The Cosmopolicast

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My friend Ariel Cohen joined us today from Netanya, where he’s celebrating the holidays. A political analyst, Ariel focuses on Russia, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and energy policy. Obviously, we had a lot to talk about.

We spoke about a question that’s maddening me: Why can’t the people who make our foreign policy learn from experience? W…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com

“There are smart pollsters, insightful pollsters, accurate pollsters … but few are all three. Christine Quirk is. She makes people who hire her look smarter than we really are.”—

Christy Quirk is a more cosmopolitan globalist than most. I met her in Istanbul about twenty years ago, where I discovered she had an interesting job: She’s a public opinion res…

Vladislav Davidzon joins us to discuss his latest article in Tablet.

Ukraine defies the US to launch a showy offensive into Russia: Observing Israel’s moves in the Middle East, Kyiv gambles on an American power vacuum:

… What changed in July is that the Ukrainians, like other embattled US allies, were faced with a new opportunity in Washington: The cognitively impaired president had been forced out of his reelection bid in favor of his vice president, who was now out on the campaign trail, three months before the election. With this emergent power vacuum at the White House, the Ukrainians decided to bypass both the deposed occupant of the White House as well as the staff of his hypercautious National Security Council, instead of slowly bleeding to death under rules guaranteed to produce slow-motion defeat. …

Kyiv observed carefully how Israel conducted its strikes immediately after Prime Minister Netanyahu returned from a triumphant speech before the US Congress. In fact, earlier this week the chair of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, Roman Kostenko, explicitly referenced the Israeli example in a televised interview. “So Israel announced that they would take the advice of their partners very seriously but would afterward make their own decisions in the best interest of their own national security. I think that we can simply mirror that approach in our own case.”

If you’re in a hurry, here’s a transcript:

Claire: Hi, it’s Claire Berlinski, and you’re back in the Elephant Cage with my guest, Vladislav Davidson. Vladislav, let’s talk about your big scoop.

Vladislav: Hi, Claire. Thank you for having me on. I have a big piece out in Tablet Magazine, and a lot of other people seemed to have missed the obvious. On August 6th, the Ukrainians began their long-awaited mechanized invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast. The Ukrainians had been preparing for their annual counter offensive for a long time and picking their target of convenience. And they chose to go all in into Kursk because they saw that it was very weakly protected, and it turned out to be a very good decision. A lot of the Russian border guards and conscripts just gave up as soon as they saw Ukrainian mechanized forces and combat-ready, battle-hardened divisions. A lot of those guys just ran, to a point where the Ukrainians seemed to be taking between 100 and 200 Russian POWs a day, and times10, 12 days. They already seemed to have taken two divisions worth of Russian POW conscripts, thus refurbishing their exchange fund to the point where the Russians have, according to Ukrainian sources, initiated a POW exchange for the first time in two years.

Claire: Yeah, I saw that. It’s actually quite amazing. I’ve been seeing a lot of photos and a lot of videos of Russians surrendering en masse. I have not been sure whether those photos are real, but it sounds like they are.

Vladislav: I think they are real. I’ve seen a lot of those videos. Those are hard to stage. And a lot of those guys are 19, 18-year-old conscripts who are technically not supposed to be fighting outside of Russia, but they’re fully usable to defend the Russian border so the Russians throw them at the Ukrainians to stop them while they bring in better forces, Interior Ministry troops, fast response guys, national guard, hardened, battle-tested troops from inside Ukraine. While they’re trading land for time, as one does in that situation, they’re throwing conscripts with four or five, six months of training under their belts directly at these really excellent Ukrainian airborne troops. It’s Soviet, Ukrainian, and Russian doctrinal policy to use airborne troops for raids. This is a textbook raid, which was transformed into a territory holding situation. The incursion is being done with the best troops, airborne troops.

Claire: Tell us how the Ukrainians decided to do this. Obviously, they’d been planning this for at least three to six months. But they decided to go all in after they saw the Israelis do what they wanted to do, after Netanyahu returned from Washington, DC. On July 30th and 31st, the Israelis carried out assassinations against two high-value targets, one in Beirut, one in Tehran. These assassinations were carried out immediately upon Prime Minister Netanyahu returning from his trip to Washington, DC, where he addressed Israel, Congress, and where he had private meetings with whoever was in the White House. And he saw Harris in the White House and he saw the national security people of the Biden administration. And he nodded politely to the finger wagging that he received. And immediately upon returning to Jerusalem, he launched assassinations against high-value Hamas and Hezbollah operatives. And it was obvious that he was told to do one thing by the White House, and he did quite another thing.

Claire: I don’t think that’s obvious, actually. There’s been a lot of speculation that he cleared that with the White House before doing it.

Vladislav: I’m not sure he did. Why would he do this right as the Democratic Party is having its convention today?

Claire: They’d do it because Haniyeh was only going to be in Iran for those days.

Vladislav: And he’s not there all the time. He was there for the swearing in of a new Persian president. And he was a target of opportunity. They obviously used a lot of effort and regional resources, operatives to get that bomb smuggled into that house. And it’s not every day that you get a chance to take him out. And they had the opportunity and they took it.

Claire: But what about that makes you think that he didn’t clear the White House beforehand? I don’t know whether he did or not. I’ve just seen speculation that he did. And as for Fuad Shukr, of course, we would have said, yeah, take him out. He’s responsible for the death of 242 Marines.

Vladislav: Yeah, but he’d been operating for decades in Beirut.

Claire: I’ve been wondering about that myself, but I just cannot imagine the Americans saying to Netanyahu, “Don’t do that.”

Vladislav: Really? Just the opposite. I can’t imagine them saying, “Do it” in this situation. This is a very delicate time, and it’s a very complex situation in terms of the Americans’ internal interests, which is, obviously, this administration is carrying on the Obama-era foreign policy of normalizing relations with Tehran. They hate the Israelis. And they hate the Israelis complicating their regional foreign policy pivot, which is obviously not something the Sunni Arabs or the Israelis want.

Claire: I’ve seen no evidence that the administration hates the Israelis. Biden likes the Israelis, he just doesn’t like Netanyahu.

Vladislav: They see them as a problem, the thorn in their side for their big foreign policy shift.

Claire: No more than every other administration always has.

Vladislav: This is a really big difference. This is a continuation of Obama-era foreign policy with a lot of the same people in charge of Middle East foreign policy, people like Blinken, people like Sullivan.

Claire: I don’t believe that the Biden administration is more vexed by Israel than almost every previous administration has been. Because our interest in Israeli security has always been at odds with our other interests in the region.

Vladislav: There’s always been a contradiction. It’s true. But with the Obama foreign policy, there is a direct contradiction between the historical American foreign policy and what the Israelis see as their existential interests in the region of keeping Tehran boxed in. And the Obama foreign policy is to normalize Iran and bring them into the Middle East security architecture as the Americans are trying to leave the Middle East. So, this is a completely radically new situation.

