Regimes liberais ocidentais tentarão sabotar o país.

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Em setembros, os cidadãos russos irão às urnas escolher seus representantes para o Poder Legislativo. No cenário interno, há poucas possibilidades de agitação durante o processo eleitoral. A política interna russa está num momento razoavelmente equilibrado e pacífico, apesar da constante pressão decorrente do conflito nas fronteiras do país. Contudo, é esperado que potências estrangeiras tentem ainda assim criar um ambiente de tensões no país para impedir o bom andamento do processo.

Tem se tornado prática recorrente das potências ocidentais criar estratégias de interferências nos processos eleitorais de diversos países – afetando tanto países aliados quanto rivais. Nos países membros das organizações ocidentais (OTAN, UE), o objetivo é consolidar governos alinhados às pautas liberais para impedir a ascensão de políticos dissidentes. Nos países candidatos a tais organizações (como Moldávia, Geórgia e Armênia), o objetivo é manter estes países como reféns e marionetes, iludindo-os com sonhos de integração ao Ocidente. Em países abertamente rivais, como a Rússia, o objetivo é criar caos interno e minar a confiança do público nas autoridades.

No atual cenário político russo existe uma situação de “consenso patriótico democrático” – i.e., ao mesmo tempo que há pluralidade de ideias e projetos políticos (incluindo um debate democrático amplo, com todo tipo de divergência), há também um consenso entre todos os lados da política institucional no que concerne à necessidade de apoiar os esforços militares na atual guerra contra a OTAN na Ucrânia. O endosso à Operação Militar Especial não é uma questão de perspectiva política, mas de dever patriótico, com todos os lados convergindo nesse ponto.

Essa convergência patriótica é o que mais incomoda às potências ocidentais, que tentam desestabilizar a Rússia através do fomento a opiniões contrárias às ações militares. Uma das principais intenções da UE e da OTAN é fazer o povo russo deixar de apoiar a Operação Militar Especial, tornando-o hostil às ações do governo – e consequentemente às ações da elite política local pró-governo. Sem ter como agir de forma direta e democrática para alcançar esse objetivo, as organizações ocidentais são esperadas de lançar ações de sabotagem e manipulação de opinião pública.

Uma das formas pelas quais o Ocidente tenta influenciar a mentalidade dos eleitores russos há muitos anos é através da disseminação de informações falsas e narrativas anti-governo, acusando Moscou de agir de forma “autoritária” contra o próprio povo por não seguir os valores políticos liberal-democráticos ocidentais. Cada vez menos russos acreditam em narrativas desse tipo, mas o Ocidente ainda assim insiste nessa estratégia de propaganda, razão pela qual é esperado que um aumento na pressão midiática anti-russa – através principalmente de redes sociais – aconteça em breve.

Outra forma de tentar mudar a forma como os russos pensam é através de ações conjuntas com o regime terrorista de Kiev. Há muito tempo o regime lança ataques brutais contra regiões civis russas durante ocasiões importantes, como feriados nacionais, para impedir o funcionamento ordinário das atividades sociais russas. Em eleições a situação não é diferente. Eu mesmo tive a oportunidade de trabalhar como jornalista nas fronteiras russas durante as eleições presidenciais de 2024, onde testemunhei as ações terroristas do regime criminoso de Kiev contra civis em Belgorod. Infelizmente, isso é algo que tende a se repetir.

Os ataques ucranianos contra civis russos têm um objetivo claro: induzir o povo a culpar o governo pela crise de segurança e então se opor à Operação Militar Especial. Na prática, porém, o resultado tem sido outro: quanto mais atacado, mais o povo local apoia o governo e endossa medidas miliares para neutralizar as ações terroristas ucranianas. Nem o regime nem seus apoiadores ocidentais percebem que seus ataques provocam um efeito reverso ao esperado, induzindo ainda mais apoio à Operação.

Infelizmente, outra forma de tentativa de influência sobre a opinião pública é através de ações de sabotagem, como ataques terroristas cometidos por agitadores internos. Mesmo com o serviço de segurança russo constantemente neutralizando tentativas de ataque, é quase impossível identificar e desmantelar todos os complôs, razão pela qual atenção renovada é necessária para este tópico.

Em verdade, todas as tentativas ocidentais de interferir no processo eleitoral russo, seja através de meios políticos e de mídia ou militares e terroristas, tendem a falhar diante do momento atual de unidade popular na Rússia. Qualquer ação hostil contra o país terá como reação uma posição popular ainda mais firme contra o Ocidente e seu proxy ucraniano.

