Ukraine outrage and analysis.

[welch]

The Post on the Russian economy: downward

Western sanctions catch up with Russia’s wartime economy

By Catherine Belton and Robyn Dixon
November 26, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EST


When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched last month a new council for coordinating supplies for the Russian army, he seemed to recognize the scale of the economic problems facing the country, and his sense of urgency was palpable.

“We have to be faster in deciding questions connected to supplying the special military operation and countering restrictions on the economy which, without any exaggeration, are truly unprecedented,” he said.

For months, Putin claimed that the “economic blitzkrieg” against Russia had failed, but Western sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine are digging ever deeper into Russia’s economy, exacerbating equipment shortages for its army and hampering its ability to launch any new ground offensive or build new missiles, economists and Russian business executives said.

In response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the West sanctioned some of his closest advisers. (Video: Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)
Recent figures show the situation has worsened considerably since the summer when, buoyed by a steady stream of oil and gas revenue, the Russian economy seemed to stabilize. Figures released by the Finance Ministry last week show a key economic indicator — tax revenue from the non-oil and gas sector — fell 20 percent in October compared with a year earlier, while the Russian state statistics agency Rosstat reported that retail sales fell 10 percent year on year in September, and cargo turnover fell 7 percent.

“All objective indicators show there is a very strong drop in economic activity,” said Vladimir Milov, a former Russian deputy energy minister who is now a leading opposition politician in exile. “The spiral is escalating, and there is no way out of this now.”

The Western ban on technology imports is affecting most sectors of the economy, while the Kremlin’s forced mobilization of more than 300,000 Russian conscripts to serve in Ukraine, combined with the departure of at least as many abroad fleeing the draft, has dealt a further blow, economists said. In addition, Putin’s own restrictions on gas supplies to Europe, followed by the unexplained explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, has led to a sharp drop in gas production — down 20 percent in October compared with the previous year. Meanwhile, oil sales to Europe are plummeting ahead of the European Union embargo expected to be imposed Dec. 5.

The Kremlin has trumpeted a lower-than-expected decline in GDP, forecast by the International Monetary Fund at only 3.5 percent this year, as demonstrating that the Russian economy can weather the raft of draconian sanctions.

But economists and business executives said the headline GDP figures did not reflect the real state of the Russian economy because the Russian government effectively ended the ruble’s convertibility since the sanctions were imposed. “GDP stopped having any meaning because firstly we don’t know what the real ruble rate is, and secondly if you produce a tank and send it to the front where it is immediately blown up, then it is still considered as value added,” said Milov, who wrote a report explaining the situation for the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies published this month.

Deeper problems were also lurking in the Russian banking sector, where most accounting has been classified. The Russian Central Bank reported this week that a record $14.7 billion in hard currency was withdrawn from the Russian banking system in October, amid increasing anxiety over mobilization and the state of the economy.

Even so, a November report by the Central Bank warned that Russia’s GDP would face a sharper contraction of 7.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, after falling 4.1 percent and 4 percent compared with last year in the previous two quarters. Last week, as the Russian economy officially entered into recession, Central Bank Chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina told lawmakers that next year the situation could get darker still. “We really need to look at the situation very soberly and with our eyes open. Things may get worse, we understand that,” she said.

Putin’s announcement in September of a partial troop mobilization dealt an enormous blow to business sentiment. “For many Russian companies the reality of the war sank in,” said Janis Kluge, senior associate at the German Institute for Security and International Affairs. “It became clear that this is going to continue for a long time. Now expectations are much worse than they were over the summer.”

Putin’s creation of the coordination council, headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, was a sign the Russian president is rattled by the increasing impact of sanctions, economists and analysts said. Putin “is concerned he needs to interfere to make sure supplies will be available,” said Sergei Guriev, provost at France’s Sciences Po. “He is concerned that sanctions have really hit the ability to produce goods.”

