El presidente francés, Emmanuel Macron, durante la conferencia de apoyo a Ucrania, este lunes en París. GONZALO FUENTES (REUTERS)
Macron se ha salido con la suya. El debate está abierto. Hay una mayoría abrumadora que no piensa mandar tropas. No está en sus planes, dicen. Siendo tajante el rechazo, hay que cuidar los matices. Los hay. Cabe la posibilidad, reconocida por varios socios europeos, de mandar asesores, instructores, o tropas para trabajos auxiliares. Así se empieza, como ha sucedido en tantas ocasiones anteriores, de forma masiva y escandalosa en Vietnam.
La sustancia es una traducción macroniana del whatever it takes bancario y monetario de Mario Draghi en agosto de 2012 a la seguridad y la defensa europeas. La UE debe hacer todo lo que esté en su mano para que Putin fracase. Los europeos no están cansados. Debe ser clara su determinación, a fin de cuentas, el factor fundamental para la victoria en cualquier guerra. Es más fácil vencer con determinación y pocos medios que con muchos medios y escasa determinación.
Este es el mensaje que Macron quería transmitir. El problema es su credibilidad. La reacción sin matices de los socios, concentrados en desmentir la peligrosa e impopular idea de mandar tropas, ha exhibido la división imperante y el temor a la escalada. Solo los hechos pueden validar tan arriesgadas palabras. Ucrania no tiene la munición que necesita para frenar la contraofensiva rusa que aparentemente ha empezado ya tras la caída de Avdiivka ni los misiles de largo alcance y los aviones de combate que le permitan recuperar el territorio perdido. Ahí Francia tiene que retratarse primero si quiere convencer luego a los demás.
Macron ha situado muy alto el listón. Todo lo que sea menos está ahora implícitamente recomendado. Lo dice el presidente del único país de la UE con arma nuclear. Parece una macronada, un exceso verbal característico de un presidente tan inteligente como impulsivo. No lo es. El experto francés en estrategia Bruno Tertrais nos lo recuerda en su último libro: “Toda disuasión eficaz es una dosificación sutil de claridad y ambigüedad calculada”, (¿Pax atómica? Teoría, práctica y límites de la disuasión, 2024).
Francia también es ahora el único país de la UE con derecho de veto en el Consejo de Seguridad y, en consecuencia, el que cuenta con más argumentos para hablar de tú a tú con Putin. Intentó apaciguarlo y convencerlo antes de que invadiera y ahora es el que le reta y le amenaza. También está en juego su papel tradicional, la grandeur, el rango internacional y el sentido disuasivo de su force de frappe, hoy en la guerra y mañana en la paz.
El equilibrio europeo se rompió en 2014 y el sistema de disuasión, bajo el paraguas nuclear estadounidense, está corroído por las dudas que aporta el trumpismo. Macron quiere restaurar la disuasión, también la nuclear, y hacerlo desde Europa si ya no es posible contar con Estados Unidos. Para que Ucrania gane a Putin, pero sobre todo para que Rusia no gane en el futuro a Europa.
La deuxième vie de Chulpan Khamatova, actrice russe en exil en Lettonie
NIKITA MOURAVIEFF
Temps de
Lecture 7 min.
RécitConnue notamment pour son rôle dans « Good Bye Lenin ! », la comédienne russe affiche volontiers son opposition à la guerre en l’Ukraine et à Vladimir Poutine. En février 2022, elle s’est réfugiée avec ses filles dans un pays où elle rencontre un succès inattendu.
Chulpan Khamatova se souvient avec précision de ce jour de février 2022 où la Russie a attaqué l’Ukraine et où sa vie a basculé dans l’inconnu. Elle était en vacances aux Seychelles avec sa plus jeune fille, profitant d’une pause des représentations du Maître et Marguerite, l’adaptation du roman de Mikhaïl Boulgakov (1894-1941) qu’elle jouait à Moscou, et elle avait réservé, pour la journée du 24 février, une excursion en mer pour nager avec les tortues. Dans le taxi menant au bateau, elle avait jeté un œil sur son portable et plongé dans l’effroi : Vladimir Poutine venait de lancer l’invasion de l’Ukraine, des bombardements visaient Kiev et plusieurs grandes villes…
L’actrice russe de 45 ans, star adulée et multiprimée au théâtre comme au cinéma, était abasourdie. « Mes mains se sont mises à trembler, raconte-t-elle. J’ai pensé à mes amis en Ukraine, à mes filles à Moscou, à mon pays qui bafouait toutes les règles, à Poutine, monstrueux, qui venait de commettre l’irréparable. Quel cauchemar ! »
Comment avait-elle pu être assez aveugle, songeait-elle, pour penser que cette guerre redoutée n’aurait pas lieu ? Elle se souvenait de discussions, les semaines précédentes, avec ses amis écrivains, acteurs, cinéastes. Il y avait ceux qui disaient : « Poutine est fou, il est capable du pire, rien ne l’arrêtera. » Et ceux, comme elle, qui pensaient : « Non, car ce serait suicidaire, il isolerait la Russie et perdrait tout crédit. » Il l’avait fait. Tandis que sa fille et les touristes se pressaient pour plonger dans le lagon seychellois, elle se cramponnait à son portable, l’esprit à des milliers de kilomètres de là. « Je n’arrivais pas à réfléchir. Ma tête était comme une turbine. Qu’allait-il advenir de nous tous ? Poutine venait d’anéantir le futur et j’avais la conviction que ma vie volait en éclats. »
Sur le bateau, personne ne soupçonnait que la femme blonde et frêle, visiblement désespérée, était l’une des actrices russes les plus célèbres, connue notamment pour son rôle dans Good Bye Lenin ! (2003), de Wolfgang Becker. Elle ne levait pas la tête, concentrée sur son écran. Vite, donner son accord pour signer lettres ouvertes et pétitions contre la guerre, dont celle de son ami le journaliste Dmitri Mouratov, Prix Nobel de la paix 2021.Vite, contacter collègues et amis pour les inciter à réagir. Vite, changer ses billets d’avion.
