the times | Tuesday April 5 2022 2GM 11News
Bolshoi raising
funds for army
The Bolshoi Theatre
staged a performance of
the ballet Spartacus in
Moscow to raise funds for
the families of Russian
soldiers who have died in
President Putin’s “special
mission” in Ukraine. The
world-famous ballet had
been set to return to the
Royal Opera House in
London this summer with
a bill that included Aram
Khachaturian’s Spartacus,
but the performances were
cancelled after the Russian
invasion. The ballet was
organised by the Russian
Ministry of Culture to
raise funds for “those who
help our army” and aid
“assistance to evacuees
from Donbas”.Germany’s regret
over gas pipeline
Frank-Walter Steinmeier,
the German president, has
said he regrets Berlin’s
conciliatory policy towards
Russia in recent decades
and that relations could
not return to their pre-war
status with President Putin
in power. “Holding on to
Nord Stream 2 was a
mistake,” he said. The gas
pipeline from Russia to
Germany was suspended
only two days before the
Russian invasion of
Ukraine despite of years of
warnings that it would
increase German reliance
on Russian energy. “We
held on to bridges Russia
no longer believed in and
our partners warned us
about,” Steinmeier said.Bodies in streets
before withdrawal
An analysis of satellite
images of Bucha
confirmed that bodies
were lying in the streets,
before Russian forces
withdrew from the area
last week. Russian officials
claimed on Sunday that
the bodies had been
placed in Bucha after “all
Russian units withdrew” to
smear Moscow.
The analysis, carried out
by the New York Times,
came as Ukrainian
officials said they had
found five bodies with
their hands tied in
Motyzhyn, west of Kyiv.
The dead included the
mayor, Olha Sukhenko,
50, her husband Igor and
their son, Oleksandr.Serbian president
is congratulated
President Putin has
congratulated Serbia’s
leader Aleksandar Vucic
on his re-election and
hopes to build on their
“strategic partnership”, the
Kremlin said yesterday. “I
expect that your work as
head of state will continue
to contribute to the
strengthening of the
strategic partnership that
exists between our
countries,” Putin, 69, said
in a message to Vucic, 52,
who has won his second
term. “This undoubtedly
meets the interests of the
fraternal peoples of Russia
and Serbia.” Putin hailed
the “independent” foreign
policy of Vucic, one of his
few allies in Europe.ukraine in brief
Fiona Hill, a former
White House
adviser, has studied
Putin for 20 yearsPresident Putin sees Ukrainians as
“traitors” to Moscow and has switched
from trying to capture the country to
“annihilation”, a former White House
adviser has warned.
The fierce resistance faced by the
invaders came as a surprise but Putin
has simply adjusted his aims, based on
his Cold War mindset of preparing for
every contingency, said Fiona Hill, a
British-born foreign affairs specialist
who has studied the Russian president
for almost 20 years.
“He wants to remove them [the
Ukrainians] as a threat,” Hill said. “He is
moving from capture to basically
carnage and annihilation, I think. The
Russian view of removing a threat is to
crush it completely.”
Hill, 56, shot to prominence as a com-
pelling witness before Congress during
the first Donald Trump impeachment
inquiry, testifying authoritatively in her
County Durham accent.
Her insights into the mind and
potential next moves of the Russian
leader have become sought-after on
both sides of the Atlantic after years of
close observation, including half a
dozen encounters with him while
advising presidents from George W
Bush to Trump.
Hill said she did not believe Putin
would be brought down by one of his
inner circle and that the West’s best
approach was to “hold our resolve” and
intensify sanctions in the hope that
Russians start rebelling and disobeying
his orders.
“Putin has a very high tolerance for
this kind of carnage, the loss of person-
nel,” she said. “And I think he has this
belief, and we’ll just have to see if this is
tested, that Russians are going to go
along with it. He is not going to sue for
peace, so whatever we do to formulate
the way out of this has to make Putin
look, from his point of view, like he’s
won something.”