It also signals the Russian government is preparing a broader mobilization of the Russian economy to supply the army amid chronic shortages of basic goods such as food and uniforms. New laws will impose hefty fines on business executives who refuse to carry out orders for the Russian military, as well as potential prison sentences, clearing the way for entrepreneurs to be pressured into providing goods at knockdown prices. The creation of the council is “connected to big pressure on business and the need to enforce a tough diktat to make business do what it doesn’t want to do,” said Nikolai Petrov, senior research fellow for Russia and Eurasia at Chatham House in London.


One Moscow businessman with connections to the defense sector said a quiet mobilization of the Russian economy had already been long underway, with many entrepreneurs forced into producing supplies for the Russian army but fearing to speak out against orders at cut-price rates.

“This became necessary right from the very beginning when the war began,” the businessman said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “The main mass of business is silent. If you say you are making supplies or weapons for the Russian state then you could have problems abroad.”

As Putin escalates war, some in Russia’s business elite despair

Anecdotal evidence reported in the Russian press has pointed to enormous problems supplying Russia’s newly drafted conscripts with equipment. An in-depth October report in Russian daily Kommersant described huge shortages in ammunition and uniform supplies for conscripts, with manufacturers citing difficulties securing the necessary materials due to sanctions.


Other Russian business executives said Russia’s military debacle in Ukraine had exposed the huge inefficiencies and corruption in Russia’s military industrial complex. “There are huge questions over where all the trillions of rubles of the past decade have been spent,” said one former senior Russian banker with connections to the Russian state.

If the new economic council fails to better coordinate the production of supplies and weaponry, it could impinge on Russia’s ability to launch new offensives in Ukraine, Petrov said. “The main problem ahead of the Kremlin is the question of when the army will be ready to begin new military action in Ukraine, and the preparation of arms and ammunition and so on will determine these plans.”

The outlook appears likely to worsen when the E.U. embargo on Russian oil sales comes into force Dec. 5, economists said. Combined with a price cap expected to be imposed on all sales of Russian oil outside the E.U., the measure could cost the Russian budget at least $120 million in lost revenue per day, Milov said, and already the Russian budget is expected to rack up a deficit by the end of this year.



By Catherine Belton
Catherine Belton reports on Russia for The Washington Post. She is the author of “Putin's People,” a New York Times Critics’ Book of 2020 and a book of the year for the Times, the Economist and the Financial Times. Belton previously was an investigations correspondent for Reuters and a Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times.
Image without a caption

By Robyn Dixon
Robyn Dixon is a foreign correspondent on her third stint in Russia, after almost a decade reporting there beginning in the early 1990s. In November 2019 she joined The Washington Post as Moscow bureau chief.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...litary-supply/

[dneal]

I've been watching this, and reading articles. Bottom line is that it's a complex period in the campaign, and no one is seizing any real initiative. Some thoughts:

Russia continues to attack infrastructure. The media is reporting x amount of people without power. This is pressure Russia is putting on the Ukrainian population, which helps force Zelensky and the government to the bargaining table - which Russia desperately needs to happen. The long game works against Putin for economic reasons noted, which is part of political reasons. Public opinion affects Putin as much as Zelensky. I don't have a word to capture this notion, but it would describe the period in the campaign.

Russia is in the defense, and Ukrainian offensive operations aren't doing much right now. I imagine we are advising them not to, since the U.S. view is concern with the A2AD bubble Russia is assumed to be good at. There's not a lot of reason that's wrong, particularly with Ukraine's limited capability.

For TSherbs in particular - Russia has probably mined the crap out of their side of the river. It'll be an issue if/when Ukraine attacks, and probably for years after the conflict. Our brigade's first casualty in Afghanistan was from an old Russian mine. When we escorted a CNN crew to Belamby, there were mines everywhere.

Winter will of course be an issue to some extent, but not as much as food. Food (and Ukrainian wheat shortages globally) will be an issue for this and next year, mainly in the developing world. Peter Ziehan talks about fertilizer shortages and how they're related to (produced by) that part of the world. We're going to continue to experience rising food prices in the west because fertilizer costs will rise. Hopefully they remain plentiful enough.

