WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine says it retakes village in 'first results' of counterattack

Ukraine said on Sunday its troops had made territorial advances on three villages in its southeast, the first liberated settlements it has reported since launching a counter-offensive this past week.

Kyiv's forces posted unverified videos showing soldiers hoisting the Ukrainian flag at a bombed-out building in the village of Blahodatne in Donetsk region and posing with their unit's flag in the adjacent village of Neskuchne.

"We're seeing the first results of the counter-offensive actions, localized results," Valeryi Shershen, spokesperson for Ukraine's "Tavria" military sector, said on television.

Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar later said Ukrainian forces had "deoccupied" Makarivka, the next village to the south, and advanced between 300 and 1,500 metres in two directions on the southern front.

"No positions were lost on the directions where our forces are on the defensive," Maliar added on Telegram.

Reuters was unable to verify battlefield reports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that a Ukrainian military push was underway, but that it had failed to breach Russian defensive lines and taken heavy casualties.

Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, praised his troops in his nightly video address, but made no reference to the specific areas where the fighting was reported.

"Of course, I am thankful to our soldiers for this day," Zelenskiy said, referring only to the two main sectors of the fighting in the east and the south.

"Each one of our combat brigades, each of our units."

Zelenskiy on Saturday had given his strongest signal yet that Kyiv has launched its long-awaited counterattack to seize back land in the east and south, confirming that "counteroffensive and defensive operations" were taking place.

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Kyiv officials have imposed a strict period of operational silence and urged Ukrainians not to disclose any information that could compromise the operation.

'KICKING THE ENEMY OUT'

With so little information out of Kyiv and scant independent reporting from the front lines, it has been almost impossible to assess the battlefield situation.

The video from Blahodatne showed Ukrainian troops inside a heavily damaged building as artillery rumbled in the distance.

"We're kicking the enemy out from our native lands. It's the warmest feeling there is. Ukraine is going to win, Ukraine above everything," an unidentified soldier said in the video on Facebook.

Russia said at least twice this week that it had repelled attacks close by the nearby settlement of Velyka Novosilka.

The Ukrainian advances follow the breach last week of the Kakhovka dam further west in Kherson region that unleashed floods and prompted rescues of residents from submerged areas.

Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the breach.

The Ukrainian-appointed governor of Kherson region on Sunday said Russian forces had shelled three boats evacuating mainly elderly evacuees to safety, killing three and injuring 10.

Shershen later told a radio interviewer that Russian forces had blown up a smaller hydroelectric dam near the scene of the latest combats in an attempt to disrupt the Ukrainian advance.

"This led to the flooding of both banks of the Mokri Yaly River," he told Ukrainian NV Radio. "This, however, does not affect our counter-offensive actions."

The occupied southeast is seen as a likely priority for Kyiv's forces that may aim to sever Russia's land bridge to the annexed peninsula of Crimea and split Russian forces in half.

Makarikva is around 90 km (55.92 miles) northwest of the city of Mariupol, which lies on the Sea of Azov on the southern rim of the land bridge. Russia captured the major city last year after besieging and bombarding it for several weeks.

Russia has built vast fortifications across occupied territory to prepare for a Ukrainian counterattack using thousands of troops trained and equipped by the West.

Maliar also said Ukrainian forces were continuing assault operations in the east near the devastated city of Bakhmut and had advanced 250 metres near the adjacent Berkhivka Reservoir.

Russia said it captured the city of Bakhmut last month after the bloodiest battle of Russia's February 2022 invasion, but Kyiv has said it has been regaining ground on the city's flanks.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said separately that a motorised infantry brigade had advanced on the front line around the eastern city Avdiivka in recent days and captured a Russian position, but it provided no further details.

** UN nuclear watchdog concerned over water levels at Ukraine plant

The U.N. atomic watchdog said on Sunday that it needs wider access around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to check "a significant discrepancy" in water level data at the breached Kakhovka dam used for cooling the plant's reactors.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi, who is to visit the plant this week, said that measurements the agency received from the inlet of the plant showed that the dam's water levels were stable for about a day over the weekend.