Claire: The radical situation is Iran’s approaching a deployable nuclear weapon. That creates all kinds of problems without easy solutions.

Vladislav: Correct. That’s true.

Claire: So tell me about how the Ukrainians reacted to this.

Vladislav: The Ukrainians spent a few days observing the American response to the move. That is obviously not a happy situation for the White House and the National Security Council led by Mr. Jake Sullivan. The State Department under Blinken does not love it. And they made the decision that they too could run their own foreign policy, independent of their American allies’ scolding and red lines of constraint. They saw the Israelis getting away with it. Act first and apologize later, which is one of the quotes from a high level source in the Zelensky team in my piece.

Claire: The people who spoke to you, they must want the administration to know what they’re thinking?

Vladislav: After I reported the piece, a gentleman who is head of the Defense Intelligence and Security Committee inside the Rada went on TV and said, look, the Israelis listened very carefully, very politely, very generously, to the advice of their allies. And they said, we will act first in our own interests, and then we will answer our allies’ concerns afterwards. He said this openly. The head of a national security committee in the Ukrainian parliament, who’s one of the very few MPs inside Ukraine who knows what’s going on in terms of defense, because even Ukrainian MPs don’t know very much about operational stuff, because the army is keeping the Ukrainian parliament in the dark, most of them.

Claire: Tell me how they understand what’s going on in America right now.

Vladislav: They see a zombie regime in the White House and they see an overcautious National Security Council administration infrastructure, which is fulfilling the orders of a zombie regime. They see a gentleman in the White House who has Parkinson’s or dementia or Alzheimer’s or whatever, and who is no longer fulfilling the president’s duties, who has given a policy to his State Department, to his Pentagon, and to his National Security Council, but is no longer making radical decisions.

Claire: Is this based on their meetings with him or publicly available information?

Vladislav: Why do you have to meet with them?

Claire: I’m just trying to figure out where they got their information, whether they specifically met with him and came to the conclusion this guy’s not in charge anymore, or are they just reading the reporting. Have they had a personal experience with him?

Vladislav: I don’t think that they’ve had a personal experience with him and they’ve had a lot less time with him because he did a lot fewer meetings. I’m not sure who the last Ukrainian to have a one-on-one with him was that the Ukrainian government decided this is a zombie situation.

Claire: But this is a really important thing to know. Because we want a sense of whether other governments are likely to have decided that this is a zombie situation, therefore we’re just going to do whatever we feel like.

Vladislav: But isn’t it the case that the entire world has access to this information?

Claire: The entire world has a strong suspicion of it.

Vladislav: But the Democratic Party made him step down from running for a second term because it’s obvious, after the debate, that he’s no longer the man that he was. Isn’t it obvious to everybody?

Claire: But it’s unclear to what extent he’s capable of discharging his duties when the spotlight is not on him. For five hours a day, or whatever.

Vladislav: Absolutely right. This is a very serious thing. The lame duck situation plus the fact that he’s no longer running and that Harris is trying to establish her own foreign policy credentials while getting the campaign into high gear has created a space of opportunity for American allies to no longer be constrained by American red lines.

Claire: Yes, and American enemies as well.

Vladislav: Yeah, American enemies and American allies, yeah. And this is a testing of red lines set forth by both Moscow and Washington, DC, one; two, this is a declaration of independence; and three, the Ukrainians know full well that they got away with it because two or three days after the start of the Kursk offensive, the Americans delivered the next tranche of US$125 million worth of previously promised assistance.

Claire: And all Biden has said about it is, “Gee, that must be a very difficult situation for the Russians.”

Vladislav: That legitimizes the act of crossing the border on August 6th. The fact that the Pentagon said, “Yeah, this is what we agreed to previously.” And yet, the new tranche is not being held up. The Pentagon did not stop aid on the eighth or ninth when they greenlit the next trench, which means—

Claire: But Biden is still saying no use to the long-range missiles in Russian territory, right?

Vladislav: Yeah. Correct. And the new reporting as of today, and today being Monday, 19th of August, shows that the Biden administration is still telling the Brits to not allow the use of long-range British rockets.

Claire: But the British have actually said, go ahead.

Vladislav: With some kinds of rockets, yes. With other kinds of rockets, no. And the Americans are telling them no. So the zombie policy set by the zombie president is still being carried out by the Pentagon, the State Department, National Security Council. It’s just that they really cant say no to the Ukrainians because the Ukrainians are all in and they’re winning. And everyone loves a winner. You know that.

Claire: Yes, of course. Everyone loves a winner. Were the Ukrainians at all concerned that they would trigger Russia’s nuclear defense doctrine in doing this?

Vladislav: This has been a concern for some time, but every time the Ukrainians go against Russian red lines, Moscow turns out to not have any red lines. First, it was bombing anything inside Russia. They did nothing. Then it was bombing inside Crimea. They did nothing. Then it was bombing the Russian Black Sea fleet inside Sevastopol dry docks. The Russians did nothing with nuclear missiles. Then it was Ukrainian troops inside Russia, which is why the Ukrainians used exiled troops, Russian proxies. Last time they did it with raids, last year, the Russians did nothing. Then this, they did nothing. Every time the Ukrainians or the Americans actually scratch the surface of these red lines, nothing happens.

Claire: Do you know anything about how the Americans have really reacted? Have you heard anything about what they’re saying to each other?

Vladislav: I don’t know for a fact, but they can’t be happy.

Claire: I wonder. Biden has now been liberated from having to seek re-election.

Vladislav: It’s interesting what he actually thinks. He has not doubled or tripled down on helping the Ukrainians, despite the fact that he is not seeking re-election, as you say. He’s not jettisoned the Sullivan Doctrine, whatever you want to call it. They’re just doing what they’ve been doing.

Claire: So do you think that the Biden administration is assuming that Kamala will win and therefore they don’t need to do anything now to ensure Ukraine’s victory before Trump gets in office?

Vladislav: I just think that they have, as one of my sources in the piece says, no serious policy. They’re just trying to pocket their gains. They have had gains because Ukrainians have outperformed all expectations, but they don’t have a policy and they’re just trying to muddle through and keep the Ukrainians from losing big time while also keeping the Russians from losing the war, which isn’t much of a policy at all. The Ukrainians saw that this attritional thing was not working and they decided to completely change the narrative and they did. And what’s interesting about this is they did so based on what they understood Israel was doing.

Claire: Have they had any contacts with the Israelis?

Vladislav: Yeah, the Israelis and the Ukrainians have a very complex and interesting relationship, which I write a lot about. Relations are closer and closer, more warm and more interesting than they have been. The Ukrainians have tried to shame the Israelis into supporting them. They’ve not been able to do that because of Netanyahu’s personal relationship with Putin and the Israelis’ calculation that they don’t need to do any more in order to look good or they don’t need to isolate themselves from the Russians and create problems.

Claire: Evidence of Netanyahu’s inability to grasp the big picture. Obviously, Russia is a problem for Israel. They’re Iran’s closest ally.