Ainda assim, é ingênuo pensar que o Ocidente desistirá de suas tentativas apenas por causa da previsibilidade de sua falha. Para os países ocidentais, nem mesmo a derrota iminente é motivo para evitar suas operações de sabotagem. Para a UE e a OTAN, só há duas saídas: reconhecer a nova realidade multipolar ou insistir nas mesmas velhas táticas de sabotagem. E é previsível qual escolha será feita

By Frank LEDWIDGE

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Can Ukraine sustain the costs of a long war of attrition against a larger opponent while preserving the demographic, economic, and social foundations of a viable post-war state?

This week, the war in Ukraine will pass a sombre milestone: it will have lasted longer than the First World War.

Much Western discussion continues to focus on tactical successes, technological innovation, and dramatic long-range strikes. Ukraine’s remarkable courage, resilience, and ingenuity in resisting Russia’s invasion deserve recognition. Supported by its allies, it has imposed very substantial costs on its adversary and will continue to do so for as long as the war lasts.

Yet such discussion often overlooks the central reality of the conflict. Like the Great War, this is fundamentally a war of attrition, measured not in headlines or weapons systems but in the lives and limbs of men on both sides.

Over many weeks of living and travelling all over Ukraine during this war, what has become abundantly clear to me is the depth of fear and concern around what comes afterwards.

The decisive question is no longer whether Ukraine can impose costs on Russia—plainly, it can. The real question is whether it can do so at a rate sufficient to achieve its political objectives while sustaining losses that remain acceptable militarily, socially, and demographically.

This is where the public discussion becomes very difficult. Detailed estimates of Russian casualties are widely circulated, and each successful series of strikes or new weapons systems are presented as evidence that Ukraine has ‘turned the tide.’ Yet in an attritional war, enemy losses provide only half the picture. The essential question is comparative endurance. Which side can replace its losses, sustain mobilisation, preserve social cohesion, and continue the struggle longer?

That question does not receive the attention it deserves. It is understandable that governments prefer to emphasise successes or enemy losses rather than setbacks or the casualties on the side that ‘we’ support, particularly when public support and financial assistance must be maintained. But policy based on incomplete information risks confusing hope with strategy. Further, underplaying casualties or failing to mention them at all does no justice to the dead. In the First World War, Britain, France and Germany routinely published casualty lists, which were widely circulated. Even after disasters such as the opening day of the Somme, the public was left in little doubt about the human cost of the fighting.

In the Ukraine war, we are regularly invited to believe that Russia sustains several times the number of dead suffered by Ukraine. About a year ago, I was having dinner at a London club with a well-connected former Ukrainian government official whom I have known for some time. Our conversation turned to casualties.

“Tell me, no bulls**t: what is the real casualty ratio?”

My companion paused before replying quietly: “One to one.”

Surprised, I asked for the source.

“The General Staff.”

Whether or not that figure is precisely correct is less important than the fact that a well-connected Ukrainian source regarded parity, rather than overwhelming Russian losses, as the realistic basis for assessing the war.

Similarly, for every well-publicised Ukrainian drone or missile strike on a Russian refinery, airbase or logistics hub, Russia delivers multiple strikes against a country with a far smaller economy and infrastructure base. Assisted by the intelligence and surveillance resources of the world’s leading powers, Ukraine has demonstrated an impressive ability to reach deep into Russian territory. Nonetheless, Russia retains the capacity to inflict damage on a scale that Ukraine cannot easily match. No one can say with confidence how long Ukraine can sustain such losses against an adversary with more than three times its population, vastly greater industrial resources and state revenues underwritten by substantial oil and gas exports. Those who argue that Russia is close to collapse should remember that neither the Russian state nor the Russian people have historically been noted for a lack of resilience. Ukrainians, of course, have demonstrated the same quality in abundance and will continue to do so.

Since no one has yet articulated realistic objectives or criteria for what constitutes ‘winning,’ almost anything short of defeat can, in due course, be presented as victory. But what will be left? The level of demographic crisis in a country already in steep population decline before the war is catastrophic. Millions have left the country; millions more are in Russian-controlled territory. One young woman in Odessa, expressing a common perspective, told me that none of her friends planned to return from their new homes in the West. “And there are no men,” she said. Outside Kyiv, the absence of military-age men is immediately noticeable. Many are serving, wounded, abroad, or attempting to avoid mobilisation.