All this creates problems for everyone. Britain is importing coal. Germany is tearing down windmills to re-open coal mines they're built on. China is expanding coal power plants (and I can't believe we don't have a thread on China yet). Inflation continues to be an issue in most western nations, and it becomes more difficult to justify spending money on Ukraine. A recent article had a headline that there will no longer be "carte blanche" for U.S. funding of the Ukrainian war effort, once the GOP takes control of the house. Politicians will be stuck between defense companies profiting from Ukraine and constituents not willing to pay for it.

Like the beginning of the campaign, this is another "wait and see" period.

[dneal]

This is significant. Looks like just artillery strikes for now, but may be the preparation for the attack. If they cut off Crimea, and finish destroying the bridge (or show they can strike resupply convoys); Russian forces are in a world of hurt. It’ll basically be a siege, and Russia will have to counterattack to break it.

Reuters: Ukraine attacks Melitopol

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Oleksiy Arestovych, said Melitopol, a major industrial and transport centre occupied by Russia since March, is key to the defence of the south.


"All logistics linking the Russian forces on the eastern part of the Kherson region and all the way to the Russian border near Mariupol is carried out through it," Arestovych said in a video interview on social media.

"If Melitopol falls, the entire defence line all the way to Kherson collapses. Ukrainian forces gain a direct route to Crimea."

[welch]

Perhaps as the ground hardens...

[dneal]

Perhaps as the ground hardens...

Maybe. More likely they're crossing the river farther north, since the bridges in Kherson are reportedly damaged and it's too close to Russian defenses. There are road networks running north/south, which are needed to support an offensive logistically.

You can see there's a sort of peninsula created with the Sea of Azov to the southeast and the Dnieper to the northwest. Melitopol sits in the middle of it.

Screenshot 2022-12-11 at 8.35.52 AM.png

[welch]

So the Ukrainian attack would work between Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, south toward Melitopol. Or south from that middling area, the northern part of which Ukraine recaptured in September. Or both.

[dneal]

I haven't seen any information on Ukrainian movement yet. Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia appear to be in solidly controlled Ukrainian territory, so it's safer to marshal formations and cross there (either location, or both).

Once across the river, they would attack southward toward Melitopol, and hold it because it's a major crossroad / network hub. That prevents resupply of Crimea by land, and provides a base of operations.

Russian forces haven't been able to succeed in any sort of close fight. The major risk to Ukrainian forces would be from Russian artillery - but should reduce attacks on infrastructure further east, if Russian magazine depth is being depleted.

Russia would have to counterattack (which again, they seem to suck at), but they could do it from two directions: Crimea and Mariupol. Ukrainian forces could also be cut off in Melitopol, but we would have to see something new from the Russians as far as competence.

Aside from isolating Crimea, it cuts Russia's "land bridge". That's big, and either forces Putin to commit or come to the table.

DraftUkraineCoTDecember10,2022.jpg

[welch]

From the NY Times today: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/12...smid=url-share

The strike on Melitopol signals the importance of longer-range weapons in Ukraine’s campaign to recapture land in the south.

Ukrainian forces struck the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol on Saturday, the authorities said, signaling the importance of longer-range artillery in the next phase of Ukraine’s campaign to recapture land in the south of the country.

The attack hit a church that was being used as a base by Russian soldiers, according to the exiled mayor of the city, Ivan Fedorov, who posted video taken at night of a large fire burning in the distance.

“Fireworks in the east of Melitopol,” Mr. Fedorov said on the Telegram social messaging app. Russian forces were ferrying their wounded by car to hospitals in Crimea, Mr. Fedorov said, but many people had also been killed. It was not possible to verify the video or some of the details independently.

Tass, a state-owned Russian news agency, quoted the pro-Russian acting governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, as saying that a strike on Melitopol using a HIMARS system had killed two people and wounded 10 others.

