The events unfolding in Ukraine today are decades in the making. Since Putin has been in power, he has made it very clear that he not only thinks of Ukraine as an illegitimate state, but he also believes the West has not given Russia nor himself the credit, power, and voice he thinks is deserved. Putin has painted the West as his enemy, flipping the narrative and calling NATO, the US, and its allies the bad guys so that he can conceal his vast networks of corruption and claim himself as the savior of the Russian people. This week, we explore the events of the last two decades that have led up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and we learn more about corruption in Russia from someone who has experienced it firsthand. And, so that we don’t forget about the threat of China, we also take a closer look at their political meddling. 

‘At War With the Whole World’: Why Putin Might be Planning a Long Conflict in Ukraine

Max Seddon, Financial Times
Read the full article here

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has often been referred to as “Putin’s war,” and for good reason – Russia’s propaganda around the Ukrainian conflict seems to fluctuate with its leader’s myopic musings. What began as a swift march to take Kyiv has morphed into a more drawn-out conflict over the Donbas region as the Ukrainian’s continued resistance rebuffs the Russian military. Despite the moving goalposts, one thing has remained constant in Putin’s views towards Ukraine – namely, that it is an illegitimate state. As long as he can sell the Russian people on that idea, that he is winning back Kyivian Rus for the Slavic people, Putin will continue. This single-minded dedication has distorted the truth at every level of government, as negative or unflattering reports are edited at each step of the command chain; by the time it makes it to Putin’s desk, the original intelligence has been so modified as to be untrue. With the war effort and peace talks both stalling, Russia’s messaging has shifted to save face for its leader, focusing on the West’s “intervention” in the conflict; after all, losing to the world’s most powerful military alliance is far more acceptable than losing to a self-proclaimed illegitimate state. Even as the conflict festers, Russia seems to be digging in its heels for a protracted, globalized conflict, with the West as its bogeyman. Whether Putin’s saber-rattling against Ukraine’s neighbors and NATO continues, abates, or escalates could well determine 21st-century history.

Chinese Political Interference Has Western Spooks Worried

The Economist
Read the full article here

While China’s desire to win political allies and mute opponents in foreign governments is no secret, its increasingly sophisticated influence campaigns in other countries have raised alarm in the intelligence community. Security administrations in Britain, Canada, the US, and Australia have all issued warnings to their respective governments regarding Chinese interference in the political machine. Much of China’s foreign work comes through a branch of the CCP known as the United Work Front Department (UWFD), which funnels resources to key Chinese nationals abroad. What worries Western intelligence about the UWFD is not that China will influence politicians to support Chinese aims, but rather that it will discourage words and actions against China, pushing politicians to remain silent and turn a blind eye to the dragon. Thus far, the UWFD’s work seems to have borne little fruit; Western opinions of China are at historic lows. But there is danger that China will leverage its full arsenal of espionage weapons to achieve its aims. The FBI has alleged that an operative of China’s state security apparatus has been working actively to discredit the campaign of New York Congressional candidate Yan Xiong, who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 as a student leader. The Bureau alleged the operative stated that if they failed to smear Mr. Xiong’s reputation, “violence would be fine too.” If China is willing to physically attack other countries’ politicians who oppose them, then it has obviously crossed the line into “rogue state” territory and must be considered as such. To do otherwise would not only physically endanger China’s enemies, but would undermine liberalism itself.

“The brightest of all redlines”

A New Iron Curtain Splits Russia From the West – Carla Norrlöf, World Politics Review

Vladimir Putin Played Germany’s Aging Patriarchs for Fools – Alexander Clarkson, World Politics Review 

Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine can be traced back nearly two decades. Over the years, Putin has made it quite clear that he is unsatisfied with Russia’s position in the world, and more specifically the way the West treats it. In his state of the nation address in 2005, Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and a “genuine tragedy” for the Russian people. At the Munich Security Conference in 2007 he had three primary complaints: he resented NATO’s expansion into the Baltics and took it as a move against Russia, he denounced the US’ involvement in elections and regime-change in former Soviet republics, and he protested a proposal to build an anti-missile shield over the US which would include bases in Eastern Europe. In 2008, when the then-president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko requested a NATO membership action plan, Putin warned that a NATO expansion up to Russia’s border would be viewed as a “direct threat”. At that time, William J. Burns, the US ambassador to Russia (who is now the CIA director), warned the White House that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite” and “a direct challenge to Russian interests.” While NATO did not immediately offer a membership roadmap to Ukraine and  Georgia, the group promised at the Bucharest Summit that year to eventually incorporate both countries into the alliance. Putin stormed out of the summit, and just a few months later launched a full-scale invasion of Georgia. After seeing little resistance from the West to his military incursion of Georgia, Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. As NATO has moved eastward, deploying battlegroups to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, and continuing the “courtship” of former Soviet states, Putin has been clear that NATO’s “direct threats” would provoke a response. Carla Norrlöf says in their article, “Had the West been attentive to Russia’s red flags, it might have effectively deterred its belligerence, by for example offering Ukraine NATO membership with full security guarantees. With the West’s awakening, NATO’s strategic concept is in for a major overhaul.”

 As Alexander Clarkson’s article explains, the West, and most specifically Germany, thought that peace in Europe would only be secure if strong economic and political ties with Russia were achieved. Unfortunately for Germany, this belief, and the hope that Putin was at least somewhat democratic, entrenched it into dependence on Russian energy exports. For decades Germany was characterized by a “stubborn unwillingness to oppose Russia”. Time will tell if German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is up to the task of reversing decades of foreign policy towards Russia and reasserting Germany’s authority and influence on “accelerating geopolitical shifts”.

For Putin, It’s All About the Money—And I Learned That the Hard Way

Bill Browder, Time
Read the full article here

From 1996 to 2005, Bill Browder ran the largest foreign investment company in Russia with a business model centered on buying undervalued shares in Russian companies, exposing the corruption of the companies, and then watching their share prices go up as the companies were forced to clean up their act. Unsurprisingly, the oligarchs making the millions of dollars off of the corruption were not very pleased and Browder and his firm were kicked out of Russia in 2006. This same year, Browder’s firm reported $1 billion in profit, paid $230 million in taxes to Russia and then moved to London, swearing off Russia. However, “Russia was not done with me”. Putin and his cronies flipped the narrative on Browder and his firm, saying that they were the ones working with corrupt American officials to launder money and defraud the Russian government. Tragically, Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was arrested and murdered for testifying against Russian officials. His death brought to life the Magnitsky Act which says that Russian human rights violators will have their assets frozen in the West, and had more specific implications for the beneficiaries of the crime Magnitsky had originally exposed. Putin retaliated against the act because, as Browder puts it, “The Magnitsky Act put all of his wealth and power at risk. That made him a very angry man. His crusade against the Magnitsky Act wasn’t just philosophical, it was personal.” Browder goes on to tell the fascinating story of how Putin publicly requested that former President Donald Trump exchange Browder himself for the extradition of 12 Russian officers who were indicted by a US grand jury. Given his years of experience up-close-and-personal with Putin’s vast network of corruption, Browder believes Putin’s motivation for the invasion of Ukraine is simply about money. He argues that Putin’s level of corruption – the source of his billions of dollars of wealth – is unsustainable. Russia presents itself as a democracy but its people are deprived of a decent standard of living all the while Putin and his regime are living lavishly with their yachts and private jets. Eventually, people will get angry and Putin has seen the consequences of this around him in Kazakhstan and Belarus where dictators have fallen (or nearly fallen) from power. So, what did Putin do? – “So Putin dug into the dictator’s playbook and started a war.”