This has been definitely the week of Central European security, with both the Warsaw Security Forum and the Riga Conference. I was delighted and honored to be invited to attend and speak at both, a chance to do the usual networking, hear a variety of interesting perspectives, pontificate, and also to see Warsaw for (to my shame) the first time and renew my acquaintanceship with Riga (always a pleasure). At the WSF, I participated in the opening panel on ‘The Rise of the West in a post-Western World’ alongside two former presidents (Saakashvili of Georgia and Landsbergis of Lithuania) and a former foreign minister (Jeremič of Serbia) ably chaired by Katarzyna Pisarska.  Am not sure whether or not the session will be made available on line (I’ll update this blog with a link, if so), but the event also provided an opportunity for Brian Whitnore of RFE/RL and me to record an episode of The Power Vertical podcast face to face, for a change. (more…)

For the next instalment of my kinda-regular roundups, here are (to the best of my knowledge) all my publications from mid-August to the end of October 2015, linked where possible.

‘Russian bear should be more cuddly, less snarly,’ Moscow Times, 12 August

‘Why Russia is not an existential threat for the West,’ Russia! magazine, 18 August

‘Museums show Russia’s big security problem,’ Moscow Times, 25 August

‘Boozing through the Soviet Afghan war was more horrifying than you can imagine,’ War On The Rocks, 5 September

‘Kremlin’s “shadow power” tarnishes its image,’ Moscow Times, 6 September

‘STOLYPIN: Can Putin really be syrious?‘, Business New Europe, 7 September

‘Yakunin and the Systemic Virtues of a Generous Retirement‘, Russia! magazine, 16 September

‘Book Review: Global gangs: street violence across the world. Edited by Jennifer Hazen and Dennis Rodgers‘, International Affairs, 16 September

‘Putin and Trump have a lot in common,’ Moscow Times, 22 September

‘Russia to defend core Syrian government areas,’ Jane’s Intelligence Review, 22 September (with Jonathan Spyrer: he wrote the stuff from Damascus’s perspective, I wrote the Russian material)

‘Zaslon — Russia’s ultra-secretive special ops in Syria,’ War Is Boring, 5 October (not technically by me, but essentially recycling my findings)

‘Russia in Syria: Putin’s hard sell of quick victory against Isis could come back to haunt him,‘ International Business Times, 6 October

‘West must play it cool with Putin,’ Moscow Times, 6 October

‘Wikistrat Report: Russia in Syria — tactical masterstroke, strategic risk,’ Wikistrat, 7 October

‘STOLYPIN: The limits of Russia’s “patriotic mobilization”‘, Business New Europe, 12 October

‘Crime, Kleptocracy, and Politics: Developments in Modern Russia‘, videocast talk at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, 13 October

‘West has lost the right to lecture Putin,’ Moscow Times, 20 October

‘Most of Russia’s military still “rubbish” despite Ukraine, Syria deployments‘, Reuters, 20 October — connects to podcast I recorded for the War College series, playable through this page or available on iTunes.

‘Russia: Economics may dent Russian police reform,’ Oxford Analytica, 26 October

‘Putin’s Spies and Security Men: His Strongest Allies, His Greatest Weakness’, Russian Analytical Digest No. 173: Russia and Regime Security, October

I was delighted to be able to discuss Russia, crime, corruption, politics, geopolitics and kleptocracy — all subjects close to my heart — yesterday at the Hudson Institute under the auspices of its Kleptocracy Initiative. The event was livestreamed and is now available through the Hudson’s YouTube channel here. The central point? That Russia is a kleptocracy in many ways but certainly not just a kleptocracy. There is also a rational state and people who want to do their jobs on one side, and a state-building project on the other, and what is distinctive about Russia today is:

• the way that kleptocracy has been harnessed by the state as an instrument for both domestic and international purposes; and
• the interconnected, post-ideological world in which Russia operates.

Poroshenko was in bullish form at the UN General Assembly but was apparently very worried about the Putin-Obama handshake, worrying that Washington would make some deal over Syria at Ukraine’s expense. Perhaps he should have been looking at Europe, instead. The ever-perceptive Leonid Bershidsky has an interesting piece in Bloomberg where he suggests that France and Germany have in effect told Ukrainian President Poroshenko that he has to make peace with the separatists, through pushing through a new election law for the Donbas and an amnesty for separatist leaders to allow them to contest the vote:

The way Merkel and Hollande see it, Poroshenko should be interested in working to reintegrate the rebel-held areas into Ukraine, which would mean contesting the election and, in case of an almost certain defeat, working with the winners. That’s the European way of doing things; trying to enlist outside support to defeat the separatists is not, especially when Europe has plenty of problems of its own.