Vladislav: Correct. Yeah. And so he’s playing this kind of balancing game where he has input on being allowed to bomb in Syria and he has the safety of Russian Jews, their property, agreed to, but nothing much else. The Russians are making pro- two-state solution comments. They’re meeting with Hamas and Hezbollah delegations. They’re involved with the war in Ukraine, and with Iran, having closer and closer relations.

Claire: If he had any kind of vision, he would be fully supporting Ukraine.

Vladislav: I’m one of the people who's been saying that and pushing for that. I’m one of the people who has really wanted that to happen. But Netanyahu’s policy is what it is, and he doesn’t see any need to change it.

Claire: But do you know if Ukrainians were actually speaking to Israelis? Were the Israelis saying, “Hey, you can just do what you want and ask for permission afterwards?” Or was this completely based on their interpretation from open sources of how this had gone down?

Vladislav: Interpretation. I don’t think the Ukrainians trust Israeli intelligence and Israeli politics, especially with so many Russian Jews having portfolios in the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence circles. You have to remember, last summer, everybody knew about the Ukrainian offensive, and that went badly because they told everybody. So they made a decision not to tell anybody. The number of people who knew about this is very small, including a lot of my own friends in the Ukrainian parliament.

Claire: In your article, you alluded to this, and you made it sound as if the Ukrainians think that something is leaking from Washington back to Russia. Is that what you meant to suggest?

Vladislav: It’s leaking from everywhere. They just did not give information to anybody. Their own frontline troops have to be kept in the dark about this, let alone Washington, DC.

Claire: Do they think, though, that there’s something in Washington that is leaking back to Russia?

Vladislav: I asked that question and I was given no good answer, to be honest.

Claire: Right.

Vladislav: I just think they don’t trust anybody after what happened last time. “Stop telegraphing your intentions.” And that turned out to be the correct insight for this one.

Claire: Yes, certainly. They really maintained tight security on this. Came as a total surprise to everyone.

Vladislav: Including the Russians. The Russians really screwed up. Russian intelligence services had inklings of this. Some people in Russian intelligence figured it out and sent it up the pole, obviously. And the Russian command didn’t figure it out.

Claire: So what do Ukrainians say is the strategic goal of this operation?

They’re not. They’re not saying what the strategic goal of this operation is for all sorts of reasons, including operational reasons. They’re going to see what sticks, and then they’re going to explain what happened based on what succeeded afterwards.

Claire: Is your intuition that this is an operation aimed more at Russia or at the United States?

Vladislav: Both. And also, as a couple of my sources said, they really needed a peremoha. They really were starting to lose nerve, and this is the best situation in terms of morale inside Ukraine since the war started. People are over the moon. People are happy. This is really gaining another year or two of good morale for the Ukrainians. They really needed a victory.

Claire: Are you in touch with people close to the Trump camp? Do you know how they’re reacting to this?

Vladislav: I am in touch with Trump people. They’re obviously calculating, and Trump is obviously watching this very closely. I don’t think he himself knows what he’s going to do, but obviously this is a big issue for him. He’s stepped back from criticizing the Ukrainians in order to have more leeway for whatever he’s going to do when he comes to power. He’s obviously going to try to make a deal, but it’s not apparent whether that deal will be very good for Ukraine or very bad. It could go either way. It’s a radical situation with Trump. You can’t know what’s going to happen. He’s obviously observing. He obviously likes winners. He’s going to say whatever he needs to say in order to make this administration in the White House look bad.

Claire: Yeah, I noticed that a lot of ultra-vatniks like David Sacks, the lamentable David Sacks, have been extremely quiet since this began.

Vladislav: 100 percent. And that is policy in the Trump camp. The Trump people have been talking to a lot of European conservatives who’ve been making nice little trips to Mar-a-Lago. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, Orban, Lord Cameron.

Claire: Tusk and Orban are going to come with very different messages.

Vladislav: Correct. But he’s talking to every single European conservative. Lord Cameron went down there and he spent hours talking to him. And it seemed to me, based on my relationships with British diplomats and intelligence people, it was a very fruitful discussion. Trump does listen, weirdly enough. He’s a politician. He takes stock of the water and the polls, and he follows his instincts, which are politically pretty good. And he’s stopped attacking the Ukrainians because he sees that he could get more mileage out of making a deal when he comes to power, if he comes to power.

Claire: Changing the subject a little bit, what should we make of these stories about Nord Stream? Is there anything to them? I don’t think we know what actually happened. Mr. Pancevski of the Wall Street Journal had a scoop, reported a thesis on what happened. I don’t believe that is the case. I still think that the Russians did this. I don't think that the sitting ambassador to the United Kingdom of Ukraine, the former head of the armed services of Ukraine, did this, that they felt they could get away with this. I don’t believe that the Ukrainians did this. But the Germans do now, and they asked for extradition of a Ukrainian serviceman, intelligence agent, which the Polish president and prime minister denied. I don’t know if you saw Donald Tusk’s tweet from yesterday. Donald Tusk’s excellent tweet was: “To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2, the only thing you should do today about it is apologize and keep quiet.” The Poles are neither extraditing people nor are they backing down from their narrative. The prime minister of Poland didn’t necessarily need to tweet that himself, but he did.

Claire: Okay, back to Kursk. I’m trying to understand the Ukrainian endgame here, what they’re hoping for.

Vladislav: The endgame is the collapse of the Russian Federation and Putin being in The Hague, that’s the best case outcome. But there is a hierarchy of outcomes, right? They are not telegraphing what their endgame is. So we can speculate and I can give you all sorts of very clever answers and I can go through different outcomes from best to worst. But ultimately, no one knows yet because the Ukrainians are keeping their cards very tight to their chest.

Claire: I don’t know if you saw it: I responded to something that Garry Kasparov said yesterday on Twitter, where he was stating that the only possible explanation or at least one possible explanation that he favored for the Biden administration’s timidity and caution was they had some kind of backroom deal with Russia. And I responded that I just didn’t think that was the conclusion to which Occam’s razor would lead you. I think the Biden administration is just an exceptionally timid administration when it comes to foreign policy. What do you think?

Vladislav: I agree with you. I think he was just mouthing off on Twitter. That’s just how Russian elites talk at the bar.

Claire: How are Americans reacting to this? Are they even hearing the news? Because all I find in the US news, anytime I look, is the election. I never find any news of this.

Vladislav: I’m hoping that my reporting will have a sobering effect.

Claire: Why sobering?

Vladislav: Is it good that American allies are ignoring us?

Claire: Who are you hoping to sober?

Vladislav: I’m hoping to sober up large swaths of the American public who should understand that American allies are just ignoring American foreign policy edicts because they’re stupid. I’d like to sober up the National Security Council, but they’re going to be out in a couple of months anyway. They could do a lot of damage in those couple of months. It’s the American public that should be sobered up, American elites.

Claire: I’m not sure they’re going to take that message from it.

Vladislav: Really?

Claire: Yeah.