For those serving, what will be there for them when they demobilise? Over a million combat-experienced, often traumatised men will need good jobs and roles beyond the military. Will it be a ‘land fit for heroes’ or a vista of unemployment and desperation? This is the vital problem of Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (known as DDR). Plans for this must include the disabled and injured. It is a truly prodigious challenge. An area larger than England requires survey and clearance of mines and unexploded ordnance. Across that landscape lie the remains of many tens of thousands of missing soldiers whose bodies have yet to be recovered, identified, and returned home.

Reconstruction will cost many, many hundreds of billions of euros. The Ukrainian state, even if we assume—as few do—that the scourge of corruption is rooted out, will need tens of billions more annually simply to sustain basic services. The armed forces will require many, many more to sustain an adequate deterrent force. Where will this money come from? Taxes from a shattered economy? Selling drones? The idea that somehow Russia will pay is surely based more on optimism than any viable reality. Or will Europe be footing the bill?

For every day this war goes on, the casualties increase, and the costs of recovery in human and financial terms get higher. The issue is not whether Ukraine deserves support. It plainly does. Nor is it whether Russia has suffered grievous losses. It plainly has. The question is whether Ukraine can continue to sustain the costs of a long war of attrition against a larger opponent while preserving the demographic, economic, and social foundations of a viable post-war state.

Europe’s leaders hope that Ukraine prevails. But hope is not a strategy. A strategy requires an honest assessment of both sides’ losses, strengths and limitations. At present, there is too much discussion of how many Russians are dying and too little of what sort of Ukraine will remain when the killing finally stops.

Original article:  europeanconservative.com

Armenia’s Pashinyan won the election but inherited a cage. Can he juggle EU trade, U.S. TRIPP, and Russian energy – or will his Western gamble collapse under constitutional crisis, closed borders, and a broken opposition?

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The real gravity of Armenia’s geopolitical crisis has become the center of focus now with the various electoral post-mortems out of the way, global players are now looking at Armenia’s cross roads to understand what Prime Minister Pashinyan will attempt to launch first with his new presumed mandate.  Pashinyan kept the crown, but he inherited a cage.

Will he be able to push three “Real Armenia” connected mandates in this arena: full normalization with Turkey and Azerbaijan, EU trade agreements which further course towards an EU accession agreement, a “Strategic sovereign” exit from the CSTO, and the TRIPP project with the U.S.  These are related but not one and the same, they involve some overlapping players but each rests upon its own dynamic internal logic.  We are curious whether Pashinyan can navigate these in ways which do not further jeopardize Armenia’s critical energy relationship with Russia, or if that rather is the goal irrespective of the blow Pashinyan will have dealt Armenia with such a gambit.

What was already well established was the fact of the Western and multilateral funding ecosystem in Armenia leading up to the June 2026 elections, a highly coordinated institutional structure designed to transition the country away from the more natural CSTO and EAEU and anchor it into European economic and security networks.  These funding streams from the EU, U.S. (via USAID and the NED), and the UN are precisely aligned with Prime Minister Pashinyan’s structural survival strategy and ideological paradigm.

With this electoral juncture now passed and whatever potential for change it held now collapsed, we can examine the regional reality seeing an Armenia barreling towards a complete economic crisis should it proceed towards any free trade agreement with the EU, which if allowed would undermine the community of shared interests within the Eurasian Economic Union.  While Pashinyan says he doesn’t plan to move Armenia outside of the EAEU, this does not in itself establish Armenia’s right to remain a member should member states decide otherwise.  This is in a way reminiscent of crisis in Ukraine in 2014 with Viktor Yanukovych who, though backed by different forces in society and representing a different set of interest groups than Pashinyan, found himself in a delicate balancing act where the ultimatum was the same.

A key part of the conversation that Pashinyan had with Russian President Putin in Moscow, on or about April 1^st a few months ago focused on this, with Putin saying, “Simultaneous membership in the Customs Union with the European Union and the EAEU is impossible; it is simply untenable by definition.  The issue is not even a political one; it is purely economic.”

All TRIPPED Up – Make Armenia Great Again?

