The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-01)

TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

russia invades ukraine

BY GREG MILLER

london — Fissures appear to be
forming between Russian Presi-
dent Vladimir Putin and mem-
bers of the oligarch class who
made billions of dollars while
showing fealty to the autocratic
leader but now see their fortunes
threatened by Western sanctions
over the invasion of Ukraine.
The cracks are faint and fall
short of suggesting any ground-
swell of oligarchic opposition to
Putin, according to experts and
Western officials. But expres-
sions of unease that weeks ago
seemed unthinkable have sur-
faced repeatedly in recent days.
After an earlier social media
post calling for peace talks “as
fast as possible,” Russian billion-
aire Oleg Deripaska followed up
on Sunday with a veiled shot at
Putin’s stewardship of the econo-
my, issuing a statement that said,
“It is necessary to change the
economic policy, it is necessary
to end all this state capitalism.”
A second oligarch, Mikhail
Fridman, said in a letter to
subordinates that the Ukraine
“crisis will cost lives and damage
two nations who have been
brothers for hundreds of years,”
according to Reuters, which said
that it had seen portions of the
message.
Fridman said that he was born
in Ukraine and that his parents
still reside in the western part of
the country. “While a solution
seems frighteningly far off,” he
wrote, “I can only join those

whose fervent desire is for the bloodshed to end.” Even the daughter of Putin’s principal spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, voiced opposition to the invasion by posting a black square on her Instagram account with a caption, “No to war!” It was an apparently a message of solidarity with protesters in Russia even while her father defended arrests of thousands who have turned out for rallies that he said were “not allowed by the law.” Sanctions experts and former U.S. officials said that while the signs of dissent remain tepid, they represent a more palpable fraying of relations between Pu- tin and the ranks of elite loyalists than has been observed in years. “The splintering of the regime is visible,” said Daniel Fried, a former State Department official who helped lead the sanctions response to Russia’s previous military incursions into Ukraine. “This is not to say somebody is going to overthrow Putin or that he’s going to fall,” Fried said, noting that when Peskov’s daughter posts support for Ukraine, “you know there is a split.” He described the spate of messages as the most significant expression of dissent by Russian elites “since the Soviet period.” Fried and others emphasized that no member of Putin’s inner circle or Russia’s oligarch class has come close to condemning the Russian leader, faulted the decision to launch the invasion

or called for the Kremlin to reverse course. The motivations behind the messages are not clear. To some, they are signs of misgiving with a war that is not unfolding the way Putin expected. Others see self- serving, if not cynical, poses of conscience struck in hopes of avoiding the crosshairs of sanctions. Sanctions advocates described the distinction as irrel- evant, saying the message adds to the pressure on Putin regard- less of the motivation. “None of these guys has bro- ken with Putin yet, but the fact is they are speaking up against” the invasion of Ukraine, said Jami- son Firestone, a New York attor-

ney who works with the Anti- Corruption Foundation led by jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Roman Abramovich, a Rus- sian billionaire considered by experts and officials to be among the most prominent sanctions targets, has yet to take a public position on the invasion but was reportedly in Belarus on Monday to take part in talks between Russian and Ukrainian represen- tatives. Abramovich has made some moves in recent days inter- preted by experts as signs of anxiety over sanctions. Over the weekend, he announced that he was turning over operational control, though

not ownership, of the Chelsea soccer team in England he owns to a charity affiliated with the club. Days earlier, his private jet, a palatial Boeing 787, departed an airport near Monte Carlo and landed in Moscow, according to online aircraft tracking services. “I highly suspect the threat of sanctions is responsible for Mr. Abramovich’s interest in peace,” Firestone said. “I don’t care. We need to motivate more people like that.” Abramovich has not been hit with sanctions so far. The finan- cial penalties on Deripaska date back to 2016, when he was ac- cused by the Treasury Depart- ment of being linked to Russian interference in the U.S. election, an allegation he has denied. But Fridman, an Alfa Group founder who is ranked among the 10 richest Russians in the world, was sanctioned on Monday by the European Union. The United States, the Euro- pean Union and Britain have signaled that dozens of oligarchs and senior Russian officials are likely to be named as sanctions targets in the coming weeks. These are in addition to broader measures advanced over the weekend, including sanctions blocking Russian central bank access to billions of dollars in foreign reserves that sent the country’s currency tumbling. Fried and others cited the pained expressions on the faces of top Russian economic and finance officials meeting with

