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With Turkey – a key NATO member - having lodged an application to join, BRICS is set to get bigger, and this can only be a good sign for the collective strength of developing nations in a multipolar world.  It’s also a bad sign, longer term, for US political and economic dominance. Two key moments in the acceleration of BRICS were 2014 when the Ukraine crisis started and 2022, when full blown war broke out.  The weaponisation of the global financial system by the west against Russia helped the core focus of BRICS coalesce around the need to create an alternative financial architecture for developing nations. A BRICS bank (now called the New Development Bank was established) to create an alternative to the World Bank. A Contingent Reserve Arrangement was established, providing an alternative to the IMF for countries who need access to a pool of reserves in the face of currency crises. As the Belgium-based Swift interbank communication service has become politicised, so BRICS Pay was created. Throughout, a core aim is to reduce dependence on the US Dollar for global trade and, therefore foreign exchange reserves. Russia and China’s shift to trading oil in Yuan, Saudi Arabia’s abandonment of the Petrodollar Pact, and the UAE and India’s agreement on trading in rupees are good recent examples of countries choosing to de-dollarize.  While the dollar remains the pre-eminent global trading currency, we should expect to see its share of global trade decline slowly over the coming decade.  This will pose longer-term systemic risks to the USA’s ability to service its vast federal debt, as the cost of borrowing inexorably rises.   BRICS is gathering momentum as the potential benefits of membership become clearer in the eyes of developing nations, and Turkey’s bold decision to apply for membership is a sign of that. While I was the economic counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow, I watched in slow motion as dissatisfaction in developing countries grew about western domination of the international financial system. Take the International Monetary Fund. Today, 59.1% of the Fund’s voting shares are accounted for by countries with accounting for 13.7% of the World’s population. 57.7% of the bumper distribution of Special Drawing Rights during the COVID Pandemic went to the world’s wealthiest countries. It's not only that developing countries see that the western dominated financial bodies don’t represent their interests.  They have also became increasingly politicised; for example, under pressure from the US in 2015, the IMF changed its rules on debt servicing to allow Ukraine to avoid default, even though it was at that time refusing ever  to service its debt obligations to Russia.  While IMF conditionality on its programmes is rigid, the rules can be changed quickly if the political imperative from Washington demands it. Take the G7, which was the preeminent grouping of the world’s most affluent nations before BRICS found its feet. Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, G7 countries coordinated over 20,000 economic sanctions against Russia. There is no plan in place for sanctions relief as and when an inevitable ceasefire in Ukraine starts and a peace process begins.  The G7 froze $300bn in Russian foreign exchange reserves; they have more recently established a funding vehicle in which the proceeds of those Russian assets held in Europe are used to fund weapons supplies to Ukraine. Bodies like the IMF, SWIFT and Euroclear have been decisively subjugated by the political interests of the G7. The G20, was intended to be a more inclusive global grouping of the world’s leading 20 economies when it was set up to focus on international financial stability.  But it has also become increasingly dysfunctional as powerful G7 nations try repeatedly to politicise its agenda. So, BRICS has emerged as a more appealing meeting point for developing countries. Its values of non-interference, equality and mutual benefit mean countries with troubled political relationships can come together to strengthen relations through economic ties.  Hence the China, Russia, India triangle, which over history has been beset by tension and conflict. Iran and Saudia Arabia joined BRICS in 2024, almost unthinkable a few short years ago, but made possible by a gradual thawing in their relations brokered by China in 2023. Pakistan is now looking to join BRICS, despite India’s prominent founding role in the group. This gradual rapprochement through trade should be applauded. When it was first convened in 2009, BRICS was seen as a developing nations’ counterbalance to the rich countries’ club of the G8 (now G7). Today, three of the BRICS founding members rank among the world’s top ten economies. Six are members of the G20 group.  The group accounts for 45% of the global population and 28% of its economic output now. Set free from the need to fit within a west-leaning normative set of rules and values, BRICS collaboration has been unleashed by putting the economics first, and letting the politics follow. It’s therefore no surprise that Turkey – which is also a G20 member - has turned to BRICS. After decades of trying to join the European Union, it’s clear that road is permanently blocked. I don’t see Turkey’s future membership of BRICS and its NATO membership as mutually exclusive.  Indeed, straddling Europe and Asia, I think it’s very much to be encouraged that a prominent NATO member state should enjoy a less antagonistic relationship with the developing world. The very point of BRICS is that countries aren’t required to choose one side against another.  There is a long list of other countries who wish to join BRICS, including Mexico, Nigeria, Bahrain, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam. Before the end of this decade, BRICS will represent a majority of the global population. The USA, the EU and the UK will continue to be powerful players, but their influence on developing countries and their dominance of the global financial system, seems set to wane as BRICS forges a more multipolar world over the longer term.

