The Biden administration and European allies are calling Russian President Vladimir V. Putin a tyrant and war criminal. But he enjoys a constant invitation to the halls of power in Brazil.
Brazil’s president says both Ukraine and Russia are responsible for the war that began with the Russian military’s invasion. And his country’s purchases of Russian energy and fertilizer have skyrocketed, pumping billions of dollars into the Russian economy.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s views express the global predicament facing the United States and Ukraine as the war enters its third year.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Biden administration launched a diplomatic offensive that was as important as its efforts to supply weapons to the Ukrainian military. With economic sanctions and calls for a collective defense of the international order, the United States sought to punish Russia with economic pain and political exile. The aim was for companies and countries to cut their ties with Moscow.
But two years later, Mr. Putin is not nearly as isolated as U.S. officials had hoped. Russia’s inherent strength, based on its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, has resulted in a financial and political resilience that threatens to outlast Western opposition. In parts of Asia, Africa and South America, its influence is as strong as ever or even growing. And his grip on power at home appears as strong as ever.
The war undoubtedly took a toll on Russia: it destroyed the country’s reputation across much of Europe. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin. The United Nations has repeatedly condemned the invasion.
And if you listen to Biden administration officials, Russia has suffered a major strategic failure.
“Today, Russia is more isolated than ever on the world stage,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in June. Putin’s war, he added, “has reduced Russian influence on every continent.”
Beyond North America and Europe, there is evidence to the contrary.
China, India and Brazil are buying Russian oil in record quantities and enjoying the deep discounts Putin is now giving to countries willing to replace his lost European customers. With these growing economic ties came strong diplomatic ties, including with some close U.S. partners. Mr. Putin visited Beijing in October and received India’s foreign minister in Moscow in late December. A few weeks earlier, Mr. Putin received a warm welcome in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where he was greeted with a 21-gun salute and warplanes trailing smoke in the red, white and blue colors of the Russian flag.
Russian influence is also increasing in Africa, according to a new report from the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security research group. When Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, died last summer, Russian military intelligence took over Wagner’s extensive operations in Africa and made further moves with governments that rely on the group for security.
“Russia is by no means hemmed in,” said Michael Kimmage, a Cold War historian at the Catholic University of America and an Obama administration State Department official. “It is neither economically nor diplomatically contained and conveys its message about war.”
According to some Russia experts, American and European leaders have not fully taken this reality into account.
“What Western leaders have conspicuously failed to do is engage with their publics about the enduring nature of the threat from an emboldened, revisionist Russia,” Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in a November essay for The Wall Street Journal accuses the West of “magical thinking” about Mr. Putin’s plight.
A prime example of disappointment is Putin’s welcome to Brazil, the largest and most globally influential country in Latin America.
Mr Lula has invited Mr Putin to attend a Group of 20 leadership summit in Brazil in November, even though his country is a member of the International Criminal Court and is obliged to enforce the court’s arrest warrant against the Russian leader. (Mr. Lula in December sidestepped the question of whether Mr. Putin would be arrested if he appeared, calling it a “judicial decision.”)
Brazil’s continued neutral stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine came up on Wednesday during a meeting between Mr. Lula and Mr. Blinken in Brasília, the country’s capital. Mr. Lula has called for peace talks, a position that Ukraine has criticized, and said the United States was fueling the war with its arms sales to Kiev. Mr. Blinken told Mr. Lula that the United States believed that conditions for diplomacy were not favorable at the moment.
Later that day, Mr. Blinken landed in Rio de Janeiro for a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 nations and heard Brazil’s top diplomat Mauro Vieira say: “Brazil does not accept a world in which differences are resolved through the use of military force.”
Sergei V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, was present. While Mr. Blinken and a handful of counterparts from allied nations denounced Russia’s war, other officials followed the Brazilian minister’s lead and expressed neutral sentiments or remained silent on the conflict.
Last year, Mr. Lavrov attended a similar event in India, was greeted by Mr. Lula at the presidential residence and visited more than a dozen African countries, including South Africa, Sudan and Kenya.
