RSN: Leonid Bershidsky | Putin and the Possibility of Defeat in Ukraine
18 September 22
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Russia’s hubris will deepen the psychological effects of its battlefield setbacks.
In a matter of days, Ukraine pushed the Russian troops out of the Kharkiv Region. This may not look like a major victory in terms of territory regained — some 2,500 square kilometers, or a little more by now, out of the 125,000 square kilometers Russia held in Ukraine before this week. Yet Ukrainian and Western jubilation is justified.
The Kharkiv region has historically been ruthless to hubris. As Russian forces were routed there in the last few days, many commentators recalled the disastrous 1942 push by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko against a smaller German force in the area, which deftly moved to cut off Moscow’s forces off from the north. Some 250,000 Soviet troops were taken prisoner. The fiasco opened the path for Hitler’s armies to reach Stalingrad, where they were only stopped at an enormous cost in human lives.
The current Russian setback, too, is strategically significant. The loss of the Kharkiv positions turns the goal of encircling Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region into a pipe dream: Russian troops can no longer press on from the north. The invading army retreated to avoid being blocked from supply lines and reinforcements. However, the Russians couldn’t avoid damage to their already low morale.
Putin’s soldiers are digging in on the eastern bank of the river Oskil, but the defensive positions lack depth, just as they did around Izyum. The Russian forces — including those in areas held by Russian proxies since 2014 — will be vulnerable to further Ukrainian counterattacks, which are expected now in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
These thrusts will seek to take advantage of what may prove to be Russia’s biggest mistake of the entire hubristic and fratricidal campaign. Since the retreat from Kyiv and northern Ukraine in April, the Russian command has used the fighting forces of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics as cannon fodder. By doing so, they have lost thousands of the only soldiers who had skin in Putin’s game: These fighting-age men were anti-Ukrainian by definition — and committed to combat as fiercely as Ukrainians themselves. Few Russian soldiers could match their determination. When Kyiv began its counterattack, the Luhansk and Donetsk fighters had been nearly eliminated by attrition.
Indeed, the positions in the Kharkiv region were manned by Russia’s regular military, fighting for cash: They folded without putting up much of a fight when Ukrainians pushed hard enough.
Now, the Luhansk People’s Republic, “apart from frontline areas, is probably empty of manpower,” tweeted Polish military analyst Konrad Muzyka, one of the most astute observers of the campaign. Fighting-age males were drafted in large numbers in the past few months, he said, meaning “there are no men to fight in Luhansk.”
To hold on to the bulk of the conquered territory, Russia urgently needs to shrink the front and bring in reserves. It’s going to be hard to do either fast enough to counter Ukraine’s momentum. Even a general mobilization would now come too late to prevent further defeats. The Russian far right has insisted from the start it would be necessary to win the war.
Now, even those locals who otherwise would have welcomed a Russian takeover will withhold their support. They will either lay low or aid Ukrainian guerillas. The loud assurances of many a Russian functionary since February that “Russia is here for good” ring hollow as the cars of fleeing collaborators line up on the border near Belgorod.
Further supplies of sophisticated Western weapons are now assured for Ukraine. Kyiv has proved it’s able to fight back and win, so there’s no reason for NATO to doubt the efficiency of its aid.
In Russia, meanwhile, an angry and aggrieved extreme nationalist community is rapidly turning into a threat to the regime. Since the start of the invasion, it’s been the only one allowed relatively free expression because it is staunchly pro-war. The narrative dominant on the far right on Telegram channels is now full of indignation over the incompetence of the corrupt military and political leadership. They are propagating a backstabbers theory focused on leaders of the “special military operation” who aren’t ethnic Russians —like Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is from Tuva near Mongolia — or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Given the ultranationalists’ high support in Russia’s all-powerful law enforcement agencies, it’s conceivable that discontent may be brewing among the very forces on which Putin has relied to hold on to power.
It’s too early to predict a military rout for the entire Russian force in Ukraine, let alone a regime collapse. But suddenly, those are glimmers of possibility thanks to what is essentially a local Ukrainian success. This is a consequence of the most fundamental flaw in the thinking behind Putin’s Ukraine campaign — if there was any thinking done at all amid all the imperialist emotion. Russia never took its opponent seriously, never even considered Ukraine a viable entity. So it never contemplated the possibility of defeat.
