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Putin "wins" Russia election, but at what cost?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
A Quick Take to kick off your week. Want to talk about things Russian. We, of course, just had an “election” that Putin “won.”
There is no opposition to speak of in Russia. If you're running against him and allowed to run, that means that you are considered acceptable to the regime and you're basically there to play against the Harlem Globetrotters. What was it, the senators, the generals? I can't remember what it was called, but that was the group that was there to make the winning team look good. Of course, you know, Putin is not as much fun to watch as the Globetrotters, but he certainly is politically talented and of course, it's important for him to show that he has an historic win with historic turnout better than anyone before in Russia, not quite Turkmen in Turkmenbashi in Central Asia, not quite Aliyev levels in Azerbaijan, but strong enough for Russia.
It's not just about his ego. It is important as a messaging function to the Russian people that he is seen as a legitimate leader. And, you know, there are others around the world that are prepared to play that game. Already so warm congratulations from Narendra Modi in India, who's strong enough domestically and geopolitically that he can say pretty much what he wants to and get away with it. Still a little sad that he felt it was worth doing that. Even sadder to see that from Pope Francis, who has been putting his thumb on the scale in favor of Russia vis a vis Ukraine in the war in the past weeks, the Vatican tried to walk that back, but he was one of the first, apparently, according to Russian state media, to congratulate Putin. Normally, you wouldn't believe Russian state media, but in this case, Pope Francis could very easily say that isn't true. So one assumes that it is.
But nothing good here in terms of the war vis a vis Ukraine. Putin feels domestically quite stable. That's true politically. It's also true economically. The Russian economy is not performing well. The growth we're seeing in the Russian economy is because of the war economy, which is a massive piece of what the economy represents today. But they're losing lots of human capital. If you look at places like Armenia, Georgia, you see that those economies are booming right now because all of the talented young Russians are leaving and they're going there to work. Great for those tiny countries, not so good for the Russian Federation, but none of this is a threat to Putin, is a threat to the Kremlin, nor is the war in Ukraine two plus years on, in part because of the consequences if you dare oppose it publicly, in part because Putin, while throwing hundreds of thousands of troops into the front, many, many of whom hundreds of thousands, are casualties now, an estimated minimum 300,000 Russian casualties in this war, but most of them are not coming from the major cities. A lot of them aren't even Russian ethnically.
They're coming from the middle Volga and Siberia and they're poor and disenfranchised. And, you know, it's an easier way for Putin to keep this going. Also, large numbers of prisoners that were furloughed and given some money to be sent to the front lines, treated very badly by the Russian army and also many that have come from other countries, including Kazakhstan, for example, Cuba, Nepal, other countries that have sent some of their citizens that to make some money too quick money, and some of whom have been engaged in human trafficking. So that's what's going on inside Russia.
In Ukraine, the war continues not to go well. The Ukrainians are losing some territory. They only have one real line of defense behind the front lines. The Russians have had three. They're much better dug in. And also the Ukrainians are having a serious manpower challenge, a serious ammunition challenge, and don't have the military equipment at the high level that they really need to continue to fight. That is starting to change for the near term. There's been more ammunition sent by the Europeans in the past couple of weeks. And there's also, I think, increasingly very likely that the Americans will give an additional package. I'm now hearing $60 billion for 2014 that should allow the Ukrainians to mostly maintain the land that they presently occupy. That's where we are for 2024.
Or what about after that? It's only getting more challenging not only because of the US election, but also because the Ukrainians are a much smaller country and it's harder for them to raise the personnel. It's also a democracy, even though they've pushed off their elections and it's much harder for Zelensky to get away with doing the kinds of things that Putin is doing on the ground to his own country.
