Russia’s Navalny describes harsh reality at ‘Polar Wolf’ Arctic prison
Andrew Osborn and Olzhas Auyezov – December 26, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at a court hearing via video link
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Tuesday confirmed his arrival at what he described as a snow-swept prison above the Arctic Circle and said he was in excellent spirits despite a tiring 20-day journey to get there.
Navalny posted an update on X via his lawyers after his allies lost touch with him for more than two weeks while he was in transit with no information about where he was being taken, prompting expressions of concern from Western politicians.
His spokeswoman said on Monday that Navalny, 47, had been tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony north of the Arctic Circle located in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region about 1,900 km (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
“I am your new Father Frost,” Navalny wrote jokingly in his first post from his new prison, a reference to the harsh weather conditions there.
“Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (traditional Russian winter footwear).
“The 20 days of the transfer were quite tiring, but I’m still in an excellent mood, as Father Frost should be.”
Navalny’s new home, known as “the Polar Wolf” colony, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Most prisoners there have been convicted of grave crimes. Winters are harsh – and temperatures are due to drop to around minus 28 Celsius (minus 18.4 Fahrenheit) there over the next week.
About 60 km (40 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, the prison was founded in the 1960s as part of what was once the GULAG system of forced Soviet labour camps, according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, has said she believes the decision to move him to such a remote and inhospitable location was designed to isolate him, make his life harder, and render it more difficult for his lawyers and allies to access him.
Navalny, who thanked his supporters for their concern about his welfare during his long transfer, said he had seen guards with machineguns and guard dogs and had gone for a walk in the exercise yard which he said was located in a neighbouring cell, the floor of which he said was covered with snow.
Otherwise, he said he had just seen the perimeter fence out of a cell window. He said he had also seen one of his lawyers.
Navalny, who denies all the charges he has been convicted of, says he has been imprisoned because he is viewed as a threat by the Russian political elite.
The Kremlin says he is a convicted criminal and has portrayed him and his supporters as extremists with links to the CIA intelligence agency who they say is seeking to destabilise Russia.
Navalny earned admiration from Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
In his social media post, he told supporters he was unfazed by what he was facing.
“Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m awfully glad I finally made it here,” said Navalny.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Olzhas AuyezovEditing by Angus MacSwan, William Maclean)
Kremlin confirms Russian warship hit by Ukrainian strike
AFP – December 26, 2023
This photograph posted on the Telegram channel @VentdeCrimee shows a warship damaged in a Ukrainian attack in Russian-controlled Crimea (Handout)
The Kremlin on Tuesday acknowledged a Ukrainian attack had damaged a warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia in what Ukraine and its Western allies called a major setback for the Russian navy.
Ukraine said its air force destroyed the Novocherkassk landing ship, with President Volodymyr Zelensky joking on social media that the vessel had now joined “the Russian underwater Black Sea fleet”.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu informed “about the damage to our large landing ship” to President Vladimir Putin in “a very detailed report”, the president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Russia’s defence ministry said that the ship was damaged by guided aerial missiles.
Ukraine’s military said its air force destroyed the Russian naval ship in a missile attack on the eastern Crimean port.
The Ukrainian defence ministry wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the “Novocherkassk landing ship was destroyed in Feodosia tonight”.
It published an unattributed photo showing flames and smoke in a port at night.
– Black Sea dominance –
“Ukraine’s aviation did an excellent job. Crimea is Ukraine. There is no place for the occupier’s fleet here,” the ministry wrote.
In his post on social media, Zelensky wrote: “The occupiers will not have a single peaceful place in Ukraine”.
The attack comes after Ukraine struck the Black Sea fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol in September, forcing Moscow to move warships to ports further east.
British defence minister Grant Shapps wrote on Twitter that “this latest destruction of Putin’s navy demonstrates that those who believe there’s a stalemate in the Ukraine war are wrong!”
“Russia’s dominance in the Black Sea is now challenged,” he added.
Ukraine nevertheless announced a setback on the eastern front Tuesday.
Commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny said that troops had pulled back in the town of Maryinka, which is close to the key Russian-held city of Donetsk.
He said troops were still present on the outskirts, after Russia on Monday claimed to fully control the town.
– Ship ‘transported Shaheds’ –
Ukraine’s air force said that its tactical aviation attacked the Novocherkassk with cruise missiles at around 0030 GMT in the area of Feodosia.
Videos posted on social media showed a fire on the horizon in a port area, followed by a loud explosion that sent up a ball of fire and was apparently followed by multiple explosions.
Ukraine’s armed forces said that “on board of the ship were Shahed drones that Russia uses for attacks on Ukrainian cities”.
