Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia

At the first US-Ukraine-Russia negotiations since February, talk turned to broad questions of security while wide gaps remain over core issues such as territorial control in the Donbas. Amid the trilateral talks in Abu Dhabl, Russia continued to attack Ukraine and crack down on is citizens at home.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

Police Action

When there's mayhem on the streets of Paris or some other European capital, Russian state TV plays it up as part of an ongoing effort by President Vladimir Putin's government to portray the West as unstable, divided, and in decline.

This week, though, chaotic scenes played out close to the Kremlin as police swept in and rounded up hundreds of young people on the streets and in a park in the heart of Moscow on Saturday night, November 7, which was, coincidentally, the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Detainees, some of them minors, reported being beaten or forcibly detained, held for hours in packed police buses and precinct houses, denied water, and barred from going to the bathroom.

Some -- including a number of boys under the conscription age of 18 -- were handed draft notices, offered contracts, or pressured to join the military, which is seeking to maintain manpower for the war against Ukraine amid massive battlefield losses as Russia's full-scale invasion approaches the five-year mark.

Police, who activists say are not authorized to carry out conscription, asserted that the goal of the operation was to prevent alcohol consumption.

Whatever the official purpose or pretext, however, it came across in two ways. One: as an episode in a yearslong clampdown on dissent and curtailing of freedoms that has intensified during the war. The other: as an element of the state's effort to keep troop numbers steady without repeating a massive mobilization decreed by Putin in September 2022 that sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the country.

In both cases, it was not the only such development this week.

On November 9, the Russian parliament advanced a bill that would establish fines for discrediting "traditional spiritual and moral values."

A co-author of the bill said it would hold Internet platforms, not individuals, responsible for violations. But Russian law includes no official definition of these values, and in its existing form the legislation would allow the authorities "to prosecute anyone they want for anything they want," legal expert Ilya Shablinsky told Current Time.

The push to impose punishments for violations of the "traditional values" that Putin and his government claim to espouse comes as Russia carries out daily attacks that kill, wound, and cause deprivation to Ukrainian civilians.

These attacks, and Ukrainian retaliation, did not stop over two days of US-led peace talks in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11, the first direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia since February.

They didn't stop because Russia has repeatedly rejected proposals for a cease-fire that would allow for peace talks to progress while halting the killing and holding the front lines in place. Instead, Putin says the guns need not go silent until a comprehensive peace agreement is reached.

'More Than Ukraine'

If Moscow gets its way, that pact will include, or be preceded by, an overarching agreement that would reshape European security architecture.

"The idea of defining clear parameters for a future security architecture, and only then moving on to resolving the actual Russia-Ukraine conflict, is absolutely reasonable," Russian Foreign Minister ⁠Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow on November 10.

For the moment, though, Russia does not want Europe involved -- go figure -- and has so far rejected US efforts to bring Europe into the trilateral talks format.

The United States appears to be fully on board with the idea of a broader security agreement. Trump had earlier called for a cease-fire with front lines in place. Last week, however, he suggested the war would end soon with a "big, beautiful agreement" that is "going to involve more than Ukraine."

Kushner followed up by writing of "the need for a broader European security architecture that can help establish conditions for lasting peace," and both Moscow and Washington indicated that topic was at the heart of the trilateral talks.

Some analysts say a wider arrangement on security could be a crucial complement to any Russia-Ukraine peace deal that could be expected to last.

"I'm not sure there is a way to end the war other than by linking it to a broader arrangement on European security," Pavel Podvig, an expert on nuclear forces and disarmament, wrote on X.

At the same time, negotiations have been a way for the Kremlin to keep hopes alive for an end to the war while making no concessions and pushing ahead with a bid to achieve its goals by force. And analysts stress that Ukraine's immediate security is a far more urgent matter.

It's "hard to imagine a durable end to the war that does not address broader regional issues," Samuel Charap, senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, a US-based think tank, wrote on X ahead of the Abu Dhabi talks. But a "new European security order will not be agreed before the end of the war, and the war is not going to end this week."