Il lui restait une semaine de vacances, elle ne la passerait pas à Moscou, mais filerait en Lettonie, où elle dispose d’un refuge, une maison toute simple, construite au milieu des bois. « J’y allais parfois en vacances, mais c’était surtout un plan B, au cas où les choses tourneraient mal en Russie. » Il fallait aussi acheter des billets Moscou-Riga pour ses deux autres filles, de 19 et 20 ans. « L’urgence était de nous regrouper. Pour le reste, j’aviserai plus tard. » C’est ainsi que le surlendemain, munie d’une valise comportant sandales, maillots et paréos, Chulpan Khamatova atterrissait à Riga par – 18 °C.
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Elle en avait déjà eu l’expérience, en 2012, lorsque Vladimir Poutine préparait sa réélection. Un matin, un appel du Kremlin l’avait sommée d’enregistrer un message vidéo de soutien à sa candidature. L’idée l’avait horrifiée. Poutine représentait tout ce qu’elle détestait. Mais voilà : à la tête d’une fondation – Le Don de la vie,œuvrant à offrir les meilleurs soins aux enfants cancéreux –, elle avait plusieurs fois eu recours à l’aide du président, et Poutine attendait un renvoi d’ascenseur. Les amis de l’actrice lui avaient déconseillé de le faire. Les jeunes médecins de la fondation, eux, l’avaient prévenue qu’un refus serait fatal à leur clinique en construction. Alors, elle s’était exécutée, la mort dans l’âme.
« Dilemmes et pressions effroyables »
A l’époque, son image d’actrice en avait pris un coup. Elle avait sauvé la clinique, mais l’opposition la tenait désormais pour une traîtresse. « Une injustice absolue, dit au MondeKirill Martynov, le rédacteur en chef de Novaïa Gazeta, rencontré à Riga, où ce journal indépendant russe s’est exilé après le 24 février 2022. La dictature soumet les citoyens à des dilemmes et pressions effroyables. Mais comment douter de Chulpan et des valeurs qu’elle défend ? C’est une amie de notre journal depuis toujours. Une artiste qui a choisi l’exil et pris le risque de saboter sa carrière pour n’avoir pas à se renier. »
Lire aussi l’analyse :
L’exil… Sur le bateau des Seychelles, elle n’y songeait pas encore. Mais dans sa maison, située à une heure de Riga, l’idée s’impose douloureusement. « Je n’ai pas dormi de la semaine. C’est vertigineux de se résoudre à tout abandonner : pays, appartement, métier, amis, parents… Avais-je le droit de bouleverser le destin de mes filles ? Et quelle vie leur offrir dans ce pays qui se méfiait tant des Russes, après une occupation de cinquante ans ? » Ce sera la décision la plus difficile de sa vie. Elle la prend sans consulter personne. Puis elle prévient Robert Lepage, le metteur en scène du Maître et Marguerite, qu’elle ne rentre pas à Moscou et qu’il faut donc prévoir une remplaçante.
« Je l’ai rappelée sur son portable, se souvient M. Lepage. Elle était paniquée, mais résolue. Je n’étais pas étonné. Je la savais engagée dans de nombreuses causes. Et je la comprenais quand elle se disait incapable de remonter sur scène comme si de rien n’était, alors que les bombes tombaient sur l’Ukraine. Elle aurait protesté, on l’aurait mise en prison. L’exil, pour cette insoumise, était la seule option. »
L’annonce de son départ est une détonation. Les médias liés au pouvoir l’accusent de trahison, les opposants la traitent de girouette, les menaces affluent. Elle craint pour ses parents, restés en Russie. Son avenir ? « J’avais devant moi une page blanche. J’étais prête à devenir coursier, chauffeur… » Pour l’heure, elle transforme sa maison en QG d’aide aux réfugiés. Elle organise l’évacuation d’enfants cancéreux ukrainiens jusqu’ici pris en charge par sa fondation et leur cherche des places dans des hôpitaux européens. « Ce fut mon meilleur médicament contre la dépression. Aider les autres m’a sauvée. »
« Je la trouve héroïque »
Et puis, un jour, Alvis Hermanis, célèbre metteur en scène letton, directeur du Nouveau Théâtre de Riga depuis 1997, l’appelle pour l’inviter à rejoindre sa troupe. Chulpan Khamatova n’en croit pas ses oreilles. Cet homme de théâtre la connaît bien pour l’avoir mise en scène en 2020, à Moscou, dans une pièce consacrée à Gorbatchev. « Il m’embauchait, avant même de penser à un rôle ! Il recrutait une Russe ! En ces temps de fureur, c’était un risque énorme. J’ai dit oui et j’ai pleuré au téléphone. » Un mois plus tard, il lui propose de coécrire et monter un spectacle mêlant les voix de Dostoïevski et d’Anna Politkovskaïa, la journaliste russe assassinée en 2006. Ce sera Post-Scriptum, une réflexion, à la lumière de la guerre, sur l’âme et la conscience russes traversées par le mal.
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La première a lieu le 15 juin 2022. Un seule-en-scène, cinq rôles en un. Elle en est malade. Elle joue en russe, avec des sous-titres en letton. « S’il vous plaît, n’applaudissez pas »,dit-elle à la fin. Un triomphe : le théâtre ne désemplit pas. A l’automne, la voilà nommée pour le titre d’actrice de l’année. Une Russe qui joue en russe et éclipse les vedettes locales ? Scandale.
