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A woman outside the damaged house of her son, who was killed the day before by shelling in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Deadly shelling, drug kingpin's jail security, Lai sighting, Sweden soccer semi, twin takeover
7: Shelling in the southern Ukrainian province of Kherson Ukraine on Sunday killed seven people, including a 23-day-old baby girl. The attack followed denials by Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar that Ukrainian forces had engaged in Russian-occupied territory in the region.
4,000: The Ecuadorian government dispatched 4,000 military and police personnel to the Zonal 8 Detention Center in Guayas province, to “establish control over weapons, ammunition and explosives within the prison.” The jail is home to José Adolfo Macías Villamar, the drug trafficker who murdered presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio claimed had threatened him prior to his assassination. President Guillermo Lasso this weekend said Macías was relocated to La Roca maximum security prison in the same penitentiary complex.
23: Photos have surfaced of former Hong Kong newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, the first taken since 2021. They show Lai accompanied by two guards at the maximum security Stanley Prison in Hong Kong, where the pro-democracy activist is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours each day. Lai was sentenced to more than five years in prison for fraud in 2022, but he is awaiting trial on charges of endangering national security, which could lead to a life sentence.
4: Sweden’s women’s soccer team has advanced to the World Cup semi-final — its fourth big semi in four years. They reached the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup, the 2020 Olympics, and Euro 2022, but they have yet to take home the crown. To make it to the finals this time, Sweden's women must beat Spain on Tuesday.
17: Must be something in the water. Primary schools in the Scottish town of Inverclyde, population 76,700, are preparing to welcome 17 sets of twins this fall. “Twinverclyde,” as the town has become known, has welcomed 147 sets of twins to its primary schools since 2013, an average of 13 sets a year.
Tucker Carlson returns: fact-checking his Ukraine episode
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take for you in the middle of the week.
I wanted to respond to Tucker Carlson's first online episode of what presumably is his new show. A lot of folks were saying that there's no fact checking on it. There's no community notes, there's supposed to be community notes to assess these standards. Why isn't someone going to do that? I certainly have no intention of doing that on a regular basis for Tucker Carlson's show, but because he's talking primarily about Russia and Ukraine, a topic I do know a fair amount about, spent a lot of time on, I thought that this could be helpful and, hey, if you want to put some community notes on it and they allow you to do that, have a party.
So let me go through some of the quotes that Tucker Carlson made in the show and I'll just kind of give you sort of my assessment on what we think about it. It's primarily about the explosion of this dam in Russian occupied Ukraine and the humanitarian and strategic implications of that. So couple points here.
First, Tucker says that the dam was built by the Russian government, not true. It was built in the early '50s actually by the Soviet Union, which of course is not the same thing as the Russian government. That's be presumably likes thinking that the United States should give Boston and Philadelphia back to the British. The dam, Carlson says, is Russia's own infrastructure. Actually, it's Ukrainian infrastructure, not Russian. Since becoming independent back in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine has been the legal owner of the dam. Russia has zero claim to it other than through occupation by force. They do occupy this territory, they have annexed the territory illegally and almost no countries in the world have recognized the legality of that annexation, not even a country like China has done that. Considers it to be Ukrainian and that Ukraine has territorial integrity over it.
He says it's not a military tactic, but an act of terror. I agree it's an act of terror. Classifying the blowing up of the dam as an act of terror doesn't mean it was not all so a military tactic. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians have accused the other side of terrorism, but both also argue that the other side destroyed the dam as a way to gain military advantage. Now, there are various arguments as to why they have had military motives. The most plausible one is that the Russians saw the resulting flooding as a way to block any Ukrainian attacks across the river of Dnipro. And it just happened just as Ukraine has intensified its ground attacks as this counteroffensive begins, which has led to a lot of speculation that a long awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive is indeed beginning or imminent. And if it was an accident, which it may well have been, it is a remarkable coincidence that it coincided with Russian concerns about the launching of that counteroffensive.
Okay, Tucker says, blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine but it hurts Russia more. This is Tucker's central argument, so it deserves the most detailed focus. All of the damage from the dam's destruction has occurred within Ukraine and almost all of the people that are impacted are Ukrainians, are ethnic Ukrainians, and just because certain regions are presently occupied by Russia does not stop them from being part of Ukraine. The damage inflicted by the flooding occurred in both Russian and Ukrainian controlled parts of Ukraine. Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that about 25,000 needed to be evacuated from the Russian controlled areas, about 17,000 from the Ukrainian controlled areas. Initial outside estimates seem to think that that's pretty close to the balance we're talking about, but even in the Russian controlled areas, a majority of the local population are likely to be pro Ukrainian and pro Zelensky. In the Kherson region, where the dam is located, Zelensky got 83% of the vote back in the 2019 presidential election.