Ukraine frequently carries out strikes in Crimea, particularly targeting the Russian military.
In April 2022, it sank the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea fleet.
The Novocherkassk was previously used by Russia for its military intervention in Syria.
The governor of the Russian-annexed peninsula, Sergei Aksyonov, wrote on Telegram: “Sadly, one person was killed and two others were wounded in an enemy attack on Feodosia.”
Crimea’s Krym 24 television reported that two had been hospitalised in a moderately severe condition.
Aksyonov said earlier that the city’s port was cordoned off following “an enemy attack” that caused a “detonation” and fire.
Six buildings were damaged, mostly with broken windows, the governor said, and some local residents have been evacuated.
Instead of $32,000, crippled Russian soldier given two buckets of carrots, onions — photo
The New Voice of Ukraine – December 26, 2023
A Russian soldier, who was seriously injured in the war against Ukraine, was compensated by local authorities in the form of vegetables
A Russian soldier from Volgograd Oblast, who was seriously injured fighting against Ukraine, has been compensated by local authorities with kilograms of vegetables, the Telegram news channel iStories reported on Dec. 26.
Oleg Rybkin, 45-years-old, was mobilized on Sept. 25, 2022 and found himself near the village of Robotyne, Zaporizhzhya Oblast, just as the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated the settlement.
However, she was actually lucky, as the residents of Rostov Oblast only received a brick with an ante-mortem message instead of their son, who died in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s effort to isolate Russia’s economy through ‘International Sponsors of War’ list
Daniil Ukhorskiy – December 25, 2023
Editor’s Note: This story was sponsored by the Ukrainian think-tank Center for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM).
What do a Snickers bar, an Oreo cookie, and Haagen-Dazs ice cream have in common?
Apart from being beloved sweet treats, these products are manufactured by companies that were named “international sponsors of war” by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) for fuelling Russia’s economy and its war effort against Ukraine.
While some multinational corporations left Russia following the full-scale invasion in 2022, many stayed behind. Household names such as Unilever, Nestlé, and Mondelez offered a range of excuses for their continued presence in Russia. These companies are not targeted by international sanctions since they do not directly contribute to Russia’s war machine. But according to Ukrainian officials, they might as well be: the tax money that these companies pay into Russia’s coffers may be used to finance its military.
The sponsors of war list is a form of “soft sanctions” that harnesses the power of public pressure. Some companies left Russia after being listed, which the NACP claims as their success. In other cases, the Agency negotiated with companies, securing promises to cut ties with Russia. Some of these commitments are yet to be fulfilled.
The “soft sanctions” approach is praised by academia and civil society alike. Yet, some say Ukraine’s policy on isolating Russia’s economy is too arbitrary, and a centralized policy is needed to achieve victory on the economic front.
Multinationals’ Russia Problem
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the thousands of international businesses operating in Russia faced immense pressure to leave the Russian market.
McDonald’s was one of the first massive corporations to cut ties, halting sales in March 2022 and announcing a complete withdrawal two months later.
Multinationals are an important part of Russia’s economy. According to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which hosts the most comprehensive tracker of international businesses operating in Russia, these companies contributed $25 billion to the Russian GDP in 2021, and paid $2.9 billion in taxes in 2022, according to KSE and their NGO partner on the project, the B4Ukraine coalition.
According to KSE and B4Ukraine, the three most profitable sectors for multinationals in Russia are alcohol and tobacco, mass-market consumer goods, and automobiles.
According to the KSE, after April 2022, the flood of companies leaving Russia turned into a drip. The KSE chart shows that most companies decided on whether to leave by summer 2022 at the latest.
A plateau of companies that made commitments to leave (in blue) shows that after an initial surge, few multinationals decided to exit Russia. (Graph by Nizar Al-Rifai)
Shutting the door on Russia isn’t always simple, even for the companies that want to. A recent investigation by the New York Times showed that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is making withdrawal difficult and costly for foreign companies and enriching Russia in the process.
More than 1,600 foreign companies have continued business as usual in Russia. When challenged about their continued presence, some companies such as Unilever claim only to sell essential goods, while Nestlé cited worries about abandoning their staff, and Carlsberg claims to be unable to find buyers for their business.
These excuses proved thin. Dutch brewer Heineken sold its entire Russian business for the symbolic sum of one euro, showing that withdrawal is possible if a company is ready to take a financial hit. Unilever continued to sell ice cream, under the guise of “essential goods.”
The Kyiv Independent reached out to Unilever, Nestle, and Carlsberg but hasn’t gotten a response as of publication time.