Dans ce pays de moins de deux millions d’habitants, dont un tiers est russophone mais où la détestation et la crainte de la Russie sont exacerbées depuis le conflit en Ukraine, le débat devient national. Pourtant, le 23 novembre 2022, lors de la grande Nuit des acteurs à Riga, c’est elle qu’on appelle sur scène. Elle met quelques secondes à comprendre avant de monter timidement recevoir son prix et de remercier, en letton, son pays d’accueil. « Plus tard dans la soirée, j’ai glissé à la présidente du jury : “Vous vous suicidez !”, “Je sais”, m’a-t-elle dit. J’ai insisté : “Ils vont vous tuer !” “J’accepte.” »
Lire aussi (2022) :
Ce souvenir la rend radieuse. « C’est la plus belle récompense de toute ma vie. » La présidente, Edite Tisheizere, critique de théâtre respectée, jubile aussi de l’audace du jury : « Nous avions le choix entre deux décisions politiques. Rejeter Chulpan au nom de la suspicion qui entache aujourd’hui tous les Russes, alors qu’elle surpassait les autres actrices. Ou bien la couronner, pas seulement parce qu’elle était exceptionnelle, mais parce que sa défiance personnelle – et risquée – envers le régime pourri de Moscou était en soi admirable. En fait, je la trouve héroïque. » Il n’empêche, ajoute-t-elle en riant : « En sortant de nos délibérations, j’ai couru me servir une boisson forte. »
Retour « à l’époque de Staline »
Son succès conforte l’actrice dans l’idée que la Lettonie est devenue sa nouvelle maison, qu’elle y a une place, un avenir. Elle fait alors le serment de jouer sa pièce suivante en letton, et plonge dans l’apprentissage de cette langue. A l’automne 2023, elle monte sur scène dans Le Pays des sourds, une pièce adaptée du film russe Les Silencieuses (1998), de Valery Todorovsky. Cette fois, elle joue en letton, sans une pointe d’accent. Le public est bluffé. En février, la pièce a été rejouée à guichets fermés. Cela n’empêche pas l’actrice de proposer à travers l’Europe des spectacles de poésie russe. « Dire Pasternak, Mandelstam, Brodsky, Marina Tsvetaeva me réchauffe », confie-t-elle.
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La nouvelle de la mort de l’opposant Alexeï Navalny, le 16 février, l’a fait éclater en sanglots. « C’était notre seul espoir ! » Là encore, elle s’en veut d’avoir pensé que Poutine n’oserait pas. « Quelle bêtise ! Nous sommes revenus à l’époque de Staline, avec son cortège de traques, de déportations et d’assassinats. Il est temps que les démocraties occidentales en prennent conscience. Elles croient encore avoir affaire à un homme politique normal, avec lequel on peut dialoguer. Mais Poutine n’est pas normal ! C’est un malade qui s’est créé son propre monde et a perdu toute notion de la réalité. »
Les collègues proches de Chulpan Khamatova qui n’ont pas quitté la Russie ne peuvent plus, pour la plupart d’entre eux, travailler, encore moins s’exprimer. Quant à sa grande amie Evgenia Berkovich, metteuse en scène et poétesse, elle a été emprisonnée pour apologie du terrorisme. « Je lui disais : “Je t’en prie, sois prudente !” Elle répondait : “Il ne s’agit que de poèmes.” Cela a suffi. C’est le retour de la terreur. » Echappe-t-elle à ce sentiment dans les rues de Riga ? « J’essaie d’être courageuse, dit-elle, mais je connais les méthodes de ce régime, je sais ce dont il est capable. Donc j’ouvre l’œil. Je dis à mes filles de se méfier des gens étranges et d’être toujours sur leurs gardes. »
Why did Sunak accept private jet ride from alleged fraudster?
Labour urging prime minister to give ‘full and honest account’ after entrepreneur who is embroiled in a civil case with investors paid for a trip on plane
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Rishi Sunak accepted a ride on an Embraer Legacy 500 business jet aeroplane like this one ALAMY
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Rishi Sunak is facing questions about his judgment after he accepted a private jet trip from a controversial businessman.
The prime minister has so far accepted more than £100,000 worth of private jet and helicopter rides from Tory donors since taking office, mainly to travel to party events.
The most contentious are flights worth £38,500 taken by Sunak and aides to Conservative conferences in Wales and Scotland in April last year.
The journey was paid for by Akhil Tripathi, a 39-year-old medical devices entrepreneur who has sought to sell to the NHS, but is being sued by investors for alleged fraud.
Tripathi has given more than £150,000 to the Conservatives and attended a series of events with ministers. After the flight Sunak sent him a hand-written note saying, “Dear Akhil, thank you for arranging the use [of] your plane”.
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The aircraft, an Embraer Legacy 500, was in fact rented from a charter company, Centreline. Tripathi’s company, Signifier Medical Technologies, is loss-making and last year auditors said there was a “material uncertainty” about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern without further investment.
Tory sources said they used such open source information in deciding to accept money from Tripathi, but Labour is urging the prime minister to give a “full and honest account” of the donation.
It was initially registered under Tripathi’s name, only for the donor’s identity to be changed to Balderton Medical Consultants, a company with close links to Tripathi, before being re-registered in Tripathi’s name.
Tripathi made the donations in a private capacity and is said by his lawyers to have given money to the Conservatives because of their focus on enterprise.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney-general, said that “the prime minister is clearly keen to travel by private jets and helicopters whenever he can” but needed to give “full and honest account” of the donation.
“Rishi Sunak needs to explain why — just a few weeks after he met Mr Tripathi, wrote to thank him for his donation, and publicly declared him as the source of that donation — he then replaced his name in the register of interests with another company’s name, and only changed the declaration back again after the Labour Party started asking questions. The behaviour of the prime minister over this donation has gone from curious to dubious to downright suspicious,” she said.
Signifier Medical Technologies raised tens of millions of pounds from investors for innovations including an anti-snoring device, but after the donation to Sunak Tripathi fell out with his fellow directors.
An investigation by a barrister appointed by the board, Julian Wilson, recommended disciplinary action against Tripathi over allegations of share sales to his sister without disclosing the relationship.
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Tripathi faces a High Court action from Waha Capital over its $20 million purchase of a stake in the company from his sister. The claim alleges “fraudulent intent” and “deceit” in not revealing that the seller was his sister. Tripathi denies the claims.
Sunak has also declared five other flights in planes or helicopters last year that were paid for by Tory donors including Richard Harpin, the HomeServe founder, and a company controlled by the logistics magnate Steve Parkin.
When asked about Tripathi’s donation in the past, Sunak has said: “All my declarations are made in the usual way according to the usual processes.”