Vladislav: What would they take from this?

Claire: It depends where they’re already ideologically inclined. Someone like, in worst case scenario, David Sacks is going to say, “Look, these Ukrainians are risking nuclear war without our permission, using our weapons.”

Vladislav: Right.

Claire: And someone who’s pro-Ukraine is going to say, “Good for the Ukrainians,” but it doesn’t necessarily mean you think a different way than the way you already think. Except the one thing I take away from it is that it’s an incredibly dangerous situation to have the world wondering whether the President is compos mentis or paying attention to anything

Vladislav: Yeah, it is audacious, and it’s taking advantage of the fact that there’s a gentleman in the White House who should not be in the White House. If you’re actually a proceduralist, just resign. He should not have been president for already two years or 18 months, obviously, depending on how long he’s been this out of it.

Claire: It should lead the White House to be on the phone with people who can communicate to our adversaries that there’s enough intelligence at the top of the food chain in the US that we would notice if they tried to do something.

Vladislav: If our allies are going against our will, why won’t China or Iran?

Claire: Exactly, exactly. But they seem to be doing a reasonably good job somehow of deterring Hezbollah in Iran right now.

Vladislav: They don’t actually want a full-on war because that would be very bloody for everybody. I don’t think that either the Ayatollahs, having been embarrassed not being able to protect their own guests, nor the Hezbollah brass actually want a full-on war right now. So, you know, when the Americans bring in their aircraft carriers into the Gulf and into the—

Claire: That’s exactly what I mean. They don’t want to go to war because they’d be up against us. So we must have convinced them that we would be serious about using those aircraft carriers.

Vladislav: It’s interesting that we’ve been able to constrain them, but maybe it wouldn’t even take that much to constrain them. Maybe they just don’t want a full-on war with the Israelis. I wouldn’t if I was them.

Claire: All right. Anything else you would like to say about this remarkable story?

Vladislav: I believe this is an opportunity for course correction in Washington, DC. I think they should stop constraining American allies.

Claire: We should actually support our allies instead of indulging in this pathological fear of escalation.

Vladislav: Correct. Correct. So thank you, my dear Claire. I will see you in a couple of weeks in Paris.

Claire: Are you going to be here?

Vladislav: I’m passing through in a couple of weeks on the way to Tunisia, on the way back to Ukraine.

Claire: Where are you going in Tunisia and why?

Vladislav: I’m going to a Berber Jewish wedding in Djerba.

Claire: Oh, how nice.

Vladislav: Yes. I’m taking my mother to the Middle East. Her last vacation to Israel on October 5th of ‘23, where she went down to visit her relations in Ashkelon and got on a bus on the morning of October 7th in Sderot, did not go so well.

Claire: Yeah, no kidding.

Vladislav: She randomly survived an attack on her bus. She got off the bus, and 30 minutes later, all other 15 people on the bus except the bus driver were executed. Okay. Thank you, Claire. I’ll see you in a bit.

Claire: Thanks very much.

Vladislav: Bye-bye.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

UPDATE: Some of you didn’t care for the sound effects, so here’s a version without them:

Since I have a philosopher in the family, I thought you might enjoy hearing a conversation with my father about what it means that we’ve built machines that can think and what we might learn from them about what it means to be human.

We discuss the way Large Language Models have altered our understanding of natural languages and learning algorithms, and the possibility that theoretical science may be obsolete: Perhaps it’s really data all the way down.

We discuss Chomsky and Skinner, human cognition, stimulus-response models, and the parallels—if any—between biological and artificial intelligence.

We also talk about the existential risks of AI, whether humans will remain the dominant species on this planet, and the broader implications for human knowledge. My father also reflects on the historical and sociological aspects of scientific innovation and the backgrounds of the key contributors to AI development.

I took the opportunity to practice my podcast production skills. I experimented with a few programs I’d never used before. If the sound effects strike you as peculiar, it’s because I couldn’t quite get them to do what I wanted, but also felt I’d devoted far too much time to trying to insert the sound of a flying bird at just right point and could no longer justify the effort. Let me know what you think: Should I keep trying to master the skill of professional podcast production? Or should I just throw the raw files on your plate from now on and say, “Eat. It’s what’s for dinner?”

I’m really unsure. Everyone tells me that journalists these days must have podcast and video editing skills, but acquiring them has proven awfully time consuming. On the other hand, I think probably I only have to learn once, and having learned, it won’t take nearly so much time.

Then again, I could just wait another year and have an LLM do it for me.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Russia has been hard at work kicking the United States out of Africa. It’s all but chased out France, too. But anyone who imagines Russia to be a kinder, gentler superpower is out of his mind.

The investigative journalist Philip Obaji has been following the activities of the Wagner group in Africa for years. He recently spent the months investigating human rights abuses by Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic, where he was abducted and tortured, only narrowly escaping alive.

His reports of the way Russian mercenaries are behaving in Africa won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been studying their behavior in Ukraine. Or Syria, for that matter, or Chechnya. It appears the Russians have gone full Mr. Kurtz, mass-murdering and raping everyone in their path with impunity, hauling off the gold and diamonds from the mines, and selling them on the black market. This is how Russia manages to sustain itself despite the West’s sanctions. Their motto, writes the Sentry, is “‘leave no trace’—in other words, kill everyone, including women and children.”

Because there’s so little journalism from Africa, this story is apt to be insufficiently appreciated in Western capitals. But unless you understand the African dimension of Russia’s war, you can’t understand what’s really happening and what’s at stake in Ukraine. Or vice-versa. When Ukrainians say they’re the victims of an unreconstructed colonial power, they’re absolutely right. The crimes Russia is now committing are exactly the ones for which France and the UK are incessantly apologizing. But neither France nor the UK (and certainly not the US) are committing these crimes right now. Russia is.

We discuss Philip’s very brave reporting on the Russian Wagner Group’s activities in CAR, his experiences of tracking them throughout Africa, and other major stories he follows. I hope he’ll come back to talk about some of the other stories he’s covered.

For those of you in a hurry, there’s a full transcript below.

Articles by Philip Obaji

* “Russians blindfolded us and made us dig mass graves to cover up their crimes.”Russian mercenaries dragged young men out of their homes and forced them to hide the evidence of a massacre of their friends and neighbors.

* Why Putin’s private army ordered soldiers to torture me. The Daily Beast correspondent Philip Obaji Jr. was abducted and beaten by soldiers while reporting on wrongdoing by the Wagner Group.

* Twins, 17: We were drugged and raped by Putin’s private army. A dozen girls have told The Daily Beast that they were kidnapped and sexually abused by Russian paramilitaries.

* Putin’s private army accused of sickening new massacre. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin may be dead, but witnesses say Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic slaughtered dozens of people to secure access to a gold mine.

* Putin’s private army filmed sex assault victims in Mali. Four witnesses describe their horrific ordeal at the hands of Russian mercenaries given a free pass by Putin’s regime.