Ukraine has occupied more territory in Russia this year than Russia has occupied in Ukraine, but the margin of difference is relatively small. What drove Zelensky’s bold gamble and will it, ultimately, succeed? In a Telegram post on August 16, Zelensky referred to captured land in Kursk as an addition to his "exchange fund." Kursk is less about overall military victory, than about gathering bargaining chips to trade in future peace negotiations with Russia. But that trade will only work to Ukraine’s benefit if its military can hold on to more territory than Russia gains over the period prior to formal negotiations starting. Only then would Zelensky be able to claim that the loss of men and materiel had been worth it. But his profit margin in any future land-for-land trade is narrowing. And all hope of the reported ceasefire talks that had been planned, reportedly, in Doha shortly before Kursk has evaporated. Instead, we have seen a hardening of Russia’s position. In a Telegram post on August 11, Dmitry Medvedev channelled the outrage in the Kremlin that Ukraine blindsided and humiliated Russia. He called for Russia eventually to take Odessa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Nikolaev, Kyiv and further on. "And let everyone, including the English bastards [he hates us even more than the Americans], be aware of this: we will stop only when we consider this acceptable and advantageous to ourselves." That represents a significant escalation, at least in terms of rhetoric. Of course, this is standard Medvedev, playing his role in the Russian apparatus, with splenetic pronouncements that are to the right of where Putin may be willing to settle. His comments probe sentiment, both internationally and at home. And they shape the narrative of Russian nationalist bloggers, for example, in the use of phrases like "the former Ukraine." i.e, the idea that Ukraine no longer exists as a sovereign nation state. In reality, taking just one of the cities Medvedev has mentioned would require a level of death and destruction far above anything we’ve seen to date. And I don’t assess, right now, that Russia would risk alienating the constituency of support it is building up in the developing world by doing that. But Kursk has changed the risk calculus on both sides. Ukraine had needed to inject morale into its military and civilian population with a victory of sorts, at a time when its lines in the Donbas were cracking, Western support for free weapon supplies was dwindling, and the result of the U.S. election was unclear/potentially worrying. Zelensky may have thought he had nothing to lose by throwing the dice . For Russia, the primary goal before Kursk had been to finish the job in the Donbas , overwhelming those remaining strategic towns and filling out the border of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts with Russian colors. They have shown openness to cut a deal , including after a new U.S. President took office, so long as that uses the line of contact as a starting point. Realists on the Western side, such as John Mearsheimer and others, cautioned that Kursk was strategic blunder. But Western government and mainstream media were dutifully cock-a-hoop about the Kursk offensive when it started. Ukraine contends that it now controls approximately 1000 square kilometers of sparsely populated land in Kursk oblast after all. However, Ukraine’s military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has admitted that the advance has slowed and that the focus has shifted to reinforcing land already occupied . The opportunity to capture more Russian land therefore appears limited, although there has been a so far unsuccessful effort by the Ukrainian army to push into Belgorod . In the Donbas, the line of contact around Donetsk had been practically unchanged for ten years since 2014, with both sides dug into heavily fortified positions. Despite large territorial gains by Russia across Ukraine at the start of the war in 2022, that line didn’t budge. Look on the Institute of the Study of War’s interactive map and you’ll see that since the overrun of fortress Avdiivka in February, Russia’s main effort has decisively broken out across rivers and difficult terrain to move 80% of the way to the strategic town of Pokrovsk. Progress has been slow and steady but has gathered momentum since Kursk. Once Pokrovsk falls, there is a flat, empty road from there to the oblast border. Russia will have leveled the scorecard with Ukrainian gains in Kursk and will then focus its main effort on Kramatorsk. As Ukraine is steadily pushed out of the Donbas, Zelensky may throw increasing men and materiel into holding his patch of land in Kursk, at a terrible cost, in a desperate bid to show his gamble wasn’t a catastrophe. Let’s be clear, Kursk has been a huge embarrassment for Russia, both politically and militarily, though probably less so than Yevgeny Prigozhin’s doomed drive towards Voronezh in 2023. Medvedev provides colorful — if exaggerated — insight into the Kremlin mood. He also illustrates the level of hatred in the Kremlin directed towards Ukraine’s Western sponsors. Some commentators in the west are assuming that if Trump is elected President, he may miraculously pull a ceasefire out of a hat. On the back of mounting evidence that Ukraine is slowly losing, I don’t rule out Biden pushing for a temporary pause in fighting before November, to give Harris a hastily papered-over "Putin didn’t win" narrative for voters after a decade of failed U.S. foreign policy. But don’t hold your breath on either front. With no incentives from the West for Russia to strike for peace, Putin may not care where the new occupant of the White House wants to position U.S. foreign policy. The military, economic and demographic cards remain stacked in Russia’s favor . On August 21, Medvedev launched another verbal salvo on Telegram, saying (his capitals) ‘NO NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE ENEMY IS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DESTROYED.'" History may record that Kursk was a pointless sideshow within a much larger tragedy for Ukraine. This is a copy of a piece I recently published in Responsible Statecraft. Will Kursk be a sideshow that turns into tragedy for Ukraine? | Responsible Statecraft

I applaud the French Government on its delivery of a fabulous Olympiad in Paris and wish the athletes and organisers success in the Paralympics that kick off today.  I have but one criticism. In 2021, the Olympic motto ‘faster, higher, stronger’ was changed with the addition of one word – ‘together’.  Excluding Russia from Paris 2024 eroded the sense of togetherness. It also breached the noble Olympic ideal of keeping sport and culture out of politics.   Banning Russia from the Olympics won’t turn Russian people against Vladimir Putin; he remains as strong as ever, two and a half years into a grinding war in Ukraine. The ordinary Russians that I came to know when I served at the British Embassy in Moscow loved sports, the opportunity to meet and compete with people from different countries, and welcomed me as an equal.  A ban merely confirms to them what Putin has been saying for many years, that the west is intent on Russia’s isolation and destruction.  It increases the sense of resentment towards the west, which is helping to replenish the Russian military with new recruits.   Banning Russia from sport won’t end this needless war in Ukraine. Rather, it will elevate Russia’s determination not to give ground. The US and UK governments in particular need to depart from using sport and culture as a diplomatic tool to isolate Russia and get back the tough diplomacy of negotiating a resolution to the huge challenges and dangers we face through confrontation. It's worth recalling that the origins of an Olympic Truce go back to Ancient Greece, with warring countries setting aside their weapons to compete with their skills and abilities.  It evokes remembrance of British and German troops laying down arms late on Christmas Eve 1914 to exchange gifts, play football, and recover casualties.    With the exception of pauses to the Olympic Games during World Wars I and II, Olympiads have taken place every four years since 1896.  