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The world is in turmoil, and in Washington, we have a lame-duck Congress and a lame-duck Administration. Both are rushing to accomplish things before their time runs out.
Great focus is given to the plans of the incoming Trump Administration both in Washington and across the globe, and, of course, there is great concern about what the new Administration will do regarding Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine.
A few weeks ago, President-elect Trump reported he had called Vladimir Putin and advised Russia not to escalate.
Putin’s response essentially was to flip our incoming President the bird!
Not only has Russia significantly escalated the rocket and drone attacks on Ukraine and the people of Ukraine, but Russian television “congratulated” Mrs. Trump on her husband's reelection by showing nude and semi-nude photographs of her on live television – something that would not have happened without Putin’s OK.
And, of course, Putin and his various mouthpieces continue their overused and worn-out threats of nuclear war, which nevertheless succeed in getting great attention and cause ongoing pathetic self-deterrence in the West.
TIME TO GET REAL
What is not being paid attention to is the FACT that Russia is methodically bringing Ukrainian nuclear power plants closer to severe nuclear disasters. Russia’s huffing and puffing about using tactical nuclear weapons is attention-grabbing, but even their use would pale in comparison to another Chornobyl.
The United Nations Nuclear Energy Agency has since 2022 been tracking nuclear power plant incidents in Ukraine. Below is the link to the NEA's tracking report about the four operational NPPs in Ukraine - just reading the incident reports for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant for the past six months will make your skin crawl.
https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_66130/ukraine-current-status-of-nuclear-power-installations
WHERE IS THE CONCERN? WHERE IS THE WESTERN RESPONSE?
The United States – current and incoming administrations – and allies should be making it clear that any Ukrainian nuclear power plant-related "accident" will not be viewed as/considered as "an accident" but as an act of war, and countries can act in accordance with their nuclear doctrines/NATO commitments to mutual defense.
Russia’s war in Ukraine and throughout the globe is not pausing until a new administration is in place in Washington. We are seen as weak and weaker during this lame-duck period.
Russia’s perception of the United States must be changed by concrete action, and opportunities to defeat Russia are available.
The current Administration has never stated its strategic objective—“with Ukraine as long as it takes”—and has established no objective around which operational goals could be set and realized.
“Going to stop the war” might sound like a strategic objective, but in the context of Russia being the enemy – and Russia is our enemy – these are hollow words. Putin will not stop until he is stopped. When and how are we going to see that is done?
It can be done – with the United States providing the means for Ukrainians to succeed.
BELOW THERE ARE TWO ARTICLES
The first from Politico is in which Eric Edelman and David J. Kramer, both members of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation’s Friends of Ukraine Network (FOUN) show how President-elect Trump can change perceptions and take control through strength.
The second is by Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist and former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council who is chair of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation’s Friends of Ukraine Network (FOUN) Reimagining, Reconstruction, and Recovery of Ukraine Task Force.
Russia’s war-impacted economy does not get the attention it deserves. There are abundant opportunities to break Putin’s war machine.
POLITICO
Putin Thinks the U.S. Is Weak. Trump Can Show Him We’re Not.
Don’t make a bad deal to end the war.
Politico included a photo of Ukrainian flags being displayed in front of the White House – I included a relevant cartoon.
By Eric Edelman and David J. Kramer | 12/06/2024 10:00 AM EST
Eric S. Edelman was undersecretary of defense for policy from 2005-2009 and is counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
David J. Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova from 2005-2008.
Whether to push Ukraine toward a peace deal with Russia is shaping up to be one of the first and most important foreign policy decisions to face the second Trump administration. A thousand days into Russia’s latest round of brutal aggression in Ukraine, some are advising President-elect Donald Trump to pressure Ukraine to give up territory and its desire to join NATO to reach a peace agreement, while others see a hasty capitulation to Russia’s demands as creating more problems than it solves by emboldening Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
We’ve both served in top foreign policy posts in Republican administrations, and we think that Trump’s stated foreign policy aims — particularly “peace through strength” — would be best accomplished by continuing to support Ukraine and standing up to Putin. The pro-Ukraine camp in his new administration has a chance to convince him of that — if they make the right case.