Ukrainian partisans working behind Russian lines have for months launched attacks on targets around Melitopol, including one in the summer close to Mr. Balitsky’s office. Mr. Fedorov said that there had also been other attacks in the city in recent days, as well as a strike on the port city of Berdiansk farther east.

Ukraine recaptured the city of Kherson in mid-November, forcing Moscow to withdraw its troops to the east bank of the Dnipro River after months of military pressure and opening a new phase of the battle for the south of the country.

The advance has enabled Ukraine to use longer-range artillery, including the HIMARS weapons system supplied by the United States, to strike targets deeper inside Russian-controlled territory between the eastern bank of the river and the Sea of Azov, an area that includes Melitopol.

However, military experts caution that the next phase of the battle is likely to be slow. Russian forces, led since October by Sergei Surovikin, have improved their defenses in the south and east of the country in recent weeks.

“Surovikin ordered a network of trenches and defensive positions to be built in many areas, as Russia transitions to an overall defensive position through the winter,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, in a thread on Twitter.

In addition, it is difficult for Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnipro River in large numbers, a likely prerequisite to any advance. Russian forces benefit from shortened supply lines and proximity to Crimea, a region farther south that Moscow annexed illegally in 2014.

Ukraine has launched a series of strikes on targets in Crimea in recent months and on Saturday a partisan group, the ATESH resistance movement, said it had struck a Russian military base in a village on the peninsula, causing casualties.

“Our agents performed as expected,” the group said on Telegram. “We will continue to destroy the Russian Army from the inside.” It was not possible to confirm the attack independently.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg

[dneal]

A few problems with the NYT piece.

- My understanding is that the majority of the defensive positions were oriented toward Kherson. It's a couple hundred miles of front from there to Donetsk (along that axis). All that terrain has to be observed and covered (although it's obvious the Ukrainians would be coming down the main road from Dnipro).

- Crimea isn't a base for resupply. It's a fortification that needs resupplied.

- Ukraine can't move large numbers across the river in Kherson (too easy for the Russians to target them), but that's not the case elsewhere.

[dneal]

Ukraine looks to be blocking reinforcements and resupply to Melitopol, and possible cutting off a route for retreat.

Ukraine: Key transport bridge targeted overnight in Russian-occupied Melitopol

A key bridge for the resupply of Russian armed forces in Melitopol was targeted overnight, according to both Ukrainian and Russian sources. The bridge is part of the M14 highway that runs along Ukraine’s southern coastline and connects Melitopol to Berdyansk to the east and then onto to Mariupol and then into the Russian Federation. Connecting the main part of the Ukrainian cities of Melitopol to a suburb in Konstantynivka, the bridge is known for its strategic significance, because it serves as the most vital supply route for goods and services transported into the liberated territories of the Zaporozhzhia and Kherson regions.

[TSherbs]

I saw a report of possible Patriot defense systems going to Ukraine. Seems like another step up in our involvement, and an esclation from Russia's point of view.

[dneal]

I'd be surprised if we gave them Patriot - for maintenance reasons alone. They're complex.

But you never know with this admin.

[TSherbs]

Although I am not all that knowledgeable in these matters, I thought that this was a persuasive piece. It's risky, though.

A WaPo opinion piece calling for more armaments for Ukrainian offensive efforts....hopefully used only/mainly/primarily in occupied Ukrainian territory:

From WaPo
Opinion Give Ukraine the ability to strike every inch of Russian occupied territory

By Max Boot
December 13, 2022 at 4:58 p.m. EST

Last week, Ukraine took the war to Russia in a small but symbolic way. Ukraine reportedly used jet drones to strike two air bases deep in Russia — one of them only 100 miles from Moscow — that are used to operate the long-range bombers that launch missiles against Ukrainian cities. According to the Kremlin, one of the attacks slightly damaged two airplanes and killed three servicemembers. The next day, another Ukrainian drone attack reportedly ignited a fuel-storage facility in the Russian city of Kursk. Kyiv was typically cagey about what happened: Borrowing a page from the Israeli playbook when discussing sensitive operations, officials neither confirm nor deny on the record, but with winks and nudges make clear that they are responsible.