Putin on Monday as further sign of the strain on elites, whose children, many of whom have become accustomed to luxurious lives in Western countries, have in some cases been more pointed in their voicing of opposition to the war than their parents. Abramovich’s daughter, Sofia, a horse-riding aficionado who has lived in London, said in a social media post last week that “the biggest and most successful lie of the Kremlin’s propaganda is that most Russians stand with Putin.” A granddaughter of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin attended an antiwar rally in London, according to a report in the British newspaper the Inde- pendent. A Russian billionaire who owns that newspaper as well as another called the Evening Stan- dard used the front page of the latter publication on Monday to issue an appeal to Putin. “I plead with you to use today’s negotiations to bring this terri- ble conflict in Ukraine to an end,” wrote the publisher, Evgeny Leb- edev, who holds a royal title in the United Kingdom and whose father was an officer in the KGB. There have also been signs of countervailing pressures on those registering their opposition to the invasion. The “No to war!” message posted by the daughter of Putin’s spokesman, for instance, remained online only briefly before it was taken down.

Invasion is opening up faint fissures between Putin and Russian oligarchs

ANDREY RUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG NEWS Billionaire Oleg Deripaska talks to reporters in Russia in 2019. He has called for peace talks and an end to “all this state capitalism.”

BY MICHAEL BIRNBAUM, MISSY RYAN AND SOUAD MEKHENNET

Just last week, many European
countries were still so somnolent
about the threat Russia posed to
Ukraine that Germany’s spy chief
was caught unawares in Kyiv
when the Kremlin invasion start-
ed. He had to be extracted in a
special operation.
But over just a handful of days,
Europe has been shocked out of a
post-Cold War era — and state of
mind — in which it left many of
the democratic world’s most
burning security problems to the
United States.
The continent has in some
ways leapfrogged the United
States, which — though many
policymakers credit the Biden
administration for helping to co-
ordinate — wasn’t prepared for
the speed of the European
change. And it has been dizzying
for some of the continent’s Russia
hawks, especially those in East-
ern Europe who campaigned for
tougher measures against the
Kremlin for years but were ig-
nored by bigger countries includ-
ing Germany, Italy and France.
That’s how it felt to Latvian
Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkev-
ics, who sat down in his office in
the Latvian capital of Riga late
Sunday to take part in a video
conference with fellow European
Union foreign ministers. On the
call they agreed to another round
of sanctions that days prior
would have been unimaginable.
They included banning Russian
state media in the E.U., harsh
sanctions on Russian banks, and
even using E.U. funds to pay for
countries’ shipments of weapon-
ry to Ukraine — a step so outside
the ordinary operations of the
27-nation bloc that some policy-
makers didn’t realize it was an
option.
“Right now I’m taking part in
the E.U. foreign affairs council,
feeling like the show ‘The Visible
is the Unbelievable,’ ” a long-run-
ning Russian popular science
program, Rinkevics wrote on
Twitter, posting a photo of his
computer screen showing a
checkerboard of small video im-
ages of foreign ministers. “We’re
deciding on things that seemed
unbelievable a week ago.”
The countries taking action
against Russia stretch around the
world. Japan announced on Mon-
day that it, like other countries,
would impose sanctions on Rus-
sia’s central bank and on senior
officials in Belarus. Australia,
meanwhile, said it would sanc-
tion Russian President Vladimir
Putin and other senior Russian
leaders and would supply weap-
onry to Ukraine.
But no region other than Eu-
rope has overturned its foreign
policy orthodoxies in a heartbeat.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared he would vastly increase his country’s defense spending and start shipping arms to Ukraine. A top leader of the German Green party — which grew out of an anti-nuclear power movement decades ago — declared an openness to keeping his country’s nuclear plants operat- ing if it helped reduce reliance on Russian energy. Eight member nations of the European Union said they want- ed to start membership negotiations with Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she would be open to it, and on Monday, Ukrai- nian President Volodymyr Zel- ensky formally sent an applica- tion to Brussels. “It’s the end of an era,” said former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who was once dismissed by a Finnish leader as having “post-Soviet stress” for his hawkish approach to Rus- sia. “What you grew up in, the last 30 years, is over,” he said he told a group of college students late last week. “We are somewhere else.” “The situation on the ground has led countries to understand neither Biden nor the East Euro- peans were crazy,” Ilves said. Finland and Sweden, who have