All of which means ultimately, it is hard to imagine the Ukrainians winning. It's also hard to talk about the Ukrainians winning. I understand that that's something that we want to do from a morale perspective. But, you know, when we talk about people that have gone through rape, we don't talk about winners. Even if the rapist was captured and imprisoned. We talk about survivors, talk about people that go through cancer and guess you can beat cancer, but you're really a cancer survivor. And what's happened to the Ukrainians with the war crimes and the torture that they have been through, is survival. And even if they were to get all their land back, you couldn't say they won the war in reality. Say if they survived the war and Russia is still there and they have to maintain their defenses and they have to continue to have the capacity to do so. And this is not a matter of one or two or three years. It's a matter of a generation, certainly as long as the Russian regime continues to exist in its present form, I do think that it's possible for Ukraine as an entity to truly survive this war.
NATO allies continue to say that they have a role in NATO, that they are being welcomed, but they haven't given them a timeline. They really should, and they need to provide hard security guarantees until that timeline of the remaining territory that Ukraine presently occupies. The French President Macron has been talking about that, if the Russians are able to make more gains, the Americans, the Germans have not, the Poles, the balls certainly have.
There needs to be more alignment on that in the run up to the NATO summit meeting in July, I believe it is in Washington, DC. There's also needs to be capacity for the Ukrainians to continue to pay for their own economic rebuilding. And that is a significant effort that right now the Europeans are providing more than the United States is all in economically.
And that includes the cost of military support, something we don't hear as much about as we should in the United States. But that doesn't mean that's going to continue. And the pressure and stress over time is only going to grow. But I do think that there is still such a window and it is good to see that a strong majority of Republicans and Democrats in the United States are continuing to focus on this issue, even as the Middle East gets more time and more attention. And that, I think, is ultimately I mean, Trump has said very clearly he doesn't want any money or support for the border because he wants that to continue to be a disaster for Biden, something that people to vote for him for in the run up to November. But when we talk about the Ukraine war, Putin has not tried so hard to say no more money under Biden. He's instead said, if I win, not another penny. So the pressure is there. We'll see where it goes. Clearly, we are talking about a de facto partition of Ukraine, but the ability to help the Ukrainians survive this and the impact that will have on NATO more broadly and on American allies around the world, like Japan, South Korea, you name it, Taiwan.
These are all long term very, very important precedents that are going to be set on the back of whether the Americans can indeed continue to stand up for themselves and for their allies and helping the Ukrainians defend themselves.
That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ukraine warns of escalation after Putin’s talk of a ‘sanitary zone’
Fresh off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “victory” of a fifth term, the Kremlin on Monday said it would move to establish a buffer zone in Ukrainian territory for the sake of Russia’s security. Putin suggested creating a “'sanitary zone' in the territories today under the Kyiv regime.”
What’s this all about? While the bulk of the fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war has occurred within Ukrainian territory, Kyiv has regularly launched strikes against targets in Russia proper as well. The border city of Belgorod has been a frequent target. The Kremlin said a buffer zone would aim to ensure “any means that the enemy uses to strike us are out of range."
Moscow already illegally annexed four Ukrainian territories — Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia — in 2022 (despite not fully controlling these regions). But Russia in recent months has ramped up strikes on Kharkiv, a region along the Ukraine-Russia border. Talk of a buffer zone could signal that Russia will increasingly prioritize seizing territory in Kharkiv.
Ukraine raises the alarm. Kyiv says this signals that Russia is planning to escalate the conflict, which has largely been stalemated over the past year, though Russia last month seized Avdiivka — giving it new momentum in 2024.
Despite Putin’s current swagger, Russia remains vulnerable
After last year’s failed Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has signaled confidence that, thanks to lagging support from the West and Ukraine’s shortage of troops and weapons, Russia can win a war of attrition. But a series of stories today remind us the Kremlin still has plenty of security concerns.
Tuesday’s raids by Ukraine-aligned paramilitaries into Russian border provinces won’t change the war, but they raise the threat level for this weekend’s Russian elections.