Now, it could be argued that as these areas are presently Russian-occupied, Ukraine has an incentive to inflict economic damage on them, but that's not a very good argument. Ukraine's military objective is to recapture these areas from Russia as soon as possible, and hence the counteroffensive. Now, that may or may not succeed, but it's a reasonable goal and the Ukrainians certainly believe it's achievable, in which case they're going to have to foot the bill for rebuilding them.
As far as Crimea is concerned, the economic damage inflicted on crime Crimea will be relatively minor compared to the damage inflicted on regions close to the dam, and that includes water accessibility where the water had been cut off to Crimea for a long time during the annexation/occupation by the Russians since 2014. And that's been certainly an economic crimp, but has not been a disaster for them or stopped their ability to continue to develop it.
That's just considering the economic impact of the dam's destruction. From a military point of view, Russia's likely to benefit a little bit more than Ukraine from the dam's destruction. The flooding of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region means it's now very difficult to attack across the river. And that benefits Russia more, since Ukraine in this region is presently on the offensive. You're shortening the frontline as a consequence, that benefits the defender more than the attacker Ukraine because it allows the defender to concentrate more forces to meet the offensive and reduces the attacker's options. Also, since the attacker has the initiative, they know where the attack is going to be. So a benefit from a long front, they benefit from having more uncertainty that forces the defender to guess and to spread out.
The military benefits from the dam's destruction are pretty questionable in the sense that that is not likely to be where the Ukrainians are going to focus most of their attacks. If you want to break the Russian land bridge from Russian to Crimea, you're likely to hit probably about 100 miles away from that. But to the extent that one side is seen as having a military benefit, it's more likely to be the Russians. For the Ukrainians to benefit militarily from the disruption of Russian defenses along the river they'd need have a large and secret amphibious force ready to pounce across the river and the flooded areas we'll see over the next few weeks, but that looks very improbable at this point.
Tucker Carlson also says, nothing dark here, just too middle-aged people celebrating the killing of a population. He's talking about Lindsey Graham and President Zelensky, and they're clearly talking about the deaths of Russian soldiers who were dying in battle as a result of being sent by Putin to conquer Ukraine. I did not enjoy hearing the way they talked about that, but they're not talking about the killing of the Russian population. Hardly any Russian civilians have died as a result of Ukrainian actions during the war. That's in contrast to Ukrainian civilians killed by the Russians, an estimated 40,000 Ukrainian civilians have died in the war so far. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have died during the Siege of Mariupol alone. The AP reported back in December that the actual death toll there could be three times greater than an early estimate of 25,000. The irony here is that Russia claims Mariupol as part of Russia, and therefore it regards the people that it killed, civilians, as Russians.
It's not like Vladimir Putin is anxious to wage war on him himself, another Tucker Carlson quote, people who think that Russia did it, think Putin is the kind of man who'd shoot himself to death in order to annoy you. Russia is not the injured party here. The vast majority of the cost of this incident will be incurred by Ukrainians, and even if you granted that this is somehow more damaging to Russia than Ukraine, that doesn't remotely mean that Putin couldn't be behind it. After all, this whole war has been a massive exercise in Russia shooting its own foot. Putin also has a long track record of disregard for Russian lives. The 1999 apartment bombings, the MH-17 downing, the indiscriminate killing of ethnic Russians in Bakhmut, all of these sorts of things. That I think is critical context that of course we don't see from Tucker.
He says, people who blame Putin do so because they think that Putin is evil and evil people do evil things purely for the dark joy of being evil. In the specific case, Putin attacked himself, which is the most evil thing you can do, and therefore perfectly in character for a man that evil. This is a straw man, and serious analysts should not believe that Putin is primarily motivated by evil. Right or wrong, there are rational explanations for why Putin might have done this. He got away with annexation of Ukraine in 2014, very limited consequences, especially after the US disaster in Afghanistan. There were reasons to believe if you were Putin that you could do this and you'd succeed and get away with it. Certainly, he believed it was going to be a very short war. That's what he told his buddy Xi Jinping, and that they would be occupying Kyiv and the Zelensky government would be removed. That's not the way it turned out. But again, his mindset is not one that is being seen as motivated primarily by evil. It's a mindset of realpolitik of how he can win against the West that has been trying to repress and keep him down. I don't happen to agree with it, but it's very different from saying that Putin is the devil incarnate.