No plans were made for pessimistic scenarios — and none seem to exist today. In a war, the side that isn’t prepared for setbacks can come apart at the first signs of trouble; overconfidence and panic are opposite sides of the same coin. Russians went in without the will to win, but they were also not primed for the risk of losing. Any setback then becomes a catastrophic blow to national pride. This will rankle even if Russia manages to halt Ukraine’s current momentum. These factors could be the ingredients of a historic defeat.
Ukrainian officials said they had found 445 graves so far in the forest in the Kharkiv region. (photo: Alessio Mamo/Guardian UK)
Ukrainians in recaptured town where 445 graves have been uncovered tell of suffering during Russian occupation
Those on a break mostly stood with their spades and goggles, looking on at their colleagues from the state rescue services who were red in the face from the hard labour of tugging the bodies out of the graves and sweating from their blue plastic overalls.
In woods a few miles from the centre of Izium, the north-eastern Ukrainian town recaptured by Kyiv last weekend, hundreds of police detectives, prosecutors, forensic doctors and journalists gathered at the site of hundreds of burials revealed after the Russian retreat.
“We have found 445 graves here in this place alone,” said Oleksandr Filchakov, the chief prosecutor of the Kharkiv region that includes Izium. “Then, a few meters away, we found a big grave containing 17 Ukrainian soldiers buried together. Most of the civilians were buried individually.”
Locals say those being exhumed from the site were killed by Russian forces, who occupied the strategic city for six months, using it as a base for its assault on the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The rescue workers digging in the earth read out details of their finds to police and prosecutors, who took notes and filmed the process from above. People living nearby arrived with drawn faces to bear witness from afar.
Ukrainian authorities say there could be more grave sites and that their investigation into events in Izium under Russian occupation is just beginning.
Many of the graves were simply marked with numbers, not names and dates that could be used to identify the deceased. Tamara Volodymyrovna, the head of an Izium funeral home that operated throughout, said she was instructed by the occupying forces to write numbers instead of names and to record both in a journal. She said the new Russian administration did not provide the materials to make proper grave markings.
Out of those Volodymyrovna handled, she said at least 100 were killed in the spring during the Russian assault on Izium, most by Russian bombs during the first weeks. She said this included at least 20 children, some of whom died because they failed to reach their basements in time.
But Volodymyrovna had just one of what could be several journals containing the names of those who died during Russia’s occupation. “We had a journal and the volunteer [buriers] had a journal,” said Volodymyrovna. She said the police had taken hers and she knew the police had been in touch with the volunteers.
“It was a complete catastrophe,” said Volodymyrovna, describing how people buried bodies wherever they could during the heavy bombing which then had to be reburied.
Multiple people, including Volodymyrovna, said Moscow had captured the town through heavy bombardment that began in early March. “After that there was still shelling but people died more rarely,” she said.
The Guardian saw the body of one civilian being unearthed with a rope around its neck. Police at the scene said they also suspected torture.
Volodymyrovna said she did not know of torture victims but she, like everyone the Guardian spoke to in Izium, said she knew of former military people and their families being rounded up in the town. They were taken to unknown locations. Their fate, to date, remains a mystery.
“I knew that in the building where I lived there was one man who fought in the Donbas,” said Serhiy Shtanko, 33, who was witnessing the exhumation. He lived on the first floor of a block of flats that was split in two by a Russian bomb, which reportedly killed more than 40 people, many of whom were buried under the rubble.
“But in the end, when they came to search the flats, they kidnapped two other veterans who had fought in the Donbas that I was not aware of. I was shocked to see the amount of information that they gathered.”
Other townspeople suspected by Russian forces of pro-Ukrainian sentiments took their own lives after severe interrogation, she said.
“Maybe because they were tortured or beaten and couldn’t process it emotionally,” said Volodymyrovna.
She said not all the deaths in the town were handled by her. “We buried territorial defence and a few soldiers. The rest of the [Ukrainian] soldiers we didn’t bury because they didn’t allow us to. Where their bodies went, I don’t know,” she said.
Volodymyrovna said she prayed the Russians would not return. Izium has for centuries acted as the gateway to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and, from there, to the Black Sea. Before the war it had a population of 46,000.