* Putin’s private army accused of most heinous massacre yet. Witnesses in the Central African Republic are pointing a finger at the Wagner Group over a series of gruesome killings that allegedly involved disemboweling several women.

And more here.

Further reading

* All eyes on Wagner: Monitoring Wagner's activities across the globe

* Bois Rouge: How the Central African Republic gave away its forest to the private military group Wagner. Because of the inefficiency of the timber controls in Europe, Wagner conflict timber cannot be stopped from reaching European clients, despite existing sanctions.

* Architects of terror: The Wagner Group’s blueprint for state capture in the Central African Republic

Transcript

Claire: Hi, it’s Claire Berlinski, and you’re here in the Elephant Cage with Philip Obaji, an extremely interesting Nigerian journalist who has had some remarkable experiences in the Central African Republic, which is why I’ve invited him to speak to us today. Philip, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Philip: So I live in Abuja, that’s the capital of Nigeria, and I have been a contributor at The Daily Beast, a news website based in New York. I have covered war, counter insurgency, and the activities of jihadist groups in Western Central Africa for The Daily Beast since 2015. In the last couple of years, I have focused my reporting on these issues, almost entirely on the activities of the Russian Wagner Group, whose mercenaries have spread themselves across Western and Central Africa.

Claire: It’s a huge story, which is getting so much less attention than it deserves. And certainly it won’t get any attention in the US right now because of the election. Nothing’s getting any attention. I wanted to ask how you became interested in the Central African Republic.

Philip: So in, 2018, three Russian journalists traveled from Russia to the Central African Republic to investigate the activities of the Wagner Group. At the time, not many people had heard about the Wagner Group. The government of the Central African Republic had just reached an agreement with the Russian Federation for the supply of arms and private military instructors to the Central African Republic. And the Russian Federation had sent a group of so-called military instructors, as the Russians like to refer to Wagner mercenaries. So these three journalists went to the country to look into the activities of the group. But sadly, they were killed somewhere around Sibut, in the central part of the country. And the journalists were close friends of one of my colleagues, Anna Nemsova, at the Daily Beast. And my then-editor , Christopher Dickey—

Claire: —You knew Christopher? We miss him so much here.

Philip: Exactly. He was my editor, yeah. Chris asked that I look into what really happened with these three journalists. And I started to make phone calls to contacts in the Central African Republic. And then I found that there was something interesting about this group called Wagner. So, since then, I took it upon myself to continue where the three late journalists stopped, to know exactly what these Russians were up to, and then how to report on the activities.

Claire: Who killed them?

Philip: It’s still not known exactly who killed them. The investigations by the Central African government didn’t come up with any clear reports. So the government believes that there were local rebel gun men who assassinated the journalists, but many accusing fingers still point at the direction of the Russians, the Russian Wagner group.

Claire: It wouldn’t be a surprise, but there are a lot of candidates as I understand it. Perhaps you’d start by giving our listeners a bit of an introduction to the Central African Republic, because it’s probably not a country they’re very familiar with.

Philip: That’s correct. Even here in Africa, not many people are really conversant with the country. So, it’s a small country in terms of population in the central part of Africa. It borders Cameroon to the West and the Sudan to the East. And it’s a very impoverished country. And although it’s very rich in gold and diamond resources, much of its wealth has been plundered by its leaders. The country has been under a civil war since 2013, when Christian militias and Muslim rebels, fought against each other. And soon after the civil war began, the UN imposed an arms embargo on the Central African Republic.

So an election was held in 2016 that ushered in the current president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra. Unfortunately for the new president, he inherited a country that was pretty much in the hands of rebels and other militia groups. Only the capital, Bangui, was under government control at the time he took office in 2016.

So he had only one option, to ask the international community for help. But he knew it would be difficult to come by, and so he ran to Russia, first, to get the Russians to ensure that the UN Security Council lifted the arms embargo, second, to get Russian military instructors in the country to provide training and even arms to fight against the rebels that were almost overrunning the capital, Bangui.

Claire: Two questions, excuse me for interrupting, but I just want to make sure I understand the story. The rebels, you said, are Christians and Muslims, are they fighting each other? Or are there other issues involved?

Philip: No, they’re fighting each other for control of power. It’s a country divided into Christians mostly in the south, and then Muslims predominantly in the north.

Claire: So did they live peacefully before the Civil War erupted, or was there some demographic change?

Philip: There were always some little pockets of conflicts in the country. But it became worse after Muslims defeated the Christian president

Claire: Which side does the government support?

Philip: The government supports no side, because, as we speak currently, the rebel groups have all somewhat come together to fight against the government. So it’s more or less about the control of resources right now, because these militia groups are seeking control of gold and diamond mines, and then the sale of gold and diamonds.

Claire: Is it a conflict between Christians and Muslims, or are they allied in some places on the same side?

Philip: In the beginning, it was a conflict between Christians and Muslims, but now a lot of them have come together to fight against the current government. Because they want to control resources.

Claire: Does the current government support one side over the other?

Philip: Not really, that’s not really the case. And so much has changed since the Russians came on board because right now, you have gold mines in the country that in the past were controlled by Christian rebels or Muslim rebels or Christian militiamen. But now, we have a situation where the Russians are targeting every gold miner, every artisanal miner, and every armed group just to take complete control of this.

Claire: What was France’s role in this? Because I know they were involved.

Philip: Yes, France’s role was more or less, initially, it’s supposed to be like a peacekeeping role where they try to protect the local population from attacks by, any of the armed groups. That was why they got involved in the first place.

Claire: And as I understand it, there was a massive information operation sponsored by Russia against France/

Philip: Yes. So much of this information targeted the French troops. That went on for a long time.

Claire: And this has been a Wagner pattern throughout Africa.

Philip: You’re correct. We’re still seeing such campaigns, especially in West Africa, where the local media is paid to spread disinformation targeted at not just France, but the West in general. There are many people who are susceptible to this, and it’s having an effect. In many ways, in many countries, you go to Niger, you go to Togo, Burkina Faso, you meet a lot of people who will tell you what they read or what they heard, which—based on what some of us have investigated—are clear disinformation sponsored by the Russians.

Claire: So the article that got my attention today, which is why I invited you on the podcast, was about some of the real atrocities that Russia has been committing in CAR, and also I know of others in Africa. And I think this is a neglected story. Have you found that people are paying attention to your reporting?

Philip: Oh, if you look at social media, my post on Twitter, you’ll find thousands of retweets and likes. And I’m having a lot of people reach out to me, to collaborate. Since last year, I have received numerous phone calls from many Western outlets, CBS, NBC in the US and then, in the Gulf region, Al Jazeera and the rest. So there was some bit of attention from late 2022 to early last year, obviously, because Wagner was so much involved in the war in Ukraine, so many people wanted to know. Many outlets didn’t know exactly how this group operated in Africa. Keeping in mind that many of the mercenaries that were active in Ukraine were pulled from Africa. So a lot begun to change after the death of the Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. It didn’t seem like Wagner was so much involved, or the old elements of Wagner were so much involved in Ukraine. So there’s little attention paid to what the Russians were doing in Africa. But I’m actually very glad that of late I’m seeing a lot more interest, particularly amongst Ukrainians and some think tank groups who are focused on Russian activities here in Africa.