"However, the height is reportedly continuing to fall elsewhere in the huge reservoir, causing a possible difference of about two metres," Grossi said in a statement.

"The height of the water level is a key parameter for the continued operability of the water pumps."

The destruction of the Kakhovka hydropower dam in southern Ukraine last week has flooded towns downstream and forced thousands of people from their homes.

Both the Kakhovka hydropower dam and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have been occupied by Russia since the early days of its invasion in February 2022.

The water from the reservoir is used to cool the facility's six reactors and spent fuel storage, the IAEA said.

"It is possible that this discrepancy in the measured levels is caused by an isolated body of water separated from the larger body of the reservoir," Gross said in the statement. "But we will only be able to know when we gain access to the thermal power plant."

Grossi said the thermal power plant "plays a key role for the safety and security of the nuclear power plant a few kilometres away," hence the need for access and independent assessment.

The agency has said earlier that the Zaporizhzhia plant can fall back on other water sources when the reservoir's water is no longer available, including a large cooling pond above the reservoir with several months' worth of water.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Four more Ukrainian Leopard 2 tanks destroyed – Moscow

The Russian military has destroyed nine Ukrainian tanks, including four German-made Leopard 2s, as it successfully repelled attempts to advance by Kiev's forces, the Ministry of Defense has claimed.

Over the past 24 hours, Ukraine has “continued fruitless attempts to carry out offensive operations” in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, in the south of Donetsk People’s Republic and near the city of Artyomovsk, also known as Bakhmut, ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said during a briefing on Saturday.

In Zaporozhye Region, Russian ground troops, artillery and aviation repelled two attacks by large Ukrainian units boosted by tanks in the area of Yablonevo and Novopokrovka villages, he said.

Two of Kiev’s armored convoys were struck near the settlements of Novodanilovka and Malaya Tokmachka, the spokesman also reported. There were also three smaller Ukrainian attacks in the region, which were also unsuccessful, he added.

Besides the nine tanks, Kiev forces are also down eleven armored personnel carriers, which include five US-supplied Bradley fighting vehicles, 14 armored cars and a French-made Caesar self-propelled howitzer, Konashenkov pointed out.

The Ukrainian military’s losses in terms of manpower during the fresh fighting in Zaporozhye Region has reached up to 300 troops, according to the ministry spokesman.

Five attacks were repelled near the city of Artymovsk, which the Russian forces captured from Ukraine in May after months of heavy fighting, he told the briefing. Kiev’s losses in this area over the past 24 hours, he pointed out, included up to 230 personnel, five armored cars and two Soviet-made D-30 howitzers.

According to Konashenkov, around 60 of Kiev’s soldiers were neutralized in the area of Krasny Liman, a Ukrainian-held town in the Donetsk Peoples Republic. An APC and several howitzers, including a Polish-made Krab self-propelled gun were also destroyed, he said.

** Kiev fails in attempt to attack Russian naval ship protecting Black Sea gas pipelines

The Kiev regime made an unsuccessful attempt with surface drones to attack the Black Sea Fleet’s ship Priazovye on a mission to protect the Turkish Stream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern portion of the Black Sea, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Sunday.

"Today, at about 1:30 p.m. Moscow time, Ukrainian armed formations made an unsuccessful attempt with six fast-speed unmanned sea boats to attack the Black Sea Fleet’s ship Priazovye accomplishing the objective of monitoring the situation and providing security along the routes of the Turkish Stream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern portion of the Black Sea. In repulsing the attack, all the boats were destroyed from the Russian naval ship’s standard weapons 300 km southeast of Sevastopol," the ministry said in a statement.

The Black Sea Fleet’s ship Priazovye continues accomplishing assigned missions after Ukraine’s attempted attack, with no casualties reported among the Russian personnel, the ministry said.

"There are no casualties. The ship has not sustained any damage. The Black Sea Fleet’s ship Priazovye continues accomplishing assigned missions," the ministry said in a statement.

A US RQ-4B Global Hawk strategic remotely-piloted surveillance aircraft conducted reconnaissance in the airspace over the central part of the Black sea during Ukraine’s attempted attack, as in other previous cases, the ministry said.