Over that period, the world has seen hundreds of conflicts, uprisings, wars and genocides. Since 1945, there have been inter alia  devastating wars in China, Korea, Vietnam, Greece, Israel, India, Pakistan, the Falklands, the Balkans, terrible genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, and two wars led by a US coalition in Iraq, the second of which many in Britain consider to have been illegal.   Yet, the banning of countries from sport has been extremely rare. Germany, Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey were banned temporarily from the Olympics after World War I and Germany and Japan were banned from the 1948 Olympics.    Russia (with Belarus) is the only country ever to have been banned for its role in a regional conflict, making it the exception to the rule.   Yes, Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022 breached the notion of an Olympic Truce.  However, that doesn’t explain why Russia was excluded from competing in Paris more than two years later.  During the Paris games, Israel’s offensive in Gaza continued which to date has killed, according to the United Nations, over twenty five thousand innocent civilians including children; calls for Israel to be banned from Paris were brushed off.  There have never been calls for the US or UK to be banned for their role in overseas military adventures.   Since the onset of the Ukraine crisis, there has been a concerted – and highly successful – effort by the US-led west to edge Russia out of all global events in a massive, and in my view, disproportionate politicisation of sport and culture.  No more Football World Cup, Formula One, World Athletics, and for a brief period, Tennis.  Russians can’t sing in Eurovision or go to their local parks to compete in a Saturday morning 5k Parkrun.   All of this departs from the very point of the Olympic games and wider international events; to bring people together in a spirit of solidarity, non-discrimination and peace. In an interview in 2020, IOC Chair Thomas Bach reflected on the sense of powerlessness individual athletes felt as western governments applied pressure for a ban on attendance at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He spoke about why this drove him to join the West German National Olympic Committee, ‘to give all the clean athletes of the world chance to compete in Olympic Games’.   He said, ‘anybody who is thinking about a boycott should learn this lesson from history; a sports boycott serves nothing. It’s only hurting the athletes, and it’s hurting the population of the country because they are losing the joy to share, the pride, the success, with their Olympic team.’    I hope that when Los Angeles lays out the red carpet in 2028, we will see a return to the Olympic ideal of putting aside our weapons so that every country can compete.   This article repeats and adds to a piece I recently posted on the Strategic Culture Foundation Website. Let Russia compete in the next Olympics — Strategic Culture ( strategic-culture.su )

With thanks to Lord Robert Skidelsky for his coordination, the following letter has now been published in the Financial Times, to which I added my signature.   https://www.ft.com/content/90185a02-8107-47c0-ae6f-b06e88b796b5 Russia’s latest military gains in the Donetsk region (Report, July 5) reinforce the case for a negotiated settlement of the war in Ukraine. The US and its allies support Ukraine’s key war aim, which is a return to the 2014 frontiers, ie, Russia’s expulsion from Crimea and Donbas. But all informed analysts agree that short of a serious escalation of war, the likeliest outcome will be continued stalemate on the ground, with a not insignificant chance of a Russian victory. This conclusion points to the desirability, even urgency, of a negotiated peace, not least for the sake of Ukraine itself. Reluctance by the official west to accept a negotiated peace rests on the belief that anything short of a complete Ukrainian victory would allow Putin to “get away with it”. But this ignores by far the most important outcome of the war so far: that Ukraine has fought for its independence, and won it — as Finland did in 1939-40. Some territorial concessions would seem a small price to pay for the reality, rather than semblance, of independence. If a peace based on roughly the present division of forces in Ukraine is inevitable, it is immoral not to try for it now. Washington should start talks with Moscow on a new security pact which would safeguard the legitimate security interests of both Ukraine and Russia. The announcement of these talks should be immediately followed by a time-limited ceasefire in Ukraine. The ceasefire would enable Russian and Ukrainian leaders to negotiate in a realistic, constructive manner. We urge the world’s leaders to initiate or support such an initiative. The longer the war continues the more territory Ukraine is likely to lose, and the more the pressure for escalation up to a nuclear level is likely to grow. The sooner peace is negotiated the more lives will be saved, the sooner the reconstruction of Ukraine will start and the more quickly the world can be pulled back from the very dangerous brink at which it currently stands. Lord Skidelsky Professor Emeritus in political economy University of Warwick Sir Anthony Brenton British Ambassador to Russia (2004-2008) Thomas Fazi Journalist, author, columnist for UnHerd Anatol Lieven Senior Fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statesmanship Jack Matlock US Ambassador to the USSR (1987-1991) Ian Proud British Embassy in Moscow (2014-2019) Richard Sakwa Professor Emeritus of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent Christopher Granville British Embassy, Moscow (1991-1995)

Jon Benjamin, Britain’s former Ambassador to Mexico, hit the headlines in May after pointing a semi-automatic rifle at a member of his staff. This incident spoke to a deeper rot at the heart of the Foreign Office at a time when Britain’s influence abroad is in sharp decline.  Here’s what awaits David Lammy when he arrives in King Charles Street as the ninth Foreign Secretary since 2014. The Foreign Office wasn’t always this bad. William Hague focused on modernisation.  He launched a Diplomatic Academy and reopened a language school, to create ‘the best diplomatic service in the world’. He grew the UK’s overseas network. Ministers worked in partnership with officials and there was a level of mutual respect. That all vanished after he left. Hammond was singularly unsuited, Boris was never taken seriously, Hunt had good ideas but was ignored by officials who knew he wouldn’t last long.  The ‘system’ circled the wagons against an overly assertive Raab.  Liz Truss was disinterested, Cleverly was liked because he had no ideas, and no one knew why Cameron jumped onto Sunak’s sinking ship having abandoned his own.  Change in any civil service department relies on Ministers spending long enough in their departments to nudge the Mandarins forward. But he also needs to grip Foreign Office Officials who have resisted change better than Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister . Sir Simon Fraser didn’t like Ministers spending Foreign Office cash, launched Hague’s Diplomatic Academy on a shoe-string and drove the Diplomatic Excellence Programme with little vigour.   Sir Simon MacDonald blogged that he didn’t ‘do’ radical reform following the publication of Naked Diplomat  Tom Fletcher’s Future FCO report in 2016 which made various suggestions to improve the capability of Britain’s diplomats. That Report was shelved and barely any its recommendations have been implemented. The Foreign Office has become progressively de-skilled. It stopped training diplomats in diplomatic skills over twenty years ago. Almost one third of diplomats fail or don’t even take the foreign language examinations that are a requirement for them to do their jobs overseas.  A Foreign Affairs Committee demand that the Foreign Office reports on improvements in language performance has been routinely ignored for years.   David Lammy needs to set his own vision to improve Britain’s international capabilities and task a junior Minister with holding officials to account. The balance between expertise and leadership at the top of the Foreign Office has never been struck.   