Tuesday’s drone attacks on energy sites in multiple regions of central Russia, including one that reportedly inflicted major damage on one of the country’s biggest oil refineries, demonstrate again Ukraine’s ability to hit long-range targets. Ukraine has already disabled about one-third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
NATO's newest members are also creating new security headaches for Moscow. Sweden’s prime minister is reportedly weighing a plan to refortify the Swedish island of Gotland, a strategically crucial piece of real estate in the Baltic Sea.
And for the first time, Sweden and Finland have joined in Operation Steadfast Defender, exercises involving 90,000 troops from all 32 NATO countries. This year’s event is the largest NATO military exercise since the end of the Cold War.
The EU, meanwhile, is expected to approve €5 billion in funding for new military supplies for Ukraine on Wednesday.Pressure builds on Ukraine
The most hotly debated question about a possible second Donald Trump foreign policy: Would he simply abandon Ukraine and its fight to repel Russian invaders? We might now have an answer.
Hungary’s PM Viktor Orbán, a political ally of both Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, announced after meeting with Trump in Florida yesterday that the former president “will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war.” He told Hungary’s M1 TV channel that “if the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone are unable to finance this war. And then the war is over.”
Trump himself has yet to comment on this claim that he would end the conflict by forcing a Ukrainian surrender.
Putin has also added more pressure on Ukraine. On Monday, he called it “quite understandable” that Pope Francis has reportedly urged Ukraine’s leaders to find “the courage of the white flag” to negotiate with the Kremlin.
Does Ukraine have any cause for near-term optimism? Despite delays, a few trained Ukrainian pilots will likely have six US-made F16 aircraft ready to go by this summer. Their successful use against Russian forces could accelerate the pace of training and delivery. (A total of 45 F16s have been promised.)
These aircraft won’t win the war for Ukraine, but significant numbers of them will boost Ukraine’s offensive and defensive capabilities. The timing of their delivery is critical. You can read details on their possible battlefield importance here.
Frozen legacy: The battle for posthumous parenthood in Ukraine
Yehor Terekhov and his wife Anna had always planned to have children. But when Yehor was injured on the front lines of the war in Ukraine, they decided to freeze that possibility — literally. The couple, who live in Kyiv, decided to preserve Yehor’s sperm in case he didn’t return from his next tour of duty. “At war, anything can happen,” he says. “It is always good to have a Plan B.”
For Yehor, 44, the decision wasn’t just personal; it was also political. He saw it as a way “to preserve the genes of the Ukrainians, especially the ones who are ready to sacrifice their lives.”
Yehor and Anna are among the thousands of couples in Ukraine who have frozen reproductive material since the war broke out in 2022. Most fertility clinics have offered the service for free or at reduced prices to military members.
Until recently, the law had nothing specific to say about using those specimens even after their donors were killed. So fertility clinics – which are common in a country that was once a world leader in surrogacy and IVF – simply required notarized contracts permitting spouses to use the sperm if the men died in combat.
Then, in November 2023, the Ukrainian Parliament passed legislation requiring clinics to destroy the sperm of soldiers killed in combat. Some lawmakers opposed posthumous reproduction on religious grounds, and others worried about the costs of cryopreservation.
But many couples were not informed of the change.
That was when Olena Babich, a Kyiv-based lawyer who has worked in Ukrainian maternity law for 20 years, took to Facebook to write about a widow who had recently learned she could no longer use her husband's sperm.
“How,” she asked, “do you explain to a grief-stricken woman who, just a couple of months ago, was drawing up documents with her husband to have a child, that while her husband was defending the state and died, our lawmakers literally deprived him of the right to be a father after his death?"
The post caused a huge public outcry. It was shared over 10,000 times and generated 1,500 comments, many of which accused the government of destroying future generations of Ukrainians, spurring Ukrainian MPs to take to the comment section to defend themselves. Many government officials wrote they did not understand what they were voting for and promised to rectify the legislation.