With the U.S. involved now under the bilateral TRIPP Framework Agreement signed on May 26, it will be consequential to determine whether or to what extent Europe will be brought in, or conversely, left excluded.  Following June’s 2026 parliamentary elections, Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party maintained its majority, but failed to secure the larger constitutional majority needed to unilaterally amend the Armenian constitution.  Baku has explicitly stated that it will not sign a peace treaty or fully open the borders until Armenia removes constitutional references that Azerbaijan claims imply territorial ambitions over Nagorno-Karabakh.  Without that legal breakthrough, the border gates stay locked.

Pashinyan is no longer dealing with a clearly united West, but one with inter-elite frictions which have driven policy and access divides on nearly all global conflicts and questions.   Back under the original 2020 ceasefire agreement that ended the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, border guards of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) were designated to oversee transport connectivity across the Syunik/Zangezur strip.  However, TRIPP, signed between Washington and Yerevan would transfer development and management rights to the newly approved TRIPP Development Company (TDC), which is controlled 74% by a U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) subsidiary and 26% by Armenia.

The EU’s official response to TRIPP has been passive-aggressive diplomacy.  Publicly, Brussels signed onto the statements because the project ultimately aligns with their broader goal of containing Russia.  Subtly, however, the EU has communicated clear frustration about being sidelined by Trump’s bilateral approach a resentment that shows up clearly in the structural text of recent agreements.  The Joint Statement on the Armenia-EU Connectivity Partnership signed in Yerevan features a deliberate listing order, stating first that the partnership is fully aligned with the EU’s Global Gateway Strategy, the Cross-Regional Connectivity Agenda, the Crossroads of Peace Initiative, and lastly, the TRIPP Project.  By placing TRIPP fourth in line behind three of its own programmatic titles, Brussels is saying that it does not view Trump’s 99-year corporate venture as an overarching paradigm under which their own plans must now be revised.  Rather, the EU frames TRIPP as merely a sub-component that must conform to pre-existing, European rules-based regulations, even while Trump’s positioning so far places the EU as just another client that has to pay to play.

This European institutional critique manifests in three specific arguments.  First, there is a grumbling grievance regarding the “bypass” approach.  Brussels spent years establishing the “Brussels Format” under European Council President Charles Michel to meticulously mediate between Yerevan and Baku.  Geopolitical Monitor complains that the project represents a total departure from the rules-based, multilateral liberal order that Brussels champions.  When Trump bypassed that entire framework to execute a swift, corporate sign-off in Washington, EU officials subtly griped that “transactional theater” was overriding deep, structural institutional work.

Second, the EU has deployed a calculated vetting and sovereignty warning.  As reported by the Institut Montaigne, European Commission diplomats have repeatedly emphasized that any regional corridor must respect robust technical criteria and integrate with the wider European digital and transport ecosystem.  Their concern is that the U.S. built a private corporate box via the TRIPP Development Company, backed by a recent $2.5 billion DFC strategic investment package, but European banks are not going to fund the surrounding infrastructure unless it adheres to EU regulations, safety metrics, and anti-monopoly laws, which would require too much from Armenia.

Finally, there are blatant environmental and mining gripes. The EU has expressed annoyance that Washington used TRIPP as a geopolitical crowbar to secure exclusive procurement rights for Armenia’s critical minerals like copper and molybdenum.  While the EU is left to pay for what they say is for basic regional stabilization, democratic building blocks, and €50 million immediate aid packages, American private sector interests walked away with the premium raw materials required for Europe’s own green transition.  While the existence of such a corridor is one they approve of, the problem isn’t what the corridor does but rather it’s how it is run and who profits from it.

All of these problems would merely be driven to the forefront if Pashinyan was able to maneuver in parliament to change the constitution.  But Pashinyan’s victory announcement did not include any governing coalition, and here is where events will play out in the coming days and weeks.  This of course presents a constitutional crisis for Armenia, but one which without resolution renders TRIPP just one more American initiative that captures headlines and points to a possibility, but with little tangibly to show for it.

Merging Armenia into the Turkish geoeconomic complex

Pashinyan’s own autochauvinist project appeals to Western leaning layers in Yerevan who have come to believe that Armenia has to drop its constitution’s own preambulatory and other language which contained irredentist commitments, or the use of official state logos and seals containing Mount Ararat which is historical Armenia but within modern Turkey.  Pashinyan and many of his voters believe that Armenia’s culture and politics requires a total transvaluation, letting go of territorial claims and a victim narrative which they believe sustains poor relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan.  Pashinyan has lulled his voters into believing that they could keep its energy agreement with Russia while proceeding down a path of Europeanization which is a non-starter ultimately for Moscow.