In 2020, Sir Philip Barton was parachuted into the job, tasked with merging the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development shortly after the onset of COVID. However, he lacked the corporate leadership skills needed to drive forward a complex merger. His main failing, highlighted in a report that I wrote in 2022, an inability to resolve in-fighting among former FCO and DFID officials and make clear decisions on the way forward. A damming National Audit Office report earlier this year highlighted a basic lack of progress in getting the two merged departments to work together.  Essentially, after Dominic Raab was ousted in the teeth of bullying allegations, pressure to make the merger work evaporated. David Lammy should consider, for the first time, appointing a senior industry leader to drive the machinery of the Foreign Office along more professional lines.    Which brings me back to Jon Benjamin.  He’s not the only diplomat to have messed up. An Ambassador was once sent home for leaving the Embassy in his pyjamas. One diplomat wrote and circulated a note about Pope-branded condoms ahead of a Papal visit. Two diplomats fell foul of Russian honey traps while I was posted to Moscow.  Benjamin’s case was different because the story was leaked by a local member of his staff.   Two-thirds of Foreign Office staff are people employed locally to work in Embassies around the world. They are paid lower salaries compared to the average in their countries and are commonly treated as second class citizens by the well-paid and pampered minority of diplomats. Sir Simon McDonald solidified this disenfranchisement by dismissing them all as only having a job rather than a career. This lack of respect coupled with a sense that the Foreign Office has been drifting rudderless since the merger has fostered a toxic culture in British Embassies.  The yearly staff survey confirms a stubborn and immovable level of bullying, harassment and discrimination across the UK overseas network.  The Office spends millions each year paying consultants to offer advice on culture and things like that.  It hasn’t worked. David Lammy should step back and look at whether a more modern structure for the organisation, less racist and colonialist and more authentically inclusive and internationalist, would be better .   Because if he wants to the UK to have a greater impact on major global evets, like in Ukraine and Gaza, he first needs to fix a failing Foreign Office.

If you search for UK Reform Party leader Nigel Farage’s recent comments about Russia online, you will first be greeted by a slew of western pundits and parliamentarians jumping on a bandwagon of condemnation.  During a recent TV interview, he asserted that Vladimir Putin was provoked into war in Ukraine.  His detractors didn’t acknowledge or debate the points that he made. The facts or arguments were incidental to their moral outrage.  Just to be clear, I would never vote for Nigel Farage, or Reform (or, before it, UKIP) as I’m a pro-European, open borders, internationalist.  Growing up as an army kid in Germany, I remember the border checkpoints when my family took weekend trips to Holland.  Peace on the European continent has been earned, in my opinion, by allowing people of different nationalities to move and interact more easily. I don’t believe in unchecked immigration, but I do believe that the UK economy needs migrant workers across a broad range of skilled and unskilled roles.  As a good example, both the NHS and the City of London would sag if reliant on British labour alone. That’s my view, based on the evidence that I’ve seen. But Farage’s comments illustrated a problem, particular to the UK right now, in which any discussion of Russia is more often than not driven by feelings rather than hard analysis of the available evidence.   Take a recent Twitter/X article by British journalist and labour activist, Paul Mason. He responded to Farage by announcing that the NATO expansion argument – the idea that continued NATO enlargement has been a casus belli for Putin - is a lie.  Like most journalists who support the ongoing war in Ukraine – specifically, the majority of journalists in the UK - he didn’t explain why it was a lie, simply that it was.  Outrage brooks no debate. The available evidence is entirely incidental. This sits in sharp contrast to the US, where debate about the ongoing war in Ukraine is more open. Somewhat to my surprise, the Guardian recently carried an excellent article by Christopher Chivvis, a Senior Fellow as the Carnegie Endowment for peace.  He argued that ‘Ukraine’s leaders should stop asking for NATO membership and the Biden Administration should stop considering it.’  His article carefully laid out a series of arguments to underpin this central judgement. I happen to agree, as having been closely involved in UK policy making towards Russia from 2013-2023, it's clear to me that repeatedly ignoring Putin’s expressed concerns about NATO expansion would cause the very conflict we see today in Ukraine. You don’t necessarily have to agree with me, or with Chivvis, but let’s at least discuss it. The British media is dominated by emotional proponents of the current UK and US policy, to continue to arm Ukraine with a view to a longer-term strategic defeat of Russia.  Whenever Zelensky makes a plea, it is always for more weapons, never for genuine negotiations. But there are counter-arguments too, that Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield, and that the US should get behind a negotiated settlement. In the run up to a UK general election that will almost certainly change the government in Westminster, these counter-arguments are almost entirely ignored. With the rare and pleasing exception of the Chivvis article, British citizens are subject to significant press censorship on alternative views of Russia. The Tories and Labour have entered a pre-election pact to whitewash all debate.  As with the Mason article, we are asked to accept the current government approach to war in Ukraine as a given.  Free speech has never been under such threat in a Britain that claims to stand up for liberty.  Don’t get distracted by the evidence guys, it’s enough to know that Russia is bad. But I firmly believe that honest debate should trump blind cancellation.  So, and back to Nigel Farage, he made four specific points that haven’t cut through the blizzard of outrage.  First, that EU expansion can help explain Putin’s choice of war over peace. In my view, this is classic Farage, using the ongoing war in Ukraine to launch another attack at his old foes in Brussels. I don’t personally believe the evidence supports this. Russia undoubtedly saw the Eastern partnership programme as a way to peel former Soviet States away from Russia’s influence. Putin offering Yanukovych a $15bn back-hander to stay out of an Association Agreement was undoubtedly a flashpoint for the Maidan protests, which precipitated the Ukraine crisis in 2014.  But since Ukraine signed the EU agreement under Poroshenko’s Presidency, the EU membership issue has largely blended into the background. Russian leaders practically never raise this as an issue now. The second and related point – what people like Mason and others write off as a lie, while offering no opportunity for debate - is that NATO expansion prompted Putin to choose war over peace. Here, in my opinion, Farage made a valid point, a point made over many years by more reputable academics and activists. Like many others, Mason proceeds from the argument that Putin has confected his concern about NATO only recently, to justify his actions.  This is convenient for a readership that is starved of unhelpful context.   But the facts show that this has been an expressed concern of Russia for eighteen years.  Cast your mind back to Bucharest in early April 2008 at the NATO Summit. This is the Summit where Putin agreed  to allow NATO to continue to transport military equipment through Russia to support the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, Putin also railed against proposed expansion of NATO.  