Ukraine’s parliament voted to revise the bill in February. Under the new law, which takes effect in April, the government will now pay for the collection and preservation of servicemen’s sperm for up to three years. It will allow for post-mortem use as long as it is explicitly permitted in the deceased soldier’s will.
“It was one of the rare cases when one Facebook post changed the legislation of the country,” says Babich.
Still, Babich is not satisfied with the revised legislation. While the government is paying for cryopreservation, there is no program to assist widows with the costs of artificial insemination, she says. In Ukraine, the cost of that service can range up to $1,000, no small amount in a country where the average monthly wage is $388.
Ukraine isn’t the only country grappling with whether fallen soldiers can father children. Ukraine is now one of just 12 countries that have legalized posthumous reproduction. Supporters of the procedure say it’s a way to preserve soldiers’ bloodlines. But there are many thorny ethical and legal questions surrounding using the sperm of the deceased.
In Israel, where the procedure has been legal since 2003, the government expanded the service after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. It is now legal to retrieve sperm from soldiers shortly after they are killed in battle. However, in Israel, it is largely the parents of the deceased, not the widows, who are fighting for the right to have grandchildren.
Some critics of posthumous reproduction have called it “planned orphanhood” and say it’s unethical to produce a child who may grow up without one or both of their parents. Others continue to object on religious grounds — IVF of any kind can involve the disposal of embryos, which they consider to be living beings.
But for couples like Yehor and Anna, it’s about leaving behind living monuments to bravery.
“To the people who are fighting,” says Yehor, who has deployed again to the front lines in Donetsk, “it is important to know that they are preserving their bloodlines.”
Why Sweden and Finland joined NATO
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Hanoi, Vietnam.
Was the Swedish and Finnish decision to move into NATO, was that driven by fear of Russia attacking them?
Not really. I don't think either of our countries feel any immediate threat by Russian aggression. But what happened when Russia, Mr. Putin, to be precisely, attacked Ukraine was a fundamental upsetting of the entire European security order. And although Mr. Putin's priority at the moment, he’s very clear on that, is to get rid of Ukraine by invading and occupying all of it, you never know where he's going to stop. And this led Finland and Sweden to do the fundamental reassessment of their security policies. Giving up, in Swedish case, we've been outside of military alliances for the last 200 years or something like that.
So it was not a minor step. And that step has now been taken. Finland completed its ratification, has been a member for a couple of months. Sweden has now formally become a member after some hiccups with the ratification process. It's a major change for our two countries need to say. It is a significant strengthening of NATO. It is a significant strengthening of the security in northern Europe and I think also will facilitate a better coordination between the military alliance of NATO and the security alliance of the EU to the obvious advantage of security of Europe and the security of the West.
It's a good day.
Russian military makes swift advance
Fresh off their conquest of the town of Avdiivka in Eastern Ukraine, Russian forces are continuing to make advances against Kyiv’s increasingly taxed troops.
Since the end of February, Russian troops have reportedly pushed an additional two miles beyond Avdiivka. That may not sound like much, but as Al Jazeera gamely pointed out, two miles in a week is a proper hare’s pace for a Russian military that spent four months (and as many as 16,000 casualties) just to advance 5 miles to Avdiivka itself.
The fresh push suggests Vladimir Putin is seizing the moment strategically and politically. With US aid to Kyiv deadlocked in Congress, Ukraine is struggling to find fresh recruits and apportion dwindling munitions. Meanwhile, with his “election” approaching in two weeks, Putin will happily peacock a few extra bits of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
All of which throws the spotlight back on the US. Without further aid, Kyiv’s military position is expected to deteriorate rapidly in the coming months. In that event, the prospect of some kind of partition of Ukraine – a top risk flagged by our friends at Eurasia Group this year – would start to look inevitable.
Frozen Russian assets could fund new Ukraine rescue plan
Frustrated by the failure to get a $60 billion emergency aid package to Ukraine through Congress, Joe Biden is working on Plan B.
