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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.
What to watch in this weekend’s Russian presidential “election”
Breaking: GZERO Media’s “decision desk” is now ready to project that Vladimir V. Putin will be reelected president of Russia this weekend. We’re walking out on this limb because the Kremlin controls most media in Russia, any opposition candidate who might embarrass Putin is barred from running, and protests are not tolerated.
But there are a few factors worth watching. Will the government get the turnout it wants? Probably. As Eurasia Group’s Alex Brideau told us yesterday, “Government employees, soldiers, and people working for state-owned companies will be under pressure to vote and ensure others vote for Putin, too.” Even if turnout is low, Russian state media will likely tell us it was high.
We should also watch to see if protesters, including supporters of recently deceased political prisoner Alexei Navalny, ignore the risk of arrest, violence, or both to hit the streets of Russia’s largest cities.
The wildcard to watch is whether Ukraine has plans to disrupt the voting in whatever way possible. Recent drone attacks on Russian infrastructure have demonstrated the Ukrainian military’s long reach.
Yes, this carefully choreographed election will probably go off pretty much exactly as planned. But some inside Russia and beyond would like to use this occasion to make their own statements on Russia’s government and its Potemkin democracy.
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.It’s election interference season — always
Roughly eight months out from the US presidential election, experts are warning that Russian disinformation campaigns against President Joe Biden are already underway. A new NBC investigation alleges the country has begun an effort to undermine Biden’s campaign and erode US support for Ukraine through online attacks by fake accounts and bots.
This marks the third US election in a row that Vladimir Putin is attempting to meddle with.
National security advisor Jake Sullivan earlier this week said that the US is “of course” concerned about potential Russian interference this election cycle. But here’s the big question looming over this issue: How much damage can the Kremlin actually do when the toxic, divisive political landscape in the US is already doing much of the heavy-lifting?
America, you’re not alone: In today’s world, no country is immune to the threat of online disinformation and cyberattacks. Moscow has also targeted Canada.
Last June, Canada’s signals intelligence and communications security agency warned that Russian-aligned actors sought to hack Canadian energy infrastructure. They cited Canada’s support for Ukraine as one reason for the potential attacks. In January, Global Affairs Canada was hacked in an attack similar to a 2022 security breach. Both times, Russia was singled-out as a potential culprit.
An independent review last year found that foreign states tried to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian elections. The report named Russia, China, and Iran as prime culprits. In the fall, Canada launched a foreign interference commission to assess the extent to which the country’s elections have been targeted, by whom, and to what effect. Its interim report is due a year from now.
Yes, Vladimir Putin is winning.
It’s been two years since Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which makes it as good a time as any to ask a simple question: Is he winning?
Here’s the best argument we can think of for why the answer is “da.”
Just to be clear, it’s true that if Vladimir Vladimirovich thought it would take barely a week to topple the Ukrainian government, conquer Kyiv, and ram the country back into the Kremlin’s own courtyard of influence — he was wrong. In fairness, he’s certainly not the first Russian leader to misjudge the likelihood of a “short victorious war.”
Still, the lines in the steppe are what they are. Even after Ukraine’s successful pushback against the initial invasion, Russia controls more than twice as much Ukrainian land as it did at the start of the war, when Moscow already held Crimea and a decent swath of the Donbas. Russian boots are currently on the ground in about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory. In EU terms, that would be like an occupation of France and most of Spain.
Ukraine’s vaunted counteroffensive of 2023, of course, fell short and the situation today is a grinding battle of attrition in which the Kremlin, grimly and simply, has more bodies to throw at the front. Just last week, Russian forces made their first breakthrough in months, taking the strategic Donbas city of Avdiivka.
It’s true that even small advances have taken a huge toll on the lumbering and inefficient Russian military. But even an estimated total of 45,000 Russian dead – and as many as eight times as many wounded, totals that dwarf any Russian losses since World War II – hasn’t rattled popular support in a country where the Kremlin controls the media, most of the casualties are from remote regions, and penalties for protests are severe.
What about the economy? Russia has weathered severe Western financial and technology sanctions – in part because it’s been able to continue selling oil and gas to the world, and in part because Putin has dragged his country onto a war footing, tripling pre-war defense expenditures. All of that helped GDP to expand by 3% last year, and the IMF predicts 2.6% this year – not bad for a country under quite literally thousands of sanctions.
When it comes to weapons, two years of war have certainly depleted Russia’s arms caches, but pariahs like Iran, North Korea, Belarus, and Syria have happily sent Putin the shells, drones, and missiles he needs to keep firing at the front lines. Just this week, it emerged that Tehran has been sending hundreds of ballistic missiles to Moscow.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is in a tough spot. Kyiv is increasingly struggling to find the men and the ammo to defend its current positions, let alone push back Russian forces.