Claire: Yeah. Now that Prigozhin is gone, is Wagner answering directly to Putin?

Philip: Now they are having to take instructions from the Russian Ministry of Defense, which has taken over the operations of Russian paramilitaries in Africa.

Claire: The pattern is extremely important. We have to look at Russia in Syria and in Africa to understand that Ukraine is not an isolated story. It’s a global story. And this is incredibly important to understand, because certainly, many people who are susceptible to Putin’s propaganda in the West don't appreciate this and believe that this is some Eastern European conflict. It’s not. It’s a global conflict. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about what you learned in Central African Republic about Russia’s activities?

Philip: First of all, the Russians have been able to take almost full control of the security apparatus in the country. You have a national security advisor to the president of the Central African Republic who is Russian. You have the communications advisor to the president who is also Russian. And you have dozens of Russian paramilitaries training the Central African Republic Armed Forces.

Claire: How many Russians are there in total?

Philip: I can’t say for now how many there are, but in the beginning there were—at some point before they were in Ukraine—there were up to 2,000 mercenaries. And in some of the reporting I did in 2022, about 500 were pulled out of the Central African Republic to Ukraine. But I do also know that some were also brought from Russia to the Central African Republic within that period, so it's hard to tell exactly how many there are, but I want to believe there are more than a thousand still in the country.

Claire: And based on your knowledge, how many would you guess are in Africa generally?

Philip: That’s difficult to tell. The Russians are most active in the Central African Republic and in Mali. We may be looking at some 1,000-something troops, or maybe two, in the continent. I don’t know for sure about Libya. Because I haven’t covered Libya so much. I have focused a lot on Western Central Africa, but I know that they have been active in Libya for some time now. But in terms of numbers, it’s difficult to tell, in Libya. But we’re looking at over a thousand troops, maybe up to 2,000, if you put together what we’ve seen in Mali and in the Central African Republic. So that’s a rough estimate. It may be a little less than that.

Claire: They’re getting a lot of bang for the buck, then, per troop. They’ve been incredibly effective with such a small force.

Philip: That’s correct. That’s because oftentimes they work closely with the local forces. So you could have Russian paramilitaries storming a particular community in Central Africa, or even in Mali, with hundreds of local troops.

Claire: When they arrive, they immediately target the natural resources. And they have absolutely no concern at all for the rights of any of the people they encounter.

Philip: That’s exactly what we have seen them do and what we’ve heard them do. And the situation now is, when the Russians first got involved, even before they sent troops on the ground in the Central African Republic, they had reached an understanding with the government to take control of the gold and diamond mines. But the problem they face is that all these mines are situated outside of Bangui, the capital. And they have been in recent years under the control of armed groups. So you just cannot go there and then take over these mines.

Claire: Why did the government agree to this? What are they getting out of it?

Philip: Basically what they wanted is control of the capital. When the Russians came, only Bangui was under government control, and even like that, Bangui was fragile. It was only a matter of time before it fell to these rebels. So that’s the game. So what they fear now is that if the Russians leave, they could face bigger problems in terms of control. And also with resources, too, because they didn’t have access to the mines.

Claire: They made a very short-term deal.

Philip: That’s correct. May not have been so short-term, but they made a deal.

Claire: And when they extract diamonds and other resources from the mines, is that staying in their hands, or is it going back to the Kremlin?

Philip: I did an investigation last year about where some of this gold gets to. Sometimes gold is sold in the Middle East. And even when Russia was under sanctions by the US and EU, they still found a way to sell their gold in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. So in the black market.

Claire: It’s a huge source of cash.

Philip: Yes, for the Kremlin, yes, it is. and no one even knows.

Claire: How much would you guess they’re managing to extract from just the Central African Republic, first, and then from Africa generally, including Sudan?

Philip: We may never know exactly how much, because, this information is opaque. This deal is done in the dark. And I have seen some outlets report about maybe over 500 billion dollars, or even above the billion dollars .

Claire: For a year?

Philip: Yeah, in the period of maybe around the year or so. But I don’t know. These are allegations, or these are information, that I haven’t verified yet. Because it’s so difficult when you don’t have access to documents.

Claire: Of course. But even if that’s ballpark correct, it explains how Russia is managing to survive the sanctions.

Philip: That’s correct. That’s correct. And they have many middlemen who are helping to evade the sanctions, for the good of the Kremlin .

Claire: Aren’t Africans enraged by this?

Philip: If you look at West Africa, for example, you find in the Francophone Africa, over the years, the French have been present in this region. And even after decolonization in the 1950s and 60s, the French never really left. You still have a situation where the currency is still being controlled in the French central bank. So people are believing in the region that France has got some level of manipulation or whatever. And that the involvement with France has not yielded any results. And to make matters worse, in some of the fragile countries that have been in conflict where there’s been French troops, we haven’t seen any kind of tangible results. Rather, things have got even worse. In Burkina Faso, in Mali, where the French independently came in to help fight against jihadists, these countries have even become worse in terms of the number of attacks and incursion by jihadist groups. It is the belief, generally, that France, rather than help[ing], exploited these Francophone nations. And the Russians, too, haven't really helped in terms of the kind of, disinformation that they have spread across the region.

Claire: So people don’t yet really understand the role that Wagner is playing.

Philip: Wagner is relatively new. So they don’t really get exactly what’s going on. So for some of them, it’s “Let’s give Russia a chance, maybe they become better than France,” but we’re seeing something different. Another problem, you look at the Central African Republic, for example, internet penetration is so low. If you live away from Bangui, you don’t really get to hear too much about what’s happening. And it is only recently that with the increase in attacks on artisanal miners by the Russians, that people are getting to understand exactly what the Russians are really up to in the Central African Republic. Not many people in West Africa really have so much to say against the Russians, because they’re relatively new in these countries. And they haven’t really done too much.

Claire: It’s pure old fashioned European colonialism without any disguise.

Philip: You put it very well. Yes, you put it very well. That’s what’s going on.

Claire: So that’s what surprises me, that people aren’t immediately able to recognize it. Have they provided any kind of security in any place they’ve been?

Philip: If I have to give credit to the Russians in Bangui, they’ve done it, in terms of what the government would like, like I said earlier, if they were not there, I can tell you for sure that Bangui would have been overridden by these men. And we will have had a situation where you have a rebel as the ruler of the country. So the Russians actually, give them credit for what they did in Bangui to keep Bangui away from the rebels.

Claire: And what about in other places they’ve been? Is there anywhere where they’ve made a significant contribution to local security? Because the jihadi issue in the Sahel has been terrible. Have they contributed in any way to reestablishing security?