WE DO NOT AGREE WITH NOONAN ON McConnell, WHO WILL GO DOWN AS THE MISERABLE ACOLYTE HE ALWAYS WAS - HIS WIFE AND HER FAMILY ARE RAT CHINESE TRAITOR SPIES WHO SHOULD BE EXECUTED INSTANTLY. NOR IS SHE RIGHT ABOUT 80% OF AMERICANS BEING SANE - THAT BIRD HAS FLOWN!
BUT SHE IS RIGHT ABOUT CONGRESS AS A LUNATIC ASYLUM.
Opinion | We’ll Miss Mitch McConnell
Feb. 29, 2024 1:21 pm ET
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) walks off the Senate floor at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 28. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
A man on CNN is reporting live from outside a polling place in suburban South Carolina and recounts a small story. An 18-year-old man had just voted, and the election clerk called out, “Ladies and gentlemen we have a first-time voter.” The room burst into applause. “They say that’s a tradition here,” the reporter said. It touched me.
All the networks had been showing all these normal Americans who showed up to vote, the people who make the country work, and interviewing them on the way in and out. “I voted for Trump because . . .” “I’m for Haley.” All of them patient and good-natured with the media folk. I thought, not for the first time, that America has become an 80/20 country, with 80% so sterling and responsible and constructive, taking part, keeping the whole edifice up and operating, of all faiths, colors and persuasions. But we only pay attention to the 20% because they make all the news—outrageousness of every sort, hurting people on the street or making threats on TikTok or acting out in every field, including politics, in some ignorant way.
The 80% never make news because they’re modestly doing what’s expected. But we should never forget who we are, a good people, and by an overwhelming majority. That gets drowned out in the daily drumbeat.
On the evening of his South Carolina triumph, Donald Trump said of the Republican Party: “I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.” It isn’t a united party but one broken in two, with one half bigger than the other. Mr. Trump won South Carolina roughly 60/40 and that is a win, a big one, a landslide. But as Nikki Haley said, speaking after him that evening, “40% is not some tiny group.” Especially when you consider that South Carolina Republicans are pretty Trumpy. Forty percent of voters not desiring his return is a big deal. The South Carolina outcome mirrored New Hampshire, but Michigan this week was different, a bigger and more decisive split for Trump, roughly 70/30. But still a split.
Eight years ago the Trump part of the party was a small minority, though one that in the end triumphed. Now the non-Trump part is a rump.
When a party is broken both sides get to speak of why they’re right and the other side’s wrong. That is why it is legitimate and constructive—it is a very 80% move!—for Ms. Haley to stay in and argue against Mr. Trump and his policies. This is right, helpful and clarifying. Mr. Trump tends to avoid this, or rather to do half, the part about why he’s the right person. He doesn’t much address his own policies, or explain why Ms. Haley is wrong in hers. But he owes it to the country. Is he capable of engaging on issues? Is he too old, too scattered and unfocused?
Some say Ms. Haley should get out now to preserve her viability for 2028. This is fantasy. She is taking on the more-than-half part of her party now and alienating them every day. They won’t forget it. In any case, future presidential cycles aren’t at all predictable or plannable. Everything changes; people will enter whose names we don’t know. If Ms. Haley has a presidential future it will more likely be with a third party. For now she is doing an authentic public service in bearing a standard and explaining why it must be borne, and that is enough.
Next week is Super Tuesday, when certain overwhelming trends, if they continue, and there’s no reason to believe they won’t, will produce the expected outcome: a Trump-Biden race, a repeat of 2020, even though no sane person would want to return to that dreadful year.
Meanwhile, for eight years normal, old-style Republicans—normal and old-style not only in policy but in terms of personal and professional seriousness—have been saying: We can’t win without the Trumpers. It has yet to dawn on the Trumpers that they need the normal, old-style Republicans, too. They were alerted to this in the elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022, but the lesson didn’t take. At some point in the future it must. Trumpism is by nature triumphalist: We are the unstoppable wave. But that wave broke in ’18, ’20 and ’22 on the rocks of the normal, old-style Republicans who ringed the shore. They may well break it again, in November. This hasn’t moderated Mr. Trump’s approach.
We close with Mitch McConnell. On hearing of his decision to step down in November as GOP Senate leader, I thought what I have been thinking for some time as various House veterans, and serious younger members, have stepped down: The doctors are fleeing the asylum.
Age and a recent family loss, the death of his sister-in-law Angela Chao, played into the decision, but so surely did the current moment. Mr. McConnell entered the Senate in 1984, and became Republican leader 2007. He came up in one party, during the Reagan revolution, and a different one has risen since.
As leader, Mr. McConnell was subtle, saw around corners, never lost his head, skillfully herded some highly unusual cats. He wasn’t a visionary but kept in his mind the big picture and played a long game. Politics to him was the art of the possible; he respected the mathematics of the situation. I suspect the political regret of his life was his decision not to back Donald Trump’s second impeachment, after 1/6. It would be a right regret.
Democrats in the Senate knew him as a formidable foe; when he blocked the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016, he sent them into a blazing rage. They painted him in return as a great villain, understandably, and as he knew they would. The break never fully healed. Yet to the extent the Senate as an institution still holds, Mr. McConnell is a primary reason. His Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer, looked honestly moved as, at the end of Mr. McConnell’s remarks announcing his decision, in the well of the Senate, he crossed the aisle to take Mr. McConnell’s hand.
His remarks were moving, and there was throughout an air of gallantry. He quoted Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season. He said: “One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to leave.” Would that others heeded his example.
“I said exactly what I felt,” he said afterward by phone. “The reaction has been surprising and rather heartwarming, and I wasn’t sure that would be the case.” A historian of the Senate wrote that he had not only been the longest serving party leader in the Senate; he had been the best. When I mentioned Mr. Schumer, Mr. McConnell said their “shared passion” on Ukraine had brought them closer.
He was one of the last grown-ups. Trump people will jeer him—“Another head we’ve cut off.” They couldn’t carry his sandals.
He will remain in the Senate and, liberated from the constraints of leadership, no doubt feel free to be a thorn in the side of irresponsible presidential and party leadership. Something tells me in this area he’ll make John McCain look like a piker.