Two years after the former Soviet Baltic states joined NATO, he saw further NATO expansion as a threat to Russian security. ‘Let’s be friends, guys,’ he implored NATO leaders.  He specifically warned against Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO.  He was ignored and, within four months, Russian troops poured into Georgia to prop up the separatist states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. NATO blamed Putin (though Medvedev was by that time President) for what happened in Georgia. Yet, despite this, Russia tried to maintain relations with the west, including Hillary Clinton’s botched attempt at a reset. Since then six new countries have joined NATO.  And here, Farage’s third point comes in. ‘They are coming after us again!’ Hard-wired into the Russian psyche is an idea that their enormous and difficult to manage country has constantly faced external threat over the centuries.  Those threats including Nazi Germany, Napoleon, the Swedes and Lithuanians and the Mongols. Russia sees NATO as the grouping that bombed Belgrade, dismembered Yugoslavia, and caused mayhem in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, all in the cause of liberty. We might take a different view on each of those theatres of conflict. But believe me, having lived in Moscow for four and a half years, many Russians really do believe this.  So, when the Polish President talked recently about dismembering Russia into a host of ethnic states, you might see how this feeds Russian paranoia. Which brings me to Farage’s fourth point. The Putin has used NATO expansion as a reason to justify his war in Ukraine. Ordinary Russians look on the map and see that NATO, and its aspirant states, almost completely encircles their country as far as the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan.  Russians don’t see NATO as a so-called ‘defensive’ alliance.  To them, it is a vast military empire with far more troops and equipment than Russia has. NATO now accounts for 55% of all global defence spending – that’s at least ten times bigger than Russia, despite its vast spending on the war.  The USA alone spends 6-7 times more each year on defence than does Russia. And despite its overwhelming advantage, NATO still encourages all of its members to spend even more which, if they did so, would add over $80bn each year to NATO spending.  It therefore isn’t difficult for Putin to convince his electorate that in this fight he is Luke Skywalker, and Joe Biden is Darth Vader. That’s one reason why domestic support in Russia for the war remains high. That’s also why developing nations in BRICS and the wider developing world increasingly see Russia as the plucky small guy, fighting for its rights against NATO.  Very few non-European or non-NATO nations signed the communique at the recently so-called Ukraine peace Summit in Switzerland.  They see a Ukraine that cannot win a war on its own against Russia despite the NATO billions. Farage is simply suggesting we have a debate about whether peace in Ukraine would be better than war. You can’t blame him for offering a point of difference when the main political parties, and the British media, as typified by journalists like Paul Mason, are set against all debate. Let’s hope that when the new Prime Minister walks into 10 Downing Street at some point on 8 July, they look above the parapet and ask for fresh advice on how badly off-track our policy towards Ukraine has become.

My core analysis remains unchanged: only negotiations will end this war and the US, in particular, is key in insisting that Zelensky do this. The US is increasingly doing high-G turns to package Ukraine's ongoing (and, I suspect, permanent) exclusion from NATO, in the run up to the military alliance's 75 anniversary summit in Washington. More high profile speakers are stepping up to press Biden to tell the truth that Ukraine will never join. I don't sense that he is listening or, if he is, will make a clear statement on this point, against the entreaties of an increasingly grasping Zelensky. Over the past couple of weeks I've had a busy time talking to various people about the ongoing war in Ukraine. You can find here a selection of my interviews. With Aaron Mate and Katie Halper on their Useful Idiots show On the Daniel Davis Deep Dive to discuss the so called Ukraine Peace Summit (or, Zelensky's asking for more weapons, summit). Recent interview on RT following Nigel Farage's comments on NATO.

The G7 recently made the headlines by agreeing to lend Ukraine $50bn which will be repaid using the yearly interest accrued on $329bn of confiscated Russian sovereign foreign exchange reserves. When it is finally structured, the loan will consist of a series of loans by G7 member countries, with the US topping up the fund by the required amount so it hits the $50bn mark. Taking a step back from the legality of, effectively, expropriating another country’s sovereign assets to repay a rival country’s debt, what does this mean for Ukraine? Figures vary, and the Ukrainian government is increasingly coy about releasing economic data sets, but Ukraine’s economy is currently around $180-190bn in size.  To put that into context, that is around 11 times smaller than Russia’s economy and 131 times smaller than the US economy. $50bn, therefore, represents around 27% of Ukraine’s yearly GDP.  That is a huge figure for a single loan. But the problem is that Ukraine has been borrowing this amount every year since the war started.  According to politico, Ukraine borrowed $58bn in 2022, $46bn in 2023 and is set to borrow $52bn in 2024. So, in just three years, Ukraine will have borrowed 82% of GDP. Ukraine needs to borrow this much because its government spends almost twice as much each year as it receives in income from taxation and other sources. To put that into context, the European Union sets a limit that Member States cannot run a budget deficit of more than 3% of GDP.  Ukraine, which aspires to join the EU, has been running a yearly budget deficit of 25% since the war began. And in addition to that, with Ukraine running a deficit on its current account each year – the difference between how much it exports and imports – it also needs capital to stop its currency going into meltdown. And here’s the thing, Ukraine will probably need to borrow even more this year than what is currently forecast.  Don't be fooled by the official defence budget for 2024 of $28.6bn; this is around half of what Ukraine actually spent on defence in 2023.  (Ukraine adjusted its original 2023 defence budget up from $39.4bn - still more than the 2024 budget - to $56.3bn). Ukraine’s massive spending spree on the war effort, in 2023 at least, accounted for one third of total economic output. With Zelensky showing no appetite to negotiate, there's little reason to believe it won't in 2024. So, with Ukraine taking on 25% of its GDP in debt each year, its debt mountain will continue to spiral out of control.  The EU forecasts that Ukrainian debt is growing by 10% of GDP each year since the war started, but I view these forecasts with a heavy dose of scepticism. Even if Ukraine’s economy grew by 5.5% in 2023, it remains smaller than it was in 2021, before the war started. More realistically, Ukraine’s debt is growing by 15-20% of GDP each year. So, Ukraine’s debt will hit 100% of GDP in the current financial year (if it hasn’t already).  And the really worrying thing is that there are no plans to repay any of it.  Because Ukraine isn’t making debt repayments each year to tamp down its debt growth.  In fact, Ukraine stopped making payments ona its existing external debt in 2022 when the war started.  For those who remember the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Ukraine immediately refused to pay a debt of $3bn that Russia had given it as part of the deal with Yanukovich to stay out of the EU Association Agreement. Fueled by hubris and self-righteousness, Ukraine has become addicted to taking on debt and then refusing to make payments on that debt.  