The Tsar of the Chessboard

"Russia plans to establish a military base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast to serve as a logistics center for the Russian navy, according to a draft agreement between Moscow and Khartoum signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and released publicly Nov. 11."

"The agreement states that Sudan will provide a land plot for the Russian base free of charge for a period of 25 years. It will automatically renew for subsequent 10-year periods. To terminate the deal, one of the parties must notify the other party of its intention at least one year before the expiration of the next period."

"While the base’s capacity will be capped at four ships at a time, nuclear-powered ships are permitted to dock, thus significantly increasing the combat capability of the Russian navy in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The number of military personnel permanently staying at this facility should not exceed 300 people, according to the agreement. Also, Russia will have the right to import and export through the seaports and airfields of Sudan 'any weapons, ammunition and equipment' necessary for the operation of the base and 'for the performance of tasks by warships'. Sudan, according to the published document outlining the agreement, will not collect import and export duties and taxes."

Kiril Semenov, Al-Monitor

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin inspects the Arktika nuclear-powered icebreaker at the port of Murmansk, northwestern Russia, Oct. 21, 2020. (Photo by Alexander ASTAFYEV / SPUTNIK / AFP)

Moscow also succeeded in persuading Syria's president Bashar al-Assad in exchange for Russian air power enabling the Alawite administration to put down a rebellion by its Syrian Sunni population, to agree to a Russian naval facility in Tartus as a leased military installation of the Russian Navy located on the northern edge of the sea port of the Syrian city of Tartus, its deep-sea base in the Mediterranean. And then there is the little matter of seizing Ukraine's Crimea naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Spreading itself around, in Vladimir Putin's ambitions to restore elements of Russia's lost status as a regional and world power.

Mr. Putin has been a busy man, negotiating deals, and when negotiations are inconvenient, simply stepping in, marshalling Russian military might and imposing itself where it believes it belongs, in a position of authority and manipulative power. No one could ever accuse Vladimir Putin of not intimately knowing the very best chess moves. Of course there are also clumsy and not-too-intelligent, visceral moves to rid himself of 'enemies' of his aspirational rise for Russia to more closely resemble the Soviet model.

Poisoning critics is one of them, whether they take place in London or in Russia itself. More effective has been the incidental and mysterious killing by snipers of intrusive reporters and pestiferous political opponents. There have been incursions in Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus, in Nagorno-Karabakh of such an open extent that Russia's neighbours in its near-abroad have shrunk back in fear of once again being forced into Russia's tentacle-orbit. NATO has done its best to allay such fears, but Mr. Putin is still smiling.

For years, Russia has been accused of attacking hospitals and clinics as part of a strategy to help President Bashar al-Assad of Syria secure victory in the civil war.   Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

His expansion and military presence in Syria, Libya and even in the Arctic have been gratifyingly useful. And should U.S.President Trump proceed with his intention to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, Mr. Putin will feel free to once again pop up there, too. This time perhaps not as an occupying force where an ignominious departure has left deep scars in the Russian psyche, but as a friend to the Taliban who are certain to reclaim the country once again.

Belarusians are once again becoming intimately acquainted with their neighbour whose troops moved in conveniently to prop up its choice of dictatorship, a ploy that failed to proceed as anticipated in Ukraine, where the standoff between the government of Ukraine and Russia's proxy ethnic Russian 'Ukrainian' loyalists defy Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia has to date escaped responsibility for the downing and murder of passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 when it was downed by a Buk missile, leaving all 283 passengers and 15 crew dead.

 

"Putin appears to have achieved a significant victory in Nagorno-Karabakh that threatens to alter the geopolitical balance throughout the former Soviet space in his favour."

"He has succeeded in expanding Russia's military presence in the strategically important region ... without encountering any Western pushback."

Anders Aslund, former economic adviser to Russia, Ukraine, Sweden, member of the Atlantic Council

In the Republic of Moldova, an election pits a democratic, pro-European Union candidate for president against a pro-Russian incumbent backed by Russia. Moldova too lost part of its territory, the region of Transnisria in 1992 to Russia. Similar to Russian troops occupying South Ossetia in Georgia, since 2008. Vladimir Putin is having a good time with his geographical chess game, and there's no one to interfere with his grandiloquent plans as the new czar.