"Starting that conversation could open the door to a cessation in Ukraine. And it is important in itself. But that is a months-long intensive process at best. Ukraine needs relief now, and that has to be the priority," Charap wrote, adding that "making the problem bigger can in principle be an effective tactic. But it can also be used to deliberately draw out a process and divide allies."

Russia's chief negotiator, Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, seemed determined to do just that in Abu Dhabi, railing against Europe and suggesting it has nothing to contribute to peace efforts at this point. Russia rejected US efforts to include European representatives in the talks, an idea Kushner indicated he would take to Putin, whom he said Witkoff were set to meet in Russia on November 12 before huddling with Zelenskyy in Dublin.

'Profoundly Unrealistic'

Medinsky also said the talks focused heavily on potential new security arrangements, which he indicated could extend not just beyond Ukraine but beyond Europe.

"The world needs a new, modern, updated security system -- one that is fair and does not disadvantage any particular countries," Medinsky said in remarks broadcast on Russian state television.

Coming from Moscow, calls like that are far from new. They go back at least as far as Putin's ascent to power over a quarter-century ago, with Russia seeking a reversal of its Cold War geopolitical losses and a restoration of its clout on the European continent.

In fact, that may have been one of the chief motives behind Putin's decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While Moscow accuses the West of using Ukraine as a lever to weaken Russia, European governments contend that the Kremlin, with a mix of violence and diplomacy, is using its war on Ukraine in a bid to gain power and influence across Europe and around the world.

In December 2021, as it amassed troops along Ukraine's border, Russia sent a list of demands to the United States and NATO that would have rolled back some of the results of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, including blocking alliance military deployments beyond the alliance's 1997 borders. Washington rejected some of them and offered to negotiate on others -- and Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine weeks later.

Nearly five years on, with Russia launching relentless attacks on Ukraine and testing the West with drone incursions, cyberattacks, and other actions, "the idea [that] this is the moment to rethink European security is profoundly unrealistic," wrote Ruth Deyermond, senior lecturer in the department of war studies at King's College London.

"You cannot develop a new European security architecture when the Russian government wants and expects to defeat Ukraine, and also wants and expects to undermine both NATO and the domestic security of NATO members, and this is extremely unlikely to change," she wrote on X on November 10.

Twenty years after investigative journalist Anna Politikovskaya was shot dead in Moscow, the paper she worked for has been crushed under pressure from the Russian state. A small cease-fire in Ukraine was followed by a massive and “evil” attack, while a seismic shift in the US political landscape precedes new trilateral peace talks.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia and its war against Ukraine over the past week, and some of the takeaways going forward.

'They Killed Us'

On October 7, 2006, investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building as she returned home from a grocery run.

The dogged documenter of rights abuses in Russia and its Chechnya region was not the first contributor to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta -- founded with support from Mikhail Gorbachev -- to be killed or to have died in mysterious circumstances during President Vladimir Putin’s long rule.

But she was the most prominent, and her murder was a chilling milestone of an era -- still in its early years at the time -- in which the Kremlin and its allies have used an array of tools to silence opposition, dissent, and basic freedoms, from electoral manipulation and trumped-up court cases to sometimes deadly violence.

Twenty years later, Novaya Gazeta is dead.

"They killed us,” the paper said in a Telegram post on October 30, a day after authorities began evicting the remaining staff from their Moscow editorial offices -- the final blow in a series of hits that made it impossible to keep operating.

Five years after Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression," the end comes in a few days.

“On November 9, we will shut out the lights in the home where we’ve lived for 30 years, turn off the servers, and leave,” the editors said. “The paper is no more.”

Abroad, the paper lives on by way of Novaya Gazeta Europe, a Paris-based edition. In Russia, after surviving for years under increasing pressure from the state, it has finally become a victim of the clampdown that began before Politkovskaya’s killing and has intensified since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Like the clampdown, there’s no clear end in sight for Russia’s all-out war, which many analysts predict will persist past the five-year mark in February.

More clarity on the prospects for peace may come next week, when US, Ukrainian, and Russian negotiators are scheduled to meet in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11 -- ending a long hiatus in direct, US-brokered talks, which went dormant as President Donald Trump focused on the war with Iran.

