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Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges. He is seen here in court on July 19.
Russia sentences US reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years
A Russian court on Friday sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison on espionage charges that the US government and his newspaper maintain are fabricated. The US State Department says Gershkovich was “wrongfully detained.”
The 32-year-old journalist was arrested last year while on assignment in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg shortly after he published a story focused on Russia's economic downturn amid the war. His trial was conducted behind closed doors, and no evidence to support the Russian government’s allegations has been made public.
Fast trial leads to hope for a swap deal. The trial was conducted with considerable speed, lasting just three weeks from first hearing to sentencing. That has raised hopes that Gershkovich could soon figure into a high-profile prisoner swap deal between the Kremlin and the West. A swap deal requires a pardon from President Vladimir Putin, which can not happen until after a guilty verdict and sentencing.
Talks to that effect have reportedly been ongoing between Moscow and Washington. But the main prize Russia seems to be seeking is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian spy serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of a Kremlin opponent in Berlin in 2019.
So far, Germany has been reluctant to release him, but with Gershkovich’s sentencing complete, US pressure to reach a deal could now rise as the Biden administration seeks a high-profile diplomatic success as part of its reelection campaign.
Yoon Suk-yeol, the presidential election candidate of South Korea's main opposition People Power Party (PPP), speaks during a news conference at the party's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea January 24, 2022.
South Korea considers sending weapons to Ukraine
Well, if North Korea is going to cozy up to Russia like that, South Korea isn’t going to just sit there, is it?
No, it’s not. Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Pyongyang on Wednesday, where he and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un celebrated their “fiery friendship” and inked a new strategic alliance, Seoul said it could start sending weapons directly to Kyiv to help Ukraine repel Russia.
That would mark a dramatic change from South Korea’s current policy of supporting US and EU sanctions against Russia while arming Ukraine only indirectly – by selling high-tech weaponry to Poland, which in turn has sent its own, Soviet-era equipment to Ukraine.
Kyiv, for its part, is keen to secure more firepower as Russia grinds its way deeper into Eastern Ukraine. These weapons “could have a meaningful impact on battlefield dynamics and potentially cause Moscow to reconsider the cost at which its burgeoning partnership with Pyongyang has come,” says Jeremy Chan, an East Asia expert at Eurasia Group.
Putin did not take kindly to the announcement, warning South Korea that arming Ukraine would be "a big mistake" and that Moscow "will... [make] decisions which are unlikely to please the current leadership of South Korea" if Seoul proceeds.
Meanwhile, Korean peninsula tensions are growing, as Seoul deepens its military coordination with the US and Japan, while Pyongyang has been testing more missiles and, of course, sending those gifts of garbage and excrement across the 38th parallel.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un arrive for a gala concert in Pyongyang, North Korea June 19, 2024.
Putin and Kim sign mutual defense deal
Russian President Vladimir Putinarrived in Pyongyang early Wednesday for his first official visit to North Korea in 24 years. He met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and signed a deal to provide “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this agreement.”
Putin called it a “breakthrough” document, but “aggression” is a vague term that leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
The real news. Russia, which has been isolated by the international community over its invasion of Ukraine, desperately needs more munitions to continue the war — that’s what this visit is really about. Moscow is deepening ties with Pyongyang to ensure it keeps the ammunition train rolling.
North Korea has sent roughly 10,000 shipping containers to Russia that could contain as many as 4.8 million artillery shells, according to recent comments from South Korea’s defense minister. Russia and North Korea have denied such arms transfers are taking place.
During Putin’s visit, North Korea notably declared “full support” for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
What does North Korea get? The expanding partnership between the two countries could see Russia provide North Korea with everything from food to military technology.
Like Russia over its war in Ukraine, the rogue state faces crippling sanctions over its nuclear program. Putin is also calling for increased cooperation between the two in fighting these sanctions, decrying such economic penalties as an effort by the West to maintain its hegemony.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia May 3, 2024.
Russia announces battlefield nuke drill
It’s also a flex from Vladimir Putin ahead of his fifth inauguration as president taking place today and Thursday’s annual Victory Day celebration, which marks the defeat of Nazi Germany. This is the first time Russia has publicly announced drills that include so-called tactical nuclear weapons, which are far less powerful than warheads that can be fitted to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Western governments will take this public threat seriously, but Russia’s use of these weapons remains highly unlikely. Putin knows that tactical nukes might well unite, rather than divide, Ukraine’s Western allies and sharply increase the risk that NATO fully enters a war that Russia can still win if it can isolate Ukraine further from its backers.
"Patriots" on Broadway: The story of Putin's rise to power
“Putin was my mistake. Getting rid of him is my responsibility.”
It’s clear by the time the character Boris Berezovsky utters that chilling line in the new Broadway play “Patriots” that any attempt to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise would be futile, perhaps even fatal.
The show, which opened for a limited run in New York on April 22, stars Tony and Emmy-nominated actor Michael Stuhlbarg as Berezovsky, a larger-than-life oligarch whose billions buy him into the highest ranks of Russian power after the fall of the Soviet Union. When asked by President Boris Yeltsin to find a successor to lead the fledgling nation, Berezovsky taps Putin, a former KGB agent and ex-mayor of St. Petersburg who few knew well.
The play’s director, Rupert Goold, said while the play is set in a specific moment in modern Russian history, the script has needed changes along the way as major developments colored Putin’s story.
“It does feel like the filter on it changes every day because something else happens every day,” actor Will Keen, who originated the role of Putin in London two years ago, told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis. “It feels like the play has, overall, become darker and darker. It seems to become more and more perturbing.”