Ultimately, most companies are cynical and profit-driven, and we cannot expect otherwise, says Glib Kanievskyi, co-founder of StateWatch, a Ukrainian transparency watchdog. Any tools that seek to isolate Russia economically must take this into account.
Who are the “sponsors of war’?
The International Sponsors of War list, launched in summer 2022, is an initiative that seeks to turn public opinion against multinationals that stay in Russia and use public pressure to incentivize withdrawal.
Of more than 1,600 foreign companies that stayed in Russia according to KSE, only 45 are listed as sponsors of war. According to Agia Zagrebelska, who oversees the sanctions policy direction at the NACP, there are three main criteria for inclusion: a substantial amount paid in taxes to Russia, any direct connections to the military, and broken promises to withdraw from Russia.
She says the NACP receives suggestions about companies from the public and civil society organizations such as StateWatch. These suggestions are then reviewed in line with the Agency’s criteria.
Some listed companies, like Unilever, snack titan Mondelez, and supermarket chain Auchan, are known worldwide for their consumer goods. Thirteen companies are based in China, a key Russian ally and its largest trading partner.
Of the three most profitable sectors identified by KSE and B4Ukraine, the NACP has widely listed alcohol and tobacco, and mass-market consumer product companies, but the automobile sector is still untouched – no Western automobile companies are on the list.
The list’s purpose is to go after a “gray zone” of companies that are not eligible for sanctions, says Zagrebelska. While there are no legal consequences to being listed, the risk of reputational damage can be enough to change company behavior.
Zagrebelska says the list allows consumers to make informed choices about their purchases, thus enacting a “direct democracy” where the public can vote with their wallets.
‘Soft sanctions’ in action
The NACP points to several companies that stopped dealing with Russia as signs of a successful policy. For instance, British manufacturing group Mondi was listed as a sponsor of war in February 2023, given their sizeable operations in Russia. They were removed from the list in November 2023 following a complete withdrawal.
While Zagrebelska admits that it is difficult to prove that the sponsors of war list had a decisive impact, she says the NACP is confident it pushes companies in the right direction.
In other instances, the NACP negotiated extensively with companies. Three Greek shipping companies saw their status change four times as they made and broke promises to the NACP. Finally, the companies were removed for good when they committed to stop shipping Russian oil entirely.
A graph of the Mondelez stock price, the blue square showing the day the company was listed as a sponsor of war by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention. (Graph by Nizar Al-Rifai)
The stock price of Mondelez, the company behind Oreos, Toblerone, and Milka, tumbled by almost five percent after it was labeled a sponsor of war in May 2023. Mondelez has continued its operations in Russia, and its stock price has not recovered.
The snack maker’s financial troubles were likely exacerbated due to a boycott by clients in Sweden and Norway such as Scandinavian Airlines since June 2023. The Nordic companies cited the listing as a sponsor of war as the reason for their decision. Mondelez claimed they were unfairly “singled out.”
The Kyiv Independent reached out to Mondelez but hasn’t heard back as of publication time.
Wrangling with banks
One of the NACP’s most high-profile clashes was with Hungary’s OTP Bank, which operates in Russia and Ukraine and was listed as a sponsor of war in May 2023.
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister known for pro-Russia stances, was outraged by the listing, and Hungarian diplomats pushed back hard, threatening to derail EU sanctions and Ukraine aid discussions in Brussels.
According to NACP’s Zagrebelska, OTP Bank made significant concessions in discussions with EU and Ukrainian officials and demonstrated a concrete plan for withdrawing from Russia, after which the bank was removed from the list in October 2023. She could not share any details of the plan, which is set to be announced in January 2024, with the Kyiv Independent.
Kanievskyi of StateWatch was skeptical of the NACP’s claim of victory over OTP Bank. He said the likelier explanation is that NACP backed down after internal and external pressure. Passing EU sanctions was more important to the Ukrainian government, he said.
A Ukrainian official who worked closely on negotiations over OTP Bank but was not authorized to speak on the record said the NACP listing caused “a lot of fuss.” They said that the listing of OTP Bank held up the 11th EU sanctions package for up to four weeks and that Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was frustrated with the NACP’s position.
Similar discussions are ongoing about Raiffeisen, an Austrian bank with huge operations in Russia. The bank’s status as a sponsor of war was suspended last week, and Zagrebelska said that NACP is awaiting concrete documentation to show its commitment to withdrawing from Russia.
Once again, the NACP’s decision to remove the bank coincided with Austria’s approval of the latest EU sanctions package. Kanievskyi said the NACP folded to pressure, but Zagrebelska maintained her confidence that Raiffaisen will take concrete steps to withdraw from Russia. She also noted that the bank’s status is only suspended, meaning it can be easily reinstated.