Wonder Land: To most voters, what happens in Washington has become an incomprehensible blur. What makes Donald Trump think he can fix it? Images: Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly
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War is on the rise everywhere. When the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London published its authoritative Armed Conflict Survey in early December, it counted 183 conflicts globally in 2023 — higher than had been recorded in 30 years. The most remarkable episode of this harrowing new era of global violence is an astounding spate of military takeovers in what has come to be known as the coup belt, stretching uninterrupted across Africa’s Sahel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea: six countries enduring 11 coup attempts, eight of them successful, since just 2020.
When Steven Pinker’s sweeping history of violence, “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” was published a little more than a decade ago, it quickly became a touchstone for a cohort of geopolitical optimists making broad claims of human progress. The book’s core empirical claim was about death: that global rates of murder and war had been declining both notably and steadily for a very long time and that the world was now far more peaceable than it had ever been.
On the time scale of human civilization, this might still be true, particularly when it comes to interpersonal violence. But on the time scale of human memory, it isn’t true any longer, particularly when it comes to warfare. Counting by the number of conflicts, the world as a whole is a more violent place than it has been for at least 30 years. By some measures, it’s more conflict ridden than at any point since the end of World War II. Nonstate violence — conflict between nongovernmental armed groups, such as gangs — has more than tripled, according to Sweden’s Uppsala Conflict Data Program, since a low point in 2007. Violence by state forces against civilians has more than doubled since 2009, and assassination attempts are on the rise.
These conflicts are also producing much more bloodshed. In 2011, when Pinker published “Better Angels,” there were nearly 40,000 deaths from warfare worldwide, Uppsala estimates. In 2022, they say, the number was above 238,000 — a nearly sixfold increase. It had nearly doubled in a single year.
For Americans, this shift has been marked by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But there are more than two wars going on in the world, many of them with much more tenuous connections to U.S. interests and far less American attention as a result.
A changing climate, a changing world
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Climate change around the world: In “Postcards From a World on Fire,” 193 stories from individual countries show how climate change is reshaping reality everywhere, from dying coral reefs in Fiji to disappearing oases in Morocco and far, far beyond.
The role of our leaders: Writing at the end of 2020, Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, found reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency, a feeling perhaps borne out by the passing of major climate legislation. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been criticisms. For example, Charles Harvey and Kurt House argue that subsidies for climate capture technology will ultimately be a waste.
The worst climate risks, mapped: In this feature, select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces. In the case of America, our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths.
Today, one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises is unfolding in Sudan, where a civil war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced nearly eight million and, according to U.N. officials, has produced “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history.” Nearly seven million people have been displaced by fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, amid accusations of mass killings, and the United Nations plans to withdraw its peacekeepers this year. The ongoing conflict in Yemen has left more than a quarter-million dead and more than 20 million in need of humanitarian assistance. Some studies estimate that Ethiopia’s recent war against its separatists may have killed as many as 600,000 people over two years, and in the Central African Republic, a 2023 report published in the journal Conflict and Health suggested, nearly 6 percent of the total population might have died in 2022.
But in many ways the most remarkable unrest has been in the Sahel — in the coup belt stretching across the continent just south of the Sahara, from Guinea in the west to the Nile basin and the Horn of Africa in the east. As recently as five years ago, some political scientists believed that coups were on their way out of world history. But now you can walk 4,600 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and pass through only countries toppled by coups d’état in those same five years.
All told, this is a remarkable geopolitical phenomenon and may be the most conspicuous episode of civic instability and turmoil anywhere in the world since the fall of the Iron Curtain — more governments falling to military takeover in one region than were overturned during the Arab Spring of the early 2010s, which brought down governments in four countries, or the color revolutions of the previous decade, which brought down four. “These days, a question crops up when African officials gather to discuss governance,” Comfort Ero and Murithi Mutiga wrote in December in Foreign Affairs. “Which president will be ousted by his military next?”
Each of these coups — in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Mali and Sudan — has its own complicated and idiosyncratic back story. And it’s possible that the clustering of these coups may be a coincidence. This is a famously inhospitable region known for underdevelopment, humanitarian catastrophe and political instability. But Ero and Mutiga call it a “crisis of African democracy,” and Naunihal Singh, a scholar of coups, emphasizes that it is an especially visible example of a global backsliding of democratic norms.
There may be a contagion effect, too, in which one coup provides a permission structure for the next, though as Singh notes, historically juntas have operated less according to external logic than internal motivation. And while many American commentators blame the end of a Pax Americana and a resulting vacuum of geopolitical leadership, those closer to the Sahel tend to see the American war on terrorism, particularly the U.S.-led invasion of Libya in 2011, as a major contributor to regional instability. On the ground, animosity toward the French is also pervasive, and there is influence jockeying and obvious strategic meddling by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, along with widespread suspicion about Russia (with its state-funded military contractor the Wagner group recentlyrebranding on the continent).
The past few years have been especially difficult ones across the Sahel, with the pandemic and Covid recessions and a surge in hunger partly driven by the war in Ukraine. Public revenues have fallen, countries are struggling through sovereign debt crises, and inflation has been soaring. Islamist militants, now largely forgotten or ignored by civilians in the United States, continue to be a source of Sahelian instability, with the failure to contain them in certain countries widely seen as an indictment of existing elites. There are generational dynamics at play, too, with booming youth populations increasingly frustrated with older leadership regimes and demographic ones as well, with rapid and disorderly urbanization from an increasingly harsh and conflict-ridden agricultural countryside.
I think it’s also worth flagging another possible contributor: climate change.
Climate researchers have long projected that the Sahel would be one of the regions most threatened by the impacts of warming. The Institute for Economics and Peace has identified the Sahel as one of its ecological threat hot spots, and according to Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Initiative’s index, all six countries in the region rank among the least prepared places in the world. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations in 2022, Beza Tesfaye noted that “Sahelian countries are simultaneously among the most affected by climate change and the least prepared to adapt,” an observation underlinedlast year by the I.M.F. as well. And in November 2022 the United Nations warned that climate impacts could bring about political instability and further conflict in 10 nations of the greater Sahel. In the last five years, those 10 nations have experienced a total of eight attempted or successful coups.