Part of the reason Kyiv can’t get the weapons it needs, of course, is that Ukraine’s once-united Western backers are now suffering from “Ukraine fatigue.”
The EU just barely pushed through a fresh financial support package that will help Kyiv to keep the lights on. And Putin can only delight in the ongoing failure of the US Congress to approve further military aid for Ukraine.
To date, the $42 billion in US military aid dwarfs that of all other countries combined. So while those pesky Czechs may now be scrounging together a few months’ worth of artillery shells for Ukraine, Putin believes that without Uncle Sam’s help, Kyiv would fold within “a week.”
Add to all of that the very real possibility of the world’s most prominent Putinophile, Donald Trump, returning to the US presidency this fall, and it’s not hard to see why Putin really is, despite everything, kind of sort of… winning.
He just needs to do one thing: wait.
The way things are headed now, it’s not unreasonable for him to assume that, before long, Ukraine will suffer a deficit not only of men, money, and materiel, but also morale. That will open the way to further gains that can force Kyiv and its Western backers to accept Putin’s terms.
That all, at least, is the argument for why Russia – despite all – is “winning.” Stay tuned for tomorrow’s counterpoint, which will ask: What exactly is Vladimir Putin really “winning”?
- Russia is winning? Winning what? - GZERO Media ›
- What Ukraine needs after two years of war with Russia - GZERO Media ›
- What's the plan for Ukraine after two years of war? Ian Bremmer explains - GZERO Media ›
- Putin wins another classic Soviet election - GZERO Media ›
- Putin "wins" Russia election, but at what cost? - GZERO Media ›
Is Putin on a roll?
Five days ago, Russia’s most prominent dissident, Alexei Navalny, dropped dead in a remote Arctic prison. Three days ago, Russian forces in Ukraine scored their first major victory in months, taking the strategic town of Avdiivka. Two days ago, the body of a Russian helicopter pilot who famously defected to Ukraine last year was found shot dead in Spain. One day ago, authorities in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg arrested a US-Russian dual citizen on charges of treason for raising money for Ukraine and attending demonstrations in Los Angeles.
It’s impossible to know if the timing of all of these things was intentional, but taken together the effect is the same: Vladimir Putin’s message to the West is, “I’ll do what I like, and you’ll do nothing about it.”
Is he right? Maybe. Russia’s already under harsh sanctions, and there’s little appetite for tougher ones that would hit, say, Moscow’s globally important energy exports. Certainly not over the arrest or killing of individual opponents.
More interesting will be whether it all affects the Capitol Hill debate over supplying more aid to Ukraine. With no sign of that yet, what will Putin do next?
Santa's newest neighbor: Navalny's Arctic transfer aims to ice out opposition
The transfer to the Stalin-era labor camp is seen as an additional attempt by the Kremlin to limit any possible impact that Navalny might have on the upcoming Russian presidential elections in March 2024.
As a reminder, Navalny is already serving a decades-long prison sentence on extremism charges that he and his supporters say are trumped up.
But that hasn’t stopped Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation from coming up with clever ways to try to undermine Putin’s dominance. The foundation subverted Kremlin censorship by paying for billboards in major Russian cities that ostensibly wished people a “Happy New Year,” but contained a QR code that led to a “Russia without Putin” website, urging voters to oppose the president on election day.
Although the charismatic and social-media savvy Navalny is Putin’s most prominent challenger, he is not broadly popular in Russia, where a majority of those polled say they disapprove of his activities. Still, the Kremlin’s decision to shunt him all the way up to the Arctic shows that Putin appears not to want to take any chances at all.
For more on this story, see our interview with the Oscar-winning director of Navalny, in which Navalny alleges that the Kremlin tried to kill him in 2021.Vanished in Russia
What has become of Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic opponent? Scarily, nobody knows.
Lawyers and spokespeople for jailed dissident Alexei Navalny say he is no longer at the prison where he has been held for the past two years, and they don’t know where he is now.
Navalny, a social media-savvy activist who led an anti-corruption protest movement of hundreds of thousands against Putin a decade ago, was poisoned with a nerve agent in Siberia in 2020 and flown to Germany for treatment. He later defied the Kremlin and returned to Russia, where he was promptly sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud and other charges.
In August, a court dumped another 19 years into his sentence for good measure, and authorities had reportedly been planning to move him to an even harsher prison.
It’s not unusual to temporarily lose touch with Russian prisoners as they are shunted through the country’s continent-sized penal system. But as Navalny’s team prepares to launch a fresh campaign against Putin ahead of next year's presidential “election,” they are especially worried about his fate.
For more on why Navalny’s team thinks Putin ordered his murder, see our interview with the director of the Oscar-winning documentary “Navalny.”