Russia may have already lost upwards of 50,000 men in Ukraine, along with untold economic costs from sanctions, direct expenses and forgone labor. Many in the West have hoped that Russia’s invasion, failing to take the whole of Ukraine in the early stages of the war, will prove to be just a costly blunder from which Russia will eventually have to retreat. They are wrong. Russia can and will continue to fight.
The future of the Wagner Group is in doubt. Less than a week after Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin launched his march on Moscow on June 23, which was then aborted mid-coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Wagner fighters who participated in the rebellion the option of relocating to Belarus. Putin also reportedly met with Prigozhin in the days after the mutiny, perhaps to press the mercenary boss on the details of the operation and to force him to lay out the inner workings of Wagner’s global enterprise.
China may have the opportunity to turn Russia into its vassal, but it has no compelling reason to do so.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia-China cooperation has grown in all directions. Moscow makes no bones about the fact that it is betting on China in the global confrontation with the West, seeing Beijing as an alternative center of power with similar interests and values to itself.
Putin’s former bodyguard and current Tula governor Alexei Dyumin is eternally tipped for a position in the federal government, yet is still waiting after seven years.
Alexei Dyumin, a former bodyguard of Russian President Vladimir Putin and now governor of the Tula region, has been the subject of much discussion since the short-lived mutiny led by the Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin last month. Although Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko got the official credit for persuading Prigozhin to stand down, many social media channels and anonymous sources claimed it was in fact Dyumin who had played the decisive role in the negotiations and, as a result, strengthened his already special place in the president’s inner circle.
If Putin changes his mind about Prigozhin and initiates some sort of revenge, Minsk will not be able to protect the Wagner leader, who knows that full well. Lukashenko in turn cannot believe the promises of Prigozhin, a warlord who has just betrayed his patron, to diligently follow Belarusian rules.
One of the strangest twists in the short-lived Wagner mutiny in Russia was the involvement of Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who allegedly brokered the deal between mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Kremlin, and is even willing to host Wagner in Belarus.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted insurrection against the Russian Ministry of Defence (MOD) last month created massive confusion. The rebellion raised many questions about what might come next for the war in Ukraine and the future of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule.
The U.S. spy agency Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has boots on the ground in Ukraine and operates a clandestine supply network to help the government in Kiev to fight Russia, leading U.S. weekly Newsweek reported on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources within the US government.
Africa has become an essential element of Russia’s geostrategic posture in recent years as Moscow seeks to evade its international isolation and sanctions. However, facing isolation and a contracting economy, Russia has come to the realisation that cultivating an entry point into Africa through conventional means like foreign direct investment (FDI), trade, development assistance, or cultural and educational exchanges, is not its best option. Instead, Moscow has chosen the path of a disruptor to elevate its influence on the African continent.1
I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men.
~PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, American University, June 10, 1963Following an essay I published earlier this month and the letter the Eisenhower Media Network ran in The New York Times in May, I have heard forceful and passionate protests that Russia had no other option but to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Frankly, I find quite bewildering and concerning this intense insistence that the only option available to Russia was to launch a cross-border invasion, conduct a deliberate occupation of a sovereign country, and commit a clear violation of the Nuremberg Principles and international law.
Evgheni Prigojin, șeful companiei rusești de mercenari Wagner, a plecat în exil în Belarus după insurecția contramandată, aparent în urma unei înțelegeri mediate de președintele belarus Aleksandr Lukașenko, relatează Foreign Policy.