On-line Intelligence Bulletin of the European Press Agency
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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By Nina Bachkatov
The successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, backed by Western new weapons and shared intelligence resources, obliged president Putin to come out. It took the form of a televised address to the nation, against a background of leakages and unusual stage crafting. It was first due to take place on the 20th evening, then it was postponed for the next day, at 8, then at 9 o’clock. That was enough to unleash new speculation concerning Putin’s physical and moral condition. The usual well-informed sources said that he had been so affected by fever and coughs that he was unable to face the cameras, despite the dispatch of a large medical staff; and that the program shown as a single tirade was in fact a re-mix of interrupted sessions.
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By Nina Bachkatov
A deluge of comments has been published since the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, passed away on 30 August. No doubts he was different from his predecessors, notably by his approach of power and image well before P.R. invaded political action. After his election as general secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party, in March 1985, Soviet media had published his official pictures, in line with decades old traditions of portraying leaders with smooth faces defying age – and reality. Gorbachev immediately banned the practice, ordering his pictures to show the characteristic red spots on his scalp.
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By Nina Bachkatov
The Russian offensive in the Donbass on 19 April has been changing the face of the war in Ukraine. For the Kremlin, it was the opportunity to come back with its original narrative about a “special operation” forced upon itself as guarantor of its “brothers”’ security and freedom. Brothers, who supposedly, were threatened by Ukrainian “neo-nazis” who seized power in Kiev and Western Ukraine in 2014 and who trapped them in a pocket territory. For president Zelensky, the Donbass offensive was the sign that the Kremlin, unable to seize Kiev, was coming back from the East, backed by separatist forces, with the intention to destroy Ukraine as a nation and a state.
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By Nina Bachkatov
In recent weeks, world’s leaders have been running from a summit to another one. Among Western allies, the key words were unity and solidarity; among the others, it was about multipolarity and convergence. But the background of all those diplomatic activities have been, and will be for a while, the war in Ukraine and its global consequences. There is also the growing awareness that the cost of the military operation and sanctions are indeed bleeding Russia, but much more Ukraine.
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By Nina Bachkatov
Three months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, a new front has been open – about grain’s exports and global food security. The concept was hardly mentioned before the fall of Mariupol, when international attention switched from the fights around Azovstal to the inaccessibility of Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. The accent has been put on its global consequences, from the prices’ increase of basic food in the West to the risk of famine in poor countries. In a couple of weeks, Westerners preoccupied with energy bills discovered that a third of the 200-300m tonnes of cereals exchanged yearly through the world were coming from Russia and Ukraine.
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Nina Bachkatov
The address of president Putin during the 9 May Victory Parade on Red square was shorter than usual. The number of men and equipment was reduced by 30%compared to previous years; seats on the side of Lenin’s Mausoleum, traditionally packed with foreign diplomats and officials, were sparsely occupied. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, had anticipated unpleasant questions by announcing that no invitations had been sent to former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, nor to Germany or Japan, because it was not an even date, just the 77 th anniversary; and that the event will be scaled down. The surprise was not so much about what Putin said, but what he didn’t.
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