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Tag Archives: desperation
Vladimir Putin’s Bragging Show About Russian Weapons Reeks of Desperation
Nearly six months into a war in Ukraine that Russia can’t seem to decisively win, Russian President Vladimir Putin is bragging this week that Russia’s weapons are decades ahead of competitors.
“Many of them are years, maybe decades ahead of their foreign counterparts, and in terms of tactical and technical characteristics they are significantly superior,” Putin said at an annual arms show Monday, according to Interfax.
And in an apparent show of camaraderie, Putin vowed Monday that he wants to expand Russia’s arms trade with other countries around the world, claiming that foreign countries value Russian weapons for their efficiency and high quality.
“Russia sincerely cherishes historically strong friendly, truly trusting ties with the states of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and is ready to offer its partners and allies the most modern types of weapons—from small arms to armored vehicles and artillery, combat aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles,” Putin said.
Moscow is indeed, a top weapons exporter. Russia accounts for 20 percent of global arms exports and is the second-largest exporter of weapons in the world, ranking just after the United States, according to an analysis of exports tracked by the independent research entity the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) between 2016 and 2020. India, China, and Algeria are the top recipients of Russian weaponry, and Russia is also the main supplier of arms to Egypt, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Angola, according to the report. Russia exports major arms to 45 states in all.
But Putin’s claims about Russian weaponry and plans for trade appear to diverge from reality, as Russia’s weapons export business is starting to feel the cascading effects of waging war in Ukraine, according to military and intelligence assessments. Russia has lost 1,876 tanks, upwards of 4,000 armored vehicles, and 985 artillery systems, and more, in the war so far, according to data from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine shared Monday.
Adding to that, Russia’s ability to replenish its stocks is quickly dwindling as the bite of sanctions settles in. U.S. officials moved to sanction entities in Russia’s defense industrial base earlier this year, including a state-owned Russian defense conglomerate focused on airborne weapons and weapon systems, as well as anti-radar missiles, ammunition, and radar systems. And already high tech components aren’t funneling into the country anymore and manufacturing plants are shuttering, according to Reuters.
“The industry could struggle to meet many of these requirements, partially due to the effects of sanctions and lack of expertise,” a June British intelligence assessment states. “Russia’s production of high-quality optics and advanced electronics likely remain troubled and could undermine its efforts to replace equipment lost in Ukraine.”
Even before Putin chose to invade Ukraine again in February, the outlook for Russia didn’t look great. The balance of exports and imports was already bound to change in the coming years, namely due to China, as Beijing may soon not need to rely on Russia’s weapons as much in future years, according to SIPRI.
“Imports from Russia are likely to reduce in volume once China’s own industry manages to consistently produce the types of major arms that it has generally imported from Russia over the years,” the report notes.
“No other country in the world has anything like that.”
Putin didn’t name any country as a particular focus for its weapons export business, but stressed that Moscow values all partners who have embraced Russia’s thinking in recent months. Putin added that weapons transfers from Russia will be key to shifting the world away from a unipolar world—in which the United States dominates—to a multipolar world.
“We highly appreciate that today our country has many allies, partners, like-minded people on different continents,” he said. “They choose a sovereign, independent path of development, they want to collectively resolve issues of global and regional security on the basis of international law, mutual responsibility and consideration of each other’s interests. Thus, they contribute to the protection of a multipolar world.”
It’s not the first time Putin has bragged about Russian weapons in recent months while waging war in Ukraine. In March, Putin bragged to Russia’s Federal Assembly that additions to Russia’s nuclear arsenal would make the United States’ defenses “useless”—even though some of the proposed additions to Russia’s stocks are “outlandish,” according to The Washington Post.
Putin’s claims at the army confab this week echo his earlier insistence that Russian arms development is lightyears ahead of other nations’ work.
“As you may have guessed, no other country in the world has anything like that,” he said of a nuclear-powered underwater drone in March. “Possibly, something similar will appear someday, but our guys will come up with something else by then.”