Reflecting on the OTP and Raiffeisen cases, Andrii Onopriienko, a policy expert at KSE, recognized that the sponsors of war list is ultimately a political process that uses these negotiations to try and find a favorable compromise for Ukraine.
On OTP and Raiffeisen, the jury is still out. Should the banks’ promises to exit Russia prove empty, the deterrent power of the list may be weakened. On the other hand, if OTP and Raiffeisen show a real commitment to withdrawing from Russia, the “soft sanctions” and negotiation approach may be vindicated as a powerful tool of economic warfare.
Dealing with the devil?
Another source of criticism has been the inclusion of companies that continue to do business in Ukraine. Philip Morris, one of the “big four” tobacco companies, was listed among sponsors of war in August 2023, having announced a $30 million factory project in Lviv Oblast just two months before.
Japan Tobacco International (JTI), another “big four” cigarette maker is also one of the biggest multinationals still active in Russia and Ukraine, and was also listed as a sponsor of war in August 2023.
Kanievskyi questioned the coherence of listing Philip Morris as a sponsor of war and continuing close cooperation with the company. Many companies on the list maintain significant operations in Ukraine, including Unilever, Nestlé, and Mondelez.
According to Kanievskyi, the cause is a lack of a unified policy and legislative framework.
On the Philip Morris deal, Phil Chamberlain from the campaigning organization Expose Tobacco said that preying on countries in difficult situations to get a better deal was straight out of the “Big Tobacco” playbook. According to Chamberlain, a lack of coherent policy only makes it easier for multinationals to take advantage of the war to increase profits.
According to Hlib Kolesov, a lawyer with the Ukrainian think-tank Center for Democracy and Rule of Law, it is hypocritical of tobacco companies to be contributing to Russia’s economy as they claim to support Ukraine amid war.
“On the one hand, tobacco companies position themselves as good partners of Ukraine, investors in its economy, in recovery, but, on the other hand, the same tobacco companies earn money in Russia and pay huge taxes to the budget of the Russian Federation,” Kolesov told European Pravda.
A picture taken on Aug. 21, 2018, shows the research and development campus of cigarette and tobacco manufacturing company Philip Morris International, in Neuchatel, western Switzerland. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet, Ilona Sologoub, an economist and head of the VoxUkraine think tank, recognized the challenges faced by Ukraine’s government in elaborating a coherent policy in this area.
Ultimately, Sologoub agreed with the NACP’s “gray area” logic. She said that “soft sanctions” fill a valuable gap, targeting companies that cannot be sanctioned because of the possible negative impact on Ukraine’s economy.
For NACP’s Zagrebelska the presumable “whitewashing” efforts by Philip Morris and other companies are too little, too late. She said she was confident that consumers can see through the efforts and will continue to pressure companies to exit Russia.
The Kyiv Independent requested a comment from Philip Morris but hasn’t heard back as of publication time.
Coordinated policy
Experts were broadly positive about the sponsors of war list and its contribution to Russian economic isolation. “There is no perfect solution,” said KSE’s Onopriienko, “but it is an all-out war. We all do our part.”
Kanievskyi, whose organization StateWatch collaborates extensively with the NACP, emphasized the lack of central government policy as the biggest challenge for Ukraine in this area.
He said that in the early months of the all-out war, companies were more afraid of reputational damage for staying in Russia, while now many are ready to take the risk. For him, this highlights an urgent need for a centralized policy on sanctions and other economic restrictions from the authorities. Ultimately, he says a lack of a clear policy undermines the communications efforts of the NACP which is crucial to the list’s success.
A lack of centralized policy also led to tensions over OTP Bank, with different Ukrainian government agencies pushing for different outcomes, as recounted by the Ukrainian official who worked closely on internal and external negotiations and who is not authorized to speak with the media.
The NACP and partners are looking to develop new initiatives to isolate Russia economically and increase the effectiveness of sanctions. A newly launched project tracks electronic components used in Russian weapons that continue to bypass sanctions. Zagrebelska said that in early 2024, the Agency plans to launch a mobile application allowing consumers to spot products by companies listed as sponsors or war.
In the meantime, Kanievsky underscores the importance of having a coordinated policy on the sponsors of war list. Lacking proper guidance from the central government, Ukrainian officials and civil society may struggle to do their part in isolating Russia’s wartime economy.
Low-quality shells supplied to Russia by North Korea are injuring its own troops and damaging artillery, Ukraine says
Alia Shoaib – December 23, 2023
North Korea has sent Russia large quantities of artillery shells.
