Thread: How dangerous is Vladimir Putin?

Ukraine, Russia agree to talks ‘without preconditions’: Zelenskyy

Ukraine announces talks ‘without preconditions’ as its foreign minister says his country will ‘not give up a single inch of territory’.

27 Feb 2022

"Ukraine and Russia have agreed to hold talks at a venue near the Belarusian border, as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country will “not give up a single inch of … territory”.

The talks, the first since Russia unleashed a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last week, would be held without preconditions and are the result of a phone call between Zelenskyy and the Belarusian president, the Ukrainian leader said.

“We agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, near the Pripyat River,” he said in a statement.

Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from Moscow, said there was “some confusion” about where the Ukraine-Russia talks will take place.

“The Ukrainians are saying these talks will be held near the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, but according to the Russians, they believe, still, that the talks will take place in the southeastern city of Gomel in Belarus,” she said.

“There seems to be some confusion about where the location for these talks will be.”

The Ukrainian foreign minister in a televised speech on Sunday said his country will “not give up a single inch of … territory” after agreeing to talks with Moscow.

“We go there [to the talks] to listen to what Russia wants to say, we are going without any … preliminary agreement on what the outcome of these talks can be. We are going there to listen and to say what we think of this war and Russia’s actions,” Kuleba said in a televised address.

“Between now and the moment that the talks are wrapped up, [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko assured President Zelenskyy that no Belarusian military force will be used against Ukraine,” he added.

“We can only hope that Lukashenko will stick to his word. And between now and the moment when these talks are wrapped up, we will continue to fiercely defend our country, to defeat Russian forces if they try to continue their offensive operations.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Lviv in western Ukraine, said the reportedly agreed talks was a positive sign but far from a breakthrough.

“The Ukrainians seem to be very weary about the talks agreed on. They say they will get along to listen to Russia on what it has to offer,” he said.

He added that the Kyiv government would not want to hear anything related to surrendering if Moscow is only prepared to make such an offer.

Zelenskyy previously rejected Belarus, an ally of Moscow which used it as a staging ground for its multipronged invasion, as a location for potential talks.

Speaking in Russian in a video message on Sunday, Zelenskyy listed the cities of Warsaw, Bratislava, Istanbul, Budapest or Baku as possible alternative venues."

Ukraine, Russia agree to talks ‘without preconditions’: Zelenskyy | News | Al Jazeera

Russia, Ukraine to hold talks on Belarusian-Ukrainian border - news agency
The particular venue of the meeting won’t be disclosed

27 Feb, 22:09

"MINSK, February 27. /TASS/. Talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations, which are due to be held in the Gomel Region, will take place on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, BelTA news agency reported.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s office confirmed that the meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian delegations will be held without any preconditions on the border in the area of the Pripyat River.

Earlier in the day, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko called Zelensky. "The politicians agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian one without any preconditions on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, in the area of the Pripyat River," the statement said.

The particular venue of the meeting won’t be disclosed, a source told TASS.

Lukashenko undertook responsibility that "all planes, helicopters and missiles" stationed on Belarusian soil will remain on the ground during the talks, as well as the Ukrainian delegation’ arrival and return.

Earlier on Sunday, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that the Russian delegation had arrived in Belarus for talks with Ukraine. The delegation consists of representatives of the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and other agencies, including the presidential administration. Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky leads the delegation. The Ukrainian delegation also has left for Gomel to hold talks with Russia, Head of the Roundtable Democratic Forces Yury Voskresensky confirmed.

According to BelTA, after the phone conversation with Zelensky Lukashenko asked Putin that the Russian delegation should stay longer and postpone the meeting due to the delayed arrival of the Ukrainian delegation. Putin accepted the Belarusian counterpart’s proposal.

Earlier, Zelensky stated that he was willing to hold talks in any other venue, but not in Belarus, since it was allegedly engaged in some aggressive actions."

Russia, Ukraine to hold talks on Belarusian-Ukrainian border - news agency - World - TASS

Jaw, Jaw, or War, War.

One can only hope an agreement can be negotiated and delivered.

Originally Posted by OhOh

95% in Moscow, two other cities with the remaining 5%.

Anti-war protesters detained in Moscow — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

Russian population is 144,100,000 (2020), <0.001% of the Russian population protested.

Russia has 1294 cities, 3 with protests, <1% of the Russian cities protested.

Another two statistics that one suspects the Russian government has little to worry about.