Inevitably, Kiev’s partisans will see this as a betrayal and playing into Putin’s hands, as the new plan puts the onus on Poroshenko to get the law through his recalcitrant legislature. In the process, what seemed almost certain – that at year’s end, while Kiev comes into for some criticism, Moscow and the Donbas rebels get the lion’s share of the blame for the (inevitable) failure of Minsk-2 – now looks much less clear. After all, the burden is on Poroshenko and Minsk-2 implicitly just history.

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When Russia! magazine adopted its shiny new format, older articles were archived in a different place, under old.readrussia.com. Unfortunately, search engines will generally take people fruitlessly and frustratingly to the former URL, so to make people’s life easier, here is a list helpfully compiled by my assistant Julie Baldyga of the archives pieces, by date, linked to their new homes:

• Blue Lights may give Red Signal to Corruption, 14/4/2015
• If the Hit on Boris Nemtsov Was Meant to Intimidate, It Failed, 3/3/2015
• A Machiavellian Muscovite Strategy for Ukraine, 24/2/ 2015
• No Tanks on Moscow’s Lawns, 12/1/2015
• Moscow’s Pre-Crisis Pre-Christmas, 26/12/2014
• Russia’s New Money Launderer: Vladimir Putin, 8/12/2014
• (Semi-)Automatic for the People, 2/12/2014
• Is This a War of Values? I Hope Not, 31/10/2014
• Iron Felix’s Slow Return From The Grave, 7/10/2014
• The Mythical Moscow Maidan, 17/9/2014
• Strelkov, Putin’s Other Rebellious Child, 18/7/2014
• Vicious Turf Wars and a Searching Press: two sides of Paradoxical Russia, 4/7/2014
• Strelkov: Historian with a Mission, 15/6/2014
• Deconstructing Victory Day, 10/5/ 2014
• Pity the Winner in Eastern Ukraine?, 6/5/2014
• The New Great Gamers: Covert, Civilian and Clueless Soldiers of the Modern Battlespace, 11/4/2014
• Will ‘Goblin’ Make Crimea a “Free Crime Zone”?, 7/3/2014
• My Lessons of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, 16/2/2014
• Spectacular Olympic Opening is a Metaphor for Putin’s Vision for Russia, 18/2/2014
• The “Novosibirsk Jamaat” and the Homegrown Terror Threat, 29/1/2014

It is behind a paywall, alas, but I just wanted to note that Bearing Down: Russia to defend core Syrian government areas, a composite article on the Russians in Syria (me on the Russian side of things, Jonathan Spyer of the Rubin Center on the Syrian dimension) has come out in Jane’s Intelligence Review. There’s a short extract here, and some of the interested satellite photography has also made it into the general press. There has been a great deal of discussion about the deployment of Naval Infantry, Su-25 bombers and the like, but I did want to quote one paragraph of mine to highlight another aspect of the Russian commitment:

There is also a team from the Russian military Main Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoye razvedyvatelnoye upravleniye: GRU) attached to its Syrian counterparts, the Mukhabarat, working in the Ministry of Defence building on Umayyad Square, Damascus, according to IHS Jane’s sources. Western intelligence sources have also told IHS Jane’s that a small special forces team in Damascus is reporting neither to the GRU or to regular military cells, but instead to the Russian embassy on Omar Ben Al-Khattab Street. This implies that it may therefore be a unit from Zaslon, the highly-secretive special forces of the Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki: SVR).

So first of all I think it’s important to note the extent to which the Russians may also be playing an increasing role in intelligence operations and military planning. Understandable, and they may well do some good for the regime. However, if we look at the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, while working alongside the locals can sometimes breed exasperation, even contempt, it can also lead to a Stockholm Syndrome of sorts as the outsiders begin to acquire an emotional commitment to their in-country counterparts. I wonder how this will affect the reporting going back to Moscow, and and if they will press for greater deployments when — I suppose if, but honestly I expect when — the war continues to go badly for Damascus.

But at the same time if that SF unit is from Zaslon — and that is just my speculation based on what little I have heard, and the way the reporting chain is not what I would expect for military Spetsnaz — then that would suggest that Moscow is at least willing to contemplate the possibility of the fall of the regime. The last time I heard with any confidence of Zaslon being deployed (other than a few individuals in extreme diplomatic protection missions) was to Baghdad in the final days of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Then, their role was to secure (retrieve or destroy) particular documents, military tech and whatever else Moscow wanted to ensure did not end up in American hands. It could be that, as higher tech Russian kit begins to bolster the regime’s capabilities, Zaslon is being deployed again as a precautionary measure.