No one in the media pundit class seemed to entertain the possibility that Ukraine did it, they believe no chance of that because Zelensky is too decent for terrorism, literally a living saint. It's another straw man. Plenty of analysts and journalists, myself included, have explicitly considered that possibility and disgusted it online and through essays. Same thing with Nord Stream, by the way, where I made very clear consistently that it was unlikely that the Russians were behind the bombing of Nord Stream. Serious people do not think that Zelensky is a saint, and we didn't get censored, I didn't get censored for putting out that I thought Zelensky was behind the Nord Stream bombing. In fact, not only did I put it out online but I repeatedly discussed it on national television, on cable news, on CNN and MSNBC and Fox. No problem.
Then he says, Ukraine's shifty and dead eyed Jewish president is rat like and an oligarch, a persecutor of Christians and a friend of BlackRock, a person who'd enjoy flooding villages or starting a famine. It's painful to even quote that, these are all anti-Semitic dog whistles with a sprinkling of blood liable, plain and simple. Tucker Carlson knows exactly the kind of filth that he's spreading here, has no place on the media, which is part of why I suspect Fox is glad to be rid of him and frankly has no space on Twitter either.
The case made by the establishment for Americans to support Ukraine's tautological, Tucker concludes, "it is vital that you support Ukraine because it is vital that Ukraine is supported by you." There are real policy discussions here, both good and bad, that have been articulated, including by me, as to why America should support Ukraine, as to why America should have supported Ukraine back in 2014. That doesn't mean there's no risk involved, doesn't mean there's no danger involved, and certainly the fact that the world's largest holder of nuclear weapons is now seen as a war criminal by the G-7 and the international criminal court means that we have a more dangerous world. But Putin is ultimately much more responsible for that, and we need to remember that too.
And the fact that the United States has inconsistently stood up for its principles of democracy and self-determination historically, and have sometimes even overtly breached them as they did in the war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq, does not mean that when the United States is standing up for the right things, for the values that the country was founded on, that it should somehow stop. And here I take very profound issue with Tucker Carlson and what he's trying to do with his show, at least with this first episode. Having said that, I take heart in the fact that the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans in the country don't agree with him, and I expect that will continue to be the case.
So, hope you found this worthwhile and I'll talk to you all soon.
Local woman cries as she prepares to enter an evacuation train from Kherson, Ukraine.
What We’re Watching: Kherson evacuation, China’s flex in Taiwan, botched bomb plot in Brasilia
A bloody few days in Ukraine and Russia
Three Russian service members were killed by what Moscow claimed was falling debris inside Russia on Monday after a Ukrainian drone was shot down over the Engels military base about 400 miles from the Ukrainian border. It’s the second time in a month that Ukraine has targeted that base, which Kyiv says the Kremlin is using as a launching pad for missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. The incident is problematic for President Vladimir Putin, who has long tried to reassure Russians that the war won’t be coming home or impacting their everyday lives – a narrative that’s harder to sell when deadly drones are flying inside Russian airspace. The timing was also embarrassing for Putin, who was hosting leaders from former Soviet republics when the attack occurred. While Kyiv has mostly been on a high since President Volodymyr Zelensky’s successful trip to Washington, DC, last week, it was also a bloody weekend for Ukraine: Russia pummeled the southern city of Kherson on Christmas Eve, leading to at least 10 deaths and scores of injuries. Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities are urging residents to evacuate the city in preparation for what's still to come.
China’s muscle flex in the Taiwan Strait
China sent 71 warplanes and seven ships towards Taiwan in a 24-hour period, marking the largest show of force by Beijing in the Taiwan Strait in months. Taipei claimed that 47 Chinese aircraft crossed the median line, an unofficial buffer between the two states. Analysts say that Beijing’s muscle flex was largely a response to a spending bill passed by the US Congress in recent days, which boosted security assistance for Taiwan, including fast-tracking Taipei’s access to weapons procurement. Beijing was predictably peeved by the development, accusing Washington and Taipei of provocations. In response, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen announced that mandatory national military service would be increased from four months to one year. Indeed, this was the biggest show of force in the Taiwan Strait by Beijing since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the disputed island in the summer, prompting an aggressive naval and aerial response from China. Still, the last thing President Xi Jinping wants right now is an escalation with the US, given that he’s grappling with a medical emergency and an overwhelmed healthcare system as his government abandons its zero-COVID policy.