Philip: When it comes to combat, they’re only active in West Africa, in fact, in the Sahel, they’re only active in Mali in terms of combat. And I can’t really say that we’ve seen so much of gains already. What happened at the weekend when dozens of Russian paramilitaries were killed by a Tuareg rebel coalition, that shows that, as much as the government will say, “There’s some gains with the Russians being involved,” it’s not exactly what we’re seeing. When you have so many troops and so many Russians being killed by rebel fighters, just at the weekend, that shows that there’s still a hot war going on there .

Claire: Tell me a little bit about the kinds of human rights outrages you’ve uncovered. I think it’s really important for people to understand just how global this is.

Philip: Yes, it’s enormous, horrifying, troubling—what have you. Now, you go to many parts of Central African Republic especially in the north, you will find at least one person who would have had an experience with the Russians, whether it’s a woman being raped on her own farm, or young girls being sexually assaulted in their own compounds or young artisanal miners who are captured and brutalized by the Russians. So it happens in many forms. Most times the Russians just show up unannounced in mining communities, and just begin to open fire on anyone they see, because they have this impression that every single person in this community is a friend or an accomplice to the rebels.

So they’re opening fire, killing people, arresting some others. And then torturing them to get them to confess to being members of an armed group. So it’s really torturous for the local population. And it’s so sad that even women and girls, some as young as 13, they’re getting raped, abused by the Russians. I did an investigation last year about young girls who were either taken from their compounds or rescued from rebels and then taken to the military base in Bouar. Bouar is the major town in the northwestern part of the Central African Republic. And in this military base, the Russians drug them, rape them, and administer contraceptives to these girls. There should have been dozens of girls who were victims of this Russian abuse in Bouar.

Claire: Administering contraceptives suggests that this is a policy, not just something that happened with troops who are out of control. It suggests that they just consider these girls and women a bonus.

Philip: Yes, you can put it that way because they’re having unprotected sex with these girls and they don’t want a situation where someone comes out the next day and say “I’m pregnant and I’m giving birth to a half caste baby.” It’d be difficult to deny.

Claire: It’s just appalling.

Philip: Yeah, it’s really appalling. So it becomes difficult to deny that they are the ones who are responsible. So the contraceptives are made to ensure that they don’t get pregnant.

Claire: And from the articles you wrote, these girls are just traumatized beyond words.

Philip: Yeah, beyond even our imagination. Because what they have faced—with not just one rapist, serial men who’ve raped them. So it’s really appalling. Horrific.

Claire: Horrific. It must be really hard to report on that.

Philip: Yes. Yes, the last reporting, I faced the most difficult time in my career as a journalist, because, one, myself, I was attacked, tortured by local forces who were acting on the orders of the Russians. And then also I still had to go, even with my injuries, go meet these young girls and listen to their stories. And in between, I was held for hours by rebels who thought I was a spy, so it was really very difficult, situation for me. But I have traveled too far and suffered too much to just give up, so I had to just focus and then complete the job.

Claire: Where else besides the Central African Republic have you spent a lot of time reporting in Africa?

Philip: Obviously in Nigeria, I started reporting in 2015 on the activities of jihadist groups, Boko Haram and Ansaru groups linked to both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. I also reported in Cameroon on the Anglophone crisis, in Cameroon. And then, yes I have reported in Niger too, on the battle with Mali.

Claire: I’m interested in all of this and I wonder if I could have you on the podcast again to discuss these stories, because these are all stories—in fact, Africa generally just gets so little coverage in the West. And it’s an absurd situation, because obviously this is the most demographically important part of the world, and it has so few journalists in it.

Philip: That’s correct. And, it’s even very difficult for we local indigenous journalists here, because the funding is so poor. Oftentimes you have to depend on one fellowship to be able to do these things. When I started this, I was spending my own money on this trip just to tell the story.

Claire: When you think about how many journalists are reporting on Donald Trump’s every twitch-- and what you’re doing is the real thing, it’s what journalists ought to be doing, and there are so few of you. It’s so important to fund work like this.

Philip: That’s correct. That's correct.

Claire: I will tell my readers that they should fund you.

Philip: Yeah, that would be great because it’s very hard, I have to tell you. And my trip to Central Africa was made possible by the International Center for Journalists, who just thought they need to hear something about what’s going on. Luckily for me, I’ve got the support of the Daily Beast. When it comes to filing stories, I always get the opportunity to file stories with Daily Beast. But in terms of getting funding for these projects, it’s difficult for a project like this. And I still have a lot to report on. I haven’t really touched on Mali that much, and that’s what I’d like to look at, going forward. But it’s very difficult to find the funds to do.

Claire: Do you speak French?

Philip: My French is poor, so I have to rely on interpreters, which is even more expensive for me, because I have to get somebody who's interpreting, either it’s French or the local language. I’m studying, I’m going back to school to improve on my French.

Claire: The French media publishes a lot more about Africa than the English language media. So that would be a good market for you if you do learn.

Philip: Yeah, you’re correct about the French media publishing more than English. Yes, you're correct.

Claire: My listeners, at least half of them will be American, and it’s an election year. So what do you think the United States should be doing, if anything, to counter what Wagner is doing in Africa?

Philip: In an election year, a lot of focus will be on what's going on in the US. But there’s something else that the Americans should not overlook, is the fact that Russia is using Africa to try to experiment a new pattern of disinformation, and that could also be deployed ahead of the US presidential elections. We all know that in the past, the IRA, that’s Internet Research Agency, founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, deployed, was used, as a conduit and as a source for disinformation targeted at the Hillary Clinton campaign. So that could return.

Claire: When you say they’re experimenting, have you noticed any experiments that we should be particularly aware of?

Philip: I have seen a pattern of disinformation in all kinds. Now, they’re not just talking about the fact that France or the West is bad and Russia is good. Before now, we were seeing this information targeted completely on France. But now, in the Central African Republic, and it’s not just in Central Africa, but across the West African region, we’re seeing more paid stories targeted at the US, saying the US is bad for central Africa, US investors are killing people quietly, and they’re ripping off Africa and what have you. And when they say US, they’re referring to the current, Joe Biden administration.

Claire: So they pretty much chased us out of Africa. We were forced to leave Niger.

Philip: That’s correct.

Claire: This is a big problem to lose your access to a whole continent. I wonder if there’s something that we could or should be doing to counter Wagner’s influence.

Philip: I think the best side of it will be on countering Wagner disinformation. I remember talking about this a long time ago, how the EU in particular must come together to counter this because we’re even hearing rumors that Wagner has been helping migrants cross across the Mediterranean from Libya getting into Europe. And in countries where the EU had tried to spend money to stem this migrant flow, the Russians now have a stronghold on the government in these countries. And whatever narrative is been pushed out there in the media in Western Central Africa is targeted at the West in general. So maybe France and the EU will have to look at sponsoring some fact checking, in terms of the information people hear out there, because it’s a lot. It’s enormous. I have done some investigation about this disinformation, here in West and Central Africa, and I can tell you that the major media outlets have been used as channels for this disinformation.

Claire: I didn’t see that article.