Here’s the argument we would make if we were advising Trump on Ukraine.
President Trump, your return to the White House comes amid a growing chorus of voices calling for negotiations with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, especially given a rising consensus that the situation on the battlefield has deteriorated and that the outlook for Ukraine has grown more perilous. Ukrainians as well as their Western supporters, this line of argument goes, are suffering from war fatigue.
But the fact that many in the United States are ready to sell out Ukraine doesn’t mean it’s the best move. In fact, it would not only not end the war but it would create an even bigger menace to the United States in the form of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Since your election victory, Putin has ignored your reported request to not escalate the war. In fact, he’s done exactly that, including launching an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to be a successor to a missile the Russians were developing in violation of the INF Treaty, from which you rightly withdrew. He continues to rain down missiles and drones on Ukrainian civilian targets and energy supplies, inflicting horrible harm on Ukraine’s citizens. He shows no interest in any negotiated settlement — unless it would be one in which he could declare victory by keeping significant Ukrainian territory, nullifying Ukraine’s goal of NATO membership, dictating Ukraine’s leadership, and leaving a rump Ukraine that would be vulnerable to renewed aggression.
Such a deal is not something you should want to own. Even entering into negotiations on this basis could lead to a Ukrainian collapse that would mar your first year in office.
What’s more, such a deal would be a display of weakness, one that Putin would exploit and the Chinese leadership would view as an opening for its ambitions toward Taiwan. Iranian leaders would also read it as a withdrawal of the United States from the global stage and open season for their designs against Israel. Cutting a deal on Ukraine that favors Putin, in other words, would lead to greater instability and escalation around the world, maybe even World War III.
The better approach is stand up to Putin and support a Ukrainian victory over Russian forces. Helping Ukraine win is not only the right thing to do, but it would advance U.S. national security, send a warning to U.S. enemies and bolster your new presidency and America’s standing in the world.
Putin started this war and he’s the one who could end it tomorrow. The problem is that he still thinks he can defeat Ukraine, replace its leaders and occupy large chunks of the country, which he doesn’t view as a separate, independent state. He also thinks he can outlast the West. You have an opportunity, even a duty, to prove Putin wrong.
To be sure, nobody wants the war to end sooner than Ukrainians themselves. They are the ones fighting and tragically dying from Putin’s barbaric aggression. But the many crimes against humanity committed by Russian forces against Ukrainian children, soldiers who have surrendered, and average citizens have strengthened many Ukrainians’ determination to see this war through to victory. We shouldn’t force them into a bad deal with Putin.
It is true that Ukrainians are frustrated and demoralized by the Biden administration’s dilatory responses to Ukrainian requests for specific weapons systems, despite the recent partial easing of restrictions on the use of U.S.-made systems to counter Russia’s escalation of the conflict. Your election offers you an opening to do what the outgoing administration failed to do: Speed up the decision-making process to provide Ukraine the weapons it needs.
Owing to Biden’s delays, the Ukrainians have been fighting with one hand tied behind their back. Still, their indigenous development of drone capabilities has delivered serious blows to Russia’s efforts and demonstrated its ability to reach distant targets inside Russia. Imagine what the Ukrainians could have accomplished had the West delivered the assistance Ukraine needed, when it needed it? Imagine how much worse off Russia would be were it not for help from U.S. adversaries including Iran, North Korea and China. Imagine what you can do by untying Ukraine’s hands and letting them fight with the support from the United States that they need.
And don’t believe Putin’s nuclear bluster. Ukraine and the West have already crossed so many so-called Russian red lines — not least Ukraine’s August incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk oblast — that Putin’s threats to use tactical nuclear weapons have lost much of their credibility. (Sadly, Putin continues to ring that bell hoping that, like Pavlov’s proverbial dogs, the U.S. continues to self-deter.)
Even though it’s outnumbered and now faces the introduction of more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers onto the battlefield, Ukraine has managed to destroy Russia’s Black Sea fleet; regain more than 50 percent of the territory Russia occupied in the initial stages of the full-scale invasion; inflict losses of more than 700,000 Russians killed and wounded; and taken over chunks of the Kursk region.
