One of the most fascinating phenomenons in Russia today is the emergence of “patriotic critics” — Russians who support the war effort in Ukraine, but who also speak candidly about the Russian military’s struggles and demand sweeping reforms.

aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/1… Many of these “patriotic critics” are people like Artemy Sych of @OrdinaryCzarizm — activists who crowdfund supplies for Russian troops on the frontlines and publish original reporting/analysis about the conflict on social media.

Important 🇺🇦🇷🇺 Update: Growing signs that Russia is preparing to declare a partial or general mobilization.

1) Russian lawmakers in the State Duma passed legislation introducing the concepts of “mobilization, martial law and wartime” into the criminal code. The law introduces jail terms of up to 15 years for wartime acts such as desertion, surrender, and looting.

🇷🇺🇰🇵 Russia is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for its ongoing fight in Ukraine, according to the Biden administration.

Not sure how reliable this specific claim is, but overall idea is plausible.

apnews.com/article/russia… Russian defense analysts have been floating the possibility of buying North Korean artillery and rocket systems for the past month, emphasizing that the North Koreans have a strong track-record on counter-battery capabilities.

zen.yandex.ru/media/proarm/p…

🇷🇺🇮🇳 Indian Prime Minister is set to give a video address to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok tomorrow.

Now is a good opportunity to take a closer look at India’s interest in the Russian Far East, a resource-wealthy but underdeveloped region. 🧵 First, a bit of background on the Russian Far East. The Far Eastern Federal District is the largest of Russia’s federal districts, accounting for over 40% of the country’s landmass. The region is also home to vast oil, gas, coal, mineral, and timber reserves.

🇷🇺 Russia’s logistical pivot to Asia

Container imports through the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok has increased by 150% over the past three months, up to 28,000 TEU per month.

Russia’s export and import flows are being re-oriented to the Far East.

russia-briefing.com/news/vladivost… As the final destination of the Trans-Siberian railway, Vladivostok has long served as Russia’s main logistical hub in Asia.

Vladivostok has been gaining additional economic significance since 2012, when the Kremlin launched its “Pivot to Asia” initiative.

🇷🇺🇨🇳 Russia has increased its natural gas deliveries to China by 60% from January-August, according to Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.

Now that there is energy decoupling occurring between Russia and the West, China is quickly becoming Gazprom’s most important customer. So far, Russia has only one natural gas pipeline to China — Power of Siberia. The pipeline was launched in 2019 and is expected to reach its full capacity of 38 bcm/year by 2025.

However, there are some additional pipelines in the works.

🇷🇺🇮🇷 Russia and Iran are moving to strengthen energy, industrial, and logistical ties as the two countries seek to ease the burden of U.S. sanctions against them.

A brief 🧵 on the latest developments: Let’s start with energy:

Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji recently announced that Iran and Russia were close to finalizing a natural gas swap deal. Basically, this deal would allow Iran to import Russian gas and then deliver a certain amount of it to third party countries.

Iran’s state-run shipping company has stated it has successfully completed the first transit of Russian goods to India, using the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

The entire journey from St.Petersburg to Mumbai took 24 days. russia-briefing.com/news/russia-te… Here is a visual comparison between INSTC (~7,200 km) and the standard route between Mumbai and St.Petersburg that goes through the Suez Canal (~16,112 km).

Based on the figures I’ve seen, INSTC is expected to reduce transport costs by 30% and travel time by 40%.

There has been a lot of debate about the impact of sanctions against Russia, so I decided to interview a number of Russian businesspeople across different industries to see how their lives have changed.

Some of their answers will surprise you.

theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-s… Sergey Karaganov, head of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a research group that advises the Kremlin, said that Russian elites won’t budge over sanctions because they increasingly view Ukraine as an existential struggle.

The Great Northern War (1700-21) is one of the most consequential wars in Russian history. It can also offer some valuable insights about Russia’s current challenges in Ukraine.

Let’s review the history of the war and its lessons for today. 🧵 First some background: Following the Thirty Years War (1618-48), Sweden emerged as one of the most powerful countries in Europe. It not only controlled Finland and much of Norway, but also the entire Baltic region and parts of Germany.

This was an obvious problem for Russia.

Alexey Maslov, one of Russia's leading Sinologists, recently gave an interview in which he was asked to what extent Russia can replace Western high tech imports with Chinese alternatives.