While these are the deepest attacks inside Russia that Ukraine has yet carried out, they are hardly the first. In early April, there were reports that a Ukrainian Tochka ballistic missile had hit a military depot in the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukrainian border and that Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter gunships had sneaked over the border to ignite a fuel depot in Belgorod. U.S. intelligence even leaked word that Ukrainian operatives were responsible for the car bomb in August near Moscow that killed the daughter of Russian ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin.

There have also been a number of spectacular Ukrainian attacks on Russian military installations in Crimea — Ukrainian territory that Vladimir Putin has illegally annexed. In August, explosions at the Saki air base in Crimea destroyed nine Russian warplanes; Ukrainian officials told The Post that their special forces were responsible. The Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea to Russia — one of Putin’s showcase projects — was badly damaged by an explosion on Oct. 8 apparently caused by a truck bomb. And on Oct. 29 Ukraine used sea drones to attack the Russian Black Sea fleet at its anchorage in Sevastopol, apparently damaging at least one warship. (In April, Ukraine sank the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the cruiser Moskva, at sea with anti-ship missiles.)

Some of these strikes are militarily significant, others are merely symbolic. But even symbolism can be important. Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the CNA think tank, compared last week’s strikes on two Russian airfields to the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942. Although the U.S. bombers caused little damage, they demonstrated that Japan was not immune from attack and rallied U.S. public opinion a few months after Pearl Harbor. Today, Ukrainians shivering in the cold and dark because of Russian attacks on the electrical grid must be heartened to see their military striking back.

The Ukrainian attacks naturally raise concerns in the West about provoking Putin. The Biden administration has made clear that Ukraine is not using U.S. equipment for attacks on Russian soil, and indeed it has refused to provide Ukraine with longer-range weapons for fear that they would be used deep inside Russia. (One administration official told me that if the Ukrainians got F-16s, they could bomb Moscow.)

“We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week. But he did not condemn the attacks. The U.S. position seems to be that if U.S. weapons systems aren’t employed, and the attacks are focused strictly on military targets, it doesn’t object to the attacks.

That’s a reasonable position — but, as I’ve argued before, the Biden administration is too restrictive in the types of weapons it provides Ukraine. The U.S. Air Force wants to send roughly 50 older model Reaper drones – which can fire Hellfire antitank missiles – to Ukraine because it doesn’t need them anymore. But the request has languished for months in the Pentagon bureaucracy.

Likewise, the Biden administration refuses to provide the ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) to Ukraine and has even modified HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) launchers so that they cannot fire ATACMS rockets, which would increase their range from 50 miles to as many as 180 miles. U.S. fighter-bombers such as the F-16, which the Ukrainians have been requesting, are also off the table.

I can understand the administration not wanting U.S. weapons to be used for attacks on Russian soil, but the Zelensky government has proven to be a reliable partner that has abided by U.S. restrictions. Moreover, the most valuable targets for longer-range strikes are in Ukraine, not Russia.

The Ukrainian military has enabled successful offensives around both Kharkiv in the east and Kherson in the south by targeting Russian headquarters, supply lines and ammunition depots to wear down enemy forces. Gaining access to longer-range “fires” will enable the Ukrainians to more effectively strike such military targets across the width and breadth of Russian-occupied territory. That includes Crimea, which remains out of HIMARS range. Such strikes, in turn, will enable future offensives that can bring this awful war to a conclusion.

The United States shouldn’t enable attacks against targets in Russia. But it should definitely enable more effective Ukrainian strikes on Russian supply lines and bases all over occupied Ukraine.

[welch]

Meanwhile, the NY Times reports that the war and the sanctions are hurting Russia and its economy.

Russia keeps its key interest rate steady amid worries of inflation.

The country’s central bank said inflation, at 12 percent, risked rising because of a growing budget deficit.

