Where Is Vlad’s Mind?

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Jack here, flying solo and battling residual jet lag after my other flight this week—from Munich via London. While Robbie is technically on vacation, he’s keeping busy by texting us tips from A-listers on the double black diamond slopes out West.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: the radioactive fallout from Vladimir Putin’s annual speech, Nigeria’s expectation of a youth wave at the polls, and the Biden administration’s desire to sell more weapons to human rights-abiding countries.

If you would like to receive Situation Report in your inbox every Thursday, please sign up here.

Around this time last year, with Russia on the verge of sending more than 100,000 troops over the border into Ukraine, one question reigned supreme inside the Washington beltway: Was President Vladimir Putin, who had spent most of the pandemic ensconced in his fortress across football field-length tables from even his closest interlocutors, a rational actor?

Nearly a year after Putin greenlit the full-scale invasion, that question is burning hotter than ever in the minds of both American and European officials. “Everyone wants to know what’s going on with the Russians,” one senior U.S. official told SitRep on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference this past weekend. “We don’t know if it’s a bluff,” the official added, when asked what’s behind Putin’s ongoing threats of possible nuclear retaliation against both Ukraine and the West.

On Tuesday, at what is roughly Russia’s equivalent of the State of the Union, less than a day after U.S. President Joe Biden’s sojourn into Kyiv, Putin’s speech cast still more doubt on his decision-making abilities.

Choose your own adventure. Putin dropped some claims that would have registered as major whoppers on any lie-detector test. He insisted that Russia wasn’t at war with Ukraine, despite Western estimates of nearly 200,000 Russian casualties. Instead, he said Russia was trying to free the Ukrainian people from a neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv. (For the record: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and was elected with 73 percent of the vote in 2019.) Putin also said that the West sparked the war.

On guard. Saber-rattling seemed to be Putin’s goal on Tuesday night, and he used the speech to announce that the Kremlin was suspending participation in the New START nuclear accord, the last arms control pact left between the two nuclear-armed powers. (Read about the significance of that announcement in this explainer by FP’s Amy Mackinnon.)

Just a day earlier, during Biden’s trip, Russia reportedly carried out a failed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch test. To further underscore how far outside the arms control boundaries the Kremlin is right now, Russia plans to deploy new Sarmat ICBMs, capable of carrying multiple warheads to a target. (The weapons were first rolled out in 2018 after New START was first authorized.)

And Russia will continue deploying hypersonic missiles that can travel up to 10 times faster than the speed of sound—though some experts believe even the tiniest dink in their armor from an air particle might make those weapons not so fast and mighty.

Revanchist tendencies. Even with Russian troops still running into trouble in the Donbas, Putin is reportedly thinking about targets beyond Ukraine. Russia is hoping to take full control of Belarus by 2030, forming a so-called union state, Yahoo reported on Monday, based on leaked Kremlin strategy documents that experts believe are authentic.

Ukrainian officials are also preparing for a possible Russian sneak attack from Moldova, where the Kremlin has troops in the breakaway region of Transnistria. Moldova, which isn’t part of NATO and spends less than 1 percent of its GDP on defense, is using this moment to get serious about defense spending.

But Putin’s means might be outstripping his ends. Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group is now recruiting Central Asian migrants to fight in Ukraine, having run through hundreds—perhaps thousands—of troops recruited from Russian jails.

Vlad Face. Those who made the trek across Red Square to Moscow’s Gostiny Dvor—the old merchant court first built from brick in the 16th century—weren’t exactly thrilled by Putin’s oratory. Elvira Nabiullina, governor of Russia’s central bank and a private critic of Russia’s war in Ukraine, looked unimpressed. So did Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

Political will. Biden continues to have some political runway for sending more arms to Ukraine, at least for now. A new Morning Consult poll shows the U.S. public’s backing for Ukraine near all-time highs, with 48 percent of voters surveyed approving of Biden’s handling of the crisis.

Biden has tapped Mastercard’s former president and CEO, Ajay Banga, to serve as the next head of the World Bank. Among the bullets on Banga’s resume: Bringing Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken to India.

Austin Dahmer is now a defense policy advisor to Sen. Josh Hawley.

Former Reuters TV correspondent Nawied Jabarkhyl has joined APCO Worldwide as a director heading up international media relations.

Two new hires at the conservative Hudson Institute foreign-policy think tank: Former Afghan Ambassador to the United States Adela Raz is coming on as a visiting fellow, while Joshua Meservey will be a senior fellow, covering great-power competition in Africa, joining from the Heritage Foundation.

He doesn’t have a new job, but kudos to FP editor in chief Ravi Agrawal for getting perfect marks from Room Rater on his remote TV setup from the Munich Security Conference.

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Get out the vote. Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, has elections coming up this weekend, and millions of young first-time voters are expected to come out to support Labour Party candidate Peter Obi, who is … not actually that young. (Obi is 61.) Nigerians, dealing with widespread instability and inflation, are liking the former state governor’s unusual transparency about where his money is coming from.

Incentive structure. The Biden administration has rolled out a new conventional arms transfer policy. In an effort to signal the president’s support for budding democracies, the administration will make human rights a factor in U.S. weapons sales.

The move gives U.S. officials more leeway to cut off weapons sales if they deem the guns could be used for human rights abuses, or to facilitate genocide or crimes against humanity. No word yet on the reaction from the arms industry, which is seeing enormous profits after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or big weapons purchasers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Ukrainian servicemen walk on the road toward their base near the front line in the Donetsk region on Feb. 4, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

Friday, Feb. 24: Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine one year ago tomorrow. It will be a busy day for both friends and foes of the Kremlin: Chinese President Xi Jinping is set for a possible anniversary speech; the Group of 7 leaders will hold a virtual meeting with Zelensky expected to call in.

Saturday, Feb. 25: Nigeria will hold presidential and parliamentary elections (see above). Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz travels to India.

Tuesday, Feb. 28: The Finnish Parliament finally votes on joining NATO, nearly eight months after the 30-nation alliance signed the accession protocol for the long-neutral Nordic country.

“They asked me how many times I’ve been here. I had to count. It’s my eighth time. I’m looking for a passport.”

– U.S. President Joe Biden, who became the Obama administration’s unofficial envoy to Ukraine after Russia invaded Crimea, deadpans to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba during his visit to Kyiv on Monday that he’s already been to the country. A lot. 

Rail Force One. Biden had a comfy ride into Kyiv aboard a decked-out Ukrzaliznytsia train that Ukrainian officials nicknamed after the U.S. presidential aircraft call sign, but wartime rail chief Alexander Kamyshin was beside himself that he had to delay some of his passenger trains to make way for POTUS. Only 90 percent of Ukrainian trains arrived on time, which “was painful for me and my team,” Kamyshin tweeted.

With service like that, no wonder the Amtrak-ridin’ Biden—who’s probably been delayed more hours on American trains than you’ve been alive—is asking for Ukrainian citizenship.