When asked how long the war could
go on, Hill pointed to the interminable
conflict in Syria as evidence that Putin
was prepared to play a long game. “One
of the things that I’ve been remind-
ing people is that Russia inter-
vened in Syria in 2015 when it
looked like Assad was going to
be toppled,” she said. “He did
that precisely to make sure that
Assad was left in place. And As-
sad is still there and lives
to fight another day.”
She said that Putin
had believed for more
than a decade that the
US establishment
was out to topple
him, which helps to
explain why he in-NewsNews
with attack on Kremlin chiefs
Goal has changed
from conquest
to annihilation,
says Putin expert
David Charter Washington tervened in the 2016 election against
Hillary Clinton.
Hill also said world leaders must talk
urgently about how to police a new era
of conflict, after the Kremlin’s blunt talk
about its willingness to use tactical
nuclear weapons. “One of the reasons
for talking about this is getting ahead of
it and we should engage the Chinese
and the other nuclear powers on this,”
she urged. While nuclear powers say
they would only use these weapons in
the face of an existential threat, she
said: “The Russians are redefining exis-
tential threat. An existential threat
could be by extension all this pressure
that’s been put on the economy, if they
believe that we’re trying to force eco-
nomic collapse or remove the head of
state. It makes the whole world a more
dangerous place... This will actually [if
Russia uses nuclear weapons] com-
pletely and utterly change everyone’s
calculations.”
Hill told how she had pushed for
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and
former Republican governor of
California, to be made US ambassador
to Moscow when the position arose
under President Obama. She believes
that Putin and Schwarzenegger, who
has spoken of his Austrian father’s
torment over his Second World War
actions, could have bonded over war
stories in much the same way that he
swapped stories with Gerhard Schrö-
der, the former German chancellor,
whose father was killed in action in- Schwarzenegger is “married into
the Kennedy family, he’s roughly the
same height as Putin, and they weren’t
going to intimidate him in the same way
that they tried with other ambassadors.
He’s popular in Russia and knows how
to handle himself,” Hill said, although
she lost the argument in 2013.
Reports of atrocities that appear to
have been committed by Russian forces
were “following a pattern that goes
back historically”, she told CBS News
on Sunday. “A lot of this wasn’t talked
about so much after World War Two
but when the Red Army moved into
Berlin, there was mass rape of German
women in the city. People didn’t really
want to talk about that so much
given all the atrocities that were
committed by German forces
and the Nazis.”
She added: “If this was genu-
inely a special military opera-
tion to liberate a fraternal coun-
try from what Putin was de-
scribing as Nazis, you
would not expect this kind
of conduct. Either this is a
complete breakdown of
command and control
or it’s actually being
sanctioned in some way
to teach Ukrainians a
lesson.”
Why I tried to make
Schwarzenegger the US
ambassador to Moscow,
Times
The greatest challenge
is posed by the priciest
yacht Italy has seized -
the €530 million Sailing
Yacht A, owned by the
coal magnate Andrey
Igorevich Melnichenko.
The vessel is taking up
a dry dock spot in Trieste
due to be occupied in
mid-April by a new cruise
ship that has been builtlocally by the Italian
state-owned shipyard
Fincantieri. The cruise
ship needs to be put in
dry dock within days for
final checks.
Industry sources said
that Fincantieri risks
daily fines of €600,000 if
it hands over the ship late
to the cruise company
which has ordered it.returned. It is believed
that the task could be
made easier since some
of the yachts are
normally rented out when
not being used by their
oligarch owners.
“The question is, who
now would want to rent
out an oligarch’s seized
yacht?” one government
source said.management. The agency
must guarantee the upkeep
of the yachts, which can
cost thousands of euros a
week in crew wages,
maintenance and port fees.
Officials are studying a
2007 law that allows assets
to be rented out to cover
costs, with outstanding
expenses to be paid by the
owner when the yacht isFRANCISCO UBILLA/AP