Possible peace agreement over Ukraine; Omicron outbreaks in PRC and DPRK
Russian and Chinese security services perform disastrously pre-invasion
The Omicron outbreak in China is rapidly shifting the calculations of Moscow and Beijing: assumptions that were valid on Thursday or Friday may be outdated. As The Report goes to press there are more hints that Russia and Ukraine may arrive at some diplomatic agreement in the near future, although caution is warranted. The Report will publish several editions this week amid a rapidly changing situation.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi is meeting with the U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Rome on Monday. The in-person nature of the meeting seems significant, as is the announcement that the two sides will discuss Ukraine. With Omicron spreading in mainland China and along the border with the DPRK, Beijing may be seeking to deescalate the conflict in Ukraine before it becomes too disruptive. The DPRK has one of the world’s lowest vaccination percentages, shows signs of a major Omicron outbreak, and has recently tested ICBMs. With potentially severe problems at home and along its border, Beijing’s appetite for a confrontation with the West over Ukraine may be waning rapidly.
Putin, facing extraordinary pressure over stout resistance from Ukrainian forces, Western sanctions, and the lackluster performance of Russian forces, may be hinting that he is willing to accept limited objectives if it will end the conflict . Russian proxies have announced they will seek to establish a (Moscow-backed) statelet in Kherson, which would presumably resolve Crimea’s water supply issues, satisfying one of Putin’s political objectives in the conflict.
Putin showed a willingness to employ mass violence against civilians earlier in the week, and Beijing seemed willing to go along with it, but the PRC’s COVID outbreak appears to have rapidly shifted Beijing’s calculus – and probably Moscow’s. If mainland China goes into lockdown just as Western sanctions hit, the Russian economy could lose access to imports overnight, with devastating economic implications. Putin may be very willing to seek a negotiated settlement in the near-term, particularly if Beijing pressures him.
There’s a growing body of evidence that Russian and PRC security services have committed historic intelligence blunders. The FSB reportedly misled Putin about the extent of Ukraine’s capability and will to resist; several senior officials at the agency have reportedly been arrested for “misusing operational funds” and “providing poor intelligence.” While the Kremlin and/or the FSB’s rival intelligence services may have leaked information about the arrests to deflect from their own failings, there is a convincing amount of evidence that the FSB has performed disastrously and is partly responsible for the Russian military’s subpar performance to date.
According to CIA Director Bill Burns during his public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, “Xi’s own intelligence doesn't appear to have told him what was going to happen.” Of course, Burns’ statement could have several motivations and is somewhat vague – no one exactly predicted “what was going to happen.” Still, Burns appears to be hinting at a major analytical failure by PRC security organs. The PRC collects – via signals and human sources – an extraordinary amount of information from the West and Russia. How on earth did PRC analysts fail to connect the dots?
The apparent inability – or unwillingness – of the PRC security services to warn Xi about Putin’s invasion is one of the most alarming facets of the crisis. What are PRC security officials telling Xi and the PLA about the difficulty of assaulting Taiwan? While there is little chance that the PRC will assault the main island of Taiwan this year, there may be more dangers surrounding the ROC’s January 2024 Presidential Election and its aftermath than is generally assumed.
Table of Contents:
1) Potential Peace Process
2) Omicron outbreak in mainland China – and possibly North Korea
3) The FSB and the Russian security services
4) Chinese security services
5) Russian military performance and war planning
6) Worth Your Time
7) Turkmenistan
1) Potential Peace Process
Progress in Russia-Ukraine talks may develop into common stance — legislator – TASS
A member of Russia’s delegation at negotiations with Ukraine, chairman of the State Duma’s international affairs committee Leonid Slutsky, has said that negotiations between Moscow and Kiev may develop into a common stance and documents yet to to be signed.
"If we compare the two delegations’ positions at the talks at the very beginning and today, we will see considerable progress. I am pleased to reiterate that according to my personal expectations this progress may develop into a common stance within days and some documents to be signed," Slutsky told the RT television broadcaster in an interview.
Russian forces have tried to intimidate local officials working in the occupied southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and deployed officers from a notorious, now-disbanded riot police unit as part of that effort, a local administration official said.
In an interview, Serhiy Khlan, deputy chief of the Kherson regional council, also described in more detail an effort by Russian officials to organize a sham independence referendum, in a pretext for formally taking over the region or simply prying it away from central government control.