Previously, the Kiev regime carried out an attack with three surface drones on May 24 targeting the Black Sea Fleet’s ship Ivan Khurs that was providing security for the Turkish Stream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone. All of the Ukrainian surface drones were destroyed by the Russian naval ship’s standard weapons. The personnel of the Russian surveillance ship who repulsed the attack by Ukrainian surface drones in the waters of the Bosporus Strait were recommended for combat state awards.

** West has zero chances to bring Russia to its knees, says top senator

The months that have passed since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine have shown that the West has zero chances to crush Russia and bring it to its knees, Chairwoman of the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament) Valentina Matviyenko said on Sunday.

"If we speak about our actions inside the country, the main conclusion is perfectly clear: Russia must be strong. Moreover, it must be strong in all respects, technologically, economically, socially and morally and, what is especially important today, militarily and in the security sphere," the top senator said on her blog on the eve of Russia Day celebrated on June 12.

"Today, 15 months after the start of the special military operation, it is perfectly clear that there are zero chances to crush our country and bring it to its knees. Russia’s victory in the conflict around Ukraine is inevitable," Matviyenko stressed.

The Russian authorities have managed within the shortest time possible to adapt the state, society and the economy to new realities, she pointed out.

"They have managed to do this without deteriorating the quality of people’s life, without any flip-flopping in the public and political sphere, without even the slightest restrictions of citizens’ rights and freedoms. Without abrupt changes in economic management, although there were plenty of calls for that," the top senator said.

"Of course, we are fully aware that we will have to face new serious challenges and we need to address them fully prepared, which will, undoubtedly, require a new quality of interaction between the authorities and society. We will ensure this because over the thirty years of Russia’s newest history we have put a reliable and strong foundation under our state and public system," Matviyenko stressed.

Reuters/RT/Tass

Race is on to protect Sudan’s pyramids and tombs as war rages

Sudan’s cultural heritage stretches back thousands of years. The North African nation boasts ancient Nubian temples, more pyramids than Egypt and is credited with being the birthplace of modern pottery and metalwork techniques. Now, Sudanese archaeologists, curators, academics and volunteers are braving fierce fighting to protect it.

Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands more injured since April 15,when the leadership of the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group with origins in the Darfur region failed to reach an agreement on how to merge their forces under a power-sharing deal that was supposed to lead to democratic elections. As the conflict has spread, fighters have looted and set fire to museums and invaluable university archives.

Under the oversight of Heritage for Peace, an organization dedicated to preserving cultural heritage during wartime, dozens of volunteers and professionals have been preparing museum evacuation plans and documenting damage to precious sites across Sudan. Despite challenges arranging safety measures and cash payments, the group has managed to station guards near archaeological areas and museums outside the capital city of Khartoum. 

“We are trying to find a way to report regularly and support work on the ground,” said Tomomi Fuahiya, an assistant professor at the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archeology at the University of Warsaw. With Ismail Hamid Elnour, a member of the Sudan Heritage Protection Initiative at the University of Birmingham, Fuahiya is assisting Heritage for Peace, which previously worked to save artifacts from the Islamic State in Syria. 

As fighting continues, the group is particularly concerned about the safety of the Egyptian temple of Buhen in the very north of the country, as well as the tomb of Muhammad Ahmad, commonly known as the Mahdi, who fought British colonial rule in the second half of the 19th century and went on to establish an Islamic state within Sudan.

Pressure to intervene on behalf of the country’s cultural heritage has mounted since a video emerged showing fighters from the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary entering the bioarchaeology lab of Khartoum’s National Museum and opening containers storing ancient human remains.

Satellite imagery obtained by the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab, made up of a coalition of experts from several US universities, also revealed that buildings belonging to the National Museum have been damaged by fire.

In Omdurman, the country’s most populous city, Elnour said that archives containing thousands of documents were looted and destroyed in a fire at Omdurman Ahlia University, which houses the Muhammad Omar Bashir Centre for Sudanese Studies and has long been celebrated as a hub of independent intellectual activity. The old Omdurman Market, known for its garments and handcrafts, has also been destroyed.