Since the start of the war, Zelensky has been pressing for the $329bn in frozen Russian assets to be given to Ukraine. The G7 loan of $50bn therefore marks an alarming shift in that direction. It assumes that Ukraine itself will never need to repay the debt itself, even though it’s Ukraine’s debt. But when the war ends, if this needless war ever ends, who will repay the G7 countries their loans then? The Americans seem to believe that it would be possible to continue to freeze Russia’s frozen reserve assets even after war finished. If that be so, what motivation, then, for Russia to stop fighting if it feels that massive sanctions and the theft of its assets will continue? As I said at the top, Russia’s economy is 11 times larger than Ukraine’s. Russia is also bringing in healthy amounts of capital each year as its exports continue to exceed its imports.  Put simply, Russia gains a surplus of around $50bn each year in its exports, which roughly equates to what Ukraine borrows each year to prop up the war effort.  While Putin has offered a peace deal – or at least, terms for peace negotiations to restart – Russia has sufficient resources to keep fighting, even if the fighting results in a barely shifting stalemate. So, in economic terms at least, winning the war doesn’t matter to Russia right now, even if he and the Russian people would prefer an end to it all.  Because the longer the war continues, the more indebted and delinquent Ukraine becomes. Putin knows that practically all of the foreign money that Ukraine borrows comes from western countries that are bankrolling Ukraine’s fight. And we have already seen the sands shift in western support with pure hand-outs transitioning to actual loans.  So, over time, the west will increasingly offer Ukraine debt rather than freebees. And it is pure fantasy to believe that Russia will repay this debt, as Russia wants its frozen money back. A one-sided peace will not be possible in which the west continues to punish Russia, including economically, after the cannon fire stops. Indeed, stealing Russia’s assets will only lead to potential further escalation, prolonging Ukraine’s suffering, and ramping up its unsustainable debt still further. This war will end when Putin feels that there are economic incentives to stand his troops down and to negotiate a lasting peace. Until then, the west is holding a ticking time bomb of debt that Zelensky doesn’t believe that he should have to pay.  Or, to put it another way, he is paying for this war using credit cards; except that they are our credit cards, not his.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Anatol Lieven, Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. We discussed how UK decision makers have failed to draw lessons from the history of Russia, and how this ignorance has fueled an avowedly hawkish sentiment in London, with the disastrous consequences we see today in Ukraine. A link to the video is below.

In what was an echo chamber for Ukraine’s allies to encourage Zelensky to continue to reject formal peace talks with Russia, the Swiss Summit delivered nothing.  Here are my key takeaways. The west makes up two-thirds of the signatures Of the 82 signatories to the Communique, 45 were European Countries including non-EU members, there were 4 European Institutions and 5 other western allies that have sanctioned Russia, including Japan. Add in Israel, which is a US client state, that makes 55 countries and institutions. BRICS blocked the Summit as did 9 G20 Members No BRICS member state associated itself with the final communique.  There are two reasons for this.  Firstly, they believe that Russia should be involved in any peace process for it to be credible. India’s representative at the Summit said that “only sincere and practical engagement” between Russia and Ukraine can lead to enduring peace.  The second point is that Ukraine will need to make difficult compromises in any peace process, something Zelensky has been determined not to do.  Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister said, “we believe it is important that the international community encourage any step towards serious negotiations which will require difficult compromise as part of a road map that leads to peace.” There were also major G20 no-shows with 9 of the non-western members not associating themselves with the Communique.  The notable exception to this was Argentina, which got behind the summit outcome. The Middle East completely turned its back on the Summit Given almost unconditional US support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, Middle Eastern Countries turned their back on the summit and final communique. They were most likely turned off by a US-engineered peace initiative for Ukraine that, much like US efforts in Gaza, seek to support one side over another in the conflict. Only Qatar, which is playing an active role in negotiating prisoner handovers associated itself with the Communique. As did the wider Global South Of the 27 non-western allies who signed the communique, there was a very limited showing from mostly smaller Asian and Pacific (6) Latin American (9) and African states.  This sent a powerful statement that the Global South was turned off by this initiative. Ukraine’s position on territorial integrity not sustainable While western media have claimed the communique endorsed Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a basis for a just and lasting peace, this isn’t correct. A core part of Zelensky’s so-called peace formula is the requirement that restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders is core to reaching any peace deal.  This is highlighted under the umbrella of the fourth point of Article 2 of the UN Charter that States should “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”. However, Russia claims that NATO expansion, including towards Ukraine, is a threat to its state under the same clause of the UN Charter.  The communique wording is therefore ambiguous on this point.  Indeed, Russia might argue that the final paragraph of the text refers to its rights as much as to Ukraine’s rights. At best, the communique was therefore inconclusive on territorial integrity. This confirms my assessment that any future peace deal will require Ukraine to make compromises, based on the battlefield realities, which are not likely to shift. Ukraine trying to demand a one-sided text on nuclear and prisoner exchange While the communique as a whole is a demonstration in diplomatic circumlocution, there are obvious points where Ukraine has tried to stamp Zelensky’s so-called formula on the text. The clause on returning Zaporizhia to the “full sovereign control of Ukraine” ignores the fact that it is currently under Russian control. Likewise, the clause on the return of “deported and unlawfully displaced Ukrainian children”: this would never make the text of any peace deal as Russia claims, rightly or wrongly, that is has acted to protect vulnerable children. The point is, that trying to shape a communique that pushes Ukraine’s positions and ignores Russia’s, will never garner broad-based international support. Zelensky’s demands for military withdrawal, restoration of its borders and a war crimes tribunal are dead in the water As I predicted in my separate article, Zelensky’s demands to settle for peace by turning back the clock to 1991 can never be met in this one-sided format for dialogue. Ukraine has not secured significant backing from the Global South for the less contentious topics discussed in Switzerland. It will never be possible to find agreement on the far more contentious points, if non-Western states consider that this is a US-led attempt to impose an outcome on Russia in absentia. A follow-up event in Saudi Arabia will put more pressure on Zelensky to compromise and involve Russia So with BRICS and the Global South decidedly lukewarm on this Swiss Initiative, it won’t be possible to garner their support for a tougher line on Russia in future. If another Ukraine Peace Summit is convened – and there are suggestions that this might take place in Saudi Arabia – the pressure will grow on Zelensky to make compromises and involve Russia. So, the biggest outcome from the Summit, if there was one, was to confirm that Zelensky’s so called 10-point peace formula is dead in the water.  It’s time for him, now, to start talking to Russia.