Comment: Somewhat perversely, this *could* be Putin’s way of signaling a willingness to deescalate. Putin’s war aims initially appeared to be highly ambitious (and, frankly, probably unachievable): the decapitation or surrender of the political leadership in Kyiv, and some sort of political settlement, such as the installation of a puppet government. He may be willing to accept more limited aims, such as resolution of Crimea’s water supply issues. If Kherson and other nearby cities, such as Nova Kakhovka and Kakhovka, are brought under Russian control then Crimea’s water supply problems will be abated.
Russian forces restored water flow to a canal linking the Dnieper River in Ukraine to Russian-annexed Crimea, a Russian defence ministry spokesperson said on Thursday, as Russia pressed ahead with a vast military operation against Ukraine.
Comment: Russian forces blew up the dam on the first day of the war. Unsurprising but significant.
Putin’s prosaic Ukraine motivations? – Jan 25th edition of The China-Russia Report
What if Vladimir Putin’s increasingly belligerent Ukrainian posture reflects alarm over changing regional military balances and their domestic political implications – not grand geopolitical ambitions? The Russian autocrat may fear that the Ukrainian military could overcome Russian-backed insurgents in the Donbas before Russia’s 2024 electoral legitimation ritual. He may be even more alarmed by long-term prospective advances in Ukrainian military capacity, which could imperil Russia’s hold over the Crimean peninsula and threaten Putin’s domestic political standing.
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Since [Putin] fears a potential future A2/AD threat to Crimea, he will accept nothing less than vast swathes of Ukrainian territory, particularly along the Black Sea coast; another pliant, puppet government in Kyiv; or some dramatic concession elsewhere, such as a reversal of NATO’s 1999 and 2004 enlargements.
2) Omicron outbreak in mainland China – and possibly North Korea
Millions in new lockdown as China faces worst Covid outbreak in two years – France 24
Millions of people across China endured lockdowns on Sunday as virus cases doubled to nearly 3,400 and anxiety mounted over the resilience of the country's 'zero-Covid' approach in the face of the worst outbreak in two years.
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The city of Jilin – centre of the outbreak in the northeast – was partially locked down Saturday, while residents of Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, were confined to their homes Sunday.
Comments: 1) This outbreak poses immense risks to Chinese and world economic growth; 2) Beijing – and Moscow – may seek a rapid resolution of the crisis due to the economic/political risks associated with large-scale outbreak and shutdowns in mainland China. Where will Russian imports come from, if Western imports are embargoed and Chinese imports are dramatically reduced amid shutdowns? 3) The Chinese outbreak is occurring along the DPRK border, while NK News is reporting that COVID-19 tests have risen tenfold in recent weeks, perhaps suggesting that North Korea is facing an outbreak of its own. News about North Korea has been overwhelmed by Putin’s invasion, but the US reported that the DPRK tested parts of its ICBM system.
3) The FSB and the Russian security services
Putin Places Spies Under House Arrest – Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan for CEPA
After two weeks of halting war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin just suddenly launched an attack in a surprising direction — his beloved agency, the FSB.
The Fifth Service of the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence service, has been targeted and the leadership placed under house arrest, according to the authors’ sources.
Its head, Colonel-General Sergei Beseda, and his deputy were being held after allegations of misusing operational funds earmarked for subversive activities and for providing poor intelligence ahead of Russia’s now-stuttering invasion. The operation has hit serious obstacles, not least fierce resistance by the Ukrainian armed forces and the unity of the population, including most Russian-speakers, behind President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government.
The Fifth Service was responsible for providing Putin with intelligence on political developments in Ukraine on the eve of the invasion. And it looks like two weeks into the war, it finally dawned on Putin that he was completely misled. The department, fearful of his responses, seems to have told Putin what he wanted to hear.
Comment: Take insider accounts of Russian security services with lumps of salt, but this reporting is highly credible (Soldatov and Borogan are experts on the Russian security services) and the article provides a convincing explanation for why the Kremlin and the Russian military have made bizarre decisions over the Ukraine war.
Russian forces clearly expected little resistance, as there are reports that small (~100-soldier) columns of troops drove straight towards Kyiv in the beginning of the war and were easily stopped (less charitably: destroyed). It’s highly likely that the Kremlin and the Russian military believed that the war would be easy due to poor intelligence from the FSB.