Izium fell to Russian forces on 1 April and Moscow turned it into the main launching point for the Russian assault against the remaining Ukrainian troops in Donbas. Local authorities managed to evacuate part of the population but, according to officials, approximately 10,000 people remained trapped.
Some who had gathered to witness the exhumation came because their relatives were buried at the site, next to an existing cemetery.
Hrehoriy Pryhodty, 72, started to weep when recalling his wife, Luba, who was killed by a Russian bomb in the first week of March. “There hasn’t been and won’t be anyone like my Lubochka,” he said.
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a ceremony marking the start of the judicial year at the Supreme Court in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 22, 2021. (photo: Matias Delacroix/AP)
Maduro said on national television that he had accepted a request by Colombian President Gustavo Petro to take on the diplomatic role, adding that his socialist government was interested in fomenting peace, security and stability in Colombia and “throughout the continent.”
Previous peace talks between the Colombian government and rebel groups have included the participation of “guarantor nations” that have acted as observers of the negotiations and supported both sides with logistics.
Venezuela was a guarantor nation in a previous round of negotiations between Colombia and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, that began in 2016. But the Colombian government asked the Maduro administration to step down from that role in 2018, as political tensions increased between the countries. The following year Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia after its government participated in a U.S.-led effort to force Maduro out of office.
Petro has begun to normalize relations with Venezuela since he was elected earlier this year and became Colombia’s first leftist president.
Diplomatic relations have been re-established and the border between both nations will be reopened to cargo trucks later this month.
The National Liberation Army operates along both sides of the porous 1,500-mile long border between both nations. In a report published earlier this year, Human Rights Watch said that some division of Venezuela’s military had conducted joint operations with the National Liberation Army against another group of rebels operating within Venezuela, in order to obtain control of drug trafficking routes.
The Venezuelan government has denied claims that it supports the National Liberation Army.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in 2019. The leaders have worked together to prop up global oil prices. (photo: Yuri Kadobnov/NYT)
The two oil-producing countries have extended their partnership even as the United States and Europe have sought to punish and isolate Russia for invading Ukraine.
Then, over the summer, as the United States, Canada and several European countries cut oil imports from Russia, Saudi Arabia doubled the amount of fuel oil it was buying from Russia for its power plants, freeing up its own crude for export.
And, this month, Russia and Saudi Arabia steered the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allied producers to reduce output targets in an effort to prop up global oil prices, which were falling, a decision that should increase the oil profits of both nations.
Taken together, the moves represent a distinct Saudi tilt toward Moscow and away from the United States, which it has typically aligned itself with. The Saudi position falls short of an outright political alliance between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but the two leaders have established an arrangement that benefits both sides.
“Obviously, Saudi-Russian ties are deepening,” said Bill Richardson, a former U.S. energy secretary and ambassador to the United Nations.
By working more closely with Russia, the Saudis are effectively making it more difficult for the United States and the European Union to isolate Mr. Putin. As Europe gets ready to greatly reduce how much oil it imports from Russia, Saudi Arabia and countries like China and India are stepping in as buyers of last resort.
During the Cold War, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union were bitter enemies. Saudi leaders helped finance the insurgency against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But, in recent years, as hydraulic fracturing of shale fields has led to a boom in U.S. oil and natural gas production that undercuts the power of OPEC and other major oil producers like Russia, the two countries have come to see each other as valuable partners with similar interests. It probably helps that Saudi Arabia is an autocratic kingdom and that Mr. Putin has suppressed or eliminated most of his domestic political opposition.
After oil prices collapsed in late 2014 and 2015, Moscow and Riyadh collaborated to prevent U.S. companies from dominating the global energy market. In 2016, Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to expand the oil cartel, creating OPEC Plus. Their partnership has proved enduring with the exception of a brief falling-out in early 2020, when the start of the coronavirus pandemic led to a collapse in oil prices and the two countries disagreed on what to do.
“The Russians and Saudis have a similar interest in driving up the price of oil, and the Ukraine war has only reinforced that,” said Bruce Riedel, a former Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and the author of “Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States Since F.D.R.”
Saudi officials have found Russia to be a useful partner in managing OPEC Plus, an often fractious group of oil producers with different ideas of how to manage oil supplies and prices.