'Serious Reasons To Doubt'

In an X post about the talks, Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said she sees several developments that “suggest a gradual, albeit very slow, movement towards an agreement.”

But she remains skeptical about the chances for “meaningful progress.” Also, she cautioned that if an agreement is reached, implementation will be difficult “and there are still serious reasons to doubt whether it could lead to a sustainable settlement.”

Stanovaya was writing as Americans voted in elections that dealt a huge defeat to Trump and his Republican Party, handing control of both the Senate and House of Representatives to the Democrats for the last two years of his second and final term as president.

For Kyiv and Moscow, the crucial question is how the midterm election results may affect the war and the US effort to end it, which Trump made a priority when he took office. He has struggled to make progress ever since.

One major factor has been the amount of pressure applied on Russia and Ukraine. Multiple times over the past two years, Trump has seemed poised to turn up the pressure on Kyiv to accept a settlement on terms that would favor Moscow -- which, among other demands, says full Russian control over Ukraine’s Donbas region is a prerequisite for any peace deal.

But a hard push in that direction seems less likely -- or less likely to succeed, at least -- given the election results.

On the other side of the coin, backers of Ukraine have frequently said Trump has not put sufficient pressure on Putin to push him into considering substantial concessions.

Among other White House overtures to Moscow that have raised alarms in Kyiv and in Congress in recent weeks, Trump waived new sanctions against Russia after signing off on them -- and separately agreed with Putin on a deal to get Russian diesel to US and world markets.

Once the new Congress is seated on January 3, lawmakers could seek to push back.

Democrats “could rescind the diesel oil deal with Russia. They could provide military assistance to Ukraine,” Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, wrote on X.

But “there will be more continuity than change” on key policy issues, he wrote. “The President remains in the driver’s seat on foreign policy, with an array of institutional and political advantages over Congress.”

One big question is how Trump will seek to use those advantages. Another is how Russia will react to the new reality.

Moscow may see a new urgency in achieving its goals -- or some of them, such as gaining control over the portion of the Donbas its forces have been unable to take in years of extremely deadly fighting.

A Devastating Attack

On the other hand, shifting US political fortunes may already be baked into Russia’s calculations.

Putin knows Trump will be out of the White House in 2028, and analysts say the Kremlin’s confidence that interaction with the Trump administration can produce the results it desires has faded over time.

In any case, there’s little or no evidence that a heightened sense of urgency in Moscow would translate into concessions.

Instead, Russia could seek to step up already relentless air attacks, in a bid to pummel Ukraine into submission, and try to push forward faster on the ground in eastern Ukraine – though its slow pace and massive losses there so far suggest that would be a tall order.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia suffered more casualties in October than in any other month of the war: about 54,400 soldiers killed or wounded.

Ahead of the Abu Dhabi talks, Moscow used a humanitarian operation allowing hungry residents to leave the Russian-held city of Oleshky, in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region to show that it can stop fighting on a dime if it wants to -- and start up again just as quickly.

Both Ukraine and Russia adhered to a localized six-day cease-fire brokered mainly by US first lady Melania Trump, who was set to host representatives of both countries at the White House on November 5.

But while Russian officials suggested similar operations could take place in future, Putin’s spokesman said the Oleshky truce should not be extrapolated to ‌the broader efforts to end the war. Putin has repeatedly rejected calls for a total cease-fire, including one made by Trump, saying fighting can stop once a comprehensive peace agreement is reached.

During the Oleshky cease-fire, Russian attacks continued outside the Kherson region. And on November 2, a day after it expired, Ukraine said Russia attacked a school in the adjacent Zaporizhzhya region where residents were receiving humanitarian aid, dropping at least 10 bombs in a “double tap” strike that left part of a town in ruins.

Zelenskyy called it a "vile" attack, saying that rescue workers and residents seeking shelter were targeted after the initial hit.

Days later, K-9 units and mine-clearing personnel were still working amid the debris, the State Emergency Service said. On November 5, the death toll reached 42, and as many as 33 people were still feared trapped under the rubble.

NOTE: This article has been corrected to reflect the fact that Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, not with Ukrainian and Belarusian activists.