Why is this story coming out now? It’s possible, of course, that elements in the SVR or the GRU leaked this story to Soldatov/Borogan to knife bureaucratic rivals (and perhaps convince the outside world that their boss, while misled by the FSB, is nevertheless rational). The Kremlin has some reasons to leak the story: it doesn’t make Putin look good, of course, but it’ll help quell the rumors about his sanity. Of course, it’s possible that a disgruntled FSB official leaked the story for their own ideological or (more likely) professional reasons. Finally, the FSB may be so leaky that its officials are sharing information throughout the Russian elite, leaving plenty of opportunities for journalists to confirm the story. Regardless of the motivations of the leaker(s), the central theme of FSB incompetence rings true.
Now, our sources report that General Beseda and his deputy have been placed under house arrest — for reasons including the alleged misuse of funds allocated for operations, as well as for providing bad intelligence. Indeed, it appears that the intel delivered by Putin’s career intelligence officer has only gone from bad to worse.
Comment: Very good thread. As Gabuev shows, the invasion represents not only a giant lapse of intelligence, but a systematic failure across most of the Russian national security community.
In April 1992, the SVR signed an agreement with its counterparts in these countries, which included Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus and Central Asian stans, agreeing not to spy on each other. The FSB, however, never signed any such agreement and felt free from any such obligations.
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The existence of first sections and the apparent intelligence vacuum in the post-Soviet republics provided the opportunity: the FSB’s new directorate was tasked by the Kremlin with spying on Russia’s nearest neighbors.
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The FSB’s foreign intelligence arm, which began as a third espionage agency of the Russian Federation, had now graduated into Putin’s imperial gendarme, fostering the Kremlin agenda in a host of post-Soviet countries, using any and all means available.
Putin’s hydra: Inside Russia’s intelligence services – Mark Galeotti [from May 2016]
Far from being an all-powerful “spookocracy” that controls the Kremlin, Russia’s intelligence services are internally divided, distracted by bureaucratic turf wars, and often produce poor quality intelligence – ultimately threatening the interests of Vladimir Putin himself.
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While much useful intelligence is collected, the machinery for managing, processing, and assessing it is limited. As a result, intelligence’s capacity to influence strategy and wider policy is questionable.
Comment: This piece held up quite well. Galeotti distinguishes between collection and analysis: while the Russian government (and authoritarian states in general) is quite effective at collecting intelligence, it often struggles to perform analysis or effectively integrate intelligence into the policymaking process.
Russia’s FSB punishes graduates for flashy celebration – BBC [from July 2016]
Russia’s FSB security service says it will punish a group of new agents who allowed themselves to be photographed lavishly celebrating their graduation.
The graduates were seen driving a convoy of black Mercedes jeeps noisily through Moscow last month, blocking traffic and hanging out of the windows.
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In a statement (in Russian), [the FSB] also says some of the FSB Academy’s senior officers have already been demoted and some will be sacked.
Comment: From July 2016. An insight into the FSB’s organizational incompetence and the motivations of many FSB officers.
Graduates of the FSB Academy riding Mercedes-Benz SUVs – Youtube
Comment: Pretty astonishing for FSB graduates to appear on camera like this, although, yes, most FSB officers don’t operate under “cover.” Some other generalizations regarding the Russian security services: the SVR is a serious and sophisticated intelligence service that excels in HUMINT; the GRU is aggressive (and often effective) but rather unsubtle; and the FSB is largely composed of careerist housecats.
Final Comment: I’m not going to link to his twitter account, but Igor Sushko, a race car driver and “entrepreneur,” claims that someone in the FSB is leaking inside information to him. It’s extremely unlikely that an FSB officer would risk exposure by leaking to an amateur like Sushko. On the other hand, someone like Sushko seems highly capable of fabricating “inside information” to boost engagement on social media.
4) Chinese security services
Bill Burns [CIA Director]: I think, senator, that the Chinese leadership first has invested a lot in partnership with Russia, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. I do, however, believe that the Chinese leadership, President Xi in particular, is unsettled by what he’s seeing, partly because his own intelligence doesn’t appear to have told him what was going to happen.
5) Russian military performance and war planning
Russia warns U.S. over arms shipments to Ukraine – Politico
Speaking Saturday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow has warned the U.S. it would see the deliveries of Western weapons to Ukraine as targets.