Last month he attended a meeting in New York with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres – which the Russian Foreign Ministry promoted in a press release in which the two men were seen shaking hands.
At the United Nations, U.S.-led resolutions condemning the war have found little support among countries not closely aligned with the United States or Russia, showing they are unwilling to be coerced to take one side in the conflict.
“These countries are afraid of being seen as pawns on the chessboard of great power competition,” said Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. “The last administration did great damage to our relations with many of these countries. We are not seen as a credible partner.”
“Russian disinformation has been effective in many places,” she added. “And Russia has been investing in many of these countries for decades.”
Moscow has also worked to avoid blame for increased food and energy prices following the invasion. A few weeks ago, Russia delivered 34,000 tons of free fertilizer to Nigeria, one of several such shipments to Africa.
Mr. Putin can afford such largesse, not to mention a war of attrition in eastern Ukraine, because Russia has replaced lost energy customers in Europe by selling far more energy on other continents. The International Energy Agency reported last month that Russia exported 7.8 million barrels of oil per day in December, the highest in nine months – and only slightly below pre-war levels.
At the same time, oil export revenues this month amounted to $14.4 billion, the lowest level in half a year. The agency said Western efforts to impose a price cap on Russian oil appeared to have hit overall revenues, as did a drop in the world price of crude.
Russia’s reputation is benefiting from President Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, analysts say. Many world leaders believe it is hypocrisy for the United States to condemn Russian attacks on civilian areas and infrastructure in Ukraine, and are swayed by the argument that Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties while Russia has deliberately targeted innocent people. don’t stir.
In addition, Russia has managed to forge closer ties with its close partners, in what Ms. Polyakova calls a “new authoritarian alliance.” These countries – China, North Korea and Iran – have provided various forms of support to Moscow. North Korea is sending ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine, Iran continues to supply drones and China, while refraining from exporting weapons to Russia, is allowing equipment that civilians and the military can use to end up in Moscow’s hands.
China maintains trade with Russia and fills gaps left by Western companies, ensuring supplies of everything from household goods to financial services.
As for sanctions intended to restrict Russia’s access to high technology, particularly equipment that could be used for advanced weapons, Mr. Putin has found workarounds. Nearby countries such as Armenia and Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have not joined the U.S. sanctions regime, and private companies there import microchips and other items for re-export to Russia.
Western sanctions and corporate boycotts have certainly disrupted daily life in Russia, though in many cases through inconveniences such as the loss of Apple Pay and Instagram – not enough to fuel popular unrest or change Mr. Putin’s behavior.
“In the here and now, the sanctions are disappointing,” said Edward Fishman, a former State Department official in the Obama administration who oversaw sanctions against Russia after Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Over time, Mr. Fishman said, the West’s sanctions will take a greater toll. Despite loopholes and black market trading, Russia will have difficulty acquiring key high-tech components. And failed deals with Western energy companies will deprive Russia of the investments it needs to maintain efficient oil and gas production.
But he said Mr. Putin had prepared his country for an onslaught of sanctions and that he had found enough options to maintain his war machine and influence on the world stage.
“Unfortunately, Russia has now set up something of an alternative supply chain,” Mr. Fishman said.
He added that Mr. Biden could take even bolder steps to crack down on Russian energy exports and technology imports. But that would mean tensions with countries that have become big buyers of Russian oil, such as India, which could only reduce their imports under threat of sanctions or other punitive measures that could risk a diplomatic crisis.
Likewise, there are many companies in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates that make large profits from acting as middlemen for banned technology items, two partners that Mr. Biden would prefer not to engage with.
Perhaps most frightening is the fact that restricting Russian oil exports will likely drive up global oil prices – bad news for the United States and a president who faces his voters this fall.
“I think there’s a lot of nervousness about doing anything that can shake up global oil markets,” Mr. Fishman said, “particularly in an election year.”
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2024-02-22 18:56:24
www.nytimes.com