OhOh the communist retard is posting his bullshit.
Numbers with no meaning...just like your idols Honecker and Putin election results.

Putin’s power vertical and the pathologies of authoritarian rule

A stage-managed meeting in which he humiliated his cabinet may come to be seen as a turning point.

Forty-eight hours before he launched his attack, on 21 February Vladimir Putin summoned the most senior members of his regime to an extraordinary, televised meeting in the Kremlin. Sitting behind an enormous white desk in the great gilded Hall of the Order of St Catherine, he called them up, one at a time, to a lectern and asked them whether they supported the decision to recognise the independence of the separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.

Some were enthusiastic. Nikolai Patrushev, the security council’s secretary and one of Putin’s closest allies, claimed that Nato and the United States were using Ukraine to try to “destroy the Russian Federation”. Others, such as the prime minister Mikhail Mishustin, who is meant to be overseeing Russia’s economic development, looked decidedly uncomfortable but said they agreed.

Then it was the turn of Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service and ostensibly one of the country’s most powerful men. But standing in front of Putin, he stuttered and stammered, struggling to formulate the correct response. The Russian president drummed his fingers on the desk and smirked. “I will support the decision to recognise,” Naryshkin ventured. “I will support, or I support?” Putin cut in. “Speak directly!”

The exchange went on like this for several minutes before he was finally satisfied and allowed his spy chief to sit back down.

It was a theatrical display of raw political power that was clearly designed to show that Putin wields absolute, personal control. The footage was pre-recorded, so Naryshkin’s humiliation could have been edited out. Instead, the full, excruciating encounter was broadcast at prime time on Russian state television. The wider meeting functioned as a loyalty test, requiring every senior official and any potential future rivals to state on camera that they supported Putin’s decision.

“Probably deep down he knows he’s risking something,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of authoritarian political systems and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. “The way I read this is that he is taking a big gamble, so he wanted to stage this performance to force these people to show that they agree with him and reaffirm that they are his lackeys.”

Putin has long cultivated the myth of his “power vertical” – the idea that he commands absolute top-down control and can personally direct officials at all levels to do his bidding. The reality is more complex. He sits atop a political system that spans both a sprawling, dysfunctional bureaucracy and a kleptocracy, with an inner circle dominated by close associates from his KGB days and old friends who have become billionaires under his rule.

Maintaining the illusion that he is both popular and powerful helps to dissuade any would-be successors from challenging him, and reassures his patrons that his future, and theirs, is secure.

But the stage-managed performance he conducted on the eve of this invasion might well come to be seen as a critical moment in his two decades in power, and an object lesson in the pathologies of authoritarian rule. It was painfully clear that some of his most senior advisers did not fully agree with him, yet none of them was prepared to say so. At one point, he asked directly whether anyone would like to offer an alternative view. The response was silence.

“When authoritarian rulers are in power for so long, they come to depend on their cheering cronies and dismiss any criticism,” Ben-Ghiat told me. “This leads them to act increasingly on their own instincts, and to think that those instincts are always right. When they are at the peak of their power, they feel invincible, and that’s when they start thinking about their legacy and taking risks.”

There is a terrible, brutal logic to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The country is slipping from his grasp, moving inexorably towards the European Union and the aspiration of eventual Nato membership. He accelerated this trend himself when he annexed Crimea and started a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014. By launching a large-scale offensive, the Russian president is attempting to halt that trajectory, overthrow the government, and return Ukraine to Russia’s sphere of influence by force. But while he has the firepower to devastate Ukraine and degrade its military capabilities, it is difficult to see an outcome that does not involve a long, bloody conflict and an even more concerted westward shift.

It is possible that Putin’s subordinates have not been reporting the most pessimistic intelligence estimates up to him, opting for the safer option of telling him what they think he wants to hear. But it is equally possible that he was fully briefed on all the risks and believed that he knew better.

Observing Putin’s behaviour, Ben-Ghiat said she was struck by the parallels to the other self-styled strongman leaders she has studied, such as Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin and Muammar al-Gaddafi. But she told me the most apt comparison was with Benito Mussolini. “He ignored the advice of every one of his military commanders and took over a number of roles including minister of war and minister of aviation himself. He kept saying that he knew better and that he knew what he was doing. And, well, the rest is history.” (The Italian dictator, whose slogan was “the Duce [leader] is always right”, was eventually overthrown and executed in a public square.)