“Patriots'' was written by Peter Morgan, creator of Netflix’s “The Crown” and the play puts a similarly-styled lens on Russian history. It’s Shakespearean, more melodrama than history lesson, but the characters are very real. The Broadway audience will also likely receive the show differently than the West End crowd in London, in part because of America’s long and contentious relationship with Russia, and the current polarization in US politics and discourse.
“Patriots” is playing a 12-week run at Broadway’s Barrymore theater.
Catch this full episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on public television beginning this Friday, April 26. Check local listings.
Re-elected head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov attends an inauguration ceremony in Grozny, Russia October 5, 2021.
Pancreas vs. Putin: the Kremlin’s terminal Chechnya problem
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed dictator of Chechnya, is reportedly dying inside – literally.
The Russian indy publication “Novaya Gazeta Europe” says the 47-year-old strongman is suffering from a terminal pancreatic condition, and that the Kremlin is scrambling to work out succession plans.
The background, briefly: After crushing a Chechen separatist uprising in the 1990s, the Kremlin installed Kadyrov’s father Akhmat – a moderate Imam and former separatist commander himself – as boss. He was assassinated in 2004, and Ramzan took over.
Backed by a quasi-private army of Islamist paramilitaries, and lots of Kremlin money, the eccentric, pugilistic, large-living Kadyrov has ruled with an iron fist, delivering stability at the cost of ferocious repression.
Putin’s problem: keeping things cool in the North Caucasus – a restive region of widespread poverty and kaleidoscopic ethnic, sectarian, and political rivalries – is essential for the Kremlin. A power vacuum there could quickly spiral.
Novaya Gazeta says the Kremlin is grooming Kadyrov’s top military commander, Apti Alaudinov, to succeed him. But any transition would be an opportunity ripe for destabilizing power grabs.
In all, Kadyrov’s untimely demise poses an age-old problem for Putin: When you make a Faustian bargain, what do you do when the devil dies?
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian servicemen of the 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade fire a 120-mm mortar towards Russian troops at a frontline, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the town of Bakhmut, Ukraine March 15, 2024.
Ukraine’s struggles multiply on the battlefield
Ukraine’s situation on the eastern front line has “significantly worsened,” wrote the country's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, on Saturday. Kyiv fears that Moscow might be planning an assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the north-east, as well as a major attack in late spring or summer in the regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.
Simultaneously, the conflict is precipitatinga severe energy crisis, not just in Ukraine but across Europe. Andriy Kobolyev, former CEO of Ukraine’s Naftogaz, warned of spikes in European energy prices as Russian forces target Ukraine's energy infrastructure. “Russia is trying to wage a global energy war," Kobolyev stated, stressing the urgent need for weapons to defend energy assets. But this week, European nations rejected requests for more Patriot and SAMP/T air defense systems.
And the attacks keep coming, thanks to help from Beijing. China is reportedlysupplying Russia with crucial components for its defense equipment, enabling Moscow to ramp up production of missiles and drones. The US has asked Chinese firms to desist, but Beijing maintains it is not taking a side in the conflict, despite thecozy relationship between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin..
Soldiers of the seven newest NATO members parade during a ceremony marking the expansion of NATO's membership from 19 countries to 26 at the alliance headquarters in Brussels April 2, 2004. NATO foreign ministers participated in an event marking the formal accession of the seven newest members, Bulgaria, Estonia Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slonevia.
NATO turns 75. Will it make it to 80?
Seventy-five years ago today, 12 leaders from the US, Canada, and Western Europe signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the world’s most powerful military alliance: NATO
Where it’s been: As World War II drew to a close in 1945, Europe faced the overwhelming challenge of reconstruction. Over 11 million displaced people were wandering the bombed-out cities and scorched countryside, including hundreds of thousands of war orphans. And on the east bank of the Elbe River stood the massive, battle-hardened Soviet Red Army, a worrying prospect as the USSR came increasingly into conflict with its erstwhile allies.
Just 18 months later, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Dunkirk, pledging mutual defense as world powers rapidly coalesced into ideological blocs. Following a Soviet-backed communist coup in Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands joined to create the Western Union in March 1948, but within months, the Soviet blockade of West Berlin would make clear only US involvement could deter Moscow.
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty just over a year hence, binding one another to mutual defense.
Five months later, the USSR tested its first nuclear bomb.
Identity crisis: Through the Cold War, NATO had a clear mission to deter the Soviet Bloc. But as the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991, what would become of the alliance?
Instead of guarding against Eastern Europe, NATO began absorbing former Soviet bloc countries and protecting the liberal democratic order more generally. In March 1999, the alliance welcomed Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary — and initiated a bombing campaign that ended the Serbian invasion of Kosovo.
Then, in 2001, the alliance’s mutual defense clause was invoked for the first time in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US, leading to the multilateral International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. By 2004, another seven former Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries had joined.
But Moscow’s sudden invasion of Georgia in 2008, just months after the small Caucasian nation voted overwhelmingly to start NATO accession talks, raised the specter of a renewed Cold War. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 restored focus on the old enemy.
Future peril. Today, NATO has expanded to 32 countries with over 3.3 million active troops, 1 million armored vehicles, 20,000 aircraft, and 2,100 warships, all backed by the US, French, and British nuclear arsenals — without question the most powerful military force ever assembled.
Yet despite its strength, the alliance is beset by anxiety over its future. Should Donald Trump win reelection in November, planners from Ottawa to Ankara worry he will hollow out the alliance’s core and expose members to Russian predation while abandoning Ukraine to the cruel fate of partition, or worse.
The upside? Europeans are starting to get more serious about protecting themselves. The invasion of Ukraine spurred a 13% increase in defense spending in Europe 2022, and Sweden and Finland, both of which punch above their weight militarily, to join NATO. Most pressingly, NATO is working on a $100 billion fund to keep Ukraine in the fight — money Trump 2.0 couldn’t touch.