Brasilia bomb plot
Just days out from the inauguration of Brazil’s incoming President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, police in Brasilia found an explosive device attached to a truck tanker outside the capital’s international airport. One person has been arrested in connection with the botched bomb plot (the device reportedly failed to detonate as planned.) A large stash of weapons, ammo, and other explosive devices were also found at the rented apartment of the suspect – a staunch supporter of outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. In recent weeks, the alleged bomb plotter had traveled from out of town to participate in protests outside the military headquarters in Brasilia in hopes of wreaking havoc and prompting the military to declare a state of emergency that would upend Lula’s swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 1. What’s more, police say this was part of a series of planned attacks around the capital and that other suspects will soon be arrested. While Lula says he is committed to bringing the deeply polarized country together and declared in his victory speech on Oct. 30 that “there are not two Brazils," Bolsonaro supporters are determined to stop left- wing Lula from taking office, going so far as to attempt storming police headquarters in Brasilia in recent weeks. Bolsonaro, for his part, still refuses to concede the election, so we'll be watching to see how high the temperatures rise.
Ukraine’s Kherson victory is a turning point in the war
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.
What's the importance of Putin losing the city of Kherson?
Major, I would say. I mean he lost, first, the battle for Kyiv immediately after launching his invasion. Then he lost the battle for Kharkiv, the second largest Ukrainian city. And now he lost the absolutely key city of Kherson, where he had said even that it's an exit to Russia. He is totally absent from the issue in the Russian media, blaming it all on the military, but it's a turning point in the war. Very big. More to come.
Is the trouble that we now see between Kosovo and Serbia the beginning of something more?
Not necessarily. It is a continuation of difficulties that have been there. Implementing an agreement is a couple of years back on both the license plates and an association of Serbian municipalities of Kosovo. And it's also coincided with efforts by the EU and US to have a more lasting solution to the problem. I don't expect an immediate breakthrough. I don't expect any immediate break down. That's the way the Balkans normally is.
Georgia Senate candidates: U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R)
What We’re Watching: US midterm cliffhanger, Russia’s Kherson retreat, ASEAN summit kickoff
Control of Congress hangs in the balance
“It was a good day for democracy and I think a good day for America,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday night about the midterm election results. The US House and Senate both remain in play after Republicans failed to deliver on their promise of giving Democrats a shellacking. While the GOP is still favored to take control of the lower chamber, incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is likely to preside over a slim and dysfunctional GOP majority – hardly the wave he had anticipated. The GOP is still 11 seats short of clinching a majority in the House, and several competitive districts are still being counted. Control of the Senate, meanwhile, rests on three states – Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia – that remain too close to call. The race in the Peach State between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker will go to a run-off on Dec. 6 after neither reaped 50% of the vote. What’s more, measures to enshrine abortion rights were overwhelmingly backed by voters in states including Michigan, California, and Vermont. Even deep-red Kentucky refused to back an amendment denying the constitutional right to abortion, proving that curtailing abortion access is a losing issue for the GOP.
Russia suffers southern setback
In a major blow to Vladimir Putin’s “special operation” in Ukraine, Russia on Wednesday announced it was withdrawing its forces from Kherson city, capital of the strategic southern region of the same name. The retreat comes after weeks of a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive meant specifically to retake the only regional capital Russia had taken over since invading in February. Russia’s military leaders, looking cheerful as always, spun the withdrawal as a measure to “preserve combat readiness,” but there’s no doubt that this was a big loss. Still, in retreating across to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, Russia still controls much of Kherson province, which borders on the Crimean Peninsula. Things seem to be going Kyiv’s way at the moment, but will Ukraine push further? Meanwhile, in positive news on Armageddon-watch, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has reportedly been in direct contact for months with his Kremlin counterparts in a bid to avert nuclear escalation.