Across the region, environmental struggle has profoundly shaped a half-century of history, but the recent disruptions are nevertheless significant. In Niger, there have been nine droughts and five major flooding events in the last 20 years, with food crises every four years and many parts of the country without a good harvest in a decade. In 2022, an intense rainy season produced devastating flooding in Mali and Chad, events the World Weather Attribution network estimated were made 80 times more likely by climate change. Southeast of the coup belt, a three-year drought in the Horn of Africa has left more than four million people in need of humanitarian assistance; according to the W.W.A.’s “conservative estimate,” the drought was made 100 times more likely by climate change.
These disasters aren’t the source of all of the recent political turmoil. As in many unstable parts of the world, climate change may not be directly causing political disruptions, but it is pressuring already fragile systems. “The patient, as it were, is suffering from lots of different kinds of ailments,” the political scientist Kenneth Schultz told me. “But this is another one.” Last August, Roland Ngam, of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, wrote in South Africa’s Daily Maverick that “behind all the coups” are “weak institutions and especially climate change which has caused a massive ecosystem collapse over the last century.” And in November Abdoulie Ceesay, the deputy majority leader of the Gambian National Assembly, wrote in The New Internationalist: “The simple fact is that the rise of militarism has gone hand in hand with the rise in poverty, food insecurity, economic crises and extreme weather. His conclusion: “To belittle the role of climate change in these crises seems to me obscene.”
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Sunak’s jet ride raises questions about access to highest levels of government
Tories urged to explain gift from entrepreneur facing legal battle over lossmaking medical start-up
JIM PICKARD · Feb 29, 2024
When Rishi Sunak attended two Conservative conferences in Wales and Scotland on the same Saturday last April, he travelled by private jet — a mode of travel often favoured by the multi-millionaire prime minister.
His round trip came courtesy of an entrepreneur and minor Tory donor called Akhil Tripathi, co-founder of a heavily lossmaking start-up that hopes to sell an anti-snoring device to the NHS.
Later, Sunak sent a handwritten letter to Tripathi expressing his gratitude: “Dear Akhil, thank you for arranging the use of your plane.”
But the cream-seated Embraer Legacy 500 jet did not belong to Tripathi — he rented it, with the prime minister recording it as a £38,500 gift.
A few months after the trip, the entrepreneur became embroiled in a civil fraud case surrounding his start-up.
The episode has prompted questions about the due diligence that Sunak and the Conservative party carried out on Tripathi before taking his money and giving him access to the prime minister and senior officials.
Emily Thornberry, shadow attorneygeneral, said Sunak and the Tories needed to give “a full and honest account” of how the prime minister ended up on the plane. “They must explain on what basis Mr Tripathi gained access to the highest levels of government and what checks were made on his background before he did so,” she said.
Since gaining close access to the prime minister, Tripathi has been pursued through the courts by unhappy investors in his start-up, Signifier Medical Technologies (SMT). They include Alan Howard, the billionaire co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management — himself a big Tory donor.
One investor claims the entrepreneur had committed a “fraud” in relation to the company.
Tripathi’s first donation to the Conservative party was £50,000 made on July 13 2021. In total, he has given the party £153,475, including the flights. His lawyers said his donations were inspired by the Tories’ focus on enterprise.
In November 2021, just months after his first donation, Tripathi met then health secretary Sajid Javid in a meeting that has not appeared in the government’s transparency records. A spokesperson for Javid said there were numerous “party supporters” at the event and it did not need to be declared because it was not “official business”.
In April last year, the day before Tripathi ferried Sunak, the entrepreneur attended a dinner at the Haymarket Hotel with four Treasury ministers including chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
One person who attended the dinner said it was around this time that Tory treasurer Graham Edwards introduced Tripathi to the prime minister. The Conservative party declined to comment.
A month later, Tripathi received an invitation to a “Business Leaders Reception” at Number 10 hosted by Oliver Dowden, now deputy prime minister.
Tripathi’s donated flights was initially recorded under his name before being attributed to a business called Balderton Medical Consultants, and later changed back to Tripathi again. Balderton has only one director, Richard Kent, who, according to an acquaintance of Tripathi is an old friend of the entrepreneur.
The Conservative party said: “The donation has been properly declared.”
There are few clues to the early background of Tripathi, although he is an Indian national born in January 1985, according to Companies House.
His spokesperson, Laura Slater from Reputation by Maverick, refused to give any details of his background, schooling or previous business record. She did not respond to any of the FT’s questions.
The company’s website describes Tripathi as a “serial medical device entrepreneur”. But some of his start-ups have left little trace. He was director of wheelchair company Flomed International: its UK accounts for three successive years described it as “a dormant company” before it was struck off in 2019.
Another, Armighorn Spine, said to have made a cervical spinal implant, similarly filed dormant UK company accounts before being dissolved.
Signifier, which he co-founded in 2015, caught the imagination of the City, raising tens of millions of pounds from investors including Howard, Sweden’s Segulah Medical Acceleration and Waha Capital of Abu Dhabi.
The company’s anti-snoring device, eXciteOSA, sits on the patient’s tongue, strengthening its muscles by sending electrical currents — which it says help prevent the tongue collapsing into the airway at night. It was invented by Professor Anshul Sama, an ear, nose and throat surgeon in Nottingham, who is Signifier’s other co-founder.
eXciteOSA has approval for sale in the US by the US Food and Drug Administration and Signifier has talked up the prospect of selling the device to the NHS. The company said it was not “currently trying to acquire NHS contracts”.
At the time of Tripathi’s hospitality to Sunak, Signifier had reported losses of $42.3mn on revenue of just $3.1mn for the year to March 31 2022.
Although it carried out a “significant restructuring” to slash costs, the company’s accounts admitted to “a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt on the entity’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
Despite Signifier’s losses, Tripathi lived a glamorous lifestyle with a chauffeur-driven Bentley and an estimated £20mn townhouse in Belgravia owned through a British Virgin Islands shell company, according to Companies House records.
Yet relations were about to break down dramatically with some of his directors and shareholders. On June 26 last year, Tripathi was suspended as chief executive at the behest of the independent directors pending an investigation into misconduct allegations.