Putin’s trip to Iran shows Russia’s ‘desperation’: U.S. Institute of Peace
Russian President Vladimir Putin likely wanted to show that Moscow is still important in the Middle East by visiting Iran, but instead, the trip shows “a bit of desperation,” according to John Drennan of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
The goal was to have a discussion with Iran and Turkey’s leaders about the peace process in Syria, said Drennan, who is a senior program officer at the USIP’s Center for Russia and Europe.
Putin met with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to notices on the Kremlin’s website published Tuesday.
“We are strengthening our cooperation on international security and making a tangible contribution to settling the Syrian conflict,” Putin said.
I think the Russians would spin the meeting as a demonstration that they’re not actually isolated, they’re still a major player in the Middle East.
John Drennan
Senior program officer, U.S. Institute of Peace
Putin also met with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Iran.
“I think the Russians would spin the meeting as a demonstration that they’re not actually isolated, they’re still a major player in the Middle East,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday.
“But I do think, to [National Security Council spokesman John Kirby’s] point, it does show a bit of desperation that the Russians are having to go to the Iranians for military support,” he added.
Earlier, Kirby told reporters at the White House that the trip “shows the degree to which Mr. Putin and Russia are increasingly isolated.”
“Now they have to turn to Iran for help,” he said.
Russia’s press service and information department did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Interest in Iranian drones
The White House said Russian officials have viewed weapons-capable drones in Iran that Moscow may want to acquire for its war in Ukraine.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday, CIA Director William Burns said Russia’s interest in Iranian drones is a reflection of “the deficiencies of Russia’s defense industry today, the difficulties they’re having after significant losses so far in the war against Ukraine and replenishing their stocks as well.”
“Russians and Iranians need each other right now. Both heavily sanctioned countries, both looking to break out of political isolation as well,” he added.
Burns said the countries want to help each other evade sanctions and show they have options, but there are limits to how much they can cooperate. He said Tehran and Moscow don’t really trust each other because they are energy rivals and historical competitors.
The competition over exporting sanctioned energy is a structural issue that is preventing deep Russia-Iran relations, USIP’s Drennan said.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi greets Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 19, 2022. Putin likely wanted to show that Moscow is still important in the Middle East by visiting Iran, said John Drennan of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Sergei Savostyanov | AFP | Getty Images
Biden Officials Warn of New Ukraine Nightmare as Vladimir Putin Hits Peak Desperation
It is day 70 of Putin’s war in Ukraine, but at least in Russia, the war isn’t official just yet—Russian leadership has continued to tout the invasion as a “special military operation.”
But that might all change on Victory Day, the day Russia celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to declare war against Ukraine on Victory Day, May 9, western and Ukrainian officials believe.
Putin will be declaring a full mobilization for war on May 9, Ukraine’s top military spy, Kyrylo Budanov, predicted this week. U.S. officials are also warning that Russia could declare war as soon as May 9, CNN reported.
Some senior U.S. officials fear Putin will massively escalate attacks on Ukraine in the coming days. Senior Biden administration officials are growing increasingly concerned that Putin is growing desperate to declare any sort of win in Ukraine as Victory Day approaches.
“He needs a victory to survive,” one senior administration official told The Daily Beast. “A repeat of [the Soviet loss in] Afghanistan is literally an existential threat to a regime that is built on the idea that a strongman leader can revive the glory of the Russian empire.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a concert marking the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, on March 18, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.
Getty
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said that the pressure to “deliver a victory, any kind of victory,” could set into motion an unprecedented escalation.
Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has denied Russia would announce mobilization or officially declare war on Ukraine on Victory Day.
Some of the day’s “festivities” could tout seeming successes of the invasion into Ukraine as a way to bolster support back home—either just to show off some alleged wins to justify the invasion or to garner support for further escalation.
The pomp and circumstance could include the twisted plan to present 500 Ukrainian prisoners of war during a parade to show Russia’s military might in comparison to Ukraine’s, according to a report from Russian human rights project “Gulagu.net.” Putin is also reportedly considering holding sham trials of Ukrainians that Russia has claimed have been supportive of Nazis, in an imitation of the Nuremberg trials that worked to hold German Nazi leadership accountable.