The fighting has forced millions of people to flee their homes and sparked a food crisis in parts of the country. Sudan’s army has asked the UN to remove its top diplomat in the region, Volker Perthes, who is currently abroad and has no immediate plans to return due to the risk involved.

While volunteers have struggled to enter most of the Sudanese capital’s 13 museums since the conflict erupted, Elnour said, “the archaeological sites and museums outside Khartoum are still protected by local archaeologists, guards, and local communities.”

In a stroke of good fortune, the main National Museum building was under renovation when the war began, so most items had been packed away and placed in storage, Fuahiya said. Of particular concern are a collection of 3,000-year-old Nubian monuments and temples now in the garden of the museum. An international effort to assemble and preserve these structures in the 1960s led to the creation of the modern UNESCO World Heritage system. 

Archaeological sites and pyramids at Meroe, the ancient walled city northeast of Khartoum where the conflict began, are also still intact. The status of the Sheikan Museum in El-Obeid and the Darfur Museum in Nyala, however, is unknown. Both museums are located near the sites of some of the most intense fighting.

US and Saudi-mediated talks between the Sudanese Army and the RSF broke down in Jeddah just over a week ago, and the two sides have not yet re-convened. Heritage for Peace, which provided mediators with recommendations during the talks, has appealed to both parties to protect Sudan’s heritage, prevent illicit exports of cultural property and to stop illegal digging at archaeological sites.

When reached for comment, an RSF spokesperson said their forces were “well aware of the significance” of the country’s artifacts and the importance of safeguarding them.

Addressing the incident at the National Museum, the spokesperson said video was filmed by a member of the RSF who believed he was doing the right thing by documenting the boxes to provide proof that everything was intact. 

“We have spoken with the individual concerned and strict instructions have been issued to all RSF personnel on site to ensure that their duties are fulfilled in a responsible manner,” the representative said.

A spokesperson for the army did not reply to questions.

Fighting this week centered around the Yarmouk Military Complex in Southern Khartoum, which contains a huge stockpile of weapons, videos posted by RSF fighters on social media and internal UN documents seen by Bloomberg show. Airstrikes also continued around Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri — areas home to many temples and monuments, and the cradle of the Kerma civilization, which flourished around 2500 BC.

“Sudan is a very rich country not just for its heritage with ancient Egypt, but also for Christianity in Africa. It’s the heart of Africa,” said Sada Mire, a Swedish-Somali archaeologist currently teaching at University College London. “I can’t overestimate how important Sudan and the Kerma civilization are to understanding the whole of Africa and civilizations as we know them.”

She pointed to Kerma pottery as proof of how culturally sophisticated Sudanese civilization was millennia ago. “You would think it’s modern art. If you put it in a museum or a gallery, nobody would believe it was 5,000 years old,” she said.

“It’s really a whole living culture that has thousands of years of continuity. This is what is under threat and it’s so sad to see.”

Bloomberg

Across the west, popular misery and ‘elite overproduction’ are fuelling crisis, argues data-driven historian Peter Turchin. So what can we do to turn things around?

In February 2010, Peter Turchin, a relatively obscure researcher at the University of Connecticut, wrote a letter to the distinguished journal Nature. He was responding to their “2020 visions” issue – an upbeat dawn-of-the-decade exercise that collected predictions of progress from across science and politics. Turchin assumed the role of Cassandra. “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe,” he wrote, “which could undermine the sort of scientific progress you describe.” He pointed to waves of disruption that tend to recur every 50 years. “All these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020.” There was still time to change course, though: with measures to improve wellbeing and reduce economic inequality, “records show that societies can avert disaster”.

Normally scientists enjoy being proved right, but for Turchin, the way the following decade panned out must have seemed a bit too on-the-nose. The response to the financial crisis wasn’t a New Deal-style rescue package as he’d recommended, but austerity and a widening of the gap between rich and poor. Frustration at the established order threw up Brexit in Britain and Trump in the US. Right on cue, 2020 delivered a pandemic, economic chaos and a president who refused to concede defeat at the polls. The following January saw the storming of the Capitol, and images of insurrection that seemed like a throwback to an earlier revolutionary era.