long held themselves apart from NATO, are seriously considering joining the defense alliance. A poll published Monday by Fin- land’s public broadcaster showed 53 percent of Finns favored membership. Even Switzerland, the mountainous redoubt of neutrali- ty and hidden bank accounts, declared Monday it would freeze top Russians’ assets. During a six-hour meeting in Brussels on Thursday night that included an emotional video call- in from Zelensky that left some E.U. leaders in tears, the presi- dents and prime ministers even discussed the possibility of uni- laterally halting the purchase of Russian oil and gas upon which they depend. That could force European factories to close for lack of power — and the leaders set aside the discussion for the time being. But that the idea was floated was a measure of Europe’s new world. Russia’s invasion “is against the values Europe believes in,” said Nathalie Tocci, the head of the Italian Institute of Interna- tional Affairs and an adviser to the European Union’s foreign policy chief. “We see the risk that it could possibly tip beyond Ukraine itself. Faced with a 1939 scenario, we’d be crazy not to change paradigm. What we don’t

know is whether it is sufficient. What is already crystal clear is that it’s necessary.” Policymakers and analysts described a months-long campaign by the Biden administration to share intelligence briefings, pressure powerful countries that they might need to make sacrifices, and coordinate among a dispa- rate group of 27 E.U. member states. Those countries range from the Russia-friendly — Hun- gary — to the Russia-fearful — many formerly communist states — to those that have powerful business ties to Moscow, including Germany and Italy. The Biden team negotiated economic measures and made countless phone calls to Euro- pean officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kyiv, Ber- lin, Riga and other European capitals. The coalition that this week laid out unprecedented sanctions, the largest ever to target an economy of Russia’s size, “did not emerge out of nowhere,” said Ivo Daalder, a U.S. ambassador to NATO under former president Barack Obama who now heads the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs. “It had to be built.” As far back as November, Daalder said, European officials were reporting that the Biden

administration was pressing them hard on the need to prepare a coordinated sanctions package they hoped, at the time, might deter Putin from acting. While there were cracks as recently as earlier this month among countries’ analysis — with the United Kingdom and United States, for example, predicting a major Russian assault and France and Germany taking a more skep- tical view — those fissures disap- peared when Putin moved into action. Biden and Blinken “basically herded the cats, many of which were quite reluctant,” Ilves said. “Otherwise you’d have a lot of people running around in all directions.” Doug Lute, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2013 to 2017, said American leadership was key in bringing NATO countries together to face a common threat. Lute characterized Biden’s at- tempt in recent months to or- chestrate pressure on Russia and encourage countries with deeper ties to Russia to adopt a stronger stance as a “diplomatic surge,” involving intelligence sharing, consultations on sanctions and more. The last time NATO was as united as it is today was Sept. 12,

2001, when the alliance for the only time in its history invoked the Article V mutual defense clause in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States, Lute said. A senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation candidly, said the Biden administration has sought as a guiding principle in its foreign policy to restore American en- gagement with the world. The official cited nearly five months of efforts by the administration to telegraph the threat it believed Russia posed in Ukraine and bring partners together in response. “The fact you now have the world coming together, this didn’t happen by accident,” the official said. “This happened by dint of a lot of hard work.” After the Russian invasion last week, Scholz felt the country’s path was clear, said his spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit. Putin underestimated “the ability of Europe and the Western partners to show unity and re- solve,” Hebestreit said. “We have decided on major sanctions, probably some of the sharpest sanctions that have been decided upon in modern times against [a] state.” “The scales are falling from people’s eyes,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and NATO deputy secretary general. “There are no more illusions or hopes about cooperating with Russia.” The current moment might serve to alter the defense equa- tion in Europe, adding gravity to Europeans’ sense of needing to protect themselves and potential- ly relieving the U.S. burden there if there is increased European spending and troop reinforce- ments on the continent. That would allow the United States to take up its long-planned shift toward Asia, said Vershbow, who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council. In the end, many said, Putin made the choice simple. “Putin made us realize that we really are dependent on each other and that we have to close ranks, which is what we did,” said Hannah Neumann, a German Green member of the European Parliament. “I think Putin is surprised that we really did it. And I can tell you, we are also a bit surprised by the extent and speed with which we really did it.” And others said the transfor- mation will endure. “We have to accept as Germans that we have to pay for our security in economic terms, that we can no longer hope for Pax Americana — that we can make our business with whoever we want, and somebody else will pay the economic price for our security,” said Franziska Brantner, a state secretary at the German Economy Ministry who was in- volved in her country’s shift on defense spending and weapons deliveries to Ukraine. “These days are over.”

In days, Europe overhauled its post-Cold War f oreign policy

STEPHANIE LECOCQ/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK Ukrainian flags are hoisted along the flag of Europe i n front of the European Parliament in Brussels on M onday to show solidarity with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. The European Union has banned Russian state media and issued s anctions on Russian banks.

Continent stands poised to be a fuller security partner to Washington

The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-01)

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