Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said he is seeking “common ground” in talks this week with his Chinese counterpart on ending his country’s war with Russia.

Mr. Kuleba met on July 24 with Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guangzhou, a major commercial and manufacturing centre in southern China. It is the first visit to the country by a Ukrainian Foreign Minister since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has strained Ukraine’s relations with China.

“I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests, and China’s role as a global force for peace is important,” Mr. Kuleba said in opening remarks.

China has close ties with Russia and has pushed for an end to the war that would take into account the interests of both sides. That position has put it at odds not only with Ukraine but also Western European countries and the U.S., which are demanding a Russian withdrawal as the basis for any settlement.

China did not participate in a peace conference in Switzerland last month that did not include Russia.

Mr. Kuleba was expected to lobby Chinese officials to attend another peace conference planned for sometime before the American presidential election in early November. His visit reflects a calculation that any peace deal favorable to Ukraine would likely be a non-starter without China on board.

Chinese officials maintained that the two countries have friendly and cooperative relations. Noting the growth in trade between them, Mr. Wang said in his opening remarks that ties have continued to develop normally “despite complex and ever-changing international and regional situations.”

Mr. Kuleba arrived in China on July 23 and is scheduled to depart on July 26. In a video posted late on JUly 23 on his social media accounts, Mr. Kuleba said he would have extensive negotiations to look for common ground in the pursuit of peace in Ukraine.

“We need to move to a just and stable peace,” he said, according to a translation posted by Euromaiden Press, an English-language news site on Ukraine. “China can play a significant role in this. Let’s go.”

His visit follows a rare public rebuke of China by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June. Mr. Zelenskyy accused China of helping Russia block countries from participating in the Swiss peace conference. China denied pressuring others.

It was the first time Mr. Zelenskyy had departed from careful attempts to court Beijing away from its strong relationship with Moscow.

China published a separate six-point peace plan with Brazil ahead of the conference The move and the timing likely angered Ukrainian officials who were in the midst of seeking support for their peace proposal.

“We must avoid the competition of peace plans,” Mr. Kuleba said in his social media video this week.

Slowly but steadily this summer, Russian troops are forging through Ukraine’s outgunned and undermanned defenses in a relentless onslaught, prompting the West to push for new weapons and strategies to shore up Kyiv.

That, in turn, has brought new threats by President Vladimir Putin to retaliate against the West — either directly or indirectly.

The moves by the West to blunt the offensive and the potential Kremlin response could lead to a dangerous escalation as the war drags through its third year — one that further raises the peril of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Probing offensive

Russia took advantage of its edge in firepower amid delays in U.S. aid to scale up attacks in several areas along the 1,000-km front. Relatively small units are probing Ukrainian defenses for weak spots, potentially setting the stage for a more ambitious push.

Russia’s offensive near Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, that began in May and worried Kyiv’s Western allies has apparently lost momentum after the Ukrainian army bolstered its forces in the area by redeploying troops from other sectors.

Meanwhile, Russia has made incremental but steady advances in the Donetsk region, including around the strategic hilltop town of Chasiv Yar, a gateway to parts of Donetsk still under Ukrainian control. Analysts say the fall of Chasiv Yar would threaten the key military hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Putin declared that Moscow wasn’t seeking quick gains and would stick to the current strategy of advancing slowly.

Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute said that by stretching Ukrainian forces along a wide front, Russia is overcoming the limitations of its military that lacks the size and training for a major offensive.

The breadth of the strikes has forced Ukraine to spread out its artillery, “expending munitions to break up successive Russian attacks,” he said in an analysis. “Russia’s aim is not to achieve a grand breakthrough but rather to convince Ukraine that it can keep up an inexorable advance, kilometer by kilometer, along the front.” Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment said Russia’s apparent goal is to maintain pressure and try to stretch out Ukraine’s forces. He noted that even though Ukraine managed to stabilize the front line, it had to use reserves intended to be deployed elsewhere.

“It will take more and more time to actually regenerate Ukraine’s combat strength because of that,” he said in a recent podcast.

Moscow also has stepped up airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities and other vital infrastructure with waves of missiles and drones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country had lost about 80% of its thermal power and one-third of its hydroelectric power in the strikes.