Yes, Russian forces are on a very slow, but accelerating march in the Donbas part of Ukraine, but at enormous cost. Western intelligence agencies estimate that September and October were Russia’s bloodiest months in the full-scale war. The North Koreans’ arrival signaled both a disturbing widening of the conflict but also Putin’s desperation to avoid a second mobilization that risks angering Russians in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He does not have enough troops to win unless he risks serious domestic unrest.
Putin is at a turning point. The economic costs of the “special military operation” are beginning to take their toll. The Russian government reportedly has cut by two-thirds its compensation payment to soldiers not “gravely” wounded in the war (from the equivalent of $33,000 down to $11,000). Official inflation is running at 9 percent per year. Government interest rates are at 21 percent. Labor shortages abound. The Bank of Russia now estimates 2025 GDP growth at a paltry 0.5-1.5 percent, and the ruble is plummeting in value. Russia can’t afford to keep up the war much longer.
Cutting off U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and rushing to negotiate will not lead to a lasting settlement. Although sources supposedly close to the Kremlin like to highlight Putin’s openness to a deal, spokesman Dmitri Peskov recently pointed out that simply “freezing the conflict” along current lines of contact wouldn’t be acceptable to the Russian leader. Putin is trying to signal that he has the upper hand, but he doesn’t.
What’s more, an imposed settlement on Ukraine would create dangers for the United States from other parts of the world. It would make Taiwan more vulnerable to Chinese aggression by potentially communicating to President Xi Jinping that he, too, could get away with such a move. It would signal an American retreat from the global stage and risk reinforcing the impression — like the one that followed Biden’s abysmal 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan — that the United States is an unreliable security partner.
You can do better than the outgoing administration did.
And don’t be fooled by those who worry about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. Welcoming Ukraine into NATO would be a complicated undertaking, for sure, but rejecting the prospect would be an unmistakable sign of weakness, grant Putin a de facto veto over NATO membership, and remove the most certain deterrent you have to future aggression from Russia.
Should the Ukrainians decide that it’s time to sit down with their Russian invaders and negotiate an end to the war, that would be their call to make. Pressuring them into doing so would demoralize their fighters on the front lines and undermine any leverage that you and the Ukrainians would have to actually get a deal.
Finally, supporting Ukrainian victory over Russia would enable the United States to focus more on China. It would allow the United States to reaffirm its leadership on the global stage and demonstrate that “peace through strength” works.
You have a golden opportunity to use your second term to demonstrate the return of American strength and leadership by helping Ukraine win and making sure Putin’s defiance and aggression aren’t rewarded.
Project Syndicate
The Battle Over Russia’s Central Bank Heats Up
Project Syndicate included a photo of central-bank governor Elvira Nabiullina. I substituted this cartoon.
Nov 11, 2024 Anders Åslund
In recent weeks, prominent Russian oligarchs have openly criticized the bank’s governor, Elvira Nabiullina, fueling speculation that she is about to be dismissed over her inability to control inflation. The question now is whether President Vladimir Putin will replace her with an unqualified loyalist.
STOCKHOLM – Almost three years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the West’s financial sanctions have finally started to bite, triggering fierce infighting within the Kremlin over control of Russia’s central bank.
Russia’s business community has remained largely silent over the past two years, even as Western sanctions triggered a surge in real interest rates. In recent weeks, however, business leaders have openly criticized central-bank governor Elvira Nabiullina, who has held her post since 2013 and reportedly sought to resign at the start of the war in 2022.
While Nabiullina’s position appears increasingly precarious, the Kremlin continues to insist that the sanctions have only strengthened the economy, making it more self-sufficient. This claim is patently false, as evidenced by Russian officials’ repeated calls for the West to lift its restrictions. In fact, since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, economic sanctions have triggered three major exchange-rate crises: in March-April 2014, February-March 2022, and July-August 2023. Each time, Nabiullina managed to contain the fallout by hiking interest rates.
But things have changed. On October 25, the central bank raised its key interest rate from 19% to 21%, citing inflation concerns. In its statement, the bank noted that “inflation expectations continue to increase” and that growth in domestic demand is “significantly outstripping” the economy’s capacity to expand the supply of goods and services. The statement added that increased government spending and the growing budget deficit have “pro-inflationary effects,” necessitating further monetary tightening.