Ukraine’s army said some are defective, causing damage to weapons and injuring Russian soldiers.
Experts have questioned the quality of North Korean ammunition.
Russia is using low-quality, often-defective artillery shells from North Korea that can cause problems on the front lines, Ukraine’s army said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
In some cases, the North Korean-supplied shells damage cannon and mortar barrels and even injure Russian soldiers.
It is particularly a problem in the “Dnepr” grouping of forces operating around the southern Kherson region under the command of Mikhail Teplinsky, according to Ukraine’s army.
Teplinsky, the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, or VDV, was recently put in charge of the area where fighting has raged in recent weeks.
North Korea, one of Russia’s few international allies, has sent it large quantities of ammunition. One South Korean lawmaker estimated that North Korea had sent Russia at least a million shells, Politico reported.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea in August to ask for ammunition amid reports that Russian forces were suffering from shortages.
Trevor Taylor, the director of the Defence, Industries & Society Programme at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, previously told Politico that it was unclear whether the North Korean ammunition was of a reliable quality.
“North Korea runs a war economy, which we don’t,” Taylor said. “But whether the ammunition they are supplying is at the standard of reliability and safety that the Europeans would adhere to is another question.”
Meanwhile, fears of a Ukrainian shell famine are growing as Western military aid shows signs of faltering.
The Kiel Institute, which has tracked aid promised and sent to Ukraine, said in an update earlier this month that while the new US aid package was delayed to next year, the EU’s commitment to supplying one million rounds of ammunition has stalled.
Israel’s war with Hamas could also divert tens of thousands of artillery rounds intended for Ukraine, Axios reported in October.
General Staff: Russia has lost 352,390 troops in Ukraine
The Kyiv Independent – December 23, 2023
Russia has lost 352,390 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported on Dec. 23.
This number includes 1040 casualties Russian forces suffered over the past day.
According to the report, Russia has also lost 5,854 tanks, 10,871 armored fighting vehicles, 10,995 vehicles and fuel tanks, 8,286 artillery systems, 932 multiple-launch rocket systems, 611 air defense systems, 327 airplanes, 324 helicopters, 6,384 drones, 22 ships and boats, and one submarine.
Ukraine’s Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk had said on Dec. that Ukrainian forces downed three Russian Su-34 supersonic fighter-bomber aircraft on the southern front.
Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said a Su-34 has not been included in the statistics of Russian losses for a long time, and each one costs “at least 50 million dollars” on air.
Putin: There must be severe action against ‘foreign agents’ who help Ukraine, destabilize Russia
Nate Ostiller – December 20, 2023
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article said that Sergei Skripal’s wife was injured in the poison attack. Skripal’s daughter Yuliia, not his wife, was injured.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin said that there must be a “severe” response against foreign intelligence services that “directly” support Ukraine and seek to “destabilize the socio-political situation in Russia” in a video address published on the Kremlin’s website on Dec. 20.
Putin has long accused Ukraine of being guided by foreign powers, especially the U.S., and has claimed that its actions are dictated by Washington.
While the U.S. openly supports Ukraine and provides the country with funding, weapons, and strategic military assistance, there is no evidence that U.S. intelligence services actively assist Ukraine on the ground, especially within Russia.
The comments came on Russia’s Security Officer’s Day. Putin congratulated them for their work, particularly in parts of Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in 2022.
He also accused Ukraine of pursuing “state terrorism” by engaging in sabotage and targeted assassinations. He did not elaborate on the statement.
Ukraine occasionally acknowledges its involvement in various operations within Russia, although it does not take direct responsibility.
Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) published a video on Nov. 30 saying that trains in the region around Moscow were disrupted at the end of November “as a result of a special measure implemented together with the resistance movement.”
A pro-Russian former lawmaker, Illia Kyva, who was charged with treason in Ukraine, was assassinated in Moscow Oblast on Dec. 6. in a special operation conducted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), according to the Kyiv Independent’s source in law enforcement.
Russian intelligence is widely believed to be behind a significant number of operations in foreign countries to sow chaos and destabilize society.
Russian operatives have also assassinated perceived opponents of Putin’s regime in foreign countries, such as the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in the U.K. Skripal and his daughter survived the attack, but an innocent passerby who found the poison was killed.
Putin is trying to solve a ‘trilemma’ in Russia’s fragile wartime economy now, a former Russian official says
Huileng Tan – December 18, 2023
Vladimir Putin is trying to solve a “trilemma” in Russia’s economy, a former Russian official has said.
He said Putin needed to keep spending on the war and appear to deliver on the economy.
He also said Putin had to keep macroeconomic stability after imposing extraordinary measures.