 

Nabad al Hayat Surgical Hospital in southern Idlib Province served around 200,000 people before being destroyed in a Russian airstrike on May 5. In a Russian Air Force transmission obtained by The Times, a pilot can be heard receiving the hospital’s exact coordinates before bombing it.  Credit...Orient News

"The argument by the Russians or the regime is always that hospitals are run by terrorists."

"Is it really possible that all the people are terrorists?"

"The truth is that after hospitals are hit, and in areas like this where there is just one hospital, our houses have become hospitals."

Nabad al Hayat’s head nurse, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared being targeted

Sow Instability ... Live With It ... Or Deal With It

"Russia is not the dominant power in any of the regions of the former Soviet Union."

"[The current trio of upheavals] really shed light on the situation."

"[The Kremlin may not have stretched itself too thin with its foreign policy agenda, but] it certainly has to pay more attention to its neighbourhood now, more attention to its alliances."

"The people in Belarus are very close to the people in Russia -- basically you have the same language and very much the same culture."

"So I think that on that score, people in the Kremlin are looking very closely at the techniques used by the organizers of these demonstrations."

"They're studying it very, very closely because they believe something like that could be used, will be used, in Russia when the situation is appropriate."

Dmitri Trenin, director, Carnegie Moscow Center 

"Russia's influence there [Central Asia] remains extremely high."

"The new post-Soviet generation does not suffer from nostalgia for the Soviet times and does not consider Moscow a political trendsetter."

Arkady Dubnov, political analyst, expert, Central Asia

Antigovernment demonstrators gathered in Minsk, Belarus, in August.  Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New YorkTimes

 

Vladimir Putin is fast closing in on 70 with two more years to go, but he plans on many more long years of active executive administration of the Russian Federation. He has gone to great manipulative lengths to change the constitution, forcing 'democratic' votes where he has garnered a huge majority of assent from Russian voters to enable him to reign undisturbed by nuisance contenders for a position that looks remarkably like a Czarist throne. These are irritatingly contentious efforts on the part of challengers who feel an obligation to Russia to dethrone Mr. Putin.

Alexei and Yulia Navalny. Photo: @navalny/Instagram

They have a following, but the authority to charge them with putative offences and send them to prison sits in the Kremlin,which can choose alternately to have them assassinated which usually puts them out of contention. The latest such disabling adventure went badly for Mr. Putin when political opponent Alexci Navalny failed to die of Novichok poisoning, to be rescued by German medical science, the poison identified by British forensic science and the wrath of additional sanctions on Russia, Putin and other notables invoked as a lesson that will never be learned.

President Putin yearns for the lost days of the Soviet Union, when Russian power and influence was at its height and neighbouring near-abroad countries were but colonies embraced by the tentacles of the great political octopus that was the USSR. When Soviet Russia held sway in the Middle East, and held the balance of power that accompanies the status of a world-class superpower, a status it shared with the United States through decades of conflicted relationships marked by suspicion, distrust, propaganda and tension in the competitive atmosphere of nuclear threat.

It has been a great disappointment to the Kremlin that former satellite states in eastern Europe, in Russia's near-abroad continue to feel so ill-done-by that they shrink in fear at the very notion they would wish to continue a firm alliance that would surely grip them with an iron vice. They have turned toward the West, looking for NATO membership, an alliance that would purchase them a guarantee of military defence against the memory of the giant that once strode the world stage.

Still, the consanguinity of closely-shared geography, ideology and a continuation of totalitarian-style governance continues to link Russia with a number of its former clients, and that a number of them are experiencing political-social upheaval with stirrings of democratic ambition is a worrying sign that there is an impending breakaway from the solid footing Russia has maintained in Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Following in the determined footsteps of Ukraine and Georgia, a dreaded apparition of sovereignty and democratic choice.

Absence, in Russia's attention turned elsewhere did not make hearts fonder of the Russian Federation's position in eastern Europe. Where former satellites still shudder at the prospect of military invasion and the spectre of the Crimean Peninsula looms large as a warning. Just how thin can a country whose petroleum and gas industry was struck a blow in the double whammy of falling prices and a world oversupply, faltering under sanctions and a restive population, spread itself? 

Well, when ambition to make friends and influence nations leads to entering the fray in the mid-abroad as when Mr. Putin committed to aiding his Syrian counterpart in destroying the lives of Sunni Syrians and airbombing hospitals, medical clinics, schools and civilian enclaves of Sunnis in exchange for an air base and a deep seaport in the Mediterranean, reclaiming its former high profile position in the Middle East, it constituted a distraction from its near-abroad.