The group works closely with Alexander Novak, a former Russian energy minister who is now deputy prime minister. Analysts describe him as willing to sit with ministers of other oil-producing countries for hours to hear their plans, concerns and grievances.
By announcing a small trim of production this month, OPEC Plus demonstrated its independence from President Biden, who visited Saudi Arabia in July and exchanged a fist bump with Prince Mohammed. The visit was widely interpreted as an effort by Mr. Biden to restore U.S.-Saudi relations after he criticized the kingdom during the 2020 U.S. presidential election for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist.
For months, the president has been encouraging Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. The cartel’s cut in production reversed its policy of gradually increasing production.
Saudi Arabia has often allied itself with the United States, including by quietly backing efforts to improve relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Now, some analysts said, the kingdom appears to be putting a greater emphasis on its financial interests by working closely with Russia even as the United States and Europe seek to isolate and punish Mr. Putin for invading Ukraine.
“It’s pretty remarkable that Russia has been able to keep Saudi Arabia on side,” said Jim Krane, a Middle East expert at Rice University. “Putin’s goal is to get between the U.S. and its allies, and, in the case of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, Putin is making some progress.”
Oil executives in the Persian Gulf say Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries are merely doing what is best for them.
“These decisions are protecting Saudi Arabia’s own commercial interests and make tremendous sense from Saudi Arabia’s own economic perspective,” said Sadad Ibrahim Al Husseini, a former Saudi Aramco executive.
Some Middle East energy executives said the United States and other Western countries had not been reliable partners to oil exporters, in large part because they sought to wean the world off fossil fuels in an effort to address climate change.
“Years of schizophrenic energy policy in Europe and the U.S. have resulted in significant energy security vulnerabilities that large producers are adapting to,” said Badr H. Jafar, the president of Crescent Petroleum, an oil company in the United Arab Emirates. “And the energy chessboard is likely to keep shifting in the months and years to come.”
Many of Saudi Arabia’s moves with respect to Russia can also be interpreted as opportunistic decisions to make easy money.
When the share prices of Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil — the three major Russian energy companies — tumbled early this year because of Western sanctions, Kingdom Holding, which is run by a Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, swooped in and invested roughly $600 million in them, according to regulatory filings.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is headed by Prince Mohammed, holds a significant minority stake in Kingdom Holding.
The investment represented nearly half the firm’s new global equity investments in the first half of the year, when many Western companies were announcing that they would leave Russia. It was one of the largest such Saudi investments since the sovereign wealth fund announced a $10 billion fund to invest in Russia in 2015, though it is unclear whether Saudi Arabia actually invested all of that money.
“This major Saudi investment in the Russian energy sector is an effort to further align Saudi and Russian interests in maintaining prices,” said Gregory Gause, an expert in Middle Eastern politics at Texas A&M University.
In April, Saudi Arabia and its closest ally, the United Arab Emirates, began ramping up heavily discounted imports of Russian refined fuel oil to use in their power plants. By importing those fuels, Saudi Arabia could sell more of its crude oil to other countries at elevated prices.
Direct supplies from Russia to Saudi Arabia reached 76,000 barrels a day in July, the second-highest total in history after September 2018, according to Kpler, a commodity research and data company. More Russian fuel oil has probably entered Saudi Arabia indirectly through Estonia, Egypt and Latvia, said Viktor Katona, a Kpler analyst.
Much of that fuel oil once went to the United States, where Gulf Coast refineries processed it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. But the United States banned Russian oil imports in March, leaving Russian exporters scrambling to find other buyers and offering the fuel at relatively low prices.
“It’s a fire sale,” said Ariel Ahram, a Middle East specialist at Virginia Tech.
Other countries like China and India also bought Russian oil, often at a discount of 30 percent or more. Saudi purchases of Russian fuel oil are declining as summer ends but could increase again next year.
Saudi-Russian relations have historically been multifaceted and have only rarely aligned completely. The two countries have supported a faction in Libya seeking to take control of the violence-torn country. But Russia has long maintained close relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s biggest rival, including regarding the civil war in Syria.
Prince Mohammed has not said much publicly about Russia’s war in Ukraine. But at the United Nations in March, Saudi Arabia joined an overwhelming majority of countries in voting for a resolution that denounced the invasion. The kingdom has also increased oil sales to Europe, replacing some of the oil that countries there once purchased from Russia.