By all accounts, Putin is obsessed with history and the great leaders of the past. As he turns 70 later this year, after 22 years in power, he must be contemplating his own legacy and how future historians will judge his rule. After invading Ukraine, unprovoked, and starting this war, he has ensured that he will be remembered, but perhaps not in the way he might wish.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2022/02/putins-power-vertical-and-the-pathologies-of-authoritarian-rule

12 hours ago

Sanctions on Russia’s Central Bank Deal Direct Blow to Country’s Financial Strength

By Tom Fairless

"FRANKFURT—Targeting the reserves held by Russia’s central bank is potentially the most powerful weapon in the West’s financial arsenal, and takes aim at the heart of Russia’s financial system. It is a move with few precedents that amplifies other Western sanctions but also carries risks.The U.S., Europe and Canada pledged Saturday to prevent the Bank of Russia from deploying its $630 billion stockpile of international reserve “in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions,” they said in a joint statement Saturday. The move directly targets the war chest that President Vladimir Putin has built up in recent years to help insulate Russia’s economy from outside pressures.
The move could be a hammer-blow to Russia’s financial system, limiting the government’s ability to defend the ruble in currency markets, to make overseas purchases and to backstop banks that have been hurt by international sanctions, economists and central-bank officials said.
Russia spent years building up its reserves, converting revenue its oil and gas companies generate through sales abroad into a massive mountain of securities, bank deposits and gold. Foreign reserves are by their nature held abroad, often in government bonds of other nations and at accounts with commercial banks and other nations’ central banks.

The moves announced Saturday would affect close to 40% of Russia’s reserves that were held in North America and Europe as of last June, according to a recent report by Russia’s central bank.
The plan contains gaps and possible loopholes, especially the absence of participation by China, a key Russian trading partner that holds about 14% of its foreign reserves, according to the data. Experts warned that it also violates a tradition of respecting the sovereign immunity of central banks.
“Symbolically speaking, it’s a nuclear bomb in the world of global finance,” said Sony Kapoor, a finance professor and CEO of the Nordic Insitute for Finance, Technology and Sustainability, an Oslo-based think tank.

“There's going to be a huge Russia discount and risk premium for any type of financial transaction whatsoever. It’s going to be macro significant and very painful,” Mr. Kapoor said.
A wildcard is that Russia might already have drawn down a substantial amount of its European reserves in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter.
Germany and France together accounted for roughly 22% of Russia’s international reserves last June, according to Russian central bank data. A French official believes those numbers have changed significantly since then.
In the short term, the move is a significant hit to the viability of the Russian financial system. Longer term, it “opens a whole Pandora’s box” that might accelerate the development of a global financial architecture that is at arm’s length from the West’s ability to disrupt it, Mr. Kapoor said.

There are only a handful of precedents, all targeting much smaller and less connected economies than Russia’s, including Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.
“Normally, without a United Nations Security Council resolution, it’s hard to justify things like this under international law and the principle of sovereign immunity,” Mr. Kapoor said.

The big unknown is China. If Beijing chooses to support Russia, that would substantially diminish the impact of the sanctions, given the scale of China’s foreign reserves and banking sector.

While details of the move have yet to be announced, it is likely to limit Russia’s ability to backstop the nation’s banks with access to foreign currencies, which have recently been weakened by Western sanctions including removal from the Swift messaging system, harming their ability to operate globally.

For foreign investors, the move creates fresh currency and business risks. Investors could have previously relied on the central bank to step in if something were to go wrong in Russia. The ruble would never tank because the central bank wouldn't allow it. That is likely to generate financial outflows.

“It enormously complicates the management of the Russian economy,” said Stefan Gerlach, a former deputy governor of Ireland’s central bank.
“Financial systems need one thing to function, they need trust,” said Mr. Gerlach. “You need to trust your counterparties if you do business. If you suddenly realize that they can't get help from their government if needed, it becomes incredibly riskier to deal with them. You just pulled the carpet from under the financial system.”

The decision is fraught with legal risks. Freezing central-bank assets could create a precedent to target government funds for other reasons.

For example, someone could sue Norway’s $1.3 trillion Oil Fund, which is managed by the central bank and invests proceeds from petroleum sales, over the nation’s impact on climate change, Mr. Kapoor said. Around half of the fund’s assets are under U.S. jurisdiction.
Some governments might respond by moving their reserves out of the West, triggering a bifurcation of the global financial system."

Sanctions on Russia’s Central Bank Deal Direct Blow to Country’s Financial Strength

The end of the western controlled financial system is here? The Eurasian community siolidifies faster?

Maybe our banking experts can clarify the possible outcomes.