Now, the Kremlin faces a backyard rebellion with former Soviet republics and regions from Central Asia through the Caucasus and into Eastern Europe, in a turmoil of mass dissent and a turn toward the West.  Even as competitors, from Turkey to China challenge the once-dominant role of the former Soviet territory with their very similar ambitions. Nagorno-Karabakh presents a dilemma for Russia between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia's military treaty with Armenia, it specified, refers only to Armenia proper, not the breakaway, majority-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh. So it was quite inconvenient that Azerbaijan admitted to bombing inside Armenian borders in their violent fracas.

Keeping a watchful eye on Russia's “near abroad   Reuters

With Turkey fully in support of Muslim Azerbaijan, a threat to Russia's interests in the region hovers with the arrival of Syrian mercenaries to fight for Azerbaijan, recruited by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Russia's foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin warned the situation could introduce Islamist militants entering to infiltrate Russia. After all, Russian air power entered Syria to bomb not only Syrian Sunnis involved in a civil war, but terrorist militias that threaten the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad.

When Turkey shot down a Russian jet it claimed had entered its airspace from Syria, conditions were tense between the two nations, but soon enough smoothed over, as each side saw benefits from ongoing collaboration. A collaboration that eventually turned from lukewarm to frigid in competing positions over Syria and Libya. In Belarus embattled Lukashenko's rival, opposition leader Svetlana Tikhnovskaya, exiled from Belarus, living in the haven Lithuania has provided for her is increasingly turning to the West for help and future support. 

The 2014 political uprising where Ukraine disposed of Viktor Yanukovych as a Russian stooge, installing their own choice for president and doing so democratically in two elections to follow, the country's firm and growing relationship with the West is the feature of the Kremlin's worst nightmare.

The disputed election in Kyrgyzstan, along with that of Belarus are following in a familiar path. As is Armenia's growing warmth with the West, fed largely by its large and politically active diaspora.

 

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

"We saw some Azerbaijan drones in the sky looking for targets, but we didn't think the fire station would be a target because we're a humanitarian service."

"Now it's going to make it harder for us to rescue innocent victims of this war. They are doing this shelling just to cause panic among people."

Armen Naremanian, senior firefighter, Stepanakeri, Nagorno-Karabakh

"I am not scared. I was fighting in 1988 and killed many Turks and mujahedeen who were fighting then."

"And as for these rockets? I will cut the tubes in half, and use them as troughs to feed my pigs."

Yura Arzumanian, 52, farmer, veteran of the 90s war

 

"Mil objects in large cities of Azerbaijan are the target of the Defense Army of #Artsakh [Armenian name of Nagorno-Karabakh]."

"Calling on Azerbaijani population to leave these cities to avoid inevitable loss." 

"Currently firing stopped upon my command to avoid loss among #civilians. Failing Azerbaijani military-political leadership to draw appropriate lessons, our commensurate response will pursue. Determined as never. #Azerbaijan can still stop its aggression."

Nagorno-Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan

 

"The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of #Armenia formally declares that no fire of any kind is being opened from the territory of Armenia in the #Azerbaijan's direction."

Shushan Stepanyan, press secretary, Armenia's Defense Minister

Smoke rises after the recent shelling, in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh.  CNN

"The information spread by the Armenian side about the alleged shelling of military facilities in Ganja city is provocative and false."

"As a result of enemy fire, civilians, civilian infrastructure and ancient historical buildings were harmed."

Azerbaijan Defence Minister Zakary Hasanov

 

"Indiscriminate Missile attacks are launched against Ganja, Füzuli, Tartar and Jabrayil cities of Azerbaijan from territory of Armenia. "

"Ganja is the second biggest city of Azerbaijan. 500.000+ population."

Hikmet Hajiyev,  foreign policy aide, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev

 

"Nagorno-Karabakh is our land. [Armenian forces] must leave our territories, not in words but in deeds, [provide a timetable for a full withdrawal, and recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan]."

"This is the end. We showed them who we are. We are chasing them like dogs."

Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev

Several buildings in Ganja were destroyed, Azerbaijani officials say   Azerbaijan Defence Ministry

Arayik Harutyunyan, Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenian leader confirmed his forces had targeted a military airbase in Ganja over the border in Azerbaijan, identifying it as the source of missiles landing in Nagorno-Karabakh. He had decided to stop shelling the city of a half-million, said to be Azerbaijan's second-largest city, to avoid hitting innocent civilians. But he put Azerbaijan on notice that if it continued shelling his enclave, there would be consequences; warning it now considers "military facilities in Azerbaijan's big cities" to be legitimate targets for response to Azeri attacks.