Russia’s economy appears to be booming even 21 months into the Ukraine war.
But behind the scenes, Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to solve a tricky “trilemma” as the country’s economy heads into 2024, Alexandra Prokopenko, a former central bank official, has said.
“At the moment, the economy looks resilient. But it’s like Putin navigates it the way he navigates his yacht, as if it’s an icebreaker. But it’s not,” Prokopenko, a former advisor to the Bank of Russia, told the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center think tank in a podcast last week.
Prokopenko, who is now a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, explained this was because Putin needed to negotiate three key issues.
First, he said the Russian leader had to keep spending on the war in Ukraine to keep up economic growth. Russia reported 5.5% GDP growth in the third quarter of this year — reversing a 3.5% decline in the same period last year.
“The current pace of GDP growth is mostly because of these war expenditures, which basically means that once the Russian state stops spending on the war, the growth will stop or slow significantly,” Prokopenko added.
He said that since economic growth would cause inflation, the country’s central bank needed to keep interest rates high to tame war-time price raises. On Friday, Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate to 16% in its fifth straight hike.
Prokopenko said Putin also had to keep up the appearance that he was still delivering because he had a social contract with the people that “everything is going according to plan.” Putin is seeking a fifth term in Russia’s March presidential election when he is almost certain to win.
“War is not a global war, but it’s still a ‘special military operation,’ and people can continue their lives as usual, business as usual,” Prokopenko said.
He said Putin also needed to maintain macroeconomic stability after imposing extraordinary measures such as capital controls and breaking the country’s budget rule to support the flagging ruble.
“Abandoning these institutions means that in the future, it will be more complicated for the financial leadership, for the Kremlin, and for Putin to deal with future shocks,” Prokopenko said.
While Putin’s administration has managed to keep up a rosy facade for Russia’s economy, the country’s official economic statistics are nearly impossible to verify, and reports suggest that much of the country’s growth is due to massive military and government spending.
Prokopenko also cited a key quantitative signal that the Russian economy isn’t quite all it’s hyped up to be.
“Next year, the key rate will be in double digits. It’s also a sign that the economy is not healthy,” said Prokopenko. “If you have a healthy economy and moderate, sustainable growth, you don’t need a double-digit key rate. You don’t need such costly money within the economy.”
Trump’s rhetoric in final campaign sprint goes to new dark extremes
Zachary B. Wolf, CNN –December 17, 2023
Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s rhetoric dropped to a spine-tingling new low this weekend with less than a month before the Iowa caucuses.
The GOP primary front-runner said migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the US and quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin about the “rottenness” of American democracy.
Whipping up thousands of supporters at a New Hampshire hockey rink on Saturday, the former president again drew comparisons to the language of Nazi Germany with the comments about migrants from mostly Africa, Asia and South America “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The language “parrots Adolf Hitler,” President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign alleged. Experts pointed to passages in Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” in which the future dictator called for racial purity and said German blood was being “poisoned” by Jews.
Trump has used the line previously, in an interview with a conservative news outlet, and bringing it out for a rally suggests he could be adding it to his routine.
He drew criticism last month for describing his political rivals as “vermin,” another term that has antisemitic connotations and was employed in Nazi rhetoric.
It’s the repetition of these lines, after their fascist roots are called out, that is more chilling than their first utterance. The former president — who leads Biden in some swing-state polling of a hypothetical rematch — has a long history with language that plays on racial prejudice and excites the right wing.
His recently repeated claim that he wants to be “dictator” for one day to build his border wall and stop immigration could be laughed off as a joke if he didn’t keep saying it.
On Sunday night, at rally in Reno, Nevada — the third GOP-nominating state — Trump claimed, without evidence, that migrants are largely coming from prisons and mental institutions. And he wondered, again without evidence, if Chinese migrants crossing the border are meant to be part of an invading army. Trump promised to reorient the US government to purge migrants. Claiming the US is now a “haven for bloodthirsty criminals,” he said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law, to remove migrants from the country. The former president also promised to divert the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration to border actions.
Invoking authoritarian leaders is no longer a surprise
“He’s a populist, authoritarian narcissist,” the Republican former House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week, before Trump’s most recent comments. “So, historically speaking, all of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good at any given moment.”
Dictators erase freedoms, but Trump — who tried to overturn the 2020 election after he lost — needs an electoral victory to get there. On Saturday, he called his campaign a “righteous campaign to liberate this nation” and said, to cheers, “we are not a free nation.”
It is no longer even jarring when Trump speaks highly of authoritarian leaders, such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un or Hungary’s Viktor Orban, as he did again Saturday in New Hampshire.