The warnings of Russia’s plans come as Russian forces are suffering massive losses—as of Wednesday, Russia has lost 24,500 troops, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And the Russian military has been struggling to keep its manpower up to the task, working to recruit more people to join up, without much success.
Declaring war more formally would allow Russia to tap into reserve forces to swell its military operation on the ground in Ukraine to reach for a more decisive victory.
The symbolic Victory Day comes at a moment where Putin needs all the help he can get after his forces have been faltering for weeks. After his troops failed to take Kyiv and achieve some of his more ambitious goals in Ukraine, Russian forces have had to retreat and replenish their supplies to go after Eastern Ukraine, in a kind of plan B for Russia. And while fighting continues in Eastern Ukraine, the delay in rerouting plans towards the east has allowed Ukraine to build up its weaponry to try to more effectively thwart Russian attacks, which may put Russia at a disadvantage for some time, Rob Lee, a Russian military analyst, told The Daily Beast.
“If you start sending conscripts to war, they start getting killed in large numbers, that becomes a really big political risk.”
“I don’t think time is on Russia’s side, as Ukraine receives more modern weapons [such as] the howitzers,” Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The Daily Beast. “I think Ukraine is going to be in a stronger position in a few weeks relative to today.”
The symbolic nature of Victory Day could serve as the ideal platform for Putin to pepper Russians with more propaganda on the invasion in Ukraine to garner support for a larger scale mobilization. But selling a more full-hearted mobilization domestically might be difficult, given that Russia has been suggesting that the “special” operation is going well.
“I’m quite curious,” Budanov said. “How will they explain this to their own people? Why does Russia, with its, as they say, the first or second army in the world, need mobilization, when, according to their official reports, everything is going according to plan and Ukraine as a military machine is nothing?”
The date could, of course, have no bearing on whether Putin declares war. The future of Putin’s war in Ukraine will depend on what happens on the ground in Eastern Ukraine, not a date, Michael Kofman, the research program director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA, a Virginia-based national security research organization, told The Daily Beast.
“The political leadership [will] assess the current situation in Donbas and their likelihood of achieving their goals by this campaign,” Kofman said. “Right now it’s still unclear if the Russian offensive is going very slowly because they’re meeting far more resistance than they expected, because their forces are much weaker now, or are they actually prosecuting this more methodically and more carefully to preserve the force.”
And Russian forces aren’t doing so hot in Eastern Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official said in a briefing Monday.
“They still have not solved all their logistics problem, and quite frankly, there’s… a risk and casualty aversion that we continue to see by the Russians now, not just in the air, but on the ground,” the senior U.S. defense official said. The Russians are being “very, very cautious, very tepid.”
Pulling out all the stops for Ukraine, in any case, might be political suicide for Putin, warned Lee. After mobilizing for a war, the expectations of successes from Ukraine might be higher—successes the Russian military hasn’t proved it can achieve. And if conscripts die in large numbers, upheaval about Putin’s decisions might mount.
“With volunteers… it’s a bit of a different scenario where Russians can say, ‘ok you chose to join, you chose to serve,’” Lee told The Daily Beast. “If you mobilize it means you need to achieve something more, because then the stakes are raised higher. And if you start sending conscripts to war, they start getting killed in large numbers, that becomes a really big political risk.”
U.S. officials have warned Victory Day might not be the endgame for Putin, as well, and have been fuzzy on the date at which Putin might make his next big move in Ukraine. Sometime around mid-May, for instance, Putin will likely try to annex portions of Eastern Ukraine as well as Kherson, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. Ambassador to Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, predicted this week.
The intelligence on the plans is “highly credible,” Carpenter said.
“We believe that Russia will try to annex the Donetsk ‘people’s republic’ and Luhansk ‘people’s republic’… to Russia,” Carpenter said Monday in a briefing with reporters. “I cannot speak to whether Russia will be able to execute on its planning, but this is the planning that we are seeing.”
Budanov, Ukraine defense intelligence chief, however, warned that the Russian military is eyeing victory on May 9 in Eastern Ukraine in the Donbas.
