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Anders Åslund Profile picture
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18 Dec, 8 tweets, 3 min read
The question is persistently asked: Why is Putin threatening with war against Ukraine now? A few ideas:
1. Russia's relative military strength will never be greater than today given stagnant economy & declining technological development.
2. Putin needs a small victorious war, or corresponding Western concessions, to stay in power. His various ratings are at an all time low, and Putin cares greatly about his ratings (popularity, trust, electability).
3. Since February 2021, President Zelensky has seen the light and realized that he cannot talk with Putin.
4. In 2021, Ukraine has cleaned up its military commands & got an excellent defense minister in Oleksii Reznikov.
5. Not much noticed is that 3 US cabinet secretaries have visited Ukraine this year & @POTUS invited Zelensky to the White House. The US & Ukraine signed a charter on strategic cooperation & established 3 working groups under it. US has given more & better military aid than ever.
6. Yet, the Kremlin sees that the soft National Security Council runs US foreign policy & wants to exploit the current power vacuum in Washington before State, Pentagon & Treasury get fully manned.
7. Germany has got a new government that is likely to take a much tougher stand on Russia to judge from its coalition agreement. The Kremlin needs to act before it has got solidified with new appointments.
8. France is moving into presidential elections in the spring and is not likely to be very effective in foreign policy.
In short, this is a good time for Putin to extort as much as possible from the West, but if he actually starts a war in Ukraine, he will be toast & lose power in Russia. Therefore, the West (the US) must just say no! @JakeSullivan46 @ABlinken @UnderSecStateP @POTUS

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More from @anders_aslund

Anders Åslund Profile picture
20 Dec
Strangely, on Russia & Ukraine, Washington is divided between Putin appeasers (worst of all Tucker Carlson) & realistic knowledgeable Russia specialists, such as @AmbDanFried @JohnEdHerbst @ARVershbow @SpecRepUkraine @general_ben & the NSC seem to turn to the appeasers.
So far, the White House has failed to formulate its own agenda on Russia. @McFaul has presented the best proposals I have seen so far. Also @Nigelgd1, @KeirGiles & @john_sipher have argued well. What should the US agenda be?
1. No more negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine at the table = no more Putin-Biden summits to reward Putin for aggression!
The US should demand that the OSCE is being restored as the main frum for Russian-Western negotiations.
Read 9 tweets
Anders Åslund Profile picture
19 Dec
Today @washingtonpost has published two articles favoring appeasement to Russia. That would hardly have happened if Fred Hiatt were still alive.
David von Drehle wants to give in to Kremlin military extortion, promising to keep Ukraine out of NATO.
"It may be possible to give Putin a portion of what he wants without substantially altering the U.S. position, and thus defuse a dangerous situation."
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
He continues: "the United States and its allies must recognize Russia’s interest in a neutral Ukraine."
No! Russia attacked Ukraine, when it was neutral. Neutrality is dangerous as Benelux experienced in WWI & WWII & Denmark & Norway in WWII.
Read 4 tweets
Anders Åslund Profile picture
12 Dec
What is @ZelenskyyUa up to?
1. He appears to maintain his partnership with Ihor Kolomoisky pursued in the US, UK & Israel, but not in Ukraine.
2. Yanukovych's top lawyer Andriy Portnov returned with Z but was now sanctioned by the US.
3. In September 2019, he appointed a friend of his, Oleksandr Gogliashvili, deputy minister of Interior, but he was just revealed to be a Russian citizen.
4. He has protected his deputy chief of staff Tatarov from prosecution for corruption.
5. The Pandora Papers show that Z & three colleagues received $41 million in their offshore company from Kolomoisky. Z has refused to answer any question about this unreported & untaxed transaction.
Read 4 tweets
Anders Åslund Profile picture
11 Dec
After a seemingly successful video call Biden-Putin, many things have gone wrong. Biden allows the conversation to focus on Putin's aggressive demands. It is Biden, Ukraine & the West that should make demands to Putin.
1. Withdraw offensive forces from Ukraine's border, Crimea & Donbas! Return to prior transparency & preannouncement of military exercises of size! Why has the West let up on those standards?
2. Russia is the main source of destabilization in the former Soviet Union. Demand that Russian troops withdraw from Donbas, Transnistria, Abkhazia & South Ossetia! Russia has repeatedly made international agreements that it will not violate national borders. Hammer that in!
Read 9 tweets
Anders Åslund Profile picture
10 Dec
Outstanding 20-minute lecture by Dmitri Muratov.
"The practice of torture in prisons and during investigation is also alive and well in today’s Russia."
End: "I want journalists to die old."
nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2…
"Criminal cases in our country are often based on false accusations and political motives. Opposition politician Alexei Navalny is being held in jail based on a false accusation from the CEO of the Russian branch of a big French cosmetics company....
...The accuser was somehow not summoned to the court or neither pleaded to be an aggrieved party. But Navalny is behind bars. The cosmetics company chose to step aside hoping that the odour from this case will not harm the scent of the company’s products."
Read 5 tweets
Anders Åslund Profile picture
7 Dec
After almost three hours after the end of the video call, Putin came out with a statement, so far only in Russian. It states that the call was mainly devoted to the "internal Ukrainian crisis and the absence of progress in fulfillment of the Minsk..."
kremlin.ru/events/preside…
Untypically, the Kremlin mentions that Biden "underlined the allegedly 'threatening' character of the movement of Russian troops close to the Ukrainian partners and mentioned sanctions that the US and its allies would be ready to undertake in the case of further escalation."
"Vladimir Putin responded that the responsibility must not be transferred to the shoulders of Russia, since it is NATO that is carrying out dangerous attempts to seize the Ukrainian territory..."
Read 8 tweets

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