But Trump went a step further, twisting around the idea put forward by his rivals, including Biden and former Rep. Liz Cheney, that he is a threat to democracy for trying to overturn the last election.
Instead, Trump now argues, it is Biden who is a “threat to democracy.”
As a way of proving the claim, Trump cited Putin, who said in September that Trump’s legal problems are “politically motivated persecution” that is good for Russia. “‘It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,’” Trump went on, quoting the Russian president.
The truth is that Putin knows about rotten systems and putting political enemies in jail; supporters of Putin’s chief rival, Alexey Navalny, can’t locate the dissident leader who is serving a 19-year prison sentence.
Trump is facing multiple criminal trials. But he will have to be convicted by unanimous juries, assuming he is tried at all. The US Supreme Court, on which three of his appointees sit, has been asked by prosecutors to weigh in on whether Trump, as a former president, is immune from prosecution.
One of Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said the pending trials are contributing to Trump’s increasingly intense rhetoric.
“Donald Trump realizes the walls are closing in,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “He’s becoming crazier. And now he’s citing Vladimir Putin as a character witness, a guy who is a murderous thug all around the world.”
Trump-supporting Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina don’t seem to care much what the former president says.
“We’re talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” although he also made clear he doesn’t agree with the poisoned blood analogy. “I believe in legal immigration. I have no animosity toward people trying to come to our country. I have animosity against terrorists and against drug dealers.”
Trump uses warnings about him to attack opponents
Twisting a warning about him and turning it into a rallying cry for his supporters is a classic Trump tactic.
He didn’t use the term “Fake News” to describe the mainstream media until after Hillary Clinton warned about an epidemic of misinformation, which she called “fake news.” Trump first used the term in a tweet the next day, on December 10, 2016, according to The Washington Post. He’s repeated it so often, including at the New Hampshire event, that now he claims to have invented it.
Similarly, he has frequently and falsely referred to the idea that he lost the 2020 election as a “big lie,” coopting it from warnings — citing the strategy of Nazi propagandists — that his repeated claims that the election results were false would ultimately convince his followers. The term “big lie” also appears in “Mein Kampf.” Most Republicans and GOP-leaners — nearly 70% in a CNN poll in August — don’t think Biden’s win was legitimate.
Tapper also played for Christie video of Trump’s comments about migrants “poisoning the blood of the country.”
“He’s disgusting,” Christie said. “And what he’s doing is dog whistling to Americans who feel absolutely under stress and strain from the economy and from the conflicts around the world, and he’s dog whistling to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us.”
Christie, however, argued Republicans might still vote for Trump despite the comments and not because of it.
In New Hampshire, Trump takes 44% support among likely GOP primary voters, with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley moving into second place at 29%, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (11%), Christie (10%), entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (5%) and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (1%).
In Iowa, Trump has majority 58% support among likely Republican caucusgoers, followed by DeSantis (22%), Haley (13%), Ramaswamy (4%), Christie (3%) and Hutchinson (less than 1%).
As CBS notes, there are some major differences between the potential electorates in each state. In New Hampshire, 57% of likely GOP primary voters say abortion should generally be legal in their state, a view shared by just 26% of likely GOP caucusgoers in Iowa. Nearly half of likely GOP caucusgoers in Iowa (48%) say they consider themselves part of the MAGA movement, compared with 33% of likely New Hampshire primary voters.
Trump’s power in the party means that, unlike Christie, most Republican candidates are not calling him out.
In an interview with ABC News to publicize her endorsement by the anti-Trump Republican governor of New Hampshire, Haley said Trump was the right president at the right time, but he will have to answer in court for his actions on January 6, 2021. She said the country needs to move beyond that kind of chaos.
“My approach is different,” said Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Trump. “No drama, no vendettas, no whining.”
She has a month left to sell that approach before the first Republicans start making their voices heard in the American process that Trump quoted Putin as saying is rotten.
CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy contributed to this report.
Trump quotes Putin to call Biden ‘threat to democracy,’ reiterates anti-immigrant rhetoric at New Hampshire rally
Aaron Pellish and Steve Contorno, CNN – December 16, 2023
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack President Joe Biden as a “threat to democracy” and doubled down on language condemned for its ties to White supremacist rhetoric, saying at a campaign event in New Hampshire that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
“Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s a threat,” he told supporters at a rally in Durham, New Hampshire. “Even Vladimir Putin … says that Biden’s — and this is a quote – ‘politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.’”
Trump also praised two other authoritarian foreign leaders, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “highly respected” and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “very nice.”
