Nigel Farage doubled down this week on his claim that the West forced Putin to invade Ukraine and launch a war that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Farage’s biographer describes the time when Nigel was a teenager at Dulwich College, a posh private school in a leafy London suburb. A favourite game of the future apologist for Putin was to stand on a railway station platform and spit. The objective was to spit far enough such that the projectile would reach the opposite platform. Some men grow out of such behaviours. Most don’t. Everything that Farage does can be understood in terms of him wondering how far he can spit.
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June 17th
In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, military bloggers were a useful source of intelligence about real-time developments on the battlefield. Careful reading revealed some soldier-bloggers - active combatants - as well as experienced analysts, safe behind lines, channeling information clearly derived from credible sources. Sorting truth from propaganda, or plain fiction, wasn’t always easy but it was possible. The Kremlin subsequently moved quickly to purge, arrest or kill anyone writing about the war in ways that didn’t suit Putin’s narrative. These days the blogger’s efforts are risible, usually involving claims that Ukraine is about to surrender and demands for the use of nuclear weapons against European Capital cities.
In a rare development, a Russian soldier has recently appeared on social media complaining that his unit was almost completely wiped out fighting in or near Vovchansk. In words reminiscent of how Russia fought in the Second World War, the commander talks of how under-trained troops are forced by officers into suicidal assaults on Ukrainian positions. High casualty rates do not seem to matter.
Casualties matter less when they are not your own. Putin has been careful not to conscript too many soldiers from Moscow or other big, relatively wealthy, Russian cities. The New York Times is currently running a long piece about the role of ex-prisoners, Chechens and ex-Wagner forces. The accompanying photos in the piece are occasionally horrific.
Fighting is, indeed, fierce around Vovchansk. Multiple reports speak of a cement plant occupied by Russian troops, now surrounded by Ukrainian forces. Drones are resupplying the Russians, not least with food and water. Sky is one of many news agencies reporting an escalation of fighting in the Kharkiv region - including the area around Vovchansk - over the weekend.
That escalation occurred at the same time as yet another peace conference concluded, one that Putin successfully sabotaged with his offer of a ceasefire late last week. Notwithstanding the fact that the offer was merely a demand for Ukraine to capitulate, it was enough to strengthen the belief in many non-Western countries that Russia has a point. The support that Russia has in many parts of the world should not be underestimated.
In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, military bloggers were a useful source of intelligence about real-time developments on the battlefield. Careful reading revealed some soldier-bloggers - active combatants - as well as experienced analysts, safe behind lines, channeling information clearly derived from credible sources. Sorting truth from propaganda, or plain fiction, wasn’t always easy but it was possible. The Kremlin subsequently moved quickly to purge, arrest or kill anyone writing about the war in ways that didn’t suit Putin’s narrative. These days the blogger’s efforts are risible, usually involving claims that Ukraine is about to surrender and demands for the use of nuclear weapons against European Capital cities.
In a rare development, a Russian soldier has recently appeared on social media complaining that his unit was almost completely wiped out fighting in or near Vovchansk. In words reminiscent of how Russia fought in the Second World War, the commander talks of how under-trained troops are forced by officers into suicidal assaults on Ukrainian positions. High casualty rates do not seem to matter.
Casualties matter less when they are not your own. Putin has been careful not to conscript too many soldiers from Moscow or other big, relatively wealthy, Russian cities. The New York Times is currently running a long piece about the role of ex-prisoners, Chechens and ex-Wagner forces. The accompanying photos in the piece are occasionally horrific.
Fighting is, indeed, fierce around Vovchansk. Multiple reports speak of a cement plant occupied by Russian troops, now surrounded by Ukrainian forces. Drones are resupplying the Russians, not least with food and water. Sky is one of many news agencies reporting an escalation of fighting in the Kharkiv region - including the area around Vovchansk - over the weekend.
That escalation occurred at the same time as yet another peace conference concluded, one that Putin successfully sabotaged with his offer of a ceasefire late last week. Notwithstanding the fact that the offer was merely a demand for Ukraine to capitulate, it was enough to strengthen the belief in many non-Western countries that Russia has a point. The support that Russia has in many parts of the world should not be underestimated.
June 18th
Joe Biden’s 100% tariffs on Chinese-made electronic vehicles have been partially matched by the EU. The West is essentially doubling down on the trade war started by Donald Trump. Many economists have bemoaned the fact that Western consumers are being shut out of access to EVs that are half the price of domestically produced cars and also have twice the range. Your correspondent is an economist so has full licence to exaggerate in order to make a point.
Western auto manufacturers have woken up to the fact that China has made another Great Leap Forward - in EVs and battery technology. Politicians have responded to lobbying, fearful that blue collar factory job losses will cost them votes.
But there are also security dimensions to the trade war, an aspect that orthodox economists miss. China wants to dominate global manufacturing, particularly if anything associated with tech, for reasons that have nothing to do with jobs or GDP.
After World War 2, America realised that economic altruism brought domestic benefits over and above simply feeling good about itself. Binding the globe into a US-dominated trading system brought huge gains to the American economy - and American security. China is now trying the same trick.