Bongbong at ASEAN
The annual ASEAN summit, which brings together 10 Southeast Asian nations, gets underway in Cambodia on Thursday. As ever, the US-China rivalry will hang over the entire event. US President Joe Biden is set to attend a US-ASEAN summit on Saturday, where he’ll press to deepen ties in infrastructure, investment, and trade. China, meanwhile, is sending Foreign Minister Li Keqiang for a separate China-ASEAN summit, where Beijing will push to accelerate a free trade deal while dangling more Belt and Road infrastructure investment. Expect the regional powers to tread carefully between the global superpower and the regional heavyweight — China is by far the largest trade and investment partner for ASEAN members, but many are wary of its territorial encroachments on the South China Sea. One thing to watch is the speech of recently elected Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who is set to address the delicate situation in Myanmar and call for a “code of conduct” in the South China Sea.
Russian attacks on Ukraine are state-sponsored terrorism
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take to kick off your week, and of course we are still talking about the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Almost eight months now of since the initial invasion of Russia into Ukraine. The war continues to get worse. There's more hits on Ukraine. 30% of the country's electricity has been disrupted. More hits on cities focused on civilian casualties over the last week. These are the attacks that we've seen across the country by mostly missile and drone attacks by the Russians. Not even trying to say that these are military targets anymore. It's really state-sponsored terror by the Russian government.
The big question going forward first is can Russia hold their own line? In other words, with their Ukrainian counterattacks before winter approaches and before it gets a lot harder to continue these, the movements on the ground, how much territory can Ukrainians take? Is the Russian mobilization going to be able to slow or stop them? Because this is the critical point. If the Ukrainians are able to break Russia's links to the Ukrainian south, and particularly to the peninsula of Crimea, that's when it gets particularly dangerous. If the Russians are no longer able to defend Crimea, I think that's the one point that you would see all out escalation by the Russian government, because this kind of a loss would be just an unacceptable hit to Putin's strategy. It would show that not only the invasion since February 24th had failed, but his entire strategy for the last 10 years had failed. And I think the opposition to that within his military forces, his close advisors would actually be quite severe at that point. So that'd be dangerous for him to allow that to happen.
Now, we've seen that the bridge, the Kerch Bridge from Russia to Crimea, which was hit and the Russian government said, "Oh, we've got it fully back up and running the next day." Turns out, of course, that's lie. And that in reality it's going to take until next year, mid next year earliest, assuming no further disruptions for the Russians to be able to get that bridge fully back up and functional. So there is some transit and traffic that's going forward on it, but it's certainly not fully operational.
Beyond that, you have Kherson, which is where the water goes to Crimea, and the Ukrainians are actively fighting in Kherson. The Russians have announced that they've got the program to get Russians to leave the country so they don't have to deal with the constant shelling, as they say, or what we more reasonably would call it, an evacuation. So there is certainly a possibility that the Ukrainians will be able to take Kherson. And cut that off. And then thirdly, Zaporizhzhia, which is the land bridge between Crimea and Russia that has been taken by the Russians. That includes Mariupol, for example, the big city that was basically leveled with the thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. Nobody's pretending that people on the ground actually want to join Russia, but it's absolutely true that if you want to hold Crimea in the face of Ukrainian counteroffensive, that being able to stalk and resupply the south is absolutely critical.
So if over the coming two, four weeks, the Ukrainians are able to puncture that land bridge and take most of Kherson, at that point, no matter how many troops the Russians are remobilizing with, they can't get them to the Ukrainian south, which potentially means that Crimea itself is vulnerable.
Now, there are a lot of people that don't want the Ukrainians to be able to retake Crimea, because it's really dangerous. I'm deeply sympathetic to that view. Crimea is different than the territories taken since February 24th. It's overwhelmingly Russian, ethnic Russian, Russian speaking. If you talk to them on the ground. They never wanted the Soviet Union to fall apart. They consider themselves a part of Russia. When they were a part of Ukraine, Crimea was an autonomous republic. It was governed locally. Their foreign policy was determined by Ukraine, but their local governments was completely determined by their own parliament that they elected with a majority of Russian parliament members. And it even had a Russian tricolor flag that flew above it. And not only if the Ukrainians tried to take Crimea, would it potentially be a very significant escalatory move against Russia, but also be very hard for them to take because the people on the ground in Crimea, the locals, really don't want to be a part of Ukraine, again, unlike all of the rest of Ukrainian territory. All four of the illegally annexed regions of Ukraine, where the majority, granted a lot of them have fled at this point, some of them are dead at this point, but the majority of the population on the ground in those territories would want very much to be a part of Ukraine.