Philip: No. I haven’t written about it yet, but I did the documentary for Al Jazeera last year, going to be next month in August, it’s on disinformation. So that will tell you a lot about what’s going on. It’s a big report coming up.

Claire: Good. If you were to hear a foreign policy statement coming from a presidential candidate now, what would you be looking for to see if they understood the problem and see if they had any intelligent thoughts about it? If you get to interview Kamala Harris, for example, next week, what would you ask her?

Philip: I would want to know what plans they have for Africa in terms of collaborations and investments. Russia and China have been promising investments in infrastructure, investments in training. And this is where the local governments have been able to fully embrace Russia or China. Because of what they’re promising, even though some of us do know that some of these promises and some of these investments are not so much in the interest of the people , especially looking long term. But the fact that African governments are able to get some bit of monies now, somehow it’s having an effect.

Claire: Chinese investments are real, aren’t they? Russia’s not investing as far as I know, but China is making massive investments.

Philip: Yes. China is invested in Africa, but again, people are already skeptical about these kinds of investments because they need loans. And with conditions that are very difficult for the local government to meet. But they accept it now because we deal with a lot of corruption in governments, especially across Africa, because they want to see what they can gain now. And then if you’re looking at the future, again, the Russians have come with promises to invest in central Africa, so-called investing because you have Russian companies linked to Wagner that have set up in the central African Republic and are doing business. Some are even hiring the locals.

Claire: What are they doing? What kind of companies are they?

Philip: The companies that work on gold mining and also on the sale of gold. We have similar companies in Sudan that was set up by Wagner.

Claire: So nothing that would actually grow the economy.

Philip: Basically, something that will fulfill them in future. It looked like they’re supposed to be paying taxes to the government. I haven’t seen any records that they’re paying these taxes to the government, but they are meant to be companies paying taxes and employing locals .

Claire: And have you been following Wagner’s role in Sudan?

Philip: Right now, because of the war, we don’t really know exactly what’s going on. But we knew that up north, before now, there was a Wagner company involved in the sale, in fact, the processing and sale of gold. But since the war begun, it’s really hard to tell exactly, how far, how much is going on there.

Claire: It’s amazing that the war in Sudan is receiving so little attention internationally.

Philip: It’s sad, really sad. Yeah. Really sad.

Claire: And it’s just, an unspeakably brutal war.

Philip: Indeed. You have many people dying from both sides and even more civilians dying than even when the war started. So it’s really sad that we’re not hearing, even here in Nigeria, where I live, people hardly talk about the war, or even the coverage is not so much there.

Claire: One of the reasons, as you said, is because there are no journalists there. And it’s part of the larger problem of the disappearance of foreign news coverage. So people are barely aware that this cataclysmic conflict is underway there.

Philip: Yeah, you’re correct. You put it well. And I want to see more because in Africa, we need help in terms of investments in media and investments in journalists. The media in Africa don’t have the resources to do in-depth, long term, long-form reporting. So we oftentimes rely on Western outlets for help. The one problem I’ve had in the past is the fact that, oftentimes, some Western outlets will send a correspondent from Europe or from the US to come to Africa, then spend a few minutes doing interviews, and then they go back and then report on a situation that really doesn’t tell the exact story.

Claire: That’s a terrible way to do it. And I’ve seen the effects of it. They’re so inaccurate. We need to fund local journalists, not parachute someone in who’s never been there before and who tries to understand the situation in three weeks.

Philip: Yeah. That’s true. That is very true. It doesn’t tell the true story, it doesn’t show the holistic picture of what’s going on there.

Claire: There should be a pan-African answer to Al Jazeera—a regional, very large professional news gathering organization. And I wonder who would fund something like that. Is that something the Nigerian government might want to sponsor?

Philip: The Nigerian government hasn’t shown so much of desire, even interest in funding the media. Maybe for fear that journalists will become equipped to go after the government itself,

Claire: Al Jazeera doesn’t report on Qatar, but they do good reporting in a lot of the world.

Philip: So you see, when government is funding you, you just cannot focus on the same government where you are getting resources from.

Claire: No, but it would be a really good resource for people who are doing work in other countries in Africa.

Philip: I know that the Global Investigative Journalism Network and I’m part of that network, we have come together and then we share some of our work together. And even ideas we share together. But the problem will always remain with the funding.

Claire: Yeah. All right. I would love to have you on the podcast again to talk about some of these issues.

Philip: I’ll be delighted. Yeah.

Claire: Okay. That would be great. I’ll put links to your stories in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us. And I’m very glad you’re okay because that was a terrifying experience.

Philip: Yeah, the pleasure is mine. I’m lucky.

Claire: All right. Speak soon

Philip: Bye bye. Have a good day.

Claire: Bye bye.

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Claire Berlinski and Judith Levy discuss the escalating tensions in northern Israel with Hezbollah, recent incursions, and the devastating impact of ongoing conflict. They explore the strategic and military implications for Israel, the psychological toll on citizens, and the political maneuvers of Israeli leadership.

Here’s an AI summary of the podcast:

Join Clare Berlinski and Judith Levy in this episode of The Elephant Cage as they discuss the Biden administration's inability to understand deterrence and escalation dominance. They provide updates on the Hamas deal, analyze the current geopolitical landscape, and critique the American foreign policy approach towards Russia and Iran. The discussion also covers the implications of the Ukraine war, the role of NATO, and the morality of abducting Ukrainian children. Additionally, they explore the interconnectedness of global conflicts and the strategic failures of Western leadership.

* 00:00 Introduction and Greetings

* 00:18 Update on Hamas and the Biden Deal

* 01:36 Internal Political Dynamics in Israel

* 02:09 Reflections on D-Day and American Decline

* 03:24 Biden’s Misunderstanding of Deterrence

* 08:19 Potential Consequences of Russia’s Actions

* 12:33 NATO’s Future and Ukraine’s Admission

* 15:38 The Iranian Threat and American Response

* 19:59 Kidnapping of Ukrainian Children

* 23:54 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

(It’s not a bad summary. It’s accurate. That’s pretty much what we talk about. It just makes it sound kind of boring—which it isn’t. But for a non-human intelligence that’s pretty impressive. Honestly, most humans couldn’t do that anywhere near as well. )

I was very sad that the elephant-trumpet sound effect on the program I use to edit this seems to have disappeared in their new upgrade. I’ve written to them to register my distress. Try playing this while you listen:

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Show notes:

Who wants a two-state solution? Not Israelis or Palestinians.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Show notes:

Who wants a two-state solution? Not Israelis or Palestinians.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Show notes

Detectives urgently investigating what led to man’s fatal sword rampage.

Truly impressive scenes from Tbilisi: Over 100,000 people are protesting against the Russia-inspired foreign agents bill in the capital, with protests also occurring in other cities. Georgians are rallying to defend their country from becoming a Russian satellite state:

John adds: “Think we are on the verge of something really happening there, and at a time where Putin would struggle to respond.”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe