government.
According to Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Putin’s ability to sell diamonds to all western markets now needs to be shut off | Laurie Dieffembacq/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images
The EU is preparing a new round of sanctions against Russia ahead of the first anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Countries such as Poland and Lithuania are again urging the EU to include diamonds. However, one EU diplomat said the discussion is now more an “intra-Belgian fight than a European one.”
De Croo leads a coalition of seven ideologically diverse parties. The greens and socialists within his government are pushing him to actively lobby for hitting diamonds in the next EU sanctions round.
In particular, Vooruit, the Dutch-speaking socialist party, is making a renewed push. Belgian MP Vicky Reynaert will be introducing a new resolution in the Belgian Parliament proposing an import ban.
“It’s becoming impossible to explain that Belgium is not open to blocking Russian diamonds,” Reynaert said. “We want Belgium to actively engage with the European Commission to take action.” Belgian socialist MEP Kathleen Van Brempt is pushing the same idea at the European level.
But the initiative from the socialists isn’t likely to deliver an import ban, or even import quotas, four officials from other Belgian political parties said. De Croo is now set on an international solution instead. No one expects the socialists to destabilize De Croo’s fragile Belgian coalition government over the issue of diamonds.
Even if all seven parties in the Belgian government did agree to hit Russian diamonds, there would be another key obstacle.
In the complicated Belgian political system, the regional governments would have a say as well. The government of the northern region of Flanders is against an import ban. That government is led by the Flemish nationalists, whose party president, Bart De Wever, is also the mayor of Antwerp. “Nothing will change their minds on this,” one of the Belgian officials said of the nationalists’ position.
Blood diamonds
Belgium hopes that by building an international coalition to trace Russia’s “blood diamonds” it will finally stop being seen as a roadblock to action.
The industry agrees. “Sanctions are not the solution,” said Tom Neys of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. “An international framework of complete transparency, with the same standards of compliance as Antwerp, can be that solution,” he said.
Such a transatlantic plan would have a huge impact, according to Hans Merket, a researcher with the International Peace Information Service, a human rights nonprofit organization. “That would have much more effect than the current U.S. sanctions, which are being circumvented,” said Merket.
But the devil will be in the details. Will Belgium succeed in building a transatlantic coalition? Are consumers willing to pay more for their diamonds, or does it still risk diverting the goods to other markets where traders are less diligent?
One of the Belgian officials was doubtful of Belgium’s chances of success. If the international alliance falters, Belgium and the EU should consider moving ahead on their own to convince the rest of the world to act. “But let’s give De Croo a shot at this,” the official said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz doubled down on his rejection of demands by Kyiv to supply Ukraine with fighter jets on the heels of Berlin’s agreement to send battle tanks.
“The question of combat aircraft does not arise at all,” Scholz said in an interview with Tagesspiegel published on Sunday. “I can only advise against entering into a constant competition to outbid each other when it comes to weapons systems.”
His comments come after a top Ukrainian official said on Saturday that Kyiv and its Western allies were engaged in “fast-track” talks on possibly sending military aircraft as well as long-range missiles to help fight the invasion by Russia.
Scholz last week ruled out providing fighter jets, citing the need to prevent further military escalation. “There will be no fighter jet deliveries to Ukraine,” he said on Wednesday, soon after Germany and the U.S. agreed to provide advanced tanks for Kyiv’s war effort.
Ukraine renewed its request for the fighter aircraft almost immediately after Berlin and Washington announced the tanks. Berlin said Germany and its European allies will send about 80 Leopard 2 tanks.
“If, as soon as a decision has been made, the next debate starts in Germany, this does not look very serious and shakes the confidence of the citizens in government decisions,” Scholz told Tagesspiegel. “Such debates should not be conducted for reasons of domestic political profiling. It is important to me now that all those who have announced their intention to supply battle tanks to Ukraine do so,” he said.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Saturday that Kyiv was in talks with allies about aircraft, but that some partners have a “conservative” attitude on arms deliveries. Without citing any partners by name, he said this attitude was “due to fear of changes in the international architecture.”
Hans von der Burchard contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Continued deliveries of arms to Ukraine by its allies in the West will lead to retaliation with “more powerful weapons,” a top official in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime said on Sunday.
Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, threatened Europe and the U.S. with “global catastrophe” over their continued military support to the government in Kyiv, which is trying to continue retaking territory it lost in the Russian invasion.
Volodin directly invoked the use of nuclear weapons in his statement over messaging app Telegram.
“Arguments that the nuclear powers have not previously used weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts are untenable. This is because these states have not faced a situation in which the security of their citizens and the territorial integrity of their countries were threatened,” the Russian official wrote in his social media post.
The threat comes amid arguments over whether Germany will send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion. Kyiv has requested the German-made tanks, which it says it needs to renew its counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces. But Berlin has so far resisted the call from Ukraine and its allies to send the tanks without the U.S. making the first move, over fears of an escalation in the conflict.
Berlin also hasn’t approved deliveries of the tanks from its allies, as Germany gets a final say over any re-exports of the vehicles from countries that have purchased them.
Newly appointed German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is planning a trip to Ukraine, which could come in the next month, German newspaper Bild, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, reported on Sunday, citing an interview. Asked about the Leopard tanks, Pistorius said: “We are in very close dialogue on this issue with our international partners, above all with the U.S.”
In his Telegram post, Russia’s Volodin said: “With their decisions, Washington and Brussels are leading the world to a terrible war … foreign politicians making such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that will destroy their countries.”
It’s not the first time that top Russian politicians threaten a nuclear escalation. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has invoked the use of nuclear weapons more than once since the outbreak of the conflict 11 months ago.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