Trump’s comments align with a pattern of expressing fondness for foreign leaders who use anti-democratic measures to maintain power. They also come after the former president attempted to sidestep questions in a Fox News town hall about whether he would act as a dictator if reelected, saying he would not act as a dictator “except for Day 1.” Trump faces federal and state charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump also told the crowd on Saturday that immigrants “from all over the world” are “pouring into the country,” reiterating a phrase he used previously that sparked outcry from the Anti-Defamation League.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done,” Trump said. “They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America … but all over the world. They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
The comments mark another instance of Trump using increasingly violent rhetoric in his campaign messaging. At his most recent campaign event in New Hampshire prior to his appearance Saturday, Trump used the word “vermin” to describe his political rivals, drawing broad condemnation, including from President Joe Biden, who likened his comments to “language you heard in Nazi Germany.”
Following Trump’s use of the phrase in October, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt linked his language to ethnically motivated massacres in Pittsburgh in 2018 and El Paso, Texas, in 2019.
“Insinuating that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ echoes nativist talking points and has the potential to cause real danger and violence. We have seen this kind of toxic rhetoric inspire real-world violence before in places like Pittsburgh and El Paso. It should have no place in our politics, period,” Greenblatt said in October.
The former president is planning a widespread expansion of his first administration’s hardline immigration policies if he is elected to a second term in 2024, including rounding up undocumented immigrants already in the US and placing them in detention camps to await deportation, a source familiar with the plans told CNN last month.
Trump on Saturday reiterated his proposal to “restore and expand” the travel bans he first implemented toward some countries in 2017 and pledged to “implement strong ideological screening for all illegal immigrants.” The travel ban targeted many Muslim-majority countries and African nations, leading critics to argue they were racially motivated.
In a statement released Saturday night, Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said Trump “parroted Adolf Hitler” in his New Hampshire remarks.
“Tonight Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy,” Moussa said. “He is betting he can win this election by scaring and dividing this country. He’s wrong. In 2020, Americans chose President Biden’s vision of hope and unity over Trump’s vision of fear and division — and they’ll do the same next November.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of the former president’s GOP rivals, said later Saturday that he hadn’t heard Trump’s comments in New Hampshire about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” instead reiterating the “huge risk” that people who cross the border illegally pose to Americans, especially “military-aged males.”
“We have to be smart about what we’re doing in this country,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Corydon, Iowa, when asked whether he believes this type of rhetoric should be used by someone who wants to lead the United States.
“We’re going to be very tough on who’s able to come into this country, because I think that what’s going on now, at the border in particular, has been a total train wreck,” he added.
Trump traveled to New Hampshire to lock down support as he tries to solidify his status as the 2024 Republican front-runner in the final weeks before the state’s first-in-the-nation GOP presidential primary.
In his first trip to the Granite State in over a month, Trump held a rally in the college town of Durham in one of the state’s most liberal counties. He’ll follow that up with an event in Reno, Nevada, on Sunday and then Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday – his second visit to the Hawkeye State in a week.
The burst of campaigning underscores an aggressive effort by Trump’s team to maintain his dominating lead when polls give way to actual voting. His advisers have privately voiced concerns that Trump supporters could simply assume he has a comfortable advantage in the race and is not reliant on their votes.
“We are leading by a lot, but you have to go out and vote,” Trump told supporters Wednesday night in Coralville, Iowa.
Trump’s visit to New Hampshire comes a day after rival DeSantis wrapped up his own one-day sojourn in the Granite State. It also comes as another opponent, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, appears to be gaining momentum there, punctuated by a recent endorsement by the state’s popular governor, Chris Sununu, who has long made clear his opposition to Trump’s candidacy.
Sununu told reporters Tuesday that he believed the Republican primary in New Hampshire was a two-person race.
“This is a race between two people. Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. That’s it … with all due respect to the other candidates,” Sununu said.
Trump has bashed Sununu following the endorsement, saying at his Saturday rally, “He’s endorsed somebody that can’t win, has no chance of winning.”
“He’s a selfish guy who can’t get elected anything right now,” Trump said of Sununu.
It’s unclear what impact Sununu’s endorsement will have on the primary. A recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll in Iowa suggested DeSantis’ support there grew only nominally from an endorsement by another popular governor, Kim Reynolds.
A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll of likely voters in New Hampshire’s Republican primary released last month showed Trump with 42% support. Haley, his closest challenger, was at 20%.
Trump is even more dominant in national polls. A Pew Research Center survey released Thursday found 52% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters name the former president as their top choice in the primary. His nearest challenger was DeSantis, at 14%.
This story and headline have been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, Alison Main, Kit Maher and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