Julian Wilson, a barrister instructed by board members to investigate claims against Tripathi, produced a report on the allegations last July.
But on August 2, Tripathi and his allies ousted four directors, appointing seven new ones in a move they described as “shareholder democracy”.
The entrepreneur now faces two civil actions in the High Court of Justice in London.
The first is by Waha Capital, which is trying to claw back $20mn it spent buying a stake in the business from an “early investor” called Jyoti Pandey, who is Tripathi’s sister — a fact that the entrepreneur failed to disclose, according to Waha’s legal claim.
Waha claims in the court documents that this equated to a “fraud”, adding: “Tripathi is liable in deceit for the false representations made knowingly or recklessly and which induced Waha Capital to enter into the share purchase agreement.”
The second action involves more than 30 shareholders and former directors, including Howard, and also criticises the lack of disclosure around Tripathi’s sister. The action claims there was a potential conflict in Tripathi’s “close connection” to another company — dubbed “Co V” — which was regularly invoiced by Signifier for “items that were not properly payable by . . . SMT”.
It also claims that two of the new directors appointed last summer were Signifier staff whose pay had been more than doubled by Tripathi in April even as other workers were laid off because of SMT’s financial woes.
Law firm Proskauer Rose, which is representing the petitioners, declined to comment. Tripathi’s legal representative, Mishcon de Reya, declined to comment on record.
Tripathi, in his defence filing to the court, denied all of the allegations and said he was not asked about the precise relationship with his sister when her $20mn shareholding was sold.
He pointed to $5mn in loans he gave the company while it was “at risk of becoming insolvent”. Tripathi also said he never received any benefits from sums paid by Signifier into Co V, which was owned by a close friend.
It is now up to the court to decide whether to believe Tripathi’s version of events or that of the former independent directors, who wrote to shareholders last August warning: “Trusting Mr Tripathi has been a terrible mistake.”
One Conservative party official said that, on reflection, Sunak should have “maybe thought twice” before taking to the skies with Tripathi.
Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International UK, said: “Until we take big money out of politics, stories like these will continue to make headlines and diminish trust in our politicians.”
Wednesday 28 February 2024
Putin’s inglorious dead: how many Russians have been killed in Ukraine?
The Times
The obituaries tell only half the story. Nikolai Serdyukov, the best district policing officer in Ulyanovsk, for example, may have felt ideologically compelled to join President Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine and may have fought bravely to the end, but he still died a miserable death far from home.
It was a fate shared by Alexander Volkov, a bespectacled and apparently erudite archaeologist from Chuvashia, last seen clutching a bunch of daisies and laughing before going to war, now just another of Putin’s inglorious dead.
“My dear, Beloved, the most reliable man in my life. I am writing you a letter to eternity,” wrote another Russian, Olesya Smorodinova, in a letter her husband Ivan will never read. After his death, she said: “Your path was so short that I didn’t have time to enjoy you. Now you will for ever be 28 years old.”
Thousands of Russians have been enlisted and killed in the conflict with Ukraine
MIKHAIL METZEL/AP
With each passing day, the numbers killed rises. Some as young as 20, others are simply missing, vanishing on a front line that shifts only glacially. Back home in Russia, women such as Irina Chistyakova, have been searching for loved ones since the war’s start. Her conscript son, Kirill, vanished just a month after Putin’s invasion. She has travelled from Petrozavodsk, more than 2,000km south to look for his body in Rostov morgues.
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She now runs an online group, “Sun of Life”, where other Russians seek their lost brothers, sons and fathers. “On the left side of the chest he has a tattoo of a tired angel,” a woman named Elena writes in the hopes of finding her brother. “[His] uniform has red embroidery. Scar on the right side in the groin area.”
Not all those killed, of course, are innocents. Dmitry Postnikov and Oleg Sizov, incarcerated after murdering two businessmen in 2016, joined Wagner after landing 18-year prison sentences for their crimes. They were both killed in action a year ago, much like 19,000 other prisoners, who comprise a high proportion of Russia’s dead in Ukraine.
A recent joint investigation between independent Russian outlets Mediazona and Meduza revealed that at least 75,000 Russians under the age of 50 have died. This, though, is still likely to be a vast underestimate.
Russian troops at the Illich Iron and Steel Works Metallurgical Plant in Mariupol. The exact number of people of both sides who died is unknown but estimates for Ukrainian military and civilian losses range from 8,000 to 100,000
AP
Breaking down the figures, they identified 21,000 contract soldiers, 19,000 prisoners, and 16,000 mobilised soldiers, saying actual losses likely ranged between 66,000 (in line with Pentagon estimates) and 88,000 men. The current rate of losses suggests that since the close of the period covered by their analysis, a further 8,000 are likely to have died, bringing the total to roughly 83,000. The number does not account for Russian military personnel from Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The increase in deaths is most notable among those aged between 20 to 24, according to Dmitriy Kobak, the co-author of a draft paper examining Russian deaths. “These age groups have fewer deaths without the war so any increase due to war becomes very noticeable.”
By region, Krasnodar Krai, in the North Caucasus region, appears to have lost the most people — 1,715, according to data provided to The Times by Maria Vyushkova from the Free Buryatia Foundation. The mineral-rich region of Bahkortostan has suffered some of the biggest losses to date. The site of rare protests against the war this year, Mediazona estimates some 1,438 deaths from this region alone.
However, Russia remains “completely indifferent to the scale of the slaughter and how many of its men it’s losing on top of an already acute demographic crisis”, Chatham House’s Keir Giles said. To this end, Russia is making efforts to keep official figures from leaking. “Russia seems to be taking no chances in concealing the numbers,” he added.
US officials have previously stated that Russia’s military casualties could be as high as 120,000 deaths, with 170,000-180,000 injured. Those numbers were provided in August last year, months before Russia’s long struggle to seize control of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. Britain’s Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, estimated in December that Russia has sustained more than 350,000 casualties — killed and wounded — as well as military equipment losses, among them 2,600 tanks and 4,900 armoured vehicles. Some 70,000 of those losses were fatalities, the MoD said.