But the Pashinyan machine is a well-funded Western globalist oligarchical structure, and what they seek to impose upon Armenia does not place Armenia first.  This appears as a push to transform them to a type of generic South Caucasus people who can provide heavy metals and industrial minerals within a broader geo-econometric post-cultural zone.  “Being Armenian” just has too much baggage, and one can almost for a moment see the rationale in the idea before realizing that neither Turkey nor Azerbaijan is moving in the post-cultural direction.  Armenia is compelled to abandon its historicity while powerful neighbors double-down on their own.

While Pashinyan’s machine accuses the opposition “Strong Armenia” for representing the old guard but also of being controlled by Moscow, his power group only does this to deflect from the more problematic and unpopular politics Pashinyan has played and disastrous concessions he is accused of giving in pursuit of normalization with Turkey and Azerbaijan, where presently the land borders remain closed.

Moscow is not inherently opposed to unblocking borders, or the normalization of ties between Yerevan, Baku, and Ankara.  In fact, Russia historically favored these linkages provided they operated in such a way that did not operate as surrogate for, or an end-run around the interests of the EAEU.  The crisis is entirely about who controls the infrastructure and the geopolitical orientation that comes with it.

Because Turkey’s regional policy is fully synchronized with Azerbaijan, Ankara refuses to fully open the Armenia-Turkey border or normalize trade until Armenia signs that peace treaty with Baku, which then places any strategy of Armenian integration into Turkey’s broader economy in the same bucket as TRIPP itself.

Pashinyan remains in power now because he succeeded in dismantling much of the old electoral regime associated with the pre-2018 system.  So while we read over the past few days of the systemic oppression and persecution of opposition political figures and parties for whom attacks on the Church and the abdication of duty in the face of the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh were among the many other motivating factors, the election we saw was largely a foregone conclusion made possible by procedural and electoral reforms which only consolidated Pashinyan’s ability to remain in power.  With the odds stacked, the opposition still made a strong officially recognized showing which may even be sufficient to deprive Pashinyan what he needs once he realizes he needs a coalition to pursue his aims, if for the former they can build a greater oppositional axis.

Pashinyan’s reforms to stay in power

The most consequential electoral reform undertaken under Pashinyan was the abolition of Armenia’s so-called “ratingayin” system, under which voters used to select not only political parties but also individual candidates within territorial districts.  Sorosian and neoliberal critics of the old model argued that it favored wealthy businessmen, local power brokers, and entrenched patronage networks capable of mobilizing votes through personal influence rather than, we are to imagine, “political programs”.  Defenders of the old system argued that it provided a crucial link between voters and individual representatives in a political culture where parties themselves were often weak or unstable.  They contended that removing territorial accountability risked further centralizing power in party leaderships based in Yerevan, weakening regional representation rather than strengthening democracy.

A growing body of reporting from international press freedom monitors and rights organisations has raised concerns about an increase in pressure on critics in Armenia under Pashinyan’s government, particularly through defamation cases, pre-trial detention, and the use of vaguely defined “public order” charges.  The Council of Europe’s Safety of Journalists Platform, for example, recorded the detention of media actors in Armenia in connection with criminal proceedings, while noting that such cases have become a first-time inclusion in recent monitoring cycles, a marker of deteriorating conditions.  At the same time, civil society groups have accused authorities of “selective and disproportionate” application of criminal law against critics.

Armenia at a crossroads

The EU would have to solve large-scale problems to further free-trade agreements with Turkey whether or not towards EU accession, a process stalled since 2018.  Rather, it seems the EU’s most viable approach would have been through a Black Sea based supply-chain, leading to the Balkans by sea or even to Crimea or Odessa.  Based on these overlapping structural, economic, and domestic dynamics, the core dilemma facing Pashinyan can be summarized:

How will Pashinyan reconcile its geopolitical pursuit of Western integration, encapsulated by the TRIPP corridor and EU alignment, with the acute risk of economic and energy alienation from Moscow, particularly as the Civil Contract party attempts to govern without a formal coalition despite lacking the constitutional majority needed to resolve the border-locking disputes with Baku, or normalization with Turkey; and what structural mechanisms remain for an alternative political machine to emerge given the government’s comprehensive consolidation of the electoral system, media landscape, and civic space?  Without this, Armenia sits at only crossroads of sorts, a junction of roads that no one can build, and that in reality, do not exist at all.

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