On 12 April, Keir Starmer announced that Labour would commit to increase UK defence spending to 2.5%. While the Conservative Party has been talking up the need to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP for some time, Rishi Sunak made his formal announcement on 24 April. On the eve of Rishi’s reveal, the UK Defence Journal declared ‘Britain to boost defence spending due to threat from Russia!’  Out of the blue, spending 2.5% of GDP on defence had become a joint Tory-Labour commitment. For voters, at a time of an ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, Israeli atrocities in Gaza and growing fear of China, spending an extra 0.5% of GDP on defence a headline grabber. But why is there no debate between the two main political parties in the UK general election campaign about foreign, security and defence policy? The Tories and Labour have been completely silent on how much this additional 0.5% will cost in hard-earned, tax-payers’ cash.  At a pre-election debate, the phrase ‘2.5% on defence’ slipped off Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner’s tongue quicker than the sale of her council house in Stockport.  In its review of the Conservative Manifesto, the Institute for Fiscal Studies only refers to increased defence spending in percentage terms, and not in pounds and pence. In fact, the Tory-Labour pact on defence spending will cost in excess of £13bn each year. Apparently, cutting the size of the civil service and cutting benefits will largely fund this. Although no actual plans for this have been set out.  So we should assume an increase in UK government borrowing which has now risen above 100% of GDP, with a government deficit that is currently twice as high as the limit set within the European Union (3%). Let’s be clear, the Tory-Labour plans for defence spending exceed the total cost of their respective election spending pledges. Labour spending plans top off at around £10bn and Keir Starmer and crew can barely breathe without being pressed on how they’ll fund breakfast clubs for primary schools, or a warm house plan to stop elderly people dying because they can’t afford to pay for heating.  The Conservatives are looking to cut taxes, despite massive debt and a large deficit. But where they are planning to spend more, for example on Sunak’s bizarre kids’ army, those costs fall far short of the assumed Tory-Labour increase in defence spending. And what the public doesn’t know is that most of the new money for defence has already been spent. The UK already spends 2.3% of GDP following a huge recent splurge.  The remaining 0.2% will disappear quicker than a British Minister’s deleted WhatsApp messages. But this money isn’t giving us anything new.  In fact, the day-to-day budget this year to pay for the lads and lasses on the front line of our defence has been cut by £2.5bn. Many service personnel worry about whether they’ll have a house to live in. Submariners talk about the increased stress of longer deployments which have been driven by the need to cut costs. No, this 0.5% increase in defence spending will be shuffled towards completely out of control spending on the defence procurement programme and the proxy war in Ukraine. In March 2024, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee reported that the Ministry of Defence has been consistently unable or unwilling to control the spiralling costs and delivery schedules of its 1800 (that’s right, eighteen hundred) defence projects. The MoD has a woeful track record: whether it’s a £430m overspend on the Warrior programme or £2.5bn over on new aircraft carriers, a 59% delay in delivering the Challenger 3 tank or an extra 7 years for Dreadnought. On 4 December 2023 the National Audit Office produced a review of the MoD’s equipment plan for the next decade concluding that it was ‘unaffordable and facing the largest budget deficit since the plan was introduced in 2012’.  Note here that the current plan was developed two years before the Ukraine crisis started.  So the motto for UK defence procurement should be ‘delivering last decade’s technology in the next decade at whatever cost.’ According to the MoD’s estimates, the costs of the equipment programme have shot up by 27% or £65.7bn over the past year alone. And that is based on their ‘most likely’ scenario for spending. In the ‘worst case’, the total increase in cost will amount to almost £80bn.  Add in other expected cost overruns that the MoD reassures us can be absorbed by efficiency savings, then the cost shoots up to over £104bn. The Public Accounts Committee noted that these estimates do not account for an estimated £12bn in additional requirements for the Army. By far the biggest area of budgetary pressure is in the nuclear programme which is currently overspent by 62%. These include the much-delayed ‘Dreadnought’ submarine as a replacement for the SSBNSs that carry the UK’s nuclear missiles.  There is a joint UK-US project to build a new class of submarines to counter the apparent threat from China under the AUKUS programme; however, the current generation of Astute class fleet submarines in the UK has only been operational for ten years. We have a programme to design a new nuclear warhead with the US, as if having 225 nukes wasn’t enough. None of these massively costly projects are giving us capabilities that we don’t already possess. While they are undoubtedly strengthening the UK’s military industrial supply chain, they aren’t making us safer. After expensive nukes, the Tories and Labour are jointly committing to prop up proxy conflicts. £3.9bn will be allocated from the Treasury reserve in the current financial year, principally to fund the UK’s weapon shipments to Ukraine, but also the cost of supporting US strikes against Yemen. As I understand it, this ‘reserve’ funding for proxy conflicts will become normalised within the defence budget from 2025/6, after the general election dust has settled.  With practically no parliamentary scrutiny, a massive financial commitment to the government in Kyiv has been baked into the government’s spending plans under the next parliament. There has been no discussion of either expensive nukes or support for proxy conflicts by the Conservatives or Labour in the election campaign. The UK is practically the only country in the western alliance where any discussion of defence spending on nuclear weapons or war in Ukraine is almost completely stifled, by the government, the main opposition party and the mainstream media. Afraid to show weakness, the Labour party has refused to chart its own policy on foreign defence and security policy. As they will most likely win the election, we should assume big spending on nukes come what may, and on proxy conflicts until a negotiated settlement is reached in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza (arguably the flashpoint for Houthi strikes against western shipping).  A brief attempt to shift debate towards spending more on international engagement including through overseas aid and diplomacy evaporated. UK electors now face a terrifying lack of choice, with both the Tories and Labour preferring war-war, over jaw-jaw.

In one of his more bizarre outbursts, Volodymyr Zelensky, red of face, jabbing his finger, recently accused China of being “an instrument in the hands of Putin”. He said this at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore as part of a world tour, in which he is encouraging participation at what Ukraine calls the Global Peace Summit.  This will take place in Switzerland from 15-16 June, and China has said it will not attend. Zelensky was treading a now well-worn path in which he and other senior Ukrainian figures insult countries that don’t bend to Ukraine’s demands for support in the war with Russia. He believes that China has been discouraging countries from attending the Summit but provided no evidence of this.  Some reports suggest that up to 107 States may attend. Although, in addition to Xi Jinping, there’s a chance Joe Biden may also not attend because of a fund-raiser in Texas.  Those who do send country delegations will undoubtedly enjoy the comforts of the Bürgenstock Resort on the shores of Lake Lucerne.  Though I suspect many will be confused about the purpose of the event. For, despite its billing, this won’t be a Global Summit. If it was, it would undoubtedly look at the appalling situation in Israel and Gaza, and no doubt other conflict hotspots across the world too. It might consider more broadly how to strengthen the adherence of states to their obligations under the UN Charter or review progress in strengthening international peacebuilding architecture. But it won’t do those things. Indeed, the Swiss Government, which is hosting, refers to it as the Summit on Peace in Ukraine.  Although it isn’t clear that Switzerland is in charge, as most of the press reporting about invitations appears to issue from Zelensky’s office. So this raises a diplomatic question as to the precise scope of the event itself?  Summits are normally hosted by the countries in which they take place; those countries shape the agenda and try to steer a communique that represents the best outcome of what can be agreed among the parties. In this case, there appears to be a diplomatic tug of love between the Swiss and the Ukrainians about who is running the show. For Ukraine, the Summit is explicitly an opportunity to push Zelensky’s so-called ten-point peace formula, which is essentially the points he made in a speech at UNGA.  The formula does contain some helpful lines on nuclear safety, food and energy security and environmental protection.  But it also contains three points that are probably unachievable.  Namely, the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, by which it means Ukraine’s border pre-2014.  This, according to Zelensky, ‘is not up to negotiations’. Secondly, the full withdrawal of Russia’s military and, third, the establishment of a tribunal to investigate alleged Russian war crimes. However, Ukraine’s pre-2014 border won’t be restored because the west tacitly gave up on Crimea in 2014 and focussed its energy instead on attempts to mediate a peace in the Donbass. These attempts notably included the Franco-German orchestrated Normandy format, which failed in the teeth of US and UK interference; namely, the locking in of sanctions against Russia under an unattainable notion of full Minsk II implementation. European leaders won’t commit to a plan where retaking Crimea is a key element, indeed, western war aims in Ukraine are now utterly unclear, beyond helping Ukraine to hold on from further territorial losses. Even though hardline and now sidelined figures like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have long supported the aspiration to re-take Crimea, Ukraine does not now and will never have the military capabilities to do so.  So the second and related aspiration of the full withdrawal of Russian troops is also unrealistic, however the map is drawn. Using western weapons to strike targets in the west of Russia won’t change the balance of power on the battlefield in Ukraine which favours Russia. It also won’t decisively shift Russian public opinion away from support for Putin in this war. Rather, it will ramp up the risk of escalation by Russia, which has still not committed its forces to the fight in Ukraine, in any numbers. While there is clearly a need to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Russian forces during the war, the west will struggle to deliver this, not least because of the inevitable pressure to consider allegations of war crimes committed by Ukrainian forces.  And as neither Ukraine nor Russia are signatories to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, neither country would recognise the legitimacy of any investigation should it materialise.  That would render the endeavour toothless in the absence of more coercive measures to hold either country to account under international law. So, Zelensky’s plan is nothing more than Ukraine’s maximalist position that will inevitably be bargained down in any future peace negotiations that take place with Russia. But, and here’s the rub, Russia hasn’t been invited to the Swiss Summit. The Swiss Government believes that Russia should be invited. The Swiss MFA website says “Switzerland is convinced that Russia must be involved in this (peace) process. A peace process without Russia is unthinkable.” But Zelensky clearly doesn’t agree. It has been an explicit aim of Ukrainian foreign policy to exclude Russia from any dialogue on a settlement of the conflict. Indeed, this mirrors long-standing UK policy of talking about Russia and not to Russia. Rather, and in a recent visit to Madrid, Zelensky encouraged western partners to force Russia to make peace.  By that, he meant specifically to continue to provide Ukraine with offensive weapons that it can use to strike directly into Russia. Or force Russia into peace by continuing to make war, even though there is no evidence that NATO plans to join the fight in any decisive way. And just to be clear, on the summitry itself, Zelensky’s so-called Peace Formula isn’t a communique either as the Swiss are (or should be) holding the pen. The Swiss are shooting for peace. But, whenever Zelensky talks about peace, what he really means is ‘keep funding the war’.  So this creates a recipe for diplomats finessing any public statements at the end of a Summit that will, most likely, achieve nothing. Since his unhelpful comments about China, Zelensky has also suggested that Donald Trump is a 'loser'. The event in Switzerland is shaping up to be another echo chamber for an increasingly boorish Zelensky to publicly hector countries that don’t agree with his deluded and completely unsupportable position.  It’s time for real peace talks with Russia to begin. This article will be published on antiwar,org