“This will be a growing problem when we talk about the future Ukraine’s economic viability,” Kofman said.

Watling said the shortage of air defenses is giving Ukraine a difficult choice between concentrating them to safeguard critical infrastructure, or protecting troops on the front.

“The persistence of Russia’s long-range strike campaign means that not only is the front being stretched laterally, but it is also being extended in its depth,” he said.

The West responds, the Kremlin counters

Washington and some NATO allies have responded to the offensive by allowing Kyiv to use Western weapons for limited strikes inside Russia. The U.S. has allowed Ukraine to use American weapons against military targets in Russia near Kharkiv and elsewhere near the border, but, to Kyiv’s dismay, Washington so far hasn’t given permission for strikes deeper in Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron and some other Western officials argue that Kyiv has the right to use their equipment to attack military assets anywhere in Russia. There also has been talk by Macron and the leaders of NATO’s Baltic members — but not the U.S. — of deploying troops to Ukraine.

Putin warns that this would be a major escalation, and he threatened to retaliate by providing weapons to Western adversaries elsewhere in the world.

He reinforced that argument by signing a mutual defense pact with North Korea in June and holding the door open for arms supplies to Pyongyang.

He declared that just as the West says Ukraine can decide how to use Western weapons, Moscow could provide arms to North Korea and “similarly say that we supply something to somebody but have no control over what happens afterward” — an apparent hint at Pyongyang’s role as arms trader.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, noted Moscow could arm anyone who considers the U.S. and its allies their enemies, “regardless of their political beliefs and international recognition.” Another threat of escalation followed a Ukrainian attack with U.S.-made ATACMS missiles that killed four and injured over 150 in Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Russia’s Defense Ministry warned it could take unspecified measures against U.S. drones over the Black Sea that provide intelligence to Ukraine.

The nuclear threat and Putin’s long game. Putin said it was wrong for NATO to assume that Russia won’t use its nuclear arsenal, reaffirming it will use “all means” if its sovereignty and territorial integrity are threatened.

He also warned that Moscow was pondering possible changes to its doctrine that specifies when it resorts to nuclear weapons.

Underscoring that, Russia held military drills with battlefield nuclear weapons involving Belarus. Last year, Moscow deployed some of those weapons to Belarus to try to discourage Western military support for Ukraine.

A military defeat in Ukraine, Putin said, would deal a deadly blow to Russian statehood, and he vowed to press his goals “to the end.”

He declared that for Russia to halt the fighting, Ukraine must withdraw its troops from the four regions that Moscow annexed in 2022, an idea Kyiv and its allies dismissed. He also said Ukraine must abandon its bid to join NATO.

Hawkish Russian commentators criticized Putin for failing to respond forcefully to NATO ramping up support for Kyiv and allowing the West to continuously push back Russia’s red lines. Some argued that if the damage grows from Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia with longer-range Western missiles, Moscow should hit NATO assets.

Vasily Kashin, a Moscow-based defense analyst, noted that while Ukraine already had used Western weapons to inflict limited damage, Putin will “have to do something if there are cruise missile strikes deep inside Russian territory resulting in significant casualties.” Russia could respond by targeting Western drones or U.S. spy satellites, or also strike some NATO countries’ assets in overseas territories to minimize triggering an all-out conflict with the alliance, Kashin said.

Other Russian commentators argued, however, that such action fraught with triggering a direct conflict with NATO isn’t in Moscow’s interests.

Moscow-based security analyst Sergei Poletaev said the Kremlin aims to steadily drain Ukrainian resources to force Kyiv into accepting a peace deal on Russia’s terms.

While nothing spectacular is happening on the front line, he said, “constant dropping wears away a stone.”

Moscow’s military advantage allows it to “maintain pressure along the entire front line and make new advances while waiting for Ukraine to break down,” he said in a commentary Lacking the resources for a major offensive, the Kremlin has opted for slow advances, aiming to “keep pressure on Ukraine while warding off the West from direct involvement in hostilities,” Poletaev said.

“We must walk the razor’s edge between our victory and a nuclear war,” he said.