Ivan Nechepurenko

By Ivan Nechepurenko

Dec. 16, 2022

Bank of Russia’s benchmark interest rate

Source: Bank of Russia

By The New York Times

Russia’s central bank kept its key interest rate at 7.5 percent on Friday, citing risks of increased inflation and restrained consumer demand as economists warned that the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions were continuing to sap productivity.

The Bank of Russia said in a statement that “the external conditions for the Russian economy remain complicated and significantly limit economic activity.” It said consumer prices rose at annual rate of 12 percent last month, pushed by a tight labor market that was accelerating wage growth.

The Russian economy has come under severe international sanctions in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but it has defied expectations of a collapse unseen since the painful post-Soviet transformation in early 1990s.

On Thursday, President Vladimir V. Putin radiated confidence at a meeting with top government ministers in which he said the Russian economy would contract 2.5 percent this year, which is somewhat more optimistic than the International Monetary Fund’s estimate of a 3.5-percent shrinkage. Accusing the West of waging “an economic war” against Moscow and praising his government’s “responsible financial policy,” Mr. Putin said the country’s economy had avoided an outright collapse.

Still, some Russian economists predicted that the worst is yet to come. Yevgeny Nadorshin, the chief economist at the PF Capital consulting company in Moscow, warned that the Russian economy could now enter a deeper downturn that cannot be cushioned by increased government spending as before.

The mobilization of recruits to help fight in Ukraine, and an exodus of some highly skilled upper-middle-class workers, would have a negative effect on productivity, he said. In addition, the government’s increased focus on military spending will make the economy less productive.

“We are doomed to deal with a tough deficit of highly effective labor while sanctions limit our way to compensate for this in terms of imports of high-end technology,” Mr. Nadorshin said in a telephone interview.

In late February, after Mr. Putin’s decision to send troops to Ukraine, inflation surged in Russia, and the central bank more than doubled its benchmark interest rate, to 20 percent. Since then, it has cut the rate six times as inflation has eased and the bank tried to stimulate an economy dealing with increased isolation.

The central bank projected that annual inflation would decline to as low as 5 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024.
ding the main story

Dmitri Polevoy, the chief strategist at Locko Invest, an asset management company in Moscow, said that sanctions would have a prolonged effect on Russia’s economy and that it was no longer important how much it will contract this year.

“What is interesting is how much deeper will the contraction be next year than what the government expects,” he said, noting that the widening budget deficit was turning into “the main headache” for the central bank.

Indeed, the Bank of Russia said Friday that the budget deficit might force it tighten its policy to control inflation.

For years, the Russian economy, and its tax revenues, relied on a huge exports of fossil fuels. But the country’s energy industry has been upended by the war in Ukraine, most recently by a European Union embargo on Russian oil and the Group of 7’s price cap on Russian crude, both of which took effect Dec. 5. Last week, Russia’s finance minister said the country’s budget deficit will reach 2 percent of economic output this year, up from earlier predictions of 0.9 percent, according to TASS, a state news agency.

The central bank noted that unemployment in Russia had dropped to a record low, partly because the mobilization of troops to join fighting in Ukraine had reduced the supply of available workers. In its Friday statement, the central bank warned that the conscription effort had forced employers to increase salaries.

Outside Russia, the effects of the war in Ukraine have manifested in soaring energy and food prices, pushing inflation in Europe, the United States and elsewhere far above levels that policymakers try to maintain. This week, the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England all raised interest rates and pledged to continue tightening their policies until stubbornly high inflation came under control, even as their economies show signs of slowing, if not outright recession.

Ivan Nechepurenko has been a Times reporter since 2015, covering politics, economics, sports and culture in Russia and the former Soviet republics.*He was raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Piatykhatky, Ukraine.

[dneal]

I don't remember if I posted it, but someone said "The only thing Putin has managed to do is destroy his military and his economy".

[dneal]

Reuters: Putin says Russia ready to negotiate over Ukraine, Kyiv says Moscow doesn't want talks

Lots of reiterating talking points, but the fact that Putin said this publicly is significant I think.