Ryabkov said Russia “warned the U.S. that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets.”
Just How Tall Are Russian Soldiers? – Dr Jack Watling for RUSI
It became a cliché in military circles to append analysis of Russian military odernization and emerging concepts with the caveat that its soldiers were not 10 foot tall. The abysmal performance of the Russian military in its invasion of Ukraine has laid bare just how wide the theory–praxis gap is. While this should lead to a recalibration of assessments of Russian capability, however, it is important that analysts do not over-correct.
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The failure to prepare units before the invasion is perhaps the greatest cause for caution in writing off the Russian Army over its performance in Ukraine. Many – though by no means all – of the failures at the tactical level stem from not having enough time to prepare. This is a mistake that the Russian military could readily avoid in the future and would likely have a significant impact on improving Russian military performance. Thus, it is important not to set their operations in Ukraine as the baseline for future conflicts.
Comment: As Watling, Kofman, and other experts on the Russian military note, Russian forces’ performance against Ukraine to date may not predict their effectiveness against NATO in a hypothetical conventional conflict.
Still, the real-world performance of Russian conventional forces is becoming harder to overlook, and the invasion is taking a major toll on Russian equipment and personnel.
As Russian forces in Ukraine approach two weeks in the country since their invasion, it has become increasingly clear that Russian efforts to achieve a quick military victory in Ukraine and replace the regime in Kyiv with a more pliable one have failed. Vladimir Putin premised the initial plan of operations seemingly on the idea that military victory would come quickly, toppling the government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In its place, Russia would establish a pro-Russian leader that would sign some form of a political agreement with Russia regarding Ukraine’s “demilitarization and denazification,” allowing the Russian military to largely withdraw from the country. Over the first weeks of the war, it has become clear that this naïve plan, based on overly optimistic assumptions about how the Ukrainian public would support toppling the government in Kyiv, has failed.
With the initial aspiration of being welcomed as liberators unfulfilled, Russian forces will now likely need to engage in occupation and pacification to achieve their goals. [Bolded by The Report] Putin has continually mentioned he was not interested in occupying the country, yet it will be the only means to achieve his goals and ensure that any lasting resistance will not oust an installed leader, as is likely to happen without continual Russian military support. His desire to avoid occupation appears smart given the historical track record of military occupation. But Putin has appeared to have fallen into a common regime change folly where, in deciding to engage in regime change, he did not consider that a military occupation would most likely be required to prop up the newly imposed regime. Like many other would-be regime changers in history, he has underestimated the costs his regime change plan will require.
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Similarly, my research on all cases of occupation since 1898 shows that only roughly 15 percent of the militaries who eventually did set up military occupation actually planned for it ahead of time. [Bolded by The Report]
Comment: Insightful article, recommend reading in its entirety if you’re interested in the (probable) next phases of the conflict.
Stalled and frustrated, Putin will likely ‘double down’ in the coming weeks, CIA says – NPR
“I think Putin is angry and frustrated right now. He’s likely to double down and try to grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties,” [CIA Director William] Burns testified before the House Intelligence Committee. “His military planning and assumptions were based on a quick, decisive victory.”
6) Worth Your Time
The Weakness of the Despot – Stephen Kotkin’s interview with David Remnick of The New Yorker
Kotkin: If Kyiv can hold out through that [planned pause three to four weeks after the invasion], then potentially it could hold out for longer than that, because it can be resupplied while the Russians are being resupplied during their pause. Moreover, the largest and most important consideration is that Russia cannot successfully occupy Ukraine. They do not have the scale of forces. They do not have the number of administrators they’d need or the cooperation of the population. They don’t even have a Quisling yet.
Comment: Kotkin is one of the top experts on Russia. The interview with Kotkin is possibly the most informative piece I’ve read on the crisis and is well worth your time.
Explainer | The ruble’s rubble: Economic fallout on Central Asia – Maximillian Hess for Eurasianet
Since Vladimir Putin launched his war on February 24, the ruble has collapsed by 50 percent with no bottom in sight. Russia has enacted currency controls reminiscent of the early 1990’s and telegraphed plans to default on foreign debtholders.
The uncertainty is gripping Central Asia, where Russia is a top trading partner and the source of critical remittances. Local currencies rise and fall with the ruble.
In short, Central Asia’s economies are highly exposed to Russia.
