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The Importance of Perceptions: President Zelensky in Europe

By Nina Bachkatov

Back from his European tour, on 9 February, Ukrainian president Zelensky had addressed the nation as he does almost daily. He told his compatriots that he got “important agreements and good signals… This goes from long range missiles and tanks, to a new level of cooperation including fighter jets. But work has still to be done on that issue”. Evidently, Zelensky has only met supportive interlocutors and enjoyed standing ovations, keeping successfully world attention on his country. But, if he indeed got a lot of promises, a lot of hugs, and another European flag to enrich his collection, he came back home without clear conditions, and dates, for the jet fighters deliveries; nor an agenda for EU adhesion. Anyway, the training of pilots and engineers is “already starting” and the general consensus has been since that taboos about the deliveries of Western jets to Ukraine were falling, the way those concerning battle tanks did earlier.

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Davos, G7, G20: Russia left aside

By Nina Bachkatov

The absence of the Russians at the Davos Forum has underlined the country’s isolation, and has been celebrated as such by the West. Earlier, members of the G7 and G20 had already been meeting without president Putin or Russian high-level officials. But it did not prevent Moscow’s dignitaries to crisscross the world to engage all those who do not believe in the Western declared goals. Lately, Westerners’ sources have begun to question the claims that Russia is an international pariah and that the world at large has some appetite for more sanctions. Hence the apparition of a new narrative, still a minority, according to which Russia is indeed isolated from the West, but not from the world.

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Moscow and Kiev weaponizing orthodox Christmas

By Nina Bachkatov

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine leaves no stone unturned, witness the saga around Christmas celebrations, epitomized in two extravagant pictures: that of the Russian president celebrating the Nativity in an empty church; and that of a crowd of men in uniforms attending the mass in Kiev’s Pechersky Caves just ‘liberated” from the All Russia and Moscow Patriarchate by presidential decree.

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Another year EU-Russia energy war

 By Nina Bachkatov

According to European leaders’, the sanctions against Russian energy producers and exporters have reached their goals – depleting Russian’s national budget, which depends for almost half from energy’s trade, and finances the war in Ukraine. They rejoice that those sanctions provided EU with an incitant to drastically reform its energy sector. But that leaves open the question concerning the intermediary period, which will start in early 2023, especially if the West is not backed by other countries. Despite pressures, a majority of states still refuse to join sanctions that might threat their national interests, and are not ready to threat Vladimir Putin as the pariah president of a failed state. They also see the present crisis as an opportunity to increase their shares of the global market and their geopolitical profiles, to diversify their investments and their industrial basis.

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Wagner’s Prigozhin goes public

By Nina Bachkatov

For almost 10 years, the existence of the group, and the name of its leader, were an open secret, in Russia and abroad. As late as October 2022, president Putin, foreign minister Lavrov and defence minister Shoigu were denying the existence of private military companies in their country. Then, in early November, out of the blue, Yevgeni Prigozhin threw his Wagner group in full light, unleashing a stream of comments and the publication of well-timed books. The move was so astonishing that many Russians, who had seen the film in which Prigozhin was seen recruiting prisoners in a prison courtyard, believed it was a fake. Even in distant villages, people knew names such as Wagner or Prigozhin, but thought it  was not their business unless a member of the family had been enrolled.

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The fickering of E.U.’s energy security

By Nina Bachkatov

In a month time, the EU should implement a ban adopted in full coordination with its G7 partners to end its oil dependency from Russia. The ban will unfold in two stages: the first, on 5 December 2022, concerns the crude oil; the second,  on 5 February 2023, will stop imports of refined petroleum products. This is in the line with the 8 packages of EU sanctions, mostly directed against energy imports from Russia. Already, Gazprom’s deliveries have been cut down by two thirds and are due to drop further. Coal and civilian nuclear produces are already sidelined, and Westinghouse has been more or less discreetly ‘contacting’ countries that had previously used Rosatom services. Energy specialists have published converging reports according to which, if things stay as they are, the West can face the winter without the anticipated level of sufferings. This results from combined decisions to fill storage’s facilities during the autumn, a political readiness to release strategic reserves in case of shortages; and the mobilisation of all the users to reduce their energy’s consumption.

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EU “diversified” aid to Ukraine

By Nina Bachkatov

The EU carries on with the preparation of its 20-21 October during which China will be the elephant in the room and all the complexity of the war in Ukraine the centre piece. After 8 months of violence and devastations, the EU is confronted with the full consequences of the sanctions it had imposed on Russian individuals and companies to undermine president Putin leadership and to starve Russia’s budgetary capacities to sustain a war.

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