The president has said that he wants G7 countries to come up with a means of tapping the $282 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets by the time leaders meet in Italy in June.
Even though the meeting in Apulia is more than three months away, it might take at least that long to reach a consensus on how to pluck the goose to obtain the most feathers with the least amount of hissing.
Last week, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said it is important to find a way to unlock the value of those assets and divert the proceeds to help Ukraine’s war effort. She said there is a “strong international law, economic and moral case” for doing so.
Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, DC, said this represents an “evolution” in Yellen’s thinking from a previous Treasury Department position that worried about the chilling effect on countries like China that might pull back their assets, in case they were confiscated in the future.
The Congressional gridlock that has held up the emergency aid package to Ukraine has clearly played its part. But Yellen said the monetization of frozen Russian assets is not a substitute for direct aid. “This is something that could help longer term,” she said of the frozen assets.
There is general agreement about the economics and morality of such a plan to monetize Russian assets, but there is considerable disquiet about the legality of seizing them outright.
Since Western countries claim they support Ukraine in defense of the international rule of law, they would be open to charges of hypocrisy if their actions were questionable from a legal standpoint.
Yellen said she did not have a preferred strategy but Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland was asked about the Treasury secretary’s comments the next day.
She said she spoke to Yellen the previous weekend, and that “She and I agree 100%.”
Canada was the first G7 country to pass legislation to forfeit Russian assets and sell the proceeds to help reconstruct Ukraine. The first cases involved individuals, but Freeland said she has been “centrally involved in the work being done to take the next steps and confiscate (central bank) assets.”
She said she has been working from the principles that aggressors should pay and that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be shown that Western support for Ukraine is not flagging.
The problem is that most of Russia’s central bank assets are being held in Belgium, and some European Union countries, including Germany and France, remain unconvinced that simply grabbing the assets and selling them off is a good idea. The EU wants Europe to be seen as a safe place for people to invest their assets, without fear of confiscation.
Clifford Sosnow, chair of international trade and investment at Canadian law firm Fasken, has been a critic of the original legislation introduced by Ottawa on the grounds of due process and compliance with international law when it comes to confiscation without compensation.
“Generally, international law takes a dim view of this. So, while the impulse is understandable, and I have no sympathy for the invasion of a sovereign country, itself a violation of international law, I question whether the house that Canada has built to prosecute and take assets is built on solid legal foundation,” he said.
France, Germany, and the European Central Bank have expressed concerns about legality, as well as fears about the prospect of Russian retaliation on European assets and the impact on the euro’s status as a reserve currency.
The Europeans are pushing a less ambitious project, using what European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen called “the windfall profits” from Russian assets that could be used to purchase military equipment for Ukraine. More than $200 billion is held in Belgium by Euroclear, a financial service company that holds for safekeeping. Euroclear earned $4.78 billion in 2023 from those assets.
There have been suggestions that the EU issue bonds based on the income from the Russian assets.
But Ziemba said the view in Washington is that this would not yield enough funds. She said Canada, the US, and the UK are coalescing around the idea that the assets be used as collateral and used to issue loans to Ukraine.
Under this plan, Ukraine’s claim for reparations from Russia would be syndicated to its allies in return for a loan. If Moscow refuses to pay damages, the allies could then use Russia’s frozen assets to pay off the loan.
While loan guarantees might also have to work their way through Congress, this proposal might have broad support: Donald Trump has spoken favorably about loans, rather than direct aid, as a means of supporting Ukraine.
However, questions remain about the legitimacy of grabbing someone else’s assets, even if you don’t auction them off.
Lenders would still have a contractual claim on the Kremlin’s reserves.
The World Bank has estimated the cost of rebuilding Ukraine at $486 billion, but the legality of Kyiv setting its own reparations invoice is dubious.
Given the hurdles, Biden will be lucky if he gets unanimity by mid-June.