Okay. So that's a close call, and that's what we want to watch over the course of the coming weeks. There's a lot of talk about Belarus potentially coming into the war. The Russians have announced joint forces with Belarus. There's been a lot of military movement of material over the weekend. I am skeptical there. I suspect what the Russians are trying to do is make a big deal out of it to try to get the Ukrainians to defend more territory, which will give the Russians a better shot of holding the line in the critical areas of the southeast that they're trying to get the remobilization forces to.
If the Belarusians were to formally enter the war, not only are there very few troops and they have horrible morale and they aren't trained well, but also there would be very significant instability, social dissent in Belarus. The Belarusian government would be less well equipped to repress and to keep back than the Russian government is on the ground in Russia. So I'm not expecting that to occur in the near term, but of course it's always possible.
Finally, what can the Russians do as this war continues? A lot of talk about the fact the Russians are running out of missiles, and that seems to be certainly the case in terms of accurate long range missiles. The Iranians are selling a lot of these missiles right now to the Russians, in addition to drones. That's certainly going to help the Russians continue to engage in the war over the course of the coming months.
You also have lots of bombers, and the Russians haven't engaged in bombing runs of Ukrainian cities. Again, would just be state sponsored terror, which would kill a lot of people. Wouldn't change the nature of the territory that the Russians are holding. The reason they haven't done it, I suspect is also because they don't want to lose a bunch of bombers, because the Ukrainians would be able to shoot some of them down. But again, that would be a much less escalatory move than say use of chemical weapons or use of a nuclear weapon. So the Russians would certainly consider that. Well, before they'd consider a nuke.
Then you have asymmetrical strikes. And let's remember Nord Stream 1 and 2 which was non-operational, going from Russia over to Germany, was blown up, was sabotaged a couple of weeks ago. Who blew it up? We don't know. But there are two options. The Russians blew it up, in which case they're willing to blow up pipelines. The first of their pipelines they know aren't going to work. It's a demonstration effect like we've seen from the Iranians historically, and that the next thing they would do would be blow up other critical infrastructure. Or the West did it. The United States, Poland, perhaps more likely. They have the capabilities in both cases, and if they're willing to blow up Russian pipelines, well why wouldn't the Russians then blow up Western pipelines, or fiber, or other critical infrastructure? So either way, the likelihood of Russian asymmetrical strikes against NATO critical infrastructure is getting much higher. And indeed, last week we saw that the Norwegians arrested a couple of Russians with surveillance drones, and they were taking lots of pictures of Norwegian critical energy infrastructure. Why? Because they're probably planning on blowing it up.
So it's not just about the idea that you're not going to see any more Russian energy going to Europe. It's also the likelihood that the war itself is going to expand to these sorts of strikes. That puts a lot more pressure on Europe going forward. Also means that the Russians are going to be completely decoupled from the European economy for the foreseeable future, as long as Putin's in power, no question there.
So that's it for me. Pretty tough situation on the ground right now. We'll keep watching it and I'll talk to you all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com
Nuclear weapons could be used; Russia's war gets more dangerous
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. I have to talk about Russia. There's plenty of news in the world. There's Brazil, there's United Kingdom, there's Iran, but no, Russia is the biggest story, and it's because we've just seen the worst week in the war in terms of escalation and danger that we've had since the initial invasion on February 24th. President Putin, after meeting with some of his closest remaining friends on the global stage, the Indian prime minister, the Chinese president, the Kazakh president, all telling him directly, "Hey, the war is a horrible idea. Please end this as soon as possible." Putin does exactly the opposite and escalates. Calls up a minimum of 300,000 additional troops in a mobilization, something he had been dragging his feet on and avoiding over the last months because he knew how unpopular it would be in Russia.
Putin also announcing annexation of four separate territories in Ukraine. By the way, territory he did not completely occupy at the time that he announced, the referenda the first time I think that's ever happened in history. But nonetheless, very clearly a significant escalation with the war in Ukraine, telling the Ukrainian people, "We are taking this land from you, you are not getting it back. We will consider it Russian territory and we will defend our territory to the death." Some 7 million people on the ground in these territories annexed some 15% of Ukrainian territory. Beyond that, we had pipelines that were suddenly sabotaged, Nord Stream 1 and 2. No hard evidence as to who is behind that, though all NATO members believe both publicly and privately that the Russian government engaged in that attack as a demonstration effect, kind of similar to what the Iranians did against Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. The largest refinery in that country saying, "We can do a lot more if you continue to behave to isolate us the way you have been."