With official inflation at 9% and a real interest rate of 12%, Russia’s long-dormant economic-policy debate is heating up. But the dominant voices are no longer those of actual economists, because most independent experts have fled the country to avoid imprisonment. Instead, three prominent oligarchs have recently spoken out against the central bank’s interest-rate hikes. While the outspoken Oleg Deripaska’s criticism was hardly surprising, Alexei Mordashov, who owns the Severstal steel conglomerate, typically chooses his words carefully. In late October, Mordashov acknowledged that “the need to raise rates to limit inflation is clear” but warned, “We are coming to a situation where the medicine may become more dangerous than the disease.”
Both Deripaska and Mordashov have broad support among Russia’s business elite. But the real shock came when Sergei Chemezov, CEO of the state-owned weapons and technology giant Rostec, rebuked Nabiullina in a speech before the Federation Council (Russia’s upper legislative chamber), arguing that repeated rate hikes would lead to the bankruptcy of most enterprises.
Chemezov also warned that elevated interest rates might force Rostec to halt exports of high-tech products. Several other prominent business figures have voiced similar concerns, marking the first time since President Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s war against Ukraine that he has faced open opposition to his economic policies.
Since 2004, Putin and his cronies have amassed fortunes by rigging public contracts and systematically stripping the energy giant Gazprom’s assets, as documented by the late Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov in their 2008 booklet Putin and Gazprom. But European sanctions have turned Gazprom’s once-enormous profits into huge losses, diminishing the financial clout of Putin’s longtime allies – the “Gazprom parasites,” including Mikhail and Yury Kovalchuk and Gennady Timchenko.
As Milov recently argued, Chemezov has emerged as the dominant figure among Putin’s business allies. Despite having few qualifications beyond his past KGB service alongside Putin in Dresden, he has leveraged this relationship to secure control of Russia’s armaments industry, now consolidated under the company Rostec, which, backed by federal funding (though its finances remain a state secret), oversees roughly 80% of Russia’s defense production.
Chemezov is also a major beneficiary of the war in Ukraine. Recent shifts in government personnel – most notably, the dismissal of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu – have worked in Chemezov’s favor, as Shoigu no longer dares to complain about Rostec’s substandard products. Meanwhile, Chemezov’s top protégé, Denis Manturov, has been promoted to First Deputy Prime Minister. Both Manturov and Alexei Dyumin, another Chemezov ally, now hold seats on the powerful Security Council.
I knew Nabiullina in the 1990s, when she was a widely respected member of Russia’s liberal camp. In 2013, a fierce struggle erupted within Putin’s inner circle over who would lead the central bank – a liberal or a statist. The main contenders were Alexei Kudrin, the liberal ex-finance minister, and the statist hardliner Sergey Glazyev. As Putin’s economic adviser at the time, Nabiullina led the liberals to victory, aided by Putin’s lingering fear of a repeat of the 1998 financial crash that brought down Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko’s government.
Nabiullina’s current priorities seem to be to control inflation, reduce capital flight, stabilize the ruble, and support GDP growth, which is projected to fall to 0.5-1.5% in 2025, down from this year’s expected 3.6% rate. But, having failed to curb inflation, she will likely be dismissed. Her trusted first deputy, Ksenia Yudaeva, was demoted in 2023 and reassigned to the International Monetary Fund. At the recent BRICS summit in Kazan, Putin even made a cruel joke at Nabiullina’s expense, leaving her visibly distressed.
The question now is whether Putin will replace Nabiullina with an unqualified loyalist who will slash interest rates, allow inflation and capital outflows to surge, and send the ruble into a tailspin. Given that Russia’s economic crisis is a direct consequence of Putin’s invasion and subsequent Western sanctions, the only way to stabilize Russia’s economy is to end the war and pull its forces out of Ukraine.
Anders Åslund is the author of Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (Yale University Press, 2019).
ROBERT MCCONNELL
Co-Founder, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation
Director of External Affairs, Friends of Ukraine Network
The introduction is Mr. McConnell’s and does not necessarily represent the views of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation or those of the Friends of Ukraine Network (FOUN).