Ukraine’s Continuing Fight for Freedom

Independence Day in Ukraine falls on August 24^th each year. Today marks the 31^st anniversary of when Ukraine voted to break with the former Soviet Union. It also falls exactly six months into a lethal war with Russia. The day was marred by explosions, death, and more destruction inside Ukraine as Russian forces bombed a train station killing at least 22 individuals and the day is not yet over in Ukraine. In an emotional speech deliver by President Volodymyr Zelensky, he called for Ukrainians to fight for their freedom rather than simply voting for it at the ballot box. “A new nation emerged on February 24 at 4 am. Not born, but reborn. A nation that didn’t cry, didn’t scream, didn’t get scared. Didn’t run away. Didn’t give up. Didn’t forget,” he said.

Although Putin is fighting a protracted war on the Russia’s western border area in Ukraine, all is not quiet on Russia’s eastern front. Just one day prior to Ukraine’s Independence Day Russia sailed 14 of its Navy ships through the La Perouse Strait from the Western Pacific Ocean into the Sea of Japan, according to Dzirhan Mahadzir of USNI News. The move was designed to unnerve Japan. The La Perouse Strait is an international waterway dividing Russia’s Sakhalin island from Japan’s Hokkaido island. The ships included a destroyer, fast attack craft, missile range instrumentation and hospital ships, among others. According to Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Japan asked Russia late last month not to traverse the waterway in anticipation of the Vostok-2022 strategic military exercise that runs from August 30 to September 5. Russia didn’t listen.

Back home in Moscow, Putin’s disinformation forces are hard at work creating a monkeypox narrative, in a reprise of the previous campaign to link the Covid virus to alleged US biolab operations. Foreign Policy magazine’s Ivana Stradner reports that “Russian Duma Deputy Chair Irina Yarovaya echoed the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory earlier this month when she called on the World Health Organization to lead an investigation into “the secrets of the US military biolaboratories.” Stradner calls it a “textbook Kremlin information operation.”

East, west, or inside the Russian Federation, Putin is not letting up or bypassing any opportunity to destabilize the global environment. What concerns several military analysts in Washington more than Russia’s flotilla off Japan or its recent disinformation campaigns is the possibility that Putin could decide to damage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant located only four miles from the city of Nikopol in southern Ukraine. On March 4 Russian military forces captured the plant and have held it since that time. UN Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month said: “Any attack to nuclear plants is … suicidal,” and called for the plant to be demilitarized. Of the 11,000 regularly employed at the facility, 1,100 have been taken hostage by Russian forces. Ukrainian engineers are being tortured and forced to work at gunpoint to keep the operation running according to Petro Kotin, president of Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power utility. It appears that Putin intends to remove the power plant from Ukraine’s electric grid in an attempt to further destroy the country. It delivers 50% of Ukraine’s power requirements and is the largest plant in Europe.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken says that Putin is using the plant strategically as a form of protection — shielding troops, weapons and ammunition. And, in doing this, Russia has stopped Ukraine from damaging its stock and soldiers on the assumption that an attack would cause a meltdown or nuclear disaster. “Of course the Ukrainians cannot fire back lest there be a terrible accident involving the nuclear plant,”, adding that Russia isn’t creating a “human shield,” but rather a “nuclear shield.” Earlier this week, Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is under the UN, urged Ukraine and Russia to allow experts to visit the site in an effort to prevent a nuclear accident. The IAEA reports it was told it could visit the plant “within the next few days” if the talks succeed. If the political-military situation is not stabilized and an errant shell hits the plant, it could result in a major leak of radioactive material. Once released into the atmosphere it could contaminate a wide swath of Europe, including Poland, with a population of over 38 million. In May the BBC posed the question, what does Vladimir Putin want? Today the question has morphed into what is he going to do next?

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Quick Analysis

Russia Expanding Aggression

President Putin is using more than one pathway to enter Europe and undermine the West. While most of the world watches the conflict he initiated in Ukraine, the Russian government is actively pursuing a second front in a little noticed campaign in Cyprus. Although the corrupt Cypriot government ended its issuance of “golden passports” in 2020, Russian intelligence is functioning quietly there to transform this EU country into a Russian beachhead of illicit economic activity aimed at penetrating the capitalist West, according to Paul Goble of the Jamestown Foundation. Cyprus is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nor does it receive as much attention as those countries who are member states. That adds to its allure as a prime location for Russia to attempt to gain a European foothold. Last week a NATO report, cited in the European Daily Monitor, noted that Russian intelligence agents have been plotting to destroy European infrastructure across the continent to disrupt states supporting Ukraine. It further suggests that Putin’s immediate goal is to lay the framework for a future move against the security organization’s members. Hungary, in particular, is another country garnering Moscow’s attention as it opposes the Western response to Russian aggression. Russia is focusing its intelligence efforts on other European, non-NATO member countries in addition to Cyprus, including Austria, Malta, and Ireland. The NATO report suggests that Moscow has had success in disseminating the Russian political narrative in these states to advance its campaign against the West. The island of Cyprus is proving to be a good target for Moscow as it is an ethnically divided island that is part of the EU since 2004. Northern Cyprus, officially called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that is only recognized by Turkey. The division precludes it from joining NATO. As Goble suggests, “it offers Russia troubled waters in which to fish.” Over the last 20 years, he points out, Cyprus’ challenges have opened it to a massive influx of Russian citizens, who now comprise approximately 10 percent of the island state’s population. Over 2,900 residents are Russians who entered until the “golden passport” program that allowed wealthy or well-connected Russians to move to Cyprus. It also provided them with documentation to travel freely throughout Europe! Although less visible on the world’s radar than the war in Ukraine, Moscow is also being helped by Cyprus’ banks opposition to seizing Russian assets and its support in evading Western sanctions. Russia has placed tens of billions of US Dollars there for money laundering. It has been more than two years since a single Russian “diplomat” has been deported and, in fact, the Embassy has grown to over 300 staffers on this tiny island state of only 1.2 million people. The Russian embassy in Nicosia has advanced communications antennae on its roof and opened a consulate on the northern end of the island. Moscow’s Ambassador, Mura Zyazikov, is a lieutenant general in the FSB with no diplomatic experience. The FSB, SVR (Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service), and GRU are actively using the island as a base of operations against NATO Member states, Israel, and other Western allies. Moscow backs pro-Russian political parties who in turn influence Cypriot decisions on education, language, and other issues. “Dmitry Khmelnitsky of the Dossier Center says that its findings should be of concern not only to Cyprus but to the West as a whole. Those who ignore what Moscow is doing because Cyprus does not follow the EU sanctions regime are missing something critical,” says Goble. “Cyprus does not seek to get rid of Russian agents and does not interfere with their work,” Khmelnitsky concludes, “despite the fact that what the Kremlin is doing is so clearly visible.” This has an impact not only on the small island but on the EU, NATO, and the West in general. Earlier this year the Moscow Times reported that when the FBI became more interested in Russian business and oligarchs in Cyprus, at least 10 of the major Russian businesses operating there left. Despite the government of Cyprus’ vow to implement plans for new sanctions against Russia, it continues to ignore Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine and to shield the wealth of the 50,000 wealthy Russian citizens and oligarchs residing there. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay