In her November 22, 2023, article for the weekly Ukrainian Russian-language socio-political journal and daily news internet resource, Fokus, Darya Denisova stressed U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s provocative challenge to the West to continue its “unwavering” financial aid to Ukraine to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revanchist schemes never come to fruition. At the same time, Denisova was optimistic that military aid would continue to flow from the West. Her optimism was based on Austin’s repeated assurances of support as well as his tough words of rebuke to Putin by accusing him at different times of being a tyrant, a dictator, and an autocrat and, concerning the latter, that “we refuse [to let] autocrats, who rely on repression with the aid of power and coercion, to dictate the form of global security.”

On the other hand, Alexei Zabronin, also writing on November 22, in an article for the Russian-language e-newspaper Kommersant entitled “Short-Term Required,” concentrated on the negative aspects of Ukraine’s and its Western allies’ attempt to gain victory over Russia. He intimated that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was having to beg Washington’s European Ramstein Contact Group members to anty up contributions for Ukraine’s military support, since, Zabronin concluded, the “[U.S.] Congress…[is] unable to agree on additional funding for Ukraine.” Zabronin reported that Ukraine’s stalled counteroffensive had upset the West and, to back up this assertion, quoted the view of the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Mariya Zakharova, that Contact Group members had traveled to Kyiv to demand from Mr. Zelensky “an accounting of the expenditure of large sums that had been allocated by the West for provisioning the so-called counteroffensive.” Zabronin suggested that it would be a “complicated task…to convince everyone that the situation was under control and that the U.S., just as earlier, would take leadership upon itself in questions of supporting Ukraine,” apparently because of the West’s dissatisfaction over the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ stalled counteroffensive.

Zabronin quoted the U.S. Secretary of Defense as reassuring the attendees that “the U.S. can continue its decisive support” for Kyiv, while at the same time helping Israel. According to Zabronin, in an attempt “to show control over circumstances,” Austin referred to the more than 80 billion dollars that the Contact Group countries had allocated to Ukraine for defense “since the Kremlin began its unjustified invasion as well as the 1.4-billion-dollar packet of military aid announced by Germany on November 21.”

The Russian state-owned news agency, TASS, on November 22, reported on its internet site Russian MFA spokesperson Mariya Zakharova’s remarks concerning the visits of U.S. politicians to Ukraine, which, she claimed, were “to temper Zelensky’s appetites and to demand from him an accounting of the expenditure of Western financial aid.”

By using the term “master” to describe the role of the U.S. in its relationship with Ukraine; and “satellites” as regards that of Europe to the U.S., Zakharova, as the main propagandist-protagonist for the Kremlin, projected a perspective onto the present situation reminiscent of the Soviet-era rhetoric that demonized the West. On the one hand, the U.S. Congress refused the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andrei Ermak, in his request for further financial support, insinuating the picture of a beggar hat in hand. On the other hand, the U.S. is strong-arming its European allies to increase their support, thus Germany increasing its military aid to Ukraine from four billion euros to eight billion euros.

Regarding a different aspect of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Bulgarian newspaper, Dnevnik (The Daily), posted an article on its internet site on November 27 entitled “Türkiye has increased the export goods needed by Russia in the war in Ukraine.” The Bulgarian-language report was based on an article in the Financial Times. The article explained that the exports concerned 45 dual-use commodities, ranging from [computer] chips to communications equipment, that Russia could use in cruise missiles, drones, and helicopters.

While Türkiye has maintained that it exercises strict oversight and “prevents efforts for the sanctions to be circumvented through Türkiye,” the article points out that for the first nine months of 2023, the export value of these commodities had been over one-half more than for the same time frame in the previous year. At the same time, the import of several such commodities had grown by over 60% when compared with the first 10 months of the period 2015-2021 and had reached 500 million dollars.

The article cited a European sanctions representative that Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates have been known to be alternative routes for Russian organizations looking to avoid export control. In this connection, the U.S. Department of Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, was to be in Istanbul and Ankara the week of November 27 to discuss ways to “prevent, obstruct, and investigate trade and financial activity, from which the Russian effort in the war against Ukraine benefits.”

The translations of the Denisova, Zabronin, TASS, and Dnevnik articles are found below in succession.

Denisova’s article follows [as translated from Russian by LOC]:

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin began the 17^th meeting of the Ramstein Contact Group on November 22, to which a U.S. Department of Defense press message [on Twitter] attested.

The Contact Group session concerning questions of Ukraine’s defense will be continuing online. The leaders of the defense departments of almost 50 countries are participating in it. According to the results of the meeting, packets of military aid would be announced.

Austin’s Opening Address – a Signal for Putin

Austin had already made an opening statement and noted that the Ukrainians have demonstrated to the world for more than 20 months already the strength of a free people to resist Putin’s aggression.

“Ukraine’s war for freedom is weighty for all of us. As President Biden has said, when tyrants don’t pay for their aggression, they threaten the whole world,” noted Austin.

He also [repeatedly] ||Translator note: The article says ‘ambiguously’ (неоднозначно/neodnoznachno), but which was obviously meant to be ‘repeatedly’ (неоднократно/neodnokratno) || gave to understand that peace cannot exist in the world while there are such dictators as the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

“No one of us wants to live in a world where such as Putin can with impunity invade his peaceful neighbors. And we refuse [to let] autocrats, who rely on repression with the aid of power and coercion, to dictate the form of global security,” Austin said.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense emphasized that support for Ukraine in its war with Russian aggression is unwavering.

“Our unity sends Putin a clear signal that he will be unable to outlast us or win the contest for freedom,” Austin continued.

He noted as well that in the time that the war has been going on, the head of the Kremlin has been forced to search for support from Iran and DPRK.

Let’s remember, during his November 20 visit to Kyiv, the Pentagon chief said that Ukraine has already inflicted serious damage on the occupiers and, therefore, the partners are expecting that the Defense Forces would also continue to dislodge Russians from its territory into the winter period.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin also announced a 100-million-dollar packet of military aid to Ukraine during his visit to Kyiv.

Zabronin’s article follows [translated from Russian by LOC]:

“Short-term Required: Ramstein-17 conducted with sights on winter”

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin for the seventeenth time since April 2022 convoked the meeting of the contact group for the defense of Ukraine in the Ramstein format. The session, which took place via video on November 22 with the participation of representatives of some five dozen countries [TR note: there are actually 54 country-participants], was conducted in a “most difficult” – in the words of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky – month. The U.S. Secretary of Defense, in opening the meeting, tried to assure all that the situation remained under control and that Washington, just as it was helping, would continue to help Ukraine. Mr. Austin was relying on Washington not being the only country equipping Ukraine with weapons and that other participants of the group are contributing their ‘lepta.’ [TR note: the author is using the Ukrainian word meaning roughly ‘a minuscule portion.’] Partly this could be assessed as a hint that it is not worth waiting, in the foreseeable future, for good news from Congress, where, as previously, they are unable to agree on additional financing for Ukraine.

The November session of the allies of Ukraine in the Ramstein format occurred at the most contradictory moment for Kyiv and its partners in the last year-and-a-half. First of all, the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive not yielding tangible results has upset the West, and in Ukraine itself has given rise to a discussion concerning the dead end at the front. Still a month ago, during Ramstein-16, the sides also noted incongruence of expectations with reality; however, they maintained some hope for the weeks ahead before the arrival of the muddy roads of autumn and the winter cold.

Secondly, the question of further support for Ukraine by Washington remains unresolved. For several months already, Congress has been unable to approve the 61 billion dollars requested by President Joe Biden for additional financing for Ukraine because of the nonconcurrence of the most conservative Republicans. In spite of the reassurance of American leaders of Washington’s unwavering support, at the Pentagon they have repeatedly admitted that there is almost no money remaining for the Ukrainian Armed Forces (VSU). The department will stretch the remaining funds for as long as they are available. Although, they won’t last for long.

The worth of the last tranche of weapons, announced at the end of Mr. Autin’s visit to Kyiv on 20 November, comprised all of 100 million dollars.

The list of weapons and equipment spoke to the fact that support has come down to providing not only the current, but the most critical needs of the UAF.

As Vladimir Zelensky admitted in an interview with pro-Republican channel, Fox News, on the eve of Ramstein-17, November has turned out to be “a most difficult month” as far as Washinton’s support of Kyiv. “I hope that Congress will help us…I hope that the U.S. will be with us against Russian terrorism,” the president of Ukraine told the channel’s journalists, where almost daily conservative politicians and experts express thoughts that do not bring comfort for Kyiv. It is remarkable that Mr. Zelensky expressed similar hopes just after Lloyd Austin was visiting in Kyiv and was reassuring of the steadfastness of American support.

In other words, Ramstein-17 had been programmed to run in difficult conditions.

The complicated task stood before chairman of the contact group, Lloyd Austin, to convince everyone that the situation was under control and that the U.S., just as earlier, would take leadership upon itself in questions of supporting Ukraine. With this, the Pentagon chief began the session, but certain peculiarities of the news coverage of the meeting made it quite unusual and only underlined the complexity of the situation.

So, on the schedule of activities, contrary to tradition, Mr. Austin’s “opening remarks” were designated as simply “address,” and the concluding press conference was not on the agenda at all. It didn’t even appear in the planned events three hours after the start of the session. Even from the very beginning, Ramstein was distinguished by strict adherence to schedule and the public activities connected with them almost always began on time with a correction for organizational delays.

The omission of the Pentagon’s press service could hardly explain the departure from tradition. More to the point, Mr. Autin was simply afraid to fall under the critical fire of the press. In any case, the journalists never took pity on the U.S. Secretary of Defense and at times inundated him with a flurry of pointed questions, to which he clearly couldn’t and didn’t want to give an answer. And if earlier the conversation would have turned to whether the U.S. would transfer to Ukraine tanks, airplanes, or long-range missiles, now Mr. Austin would inescapably have had to answer whether Washington, in principle, would help Kyiv and how, when in the accounts of the Pentagon the remaining billion dollars for Ukraine would run out. In any case, there was no way for Mr. Austin to foretell the progress of the press conference and please the public.

However, speaking at the session, the Pentagon chief declared that “Ukraine’s war for freedom has meaning for all,” and was reassuring that the U.S. “is able to continue the decisive support” of Kyiv” while at the same time helping Israel.

Attempting to show control over circumstances, the U.S. Secretary of Defense mentioned the last packet of aid of 100 million dollars and gave an assessment to the collective efforts of the contact group. “I am proud that this historic contact group has allocated to Ukraine more than 80 billion dollars for defense since the Kremlin began its unjustified invasion. I am proud of this firmness,” and, separately, mentioned the 1.4-billion-dollar packet of military aid announced by Germany on November 21.

Meanwhile, Mr. Austin didn’t even think about drawing attention to the long-term aid that he would talk about at all Ramsteins in 2023, but immediately went to the necessity of satisfying the urgent needs of the UAF and called his colleagues to find “creative solutions” for this. In his opinion, now the contact group needs to concentrate on providing Kyiv with weapons, based on the approaching winter. “Since Ukraine is facing another winter of fighting, I am calling the group to provide Ukraine an anti-aircraft defense arsenal for protecting its people.”

Moscow has its own view on what’s happening in the camp of Ukraine’s allies. In the opinion of the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MID RF), Mariya Zakharova, Kyiv’s partners are trying not to solve the difficulties that are arising, but “to temper Zelensky’s appetites.” It was exactly with this, in her opinion, that the most recent visits to the Ukrainian capital of American officials, including Lloyd Austin, was connected. Besides this, she considers that the “visitors beyond the ocean” came to demand from Mr. Zelensky “an accounting of the expenditure of large sums that had been allocated by the West for provisioning the so-called counteroffensive.”

Zakharova’s briefing as reported by TASS [translated from Russian by LOC]:

“Zakharova: U.S. Politicians’ Visits to Ukraine Called Upon to Temper Zelensky’s Appetites”

According to the words of the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, such visits were also invoked to demand from the Ukrainian president an accounting of the expenditure of Western financial aid.

Moscow, 22 November /TASS/ Visits of American politicians to Kyiv in recent days, it seems, have been summoned to temper the appetites of President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, and to demand from him an accounting of the expenditure of Western financial aid. The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MID RF), Mariya Zakharova, made these assertions at a briefing.

“Within the last week, several high guests from the U.S. have all of a sudden visited Kyiv. It seems, they wanted to be convinced of the level of democracy that has been achieved in the last 10 years. But economists and financial analysts were not among them, rather CIA director, William Burns; Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin; and Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen. Judging by everything, these visitors from across the ocean came to temper the appetites of Zelensky and at the same time to demand from him an accounting of the expenditure of the large sums that the West has allocated for providing for the so-called summer counteroffensive.”

According to her words, Kyiv convinced its masters of the guaranteed success of this offensive, while they convinced the Kyiv regime that all this history would end with a convincing victory of Zelensky. “Both were mistaken,” stressed Zakharova, “Andrei Ermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, returned from his November 13-15 trip to Washington with empty hands. His attempts to reach out to congressmen and convince them of the necessity of the further subsidizing of the Kyiv regime and army were not crowned with success.”

The official representative of the diplomatic department explained this with a deep-dive into the differences in the American ruling circles on the question of military and financial help to Kyiv. “Judging by everything, in the circumstances that are unfolding in the U.S., they are attempting to shift the costs for keeping Zelensky to their European satellites,” suggests Zakharova. “On this backdrop, the announcement by Berlin of its plans was not accidental to double, in the future year, military aid to Ukraine from four billion euros to 8 billion euros.”

The Dnevnik article follows [as translated from Bulgarian by LOC]:

Turkey has increased the export goods needed by Russia for the war in Ukraine.

The export of dual use goods, needed by Russia for the war in Ukraine, has been sharply increased this year, writes the Financial Times.

According to the newspaper, this emphasizes the concerns of the U.S. and its allies that goods of their producers are passing through the country, which Russia can use in cruise missiles, drones, and helicopters. The publication as well as the upcoming trip there of a representative of the United States are at a delicate moment for Ankara, when it hopes to buy from Washington F-16 fighter jets for billions of dollars.

It’s about 45 commodities for civilian use, but used by the Russian army and designated by the U.S. as “high priority” for Moscow – from chips to communications equipment. These are subject to export control for Russia by the U.S., EU, Japan, and Great Britain.

Türkiye maintains that although it applies the West’s sanctions imposed on Russia because of the war in Ukraine, it exercises strict oversight and “prevents the efforts for the sanctions to be circumvented through Türkiye.” It is inevitable however that there are attempts at avoidance by secretive or peripheral organizations that do not know about the sanctions or are indifferent to them.

What do the numbers show?

For the nine months in 2023, Türkiye has reported the export of these commodities at a value of 158 million dollars – three fifths more than recorded for the same period commodities in 2022. For the period 2015 – 2021, the average value was still less – 28 million dollars.

The import of a number of commodities with a high priority by the G-7 has grown by over 60% this year, compared with the first 10 months for the period 2015-2021 and has reached 500 million dollars.

The trade takes place due to regulatory gaps in export control, according to Emily Kilcrease of the Center for a New American Security think-tank and a former deputy assistant U.S. trade representative.

The anxiety of the U.S.

Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates are frequently an intermediary for Russian organizations that look to take advantage of alternative routes for avoiding export control, according to a European representative responsible for the sanctions, who spoke with the Financial Times. As a sign that the issue is a priority for the U.S., Brian Nelson, who is responsible for the war on terrorism and financial intelligence in the Department of the Treasury in Washington, will be in Istanbul and Ankara this week. His goal is to discuss ways to “prevent, obstruct and investigate trade and financial activity, from which the Russian effort in the war against Ukraine benefits.”

Nelson is in Türkiye for the second time this year. His visit follows indications that some units with dual use and especially important in the war, have been “transported directly to Russia even if they have been designated as going to another country.”

Coping with this problem is difficult, given the fact that these commodities also have civilian use. But the commodities probably can be detected; they formally are going to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, but the statistical agencies of these countries do not register a corresponding increase in imports. For example, Kazakhstan maintains that it imported such commodities for 61 million dollars between January and September; Türkiye registers an export to Kazakhstan for 66 million.