“From the Saudi standpoint, they certainly don’t want to get themselves in the middle of a Western-Russian dispute,” said Helima Croft, the head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
But that reluctance should not be mistaken for neutrality, other experts said.
“I think M.B.S. wants to play in the big leagues, and whatever gives him that opportunity, he’ll be opportunistic about it,” said Robert W. Jordan, who was the ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the George W. Bush administration. “If there is a way to help Putin, fine, and, incidentally, it doesn’t hurt that he is able to show that he is independent of American influence.”
Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. (photo: Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
"There's no safe place in the United States for any of these motherfuckers right now"
The voices on the recording delight in hearing the news that Congress members were fleeing for their lives as rioters inspired by then president Trump breached the Capitol.
“There’s no safe place in the United States for any of these motherfuckers right now,” says one man with a gravelly voice. The same man suggests that by abandoning their positions the lawmakers were sealing their fate. “Military principle 105,” the man said. “‘Cave means grave.'”
When another voice on the audio relays a Tweet from Trump asking rioters not to hurt Capitol Police, the same gravel-voiced man takes that as a word of encouragement to his dark aims. “That’s saying a lot by what he didn’t say: He didn’t say not to do anything to the congressmen.”
The Jan. 6 Committee did not provide any context for the audio shared on Twitter, including the identities of the speakers or their precise connection to the militia group. Rolling Stone has since learned that the audio was obtained from a far right chatroom, Zello, and originally recorded by On the Media. (You can read more about the recordings here.)
By highlighting the disturbing audio, the committee is front-running the seditious conspiracy trial for senior Oath Keepers members, including founder Stewart Rhodes, which is due to commence later this month.
Other voices on the recordings make clear that the Oath Keepers saw themselves as executing a mission at the Capitol. “This is what we fucking lived up for,” says one man. “Everything we fucking trained for.”
Below is a transcript of the audio released by the Jan. 6 committee:
Voice 1: CNN just said that they evacuated all members of Congress into a safety room.
Voice 2: There’s no safe place in the United States for any of these motherfuckers right now.
Voice 3: I hope they understand that we are not joking around.
Voice 2: Military principle 105. Military principle 105 “Cave means grave.”
Voice 1: Trump just tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police. They are on our side, do not harm them.”
Voice 2: That’s saying a lot by what he didn’t say. He didn’t say not to do anything to the congressman. [Laughter]
Voice 1: Well, he did not ’em to stand down. He’s just said stand by the Capitol Police. They are on our side and they are good people. So it’s getting real down there. I got it on TV and it’s, uh, it’s looking pretty friggin’ radical to me. CNN said that Trump has egged this on that he is egging it on. And that he is watching the country burn two weeks before he leaves office. He is not leaving office. I don’t give a shit what they say.
Voice 4: We are in the mezzanine we are in the main dome right now we are rocking it they’re throwing grenades there frikin shoot people and paintballs but we’re in here.
Voice 5: Be safe. Be safe. God bless and Godspeed — and keep going.
Voice 6: Get it Jess! Do your shit. This is what we fucking lived up for. Everything we fucking trained for.
Private-Sector Nurses Strike in Minnesota. (photo: John Autey/Media News Group/St. Paul Pioneer Press/Getty Images)
Protesting understaffing and low pay, Minnesota nurses hit the picket line in a “fight for our very profession.”
Claiming that nurses are continually being expected to go against their own moral compass while on the job, Anaas said that hospital administrators are corporatizing healthcare, in part by advising nurses to use “cookie cutter patient plans” rather than rely on their own expertise.
On Monday, September 12, around 15,000 nurses in Minnesota walked off the job for a three-day strike, citing staffing and safety concerns as well as ongoing contract disputes at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth metro areas.
The walk out is considered to be the largest private-sector nurses strike in U.S. history and comes at a time when nurses across the country are not only dealing with longstanding workplace challenges, but pushing back against them. A recent article in The Nation noted that there were “76 strikes in healthcare between January 2021 and mid-April 2022 alone,” as nurses navigate pre- and post-pandemic staffing, safety, and compensation issues with their employers.