U.S. President Joe Biden during a a reception celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, in the Rose Garden of the White House, in Washington, U.S., May 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a ban on Russian enriched uranium on Monday, May 13, 2024, the White House said, in the latest effort by Washington to disrupt President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ban on imports of the fuel for nuclear power plants begins in about 90 days, although it allows the Department of Energy to issue waivers in case of supply concerns.

Russia is the world’s top supplier of enriched uranium, and about 24% of the enriched uranium used by U.S. nuclear power plants come from the country.

The law also unlocks about $2.7 billion in funding in previous legislation to build out the U.S. uranium fuel industry.

“Today, President Biden signed into law a historic series of actions that will strengthen our nation’s energy and economic security by reducing, and ultimately eliminating, our reliance on Russia for civilian nuclear power,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said in a statement.

Mr. Sullivan said the law “delivers on multilateral goals we have set with our allies and partners,” including a pledge last December with Canada, France, Japan and the United Kingdom to collectively invest $4.2 billion to expand enrichment and conversion capacity of uranium.

The waivers, if implemented by the Energy Department, allow all the Russian uranium imports the U.S. normally imports through 2027.

Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, said that Washington’s decision is leading to shocks in global economic relations, but will not bring the desired results.

“The delicate balance between exporters and importers of uranium products is being disrupted,” the Russian embassy in Washington cited Antonov as saying in a post on its Telegram messaging channel.

“Life has confirmed that the Russian economy is ready for any challenges and quickly responds to emerging difficulties, even extracting dividends from the situation. It will be so this time too.”

Russian police detain a man trying to lay flowers at a monument in St. Petersburg to honour Alexei Navalny on Feb. 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

When charismatic opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015, more than 50,000 Muscovites expressed their shock and outrage the next day . Police stood aside as they rallied and chanted anti-government slogans.

Nine years later, stunned and angry Russians streamed into the streets on the night of February 16, when they heard that popular opposition politician Alexei Navalny had died in prison. But this time, those laying flowers at impromptu memorials in major cities were met by riot police, who arrested and dragged hundreds of them away.

In those intervening years, President Vladimir Putin’s Russia evolved from a country that tolerated some dissent to one that ruthlessly suppresses it. Arrests, trials and long prison terms — once rare — are commonplace, especially after Moscow invaded Ukraine.

Wider targets

Alongside its political opponents, the Kremlin now also targets rights groups, independent media and other members of civil-society organisations, LGBTQ+ activists and certain religious affiliations.

“Russia is no longer an authoritarian state — it is a totalitarian state,” said Oleg Orlov, co-chair of Memorial, the Russian human rights group that tracks political prisoners. “All these repressions are aimed at suppressing any independent expression about Russia’s political system, about the actions of the authorities, or any independent civil activists.”

A month after making that comment, the 70-year-old Orlov became one of his group’s own statistics: He was handcuffed and hauled out of a courtroom after being convicted of criticising the military over Ukraine and sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Memorial estimates nearly 680 political prisoners in Russia. Another group, OVD-Info, said in November that 1,141 people are behind bars on politically motivated charges, with over 400 others receiving other punishment and nearly 300 more under investigation.

There was a time after the collapse of the Soviet Union when it seemed Russia had turned a page and widespread repression was a thing of the past, said Mr. Orlov, a human rights advocate since the 1980s.

While there were isolated cases in the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, Mr. Orlov said major crackdowns began slowly after Mr. Putin came to power in 2000.

When Mr. Putin regained the presidency in 2012 after evading term limits by serving four years as Prime Minister, he was greeted by mass protests. He saw these as Western-inspired and wanted to nip them in the bud, said Tatiana Stanovaya of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Many were arrested, and over a dozen received up to four years in prison after those protests. But mostly, Ms. Stanovaya said, authorities were “creating conditions in which the opposition could not thrive,” rather than dismantling it.

Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 from Ukraine created a surge of patriotism and boosted Mr. Putin’s popularity, emboldening the Kremlin. Authorities restricted foreign-funded non-governmental organisations and rights groups, outlawing some as “undesirable,” and targeted online critics with prosecutions, fines and occasionally jail.

With the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia enacted repressive new laws that stifled any anti-war protests and criticism of the military. The system of oppression is designed “to keep people in fear,” said Nikolay Petrov, visiting researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.