This is nothing but typical of Islamic warfare, to establish bases and arms caches within civilian populations. Also typical, is the shelling by those same Islamic militaries of civilian institutions such as firehalls, medical clinics and hospitals. It has been seen in Syria's Alawite regime's shelling of hospitals in territories held by majority Sunny Syrian rebels, along with the bombing of bread lines, clinics and civilian enclaves where most homes sheltered Syrian Sunnis. The famed White Helmets rescue missions were bombed,as well, by Syrian warplanes.

The aggressor here is clearly Azerbaijan, fixated on recapturing the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory. The ethnic Armenian majority that now represents the enclave's population base and its leaders are under fire and they're fighting back equally determined to protect the geography they defend as their own. There are parallels to ethnic Russian-Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine mounting their separatist movement and Russia's capture of Crimea. Russia is on the support side of Armenia, clearly a religion-and-ethnic bias.

Firefighter Armen Naaremanian foresaw being involved in the protection of his city of Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, but as a firefighter, not as a member of the military; he hardly anticipated that his fire station would become a target of Azeri shelling. Now he is tasked like the Syrian White Helmets, with rescuing people out of bombed-out buildings and in the process himself running for cover from the rockets launched from Azerbaijan. 

Pro-Azerbaijan protesters in Istanbul, Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty Images

A constant barrage of Azeri artillery has hit in and around Stepanakert in the past week, some striking military targets, while others came down into nearby hills and gorges, and some destroyed civilian homes and farmsteads. Stepanakert has become a deliberate target for Azerbaijan in its campaign of aggression, aided by Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, calling up his Islamist terrorist allies in the process, promising to be with Azerbaijan to the very end, until it has achieved its goal.

Azerbaijan considers the ethnic Armenian-ruled Nagorno-Karabakh an insulting blow to its honour calling out for retribution and recapture into its sovereign geographic holdings. When thirty years ago Armenian-dominated Nagorno-Karabakh fought for independence it chose Stepanakert as its capital of the breakaway enclave, today a city of 50,000. That earlier war's brutal bombing campaign where 40,000 died, can still be seen in unrestored buildings in some areas. Farmland close to the Azeri front lines cannot be worked because of landmines.

 

In the past decades there have been skirmishes leading to the deaths of an estimated 3,000, many of those deaths by snipers firing from front lines. Initially the two sides were matched for military numbers with the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh receiving military and political support from Armenia. Since then oil wealth enjoyed by Azerbaijan has weighted assaults in its favour. Alongside Turkey's support Azerbaijan has acquired new drone weaponry to target the old Soviet-era tanks that comprise Nagorno-Karabakh's military armamentarium. 

Atepanakert is in preparations for a siege, with hotels and local houses sheltering women and children evacuated from outlying villages. Proprietors of shops and businesses have volunteered for the front lines, closing their businesses temporarily. Residents are ordered regularly to take cover in bombproof shelters, by air raid sirens. The city switches its lights off at night to avoid being a target for drone attacks. French president Emmanuel Macron criticizes Turkey's Erdogan for sending Syrian jihadis to fight alongside Azerbaijani forces.

Even so, Ilham Aliev, the president of Azerbaijan insists the "ball was in the court of Armenia", which must withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh prior to any ceasefire discussions. That Nagorno-Karabakh's ultrapatriotic residents would concede defeat despite facing a superior military equipped with newer fighting technologies is beyond unlikely to occur. When veteran fighter of the original war in the 90s, Hura Arzumanian, woke up at the sound of three Azeri missiles landing in his farmstead acreage on the outskirts of Stepanakert which failed to explode he was undaunted.

 

With encouragement from Turkey's Erdogan, Azerbaijan has ignored calls from Russia, the U.S., France and the European Union for a ceasefire and an end to the violence. Instead, the conflict and the violence is increasing. The Karabakh cities of Stepanakert and Martakert have come under attack by Azerbaijani war jets and long-range missiles. A string of villages have been captured by Azerbaijani forces, while Armenia admitted ethnic Armenian fighters are under pressure in some areas, with a fluctuating situation on the ground.