[welch]

Reuters: Putin says Russia ready to negotiate over Ukraine, Kyiv says Moscow doesn't want talks

Lots of reiterating talking points, but the fact that Putin said this publicly is significant I think.

Putin says he is ready to negotiate as long as Ukraine recognizes that Russia owns the territory it has captured and annexed. That is his starting point. Hard to imagine how Ukraine would agree.

[dneal]

Reuters: Putin says Russia ready to negotiate over Ukraine, Kyiv says Moscow doesn't want talks

Lots of reiterating talking points, but the fact that Putin said this publicly is significant I think.

Putin says he is ready to negotiate as long as Ukraine recognizes that Russia owns the territory it has captured and annexed. That is his starting point. Hard to imagine how Ukraine would agree.

Yep. There’s no reason to concede anything when you’re winning. I still think that’s why Russia keeps pounding cities and infrastructure.

There has also been a rash of oligarchs and generals dying…

[welch]

Reuters: Putin says Russia ready to negotiate over Ukraine, Kyiv says Moscow doesn't want talks

Lots of reiterating talking points, but the fact that Putin said this publicly is significant I think.

Putin says he is ready to negotiate as long as Ukraine recognizes that Russia owns the territory it has captured and annexed. That is his starting point. Hard to imagine how Ukraine would agree.

Yep. There’s no reason to concede anything when you’re winning. I still think that’s why Russia keeps pounding cities and infrastructure.

There has also been a rash of oligarchs and generals dying…

A punchy bit from an article in yesterday's Washington Post:

Among Russia’s elite, questions are growing over Putin’s tactics heading into 2023 following humiliating military retreats this autumn. A divide is emerging between those in the elite who want Putin to stop the military onslaught and those who believe he must escalate further, according to the state official and Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Despite a media blitz over the past 10 days, with Putin holding carefully choreographed televised meetings with military top brass and officials from the military-industrial complex, as well as a question-and-answer session with a selected pool of loyal journalists, members of the Russian elite interviewed by The Washington Post said they could not predict what might happen next year and said they doubted Putin himself knew how he might act.


“There is huge frustration among the people around him,” said one Russian billionaire who maintains contacts with top-ranking officials. “He clearly doesn’t know what to do.”

The Russian state official said Putin’s only plan appeared to lie in “constant attempts to force the West and Ukraine to begin [peace] talks” through airstrikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and other threats. Putin repeated the tactic this week by declaring on Christmas Day that he was open to peace talks even as Russia launched another massive missile strike just days later on Thursday, taking out electricity supplies in several regions. “But,” the official said, Putin is willing to talk “only on his terms.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...a-ukraine-war/

[TSherbs]

Atlantic piece on " Sudden Russian Death Syndrome" among the oligarchical elites and journalists, etc: The Atlantic

Here is how it begins:

Here is a list of people you should not currently want to be: a Russian sausage tycoon, a Russian gas-industry executive, the editor in chief of a Russian tabloid, a Russian shipyard director, the head of a Russian ski resort, a Russian aviation official, or a Russian rail magnate. Anyone answering to such a description probably ought not stand near open windows, in almost any country, on almost every continent.

Over the weekend, Pavel Antov, the aforementioned sausage executive, a man who had reportedly expressed a dangerous lack of enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, was found dead at a hotel in India, just two days after one of his Russian travel companions died at the same hotel. Antov was reported to have fallen to his death from a hotel window. The meat millionaire and his also-deceased friend are the most recent additions to a macabre list of people who have succumbed to Sudden Russian Death Syndrome, a phenomenon that has claimed the lives of a flabbergastingly large number of businessmen, bureaucrats, oligarchs, and journalists. The catalog of these deaths—which includes alleged defenestrations, suspected poisonings, suspicious heart attacks, and supposed suicides—is remarkable for the variety of unnatural deaths contained within as well as its Russian-novel length....