From my vantage point at the outset of the crisis, China had the unenviable task of trying to reconcile three interests in particular that are fundamentally irreconcilable.
The first is a strategic partnership with Russia and let’s face it, it’s an unsentimental partnership. There’s no love in it. It’s not an alliance. It’s what I would call an entente: a strategic and tactical accommodation directed in part at third parties and powers. The first interest was this strategic partnership with Russia. The second, obviously, involved China’s longstanding foreign policy principles of sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs, territorial integrity, and then third, the desire not to be collateral damage in American and European sanctions.
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We’re a week plus into this. My take on it is that they have essentially decided to jettison the principles, to lean hard toward Moscow, and to try to straddle on the sanctions. We can come back to the sanctions, but I think from my vantage point that a lean toward Russian positions is not just notable and it’s significant and you can’t just look at that as a snapshot in time. You can really see that in much starker relief, if you look at it in historical perspective.
Comment: I learned a lot from the interview but have a quibble. Isn’t Beijing’s embrace of sovereignty, non-interference, and territorial integrity widely understood to be tactical rather than principled, even within China? Beijing routinely sanctions countries that have upset it: (Norway, South Korea, Australia, and Lithuania, just to name a few); Daryl Morey and Anne-Marie Brady (to say nothing of members of the Chinese diaspora) have faced extraordinary pressure from Beijing for their actions abroad; and the 9-dashed line is a rather expansive definition of territorial integrity. Beijing’s principles appear situational and flexible, that might makes right.
Beijing should be drawing some important lessons from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Though there are big differences between Ukraine and Taiwan, there are important similarities.
China's Censorship, Propaganda Push Russian Version Of The War In Ukraine – Reid Standish for RFE/RL
While Beijing is threading the needle diplomatically and looking to put breathing room between it and its close ties with the Kremlin in the face of mounting international pressure over its invasion of Ukraine, China's state media and vocal officials are increasingly converging with Moscow's distorted narrative of the war -- even beginning to push conspiracy theories against Ukraine and the West in the process.
China’s tech platforms become propaganda tools in Putin’s war – FT
Response to Ukraine invasion poses ESG problems for foreign investors in country’s social media companies
Xi Jinping places a bet on Russia – Chaguan (David Rennie) for The Economist
In the diplomatic drawing rooms of Beijing, there is debate about whether Mr Putin told his host, Mr Xi, that he was going to launch a war with Ukraine less than three weeks after that agreement. A popular view is that Mr Xi knew that Russian forces were massing for a possible invasion—not least because China spies assiduously on Russia—but may have accepted assurances from Mr Putin that any war would be over in as little as a week.
Comment: This podcast is from earlier in February but I strongly recommend it – particularly for folks who don’t know much about reporting in the PRC.
As China tries to square a circle in Ukraine, it will continue to navigate between unpalatable choices. Beijing prizes its security ties with Russia but also seeks to safeguard its economic and technological ties to Europe and the rest of the West. These contradictory interests remain unresolved, but it is increasingly evident that Beijing will tilt to Vladimir Putin even as it seeks to maintain some rhetorical separation.
7) Turkmenistan
Comment: Turkmenistan’s new President held a press conference, spoke in English, and discussed the importance of entrepreneurship and the private sector. Very early days, but noteworthy. For new subscribers: Turkmenistan is a major natural gas exporter and a significant player in Sino-Russian relations.
The war’s impact on Central Asia - China-Russia Report on February 27th
Central Asia may be in the initial phases of a natural gas renaissance. Serdar Berdymukhamedov’s elevation to the Turkmen presidency is fraught with uncertainty but could augur economic reforms in gas-rich Turkmenistan. Uzbekistan is undertaking economic transformation, prospecting for shale gas, and opening itself to foreign trade and investment. The outcome of these events and trends is hardly foreordained: Uzbekistan’s gas reserves are still unknown but may be insufficient, and one should never underestimate the incompetence of the Turkmen elite. Still, there are hints that Beijing may be eyeing additional natural gas and energy imports from the region. The stars may be aligning for Central Asian natural gas.
v/r,
Joe Webster
The China-Russia Report is an independent, nonpartisan newsletter covering political, economic, and security affairs within and between China and Russia. All articles, comments, op-eds, etc represent only the personal opinion of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the position(s) of The China-Russia Report.