And now of course, we also have the Ukrainians taking land back, significant counter offensives that had started a few weeks ago and are being extended in Kherson, in the south, just north of Crimea, as well as in Donetsk, part of the Donbas, which has been the focus of this second phase of Russia's special military operations. So what is all of this mean? Well, it means that Putin is increasingly really in a box. He's now announced to his own population, "We have taken this territory. We're fighting for it. It's ours. It's going to cause real sacrifice. It's going to mean that we're going to send your young men into the battlefield, and a lot of them are going to face injury and death."
The Russians don't have adequate weaponry to give them to fight this war. They don't have the time to adequately train them. Many are being sent to the front without either, and that means that they're going to continue to underperform. Though Russia can send a lot more people into the field in southeast Ukraine than the Ukrainians themselves can marshal in the near term. Meanwhile, more sanctions are coming from the West. The US, the UK have already announced some in response to the annexation. The EU will have a unanimous eighth round of sanctions later this month. No one is asking now, "Are the Europeans about to break?" Despite the fact that that's what everyone was asking a couple of weeks ago before these escalations. Whether it's the US, the UK, or the Europeans, at least for the coming months, what we're seeing is more aid for the Ukrainians, more weapons and intelligence for the Ukrainians, more willingness to do everything they can to help the Ukrainians fight and take as much land as possible before the Russians get enough troops in to defend territory and hold the line.
In other words, this is a full-fledged, not only proxy war, but increasingly has elements of a hot war between Russia and NATO. And perhaps the most disturbing piece of all of this is if you watch Putin's speech that he gave last week, or if you look at Russian state media, it is all about Russia losing land, losing in the battlefield because they're fighting NATO, because of everything NATO's doing. And so the willingness of the Russians to increasingly take the fight to NATO is growing. And of course, the more we see that, the more dangerous it gets, the greater the potential for this war to actually expand. I don't, as I mentioned, believe that we are close to a nuclear weapon actually being used in battle. But I recognize it's now possible, and I wouldn't have said that a couple of months ago. I'll tell you, after the Russian speech, after Putin speech announcing the annexations and the mobilization in the middle of the night, I woke up thinking about "The Day After", which I haven't thought about in decades.
This was a movie that some of you will remember. I saw it in high school and the next day we had a day off basically where all we did was talk to local leaders and civic leaders about what would happen if there was a nuclear war. I had nightmares for months. There's no way you can watch Putin rattling nuclear savers with his singular capability to have that finger on the button to say that he is prepared to do everything possible to defend land that he will lose and not be somewhat horrified that we could, again, for the first time since World War II see nuclear weapons used in battle. Everything possible has to be done to avoid that. And yet so far, the United States and Europe have done a fantastic job in punishing the Russians. They've done a fantastic job in supporting the Ukrainians, but they've done a really poor job at deterring Putin.
They haven't been able to change his behavior. They haven't stopped him from escalating on the ground in Ukraine. And of course, the more he does that, the greater the desperation. The economic desperation, the international desperation, the domestic political desperation, that is what we are increasingly seeing from Putin. At some point, Putin needs to not be humiliated, but he needs to recognize reality.
He needs to understand that the future of Russia is not in the occupation of Ukraine. And unless he's prepared to get that and he's making it harder and harder to get that on himself, then we are heading towards a much more dangerous confrontation even that we've seen since February. So that's where we are presently. I wish I had some better news for everyone. It's going to be a very tough winter, certainly for the Europeans, even more so for the Russians, and particularly for the Russians that are being sent to the front lines. I don't envy them at all, but I wish we could find a way to deescalate. Unfortunately, for now, that appears to be not in the cards.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Risks of Russia losing: Putin, Ukraine, and potential for escalation ... ›
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EU keeps borders open for Russians but tightens visa rules
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.
Will the EU close its border to Russian tourists?
No, it will be more difficult to get a visa if you are a Russian, but I think we have an interest in keeping our borders open. There's roughly, I think, 400,000 Russians who've left Russia since the invasion, and they've done it because they don't consider the Russia to be the country where they want to spend their future. There might be more of those coming, and we should keep the borders open for them.
How is the Ukrainian counter offensive in the Kherson region moving?
That, we simply don't know. A counter offensive of this sort, and there's no doubt that the Ukrainians have started one, they are trying to advance, they might be advancing. But I will say it's going to take a week or so until we know. There are all the signs that the Russians are trying to reinforce, and that's a good sign that they are getting nervous and they are on the defensive.