I found his answer interesting so I decided to summarize his main points below. Brief🧵 Maslov admits that making this pivot is difficult, since many Western technologies are protected by patents in China. However, he notes that Russia and China are negotiating the transfer or joint production of equipment such as microcircuits and printed circuit boards.

Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t always have such an estranged relationship with the West. In fact, Putin got his start in politics by working for Russia's pro-Western liberals during the 1990s.

A 🧵on an often overlooked chapter in Putin's biography. In 1990, a 37-year old Putin returns to his hometown of Leningrad after working for the KGB in East Germany. Putin soon reconnects with his former law professor, Anatoly Sobchak, who had become a prominent liberal figure in Leningrad politics during the final years of USSR.

A very silly thread by a EU-affiliated think tanker. Several obvious counter-points:

1) Russia's political, cultural, and main population centers are located in European part of the country. This has been the case for literally the entirety of Russia's existence.

https://twitter.com/FlorenceGaub/status/1514152917556727813

2) Siberia and the Russian Far East are located in Asia, but demographically and culturally, are heavily European. Just take a look at Vladivostok, it's a standard European city that just so happens to be located on the Sea of Japan.

Important Historical Anniversary: Pyotr Stolypin, the last great statesmen of the Russian Empire, was born on April 14, 1862 - exactly 160 years ago.

Stolypin is best known for his agricultural reforms, which helped increase peasant ownership of land to 80% on the eve of WW1. This thread offers a very helpful summary of the impact and scale of Stolypin's reforms.

Beyond increasing the percentage of Russian land owned by peasants, Stolypin also promoted the mass settlement of Siberia/Russian Far East.

https://twitter.com/nikol_ovnik/status/1509221071920279557?s=20&t=vcBx9zJnlJXBcnBwkusFcw

There has been a lot of speculation on here recently how the #UkraineConflict will impact Russian-Chinese relations.

Prominent Russian sinologist Alexey Maslov recently wrote an interesting Telegram post on this issue. English translation is below 🧵 "In China, a principled political decision on economic cooperation with Russia needs to be made at the highest level. If such a decision is made, then - and only then - will there be 'expansion' on all issues. "

Update on Battle for Mariupol:

Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, which is stationed in the city, writes on Facebook, “Today will probably be the last battle, as the ammunition is running out.”

The brigade added that around half of its men are wounded.

themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/11/ukr… Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the Donbass rebel Vostok Battalion, claims that a Ukrainian column tried to breakthrough their encirclement last night by pretending to be Russian forces. However, the attempt was unsuccessful and the rebels captured some Ukrainian equipment.

According to a recent survey by the Levada Center, Russia's leading/only independent pollster, Vladimir Putin's approval rating has reached 83%, an increase of 12 points over the past month.

This is Putin's highest figure since the start of his fourth term back in 2018. Incidentally, I recently wrote an article for @ggreenwald where I interviewed Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, about potential impact of the #UkraineConflict and Western sanctions on Russian public opinion.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1508068046916702214

#Breaking: South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia, announced that it plans on becoming part of Russia in the near future.

Back in 2008, Russia went to war against Georgia after the latter tried to reassert its control over South Ossetia. Here is the statement from the leader of South Ossetia: I believe that unification with Russia is our strategic goal...The Republic of South Ossetia will be part of its historical homeland - Russia."

er.ru/activity/news/…

On this week of bad takes on Russian history: David Frum tries his hand at 20th century Russian military history.

This is obvious nonsense, but for educational purposes, let’s take a closer look at David’s claims point by point. 🧵

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1508483812287823883

First stop is Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. This is a pretty fascinating example since even though Russia lost nearly every battle, it ended up getting a pretty favorable peace deal.

Russia's Pivot to Asia 2.0 will likely be not just a political & economic shift, but also a cultural one to some extent. I expect to see more Indian + Chinese films in Russian movie theaters over next several years. Same goes for Russian art museums.

https://twitter.com/ArtyomLukin/status/1508008863047593987

Despite Russia's geographic location, I don't think Russians will ever view themselves as culturally closer to Asia than Europe. But I do think that Russians will become much more familiar with different Asian cultures, and therefore view them as less distant/alien.

I try to stay away from editorializing on here, but I will make an exception for this New Yorker interview with Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin.

Kotkin makes some bizarre claims about Russian history which should be addressed. Let's begin 🧵

newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/s… Some background first: Editor David Remnick asks Kotkin about the role of NATO expansion in causing the #UkraineConflict.

Kotkin goes on a weird essentialist rant in which he claims that Russia has always been an aggressive, autocratic power that hostile to the West.