In desperation, U.S. scours for countries willing to house Afghan refugees
The U.S. flag is reflected on the windows of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan July 30, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer
WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration has been holding secret talks with more countries than previously known in a desperate attempt to secure deals to temporarily house at-risk Afghans who worked for the U.S. government, four U.S. officials told Reuters.
The previously unreported discussions with such countries as Kosovo and Albania underscore the administration’s desire to protect U.S.-affiliated Afghans from Taliban reprisals while safely completing the process of approving their U.S. visas.
With the Taliban tightening their grip on Afghanistan at a shockingly swift pace, the United States on Thursday announced it would send 1,000 personnel to Qatar to accelerate the processing of applications for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).
Afghans who served as interpreters for the U.S. government and in other jobs are entitled to apply for the SIV program.
So far, about 1,200 Afghans have been evacuated to the United States and that number is set to rise to 3,500 in the coming weeks under “Operation Allies Refuge,” with some going to a U.S. military base in Virginia to finalize their paperwork and others directly to U.S. hosts.
Fearful the Taliban’s advances are raising the threat to SIV applicants still awaiting processing, Washington is seeking third countries to host them until their paperwork is done and they can fly to the United States.
“It is deeply troubling that there is no concrete plan in place to evacuate allies who are clearly in harm’s way,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service resettlement organization.
“It is baffling why the administration has been taking so long in order to secure these agreements,” she said.
While there still are no third country agreements, a State Department spokesperson said, “We are evaluating all available options.”
COUNTRIES HESITATE
Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said countries were hesitant to take in the Afghans because of concerns about the quality of security vetting and health screening for COVID-19 before they were allowed to fly.
The Biden administration was exploring having Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan take in thousands of applicants, but that effort has made little progress. read more
“There’s concerns that you might expect: ‘Who are these people? How do you know these people? Can you assure that these people will get visas to the United States? Who’s going to care for and feed these people. What happens if these people wander off this facility you’ve got them in?” a senior State Department official said.
The official declined to confirm the countries in talks with the United States.
A deal to house about 8,000 Afghans in Qatar, which hosts a large U.S. military base, has been close for weeks, said a second U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter, but a formal agreement has yet to be announced.
Officials warn the pace of any potential agreements may be stymied by the rapidly changing Afghanistan situation.
U.S. Representative Jason Crow, who has led congressional efforts to speed SIV processing, said the administration should use a temporary U.S. troop deployment at Kabul airport for the drawdown of embassy staff to accelerate evacuations of SIV applicants irrespective of whether it has a third country deal.
At the same time, Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, said it is very difficult to evacuate many SIV applicants and their families because they cannot reach Kabul.
“If you’re not already in the Kabul security perimeter, getting there is very, very hard,” he told Reuters. “That is a hard reality.”
The reluctance of some countries has prompted the administration to appeal to others that may be willing to help if Washington provides some assistance, officials said.
The United States has offered economic and political concessions to Kosovo for taking in several thousand Afghans, but there is concern in Washington about its ability to house the Afghans, sources said.
The foreign ministry in Kosovo did not respond to a request for comment. The embassies of Albania, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO LEAVE’
The 1,200 Afghans evacuated are but a fraction of the 21,000 people in the SIV application pipeline and the Biden administration is still struggling to find temporary homes for the evacuees.
Advocates estimate the total number of evacuees under the SIV program at between 50,000 and 80,000 when family members are included.
James Miervaldis, chairman of the board of No One Left Behind, an organization that helps SIV applicants get to the United States, said there now appeared to be little chance that most of the SIV applicants will be evacuated.
“The math and the timeline just do not add up … Those people are not going to be able to leave,” said Miervaldis, an Army Reserve non-commissioned officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The issue has been closely watched by lawmakers in Congress, including Biden’s allies.
“We have to follow through on our promises to the thousands of Afghans who risked their lives to help us. It’s time for the Biden (administration) to cut the red tape and get this done,” said Democratic congresswoman Sara Jacobs.
Reporting by Idrees Ali, Jonathan Landay, Humeyra Pamuk and Ted Hesson; Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci in Pristina; Editing by Mary Milliken, Howard Goller and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.