David Fickling, a Bloomberg columnist, points out that China has slowed down the recycling of its balance of payments surplus into US Treasury bonds and is instead simply investing in anywhere other than Western countries. EVs are at the vanguard of this effort but Chinese foreign direct investment is my no means restricted to auto manufacturing.
Asia, Latin America and North Africa now received the lion’s share of Chinese FDI. Brazil is seeing Chinese additions to the 3.8 gigawatts of solar power it already operates there; Morocco alone accounted for $6.3 billion of Chinese EV investment last year.
China now has the tech necessary for the world to decarbonise. The West is saying it doesn’t want that tech, partly because it doesn’t want China to accrue the soft power that goes with it.
June 19th
Russia and North Korea shared ‘pent up inmost thoughts’ about a world situation that is ‘exacerbating and changing rapidly’. Things sometimes get lost in translation but interpreting these words is not terribly hard. Putin is in Pyongyang for 24 hours and continues to deny that there is an arms deal with North Korea, a country that has sent millions of artillery shells to Moscow, along with many ballistic missiles. Fragments of all this ordnance have been found in multiple locations in Ukraine. Those arms are helping Russia advance towards an important Ukrainian supply route, just north of Avdiivka, the town recaptured by Moscow a short while ago.
The full militarisation of Russia’s economy continues. Putin has just reshuffled the ministry of defence in a way that signals long term commitment to massively increased arms spending. Russian taxes have just gone up in order to finance some of this. Income and corporation tax rates have been raised. Government spending will rise by at least 15% this year, after big increase in 2023. Russia looks like it will become like North Korea, an economy that is built around its military.
‘Juneteenth’ is a word not lost in translation, unless American is a new language. It’s a portmanteau term combining ‘June’ and ‘Nineteenth’, and marks the day when news of the civil war’s end (the day before) reached Texas. It is a holiday (today) in the US, one that celebrates the end of slavery. The emancipation proclamation on June 19th 1865 served only to free slaves in the defeated Confederate states. It took an amendment to the Constitution, the 13th such iteration, to make slavery illegal across the whole of the US. That didn’t happen until December 1865. Happy Juneteenth to all our American readers.
June 20th
Russia is trying to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. That’s a sentence that could have been written at any time since the war started. Damaged power stations have been at least partially restored thanks to a massive engineering and construction effort. But in recent weeks Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and the destruction is happening at a much faster rate than the repairs. Ukraine has appealed for specific help with its energy grid from the West. The race is now on to try and get enough capacity restored before winter sets in. Many are fearful that so much damage has already been done that Ukraine will lose that race.
Meanwhile, Russia continues its attacks. Overnight, the usual complement of ballistic missiles and drones were fired at a variety of targets. Most were shot down but more energy infrastructure was damaged in central Ukraine.
On top of the usual attacks, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has spotted a change in Russian tactics over the last week or so. For the first time in quite a while, Ukrainian air bases have been targeted by cruise missiles. That’s because Ukraine’s airforce has been successfully hitting targets in Crimea. It could also be linked to the imminent arrival of F16s.
Putin has left North Korea and moved on to a full state visit to Vietnam. The slightly bizarre images of Putin and Kim Jong-Un driving each other around Pyongyang included shots of them travelling in an open topped Mercedes. Perhaps they don’t make luxury cars in Pyongyang. Questions might be asked about the effectiveness of Western sanctions.
The visits to North Korea and Vietnam underscore the fact that Russia is far from friendless on the international scene. Vietnamese leaders have been keen to stress there close ties to Moscow, not least because all of their arms imports are from Russia.
June 21st
The situation on the Israel-Lebanon border has been deteriorating for weeks and threatens to become more destabilising for the region than even the war in Gaza. Several analysts say that the Israeli army is unlikely to be able to successfully wage a war on two fronts. It is almost certainly the case that large sections of the IDF are exhausted and might not relish a shift to a new war theatre.
A White House envoy is in the region trying to calm things down. Middle Eastern news agencies are carrying reports that Amos Hochstein told Lebanese officials in Beirut that if a diplomatic solution is not found, America will back a limited Israeli incursion into Lebanese territory. Almost 100,000 Israeli citizens have been displaced by the rocket attacks and the objective is to make things safe enough for them to go home.
One problem is that Hezbollah is linking peace (or just a truce) to a ceasefire in Gaza. Hamas is incentivised to keep its war going because that means Israel is tied down on two fronts.
Hezbollah continues to send its Katyusha rockets and other missiles towards multiple Israeli targets. Reporters have been briefed by US officials who are worried that such is the quantity and quality of Hezbollah’s missile attacks, Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ defences could be overwhelmed. There are suggestions that Israel could stage another invasion into Lebanon in order to reduce the threat from Hezbollah.
The label ‘Hezbollah’ could just as easily be written as ‘Iran’. The deteriorating situation is exactly the kind of escalation that was feared in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attacks. Full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel could mean full-scale war between Israel and Iran. That would inevitably drag in the U.S. - and possibly Iran’s new best friends in Moscow and Beijing.