Mary Turner is president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents more than 22,000 nurses and healthcare professionals in the Upper Midwest. At a Monday press conference, Turner said nurses are in a “fight for our very profession,” as hospital administrators continue to put pressure on them to do more with fewer resources.
Turner described nurses being required to work shifts longer than 16 hours in some instances, in what she said was a retaliatory move from their employers who did not want nurses to go out and walk the picket line.
Another nurse, Melissa Cole, also spoke up at the press conference. Cole described how Children’s Hospital Minnesota St. Paul Campus, where she works, has lost more than 500 nurses in the past few years “due to the moral distress of no longer being able to provide the care and quality they believe your children deserve.”
Cole’s statement taps into a growing realization among frontline workers that they are experiencing what some researchers describe as “moral injury.” This term first arose in connection with Vietnam War veterans who were asked or required to commit atrocities on the battlefield, in violation of their own moral judgment and in the absence of real leadership or guidance.
Soldiers were often then “blamed or punished for their actions,” according to a recent In These Times exploration of the parallel between moral injury among both veterans and frontline workers, including nurses.
According to Anaas, hospital administrators are dictating how nurses do their jobs, even when it’s not in their patients’ best interests. “They’re practically sending us scripts to use at patients’ bedsides,” she said, “and handing out decisions” that are made off-site, with no accounting for nurses’ everyday challenges.
As a result, healthcare workers are experiencing exhaustion and burnout, but it’s really only the tip of the iceberg for nurses like Anaas. She described giving birth to two children during her years as a nurse, and in each instance, Anaas had to fund her own maternity leave by using up sick time and vacation days.
That’s because there is no paid family leave plan available to nurses at her hospital, which is managed by Allina Health, a regional, nonprofit healthcare provider whose CEO Lisa Shannon makes more than $1 million per year.
“We want Allina to make it worth it for us to stay in this profession for a lifetime,” Anaas said, rather than focus on recruiting more nurses without paying attention to the workplace issues that are causing so many to quit.
Anaas cites an example of this that many other industry observers have also pointed to: traveling nurses. She says many of her coworkers have left their jobs to become traveling nurses instead, as a way to make more money and have more control over their schedules.
While Anaas says she is grateful to have the help of such nurses in her workplace, she noted that traveling nurses are not unionized, thus threatening the overall bargaining power of those who have chosen to remain on site.
Nurses are currently asking for a 30 percent raise over three years, along with more input into staffing decisions and a greater emphasis on nurses’ ability to direct patient care using their own professional judgment.
Speaking outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital on Tuesday, Angela Becchetti, who is a nurse and a member of the union’s negotiating team, put the focus on patient care. “We are tired of our hospitals saying ‘we don’t have enough, there’s nothing I can do, that costs too much,’” she said, noting that it’s patients who are suffering while hospital administrators continue to rake in higher salaries.
Paul Omodt, spokesperson for the Twin Cities Hospital Group, which represents several of the hospitals where nurses are on strike, has said that nurses have refused to go to mediation to end their contract disputes. “Their choice is to strike. This strike is on the nurses,” he told the Washington Post.
Union representatives have refuted that claim, insisting hospitals have had plenty of time to take nurses’ proposals seriously in order to avoid the walk out. With or without a deal, nurses plan to end their strike at 7 a.m. on September 15.
Still, a key realization looms large for Anaas: “Hospitals don’t make money by having experienced nurses, yet having experienced nurses leads to greater patient and nurse satisfaction.”
A cheetah is seen after Prime Minister Narendra Modi released it into Kuno National Park on Saturday. (photo: India's Press Information Bureau/Reuters)
Arrival of eight big cats from Namibia coincides with the 72nd birthday of Indian Prime Minister Modi who released the first into a wildlife park.
Officials say the project is the world’s first intercontinental relocation of cheetahs, the planet’s fastest land animal. The five females and three males were moved from a game park in Namibia on board a chartered Boeing 747 dubbed “Cat Plane” for an 11-hour flight.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over the release on Saturday at Kuno National Park, a wildlife sanctuary 320km (200 miles) south of New Delhi selected for its abundant prey and grasslands.
“Today the cheetah has returned to the soil of India,” Modi said in a video address after their arrival, which coincided with the leader’s 72nd birthday.
“The nature-loving consciousness of India has also awakened with full force. We must not allow our efforts to fail.”
Each of the animals, aged between two and five and a half, was fitted with a satellite collar to monitor their movements. They will initially be kept in a quarantine enclosure for about a month before being released in the open forest areas of the park.
Grow the population
Critics have warned the creatures may struggle to adapt to the Indian habitat. A significant number of leopards are present in the park, and conservation scientist Ravi Chellam said cubs could fall prey to feral dogs and other carnivores.
Under the government’s current action plan, “the prospects for a viable, wild and free-ranging population of cheetahs getting established in India is bleak”, he said.
“The habitats should have been prepared first before bringing the cats from Namibia. It is like us moving to a new city with only a sub-optimal place to stay. Not a nice situation at all.”
But organisers were unfazed.
“Cheetahs are very adaptable and [I’m] assuming that they will adapt well into this environment,” said Laurie Marker, founder of the Namibia-based charity Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), which has been central to the project logistics. “I don’t have a lot of worries.”
Another 12 cheetahs are expected to join the fledgling Indian population next month from South Africa.
As India gathers more funding for the 910 million rupee ($11.4m) project, largely financed by the state-owned Indian Oil, it hopes to eventually grow the population to about 40 cats.
Habitat loss and hunting
India was once home to the Asiatic cheetah but it was declared extinct in the country by 1952.
The critically endangered subspecies, which once roamed across the Middle East, Central Asia and India, are now only found, in very small numbers, in Iran.
Efforts to reintroduce the animals to India gathered pace in 2020 when the Supreme Court ruled that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, could be settled in India at a “carefully chosen location” on an experimental basis.
They are a donation from the government of Namibia, one of a tiny handful of countries in Africa where the magnificent creature survives in the wild.
Cheetahs became extinct in India primarily because of habitat loss and hunting for their distinctive spotted coats.
An Indian prince, the Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, is widely believed to have killed the last three recorded cheetahs in India in the late 1940s.
One of the oldest of the big cat species, with ancestors dating back about 8.5 million years, cheetahs once roamed widely throughout Asia and Africa in great numbers. But today only about 7,000 remain, primarily in the African savannas.
The cheetah is listed globally as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. In North Africa and Asia, it is “critically endangered”.
Conservationist Saad Bin Jung, told Al Jazeera from Bengaluru that he is “extremely positive and excited at the fact that something truly wonderful has happened to Indian wildlife.
“We needed a kickstart and that has come directly from the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office), which is going to drive conservation forward,” Bin Jung said. “If you look at what’s happening with the cheetah, it’s going to become a key stone species.”
Addressing criticism that habitat destruction is one of the reasons the cheetah became extinct, Bin Jung said India lost 99 percent of the Cheetah population “during the days of the colony.
“It had nothing to do with independent India… after we’ve lost our cheetah, we’re trying to get it back in again.
“Habitat destruction used to happen, yes. But once national parks were declared, I don’t believe there is any habitat destruction within our protected forests,” Bin Jung said.
Controversy
Some Indian scientists say modern India presents challenges not faced by the animals in the past.
A single cheetah needs a lot of space to roam. A 100-square-kilometre (38-square-mile) area can support six to 11 tigers, 10 to 40 lions, but only one cheetah.
Once the cheetahs move beyond Kuno’s unfenced boundaries, “they’ll be knocked out within six months by domestic dogs, by leopards”, said wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth, director of the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru. “Or they’ll kill a goat and villagers will poison them [in response].”
Poaching fears stymied another project that involved a 2013 Supreme Court order to move some of the world’s last surviving Asiatic lions from their only reserve in the western Indian state of Gujarat to Kuno. Now, the cheetahs will take over that space.
“Cheetahs cannot be India’s burden,” said Chellam, an authority on Asiatic lions. “These are African animals found in dozens of locations. The Asiatic lion is a single population. A simple eyeballing of the situation shows which species has to be the priority.”
Other conservation experts say the promise of restoring cheetahs to India is worth the challenges.
“Cheetahs play an important role in grassland ecosystems,” herding prey through grasslands and preventing overgrazing, said Marker.
She and her collaborators will help monitor the cats’ settlement, hunting and reproduction in coming years.
Modi called for people to be patient as the cats adjust. “For them to be able to make Kuno National Park their home, we’ll have to give these cheetahs a few months’ time.”
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