Carol J. Williams is a retired foreign correspondent with 30 years' reporting abroad for the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press. She has reported from more than 80 countries, with a focus on USSR/Russia and Eastern Europe.
“The full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched on February 24, 2022, has precipitated by far the most significant crisis in Russian studies since the collapse of the Soviet Union."
The attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic sites over the past week are suspected to have been orchestrated by Iran and designed to further sabotage prospects for a U.S.-brokered peace accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
There is no hope of diplomatic resolution of the crisis taking the lives of hundreds on both sides each day. Death tolls have soared beyond 2,000, with more bodies and atrocities being discovered as IDF reach massacre scenes and Hamas fighters dig out from the rubble of punishing Israeli aerial bombardment.
The Kremlin leader has burned through Russia’s arsenal of sophisticated missiles in the 18 months since he launched his “special military operation” to conquer Ukraine. He now must rely on barter with impoverished Soviet-era allies to resupply his stalled war machine.
It was only a matter of time before Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin would pay with his life for his mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his disastrous war in Ukraine.
The new arms race threatens to end as did the old one more than three decades ago. Russian prioritizing of government investment in war-fighting capability over the needs of its population will end with the economic collapse of a state that can no longer afford to keep pace. The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the result of Communist hubris that bankrupted the federation in its failed bid to out-power the United States.
Punishing the Russian invasion’s more effective commanders for speaking truth to power is unlikely to reverse the damage Prigozhin’s mutiny inflicted on Putin’s posture as the strongest Russian leader since Peter the Great.
“Vilnius has been a summit for implementation for the NATO of tomorrow,” the leaders’ statement proclaims. “A new generation of regional defense plans has been put in place, making the Alliance more capable to deter and defend itself than in recent decades.”
If any of the post-mutiny reports on Prigozhin’s whereabouts are true, that would represent a stunning departure from Putin’s response to far less serious challenges to his power.