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Despite Putin’s control of state media and savage stamping out of protest, there are occasional voices of dissent. For example, Andriy Morozov, a Russian military blogger, caused a stir shortly before his apparent suicide this month when he wrote that Russia had lost some 16,000 men in the siege of Avdiivka. Ukraine’s own most recent figures suggest that, to date, some 412,000 Russian combatants have been killed or wounded. Meanwhile, Idel.realli, a US-backed website, has traced 11,107 deaths from the Volga region alone, with the regional figures slightly higher than those provided by Mediazona’s tally.
There is a wide regional disparity in terms of Russia’s losses. While ethnic Russians comprise the overall majority of those killed, with about 1,170 confirmed from the Moscow region, Russia’s ethnic minorities and “small nations” are vastly over-represented in death figures, according to Vyushkova. “We have found 37 confirmed Chukchi casualties. The real number may be much greater,” Vyushkova said. “That’s a lot, because there are only 16,000 Chukchi in Russia. And they are exempt from mandatory military service.”
A wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow to mark Defender of the Fatherland day which is held in late February
SERGEI SAVOSTYANOV/EPA
Some ethnic groups fear they may die out completely. There are only 2,730 Telengits in Russia, and ten of them are among Russia’s confirmed casualties. In one case authorities attempted to draft 100 per cent of the adult male population of a Nanai village, according to Vyushkova. “It is politically safer to put the burden of mobilisation on those groups no one cares about,” she added.
Those who have lost relatives are afraid to speak out for fear of losing death compensation of up to 5 million rubles (£43,000). Furthermore, the statistics do not account for those who are simply missing — and there are few incentives to retrieve any stray bodies.
The body of one 47-year-old man from Buryatia, for example, has been lying in a tank on the front lines for “about a year”. “Today is exactly one year since our friend, colleague, comrade, brother Ikhineev Dmitry Melsovich has not been with us,” stated a post paying tribute to him on VK, Russia’s Facebook, on February 7. The likelihood of death is higher for some groups, such as Buryats, than others, as Russia sends its “meat waves” to the front.
It’s possible that some deaths are registered in parts of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed the temporarily occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, too. “Rosstat doesn’t provide any data on these regions,” said Kobak.
Putin held a high-profile meeting with representatives of mothers and wives of Russian soldiers at his residence outside Moscow in November 2022
ALEXANDER SHCHERBAK/AFP
Several men from Tatarstan’s Alga battalion do not fall under the numbers of Russian dead — even though several dozen were believed to be have been killed. “A f***ing tonne of people have been killed here,” a commander reportedly stated after being captured near Bakhmut. The bodies were simply left on the battlefield last February.
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In spring last year the Russian state made the process somewhat easier for those with missing relatives in order “to simplify the procedures for recognising a citizen as missing, declaring him dead, and establishing the fact of death of a serviceman during a special military operation”.
In some cases, women have been offered money to recognise their missing relatives as dead. However, the numbers of people pursuing this course of action seem low — and no confirmation of death means no compensation payments. “If the soldier is MIA they get nothing,” said Vyushkova.
The prospect of comparatively good compensation enticed many men from deprived regions to head to Ukraine. “The lives and the standard of living in the rural areas are so miserable, and can be transformed by the kinds of salaries that are promised (even if not actually paid) for signing up for a fixed period on the front line,” said Giles.
Despite these losses, support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains high. “Various kinds of polls conducted by different pollsters, using different methodologies, consistently shows majority support for the war,” said Dr Maria Popova, the co-author of a new book on the conflict.
There is a “loud minority” of people apparently against the war — often for personal reasons as opposed to out of any disgust for the atrocities their government is inflicting on Ukrainians. “The war in Ukraine is a mistake and we will have to pay dearly for the short-sightedness of our government,” Maria Andreeva, a 34-year-old woman who has become the face of anti-war protests in Russia told The Times last month.
Indeed, intercepted phonecalls widely publicised in a new documentary film, Intercepted, suggest some Russians actively relish the opportunity to “beat bandera [Ukrainians] into shashlik”. “Ordinary people kill and brag about atrocities,” noted a recent review in Novaya Gazeta Europe.
Opinion polling can be notoriously unreliable in Russia. There is now, however, a sense among people that nothing can be done to change the status quo. “Part of the population has chosen to become apathetic: their condition can be referred to as ‘learnt indifference’,” noted a recent report from the Carnegie Endowment think tank.
Mourners gather to lay flowers in memory of Russian soldiers
ARDEN ARKMAN/AFP
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Beleaguered opposition movements have had a more domestic focus, particularly now with the death of Alexei Navalny. “Disgust at the corruption of the Putin regime is more likely to reach a broader swathe of the population than criticism of the war,” said Popova.
Nonetheless, there have been small waves of individual protest activity — such as arson attacks against military enlistment offices — which Russia attempts to downplay as the result of “foreign interference”. There have been more than 200 across the country since the war began.
The numbers of Russia’s war dead of course pale in comparison with Ukraine’s suffering. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state has estimated that about 900,000 to 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens (among them 260,000 children), have been detained and forcibly deported to Russia via “filtration” camps.
President Zelensky has said that some 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s civilian death toll also remains unknown — though the UN has verified more than 10,000 civilian deaths. In Russian-occupied Mariupol, for example, where death toll estimates have ranged from about 8,000 to as high as 100,000.
A man is detained for protesting against the war in Moscow, holding a placard demanding Putin resigns
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP
In a rare acknowledgement of the casualties, Putin invited families of his “military heroes” to a gala dinner last year. He promised that the Russian state would always “come to the rescue” of fallen servicemen and women.
“If you’ve got more bodies than the Ukrainians have bullets, then again, you’re left with somebody who can overrun the position,” said Giles. The stakes are high, as Ukrainians are fighting to deter Russia’s same disregard for life displayed at home.
“For Ukrainians there is no other choice,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of Ukraine’s Nobel-winning Center for Civil Liberties, told The Times. “When the invaded state lays down weapons it will be occupied. If we, Ukrainians, stop fighting, there will be no freedom, no democracy, no Ukraine.”
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