Now Turchin is having another go at explaining those cycles of disruption and what it might take to emerge unscathed (though he tells me that, unlike in 2010, it’s past time to avoid the consequences entirely: “We are in crisis – but it’s not too late to take a less bloody exit.”) His book’s title, End Times, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but it does provide a clear theory about how we got into this mess, and how to get out of it. There are some familiar concepts here – falling living standards leading to mass discontent – but others, “elite overproduction” in particular, are much less widely recognised, and genuinely eye-opening.

For a global prophet of doom, Turchin cuts a surprisingly ordinary figure. He speaks to me over Zoom from the sofa in his modest living room in Storrs, Connecticut, essentially a village with a huge university campus attached. “We have a house in the woods,” he tells me, and praises the area’s “low population density” in a way that makes me wonder if he’s prepping for the apocalypse. The reality is less alarming. “You know, my wife has a garden, it’s very comfortable.” A bit like a dacha, he observes – a reminder, alongside his strong accent, that he was born in the USSR – “a country that doesn’t exist any more”. He emigrated with his dissident parents in 1977, when he was 20.

That background makes him less sanguine than others might be about the prospect of societal upheaval – even state collapse. “I went back for the first time since leaving in 1992, and I experienced a failed state. Now, when I’d moved to the United States in 1977, the [country] was really at the brink of several trends beginning to point downwards,” he says, tracing the path of a rollercoaster with his right hand. “I saw the end of the Golden Age – from the common people’s point of view – and it has been downhill since then. So I’m really worried about ending up in another failed state.”

I point out that this will seem like hyperbole to lots of people. “I don’t say that it’s 100% certain,” he counters – and notably refuses to be drawn on whether Trump will be re-elected in 2024. “The road out of crisis opens up a whole set of possibilities, from pretty mild instability all the way to collapse. At this point, pretty much anything is possible.”

What were those downward-pointing trends in the 1970s, then? That decade, Turchin argues, was when the social contract established in the 1930s – Roosevelt’s New Deal – began to disintegrate. For 40 years, America had effectively replicated the Nordic model under which the interests of workers, owners and the state were kept in balance (he’s careful to point out that a significant portion of the population – mostly Black Americans – were always shut out of this cosy arrangement). After that, things began to shift in favour of owners. The power of unions was eroded, as were labour rights. Typical wages started to lag behind economic growth, or even decrease. Quality of life suffered, and with it life expectancy. “Diseases of despair” such as opioid or alcohol abuse grew. Turchin even links the rise of mass shootings to a generalised hopelessness he refers to as “popular immiseration”.

At the same time, the rich got richer – far richer. A system of taxation that weighed most heavily on the highest earners, including a top rate of 90%, was dismantled. The number of decamillionaires, or households worth over $10m, increased from 66,000 in 1983 to 693,000 in 2019, accounting for inflation. The economy chugged along nicely, but the share of it controlled by the wealthiest got larger at the expense of the average earner. Turchin calls this the “wealth pump”. Things are now set up, he argues, so that money gushes away from workers and towards the elite, like a blowout from an oil well.

This has an interesting effect: so-called “elite overproduction”, a phrase coined by Turchin’s colleague, the sociologist Jack Goldstone. “The social pyramid has grown top heavy,” he explains, with rich families and top universities churning out more wealthy graduates than the system can accommodate. To illustrate this, Turchin describes a game of musical chairs with a twist. There’s always been a limited number of powerful positions, be they senator, governor, supreme court justice or media mogul. In an era of elite overproduction, rather than chairs being taken away whenever the music stops, the number of competitors increases instead. Before you know it, there are far more people than can realistically attain high office. Fights break out. Norms (and chairs) are overturned as “elite aspirants” – those who have been brought up in the expectation of a say in how things are run – turn into counter-elites, prepared to smash the system to get their way. This isn’t just a US problem, by the way; Turchin says that Britain is on a similar trajectory. In fact, among OECD countries, it’s next in line. Germany is further behind, but also on the same “slippery slope”.

Turchin, who was a mathematical ecologist before turning to history in the mid-2000s, brings a numbers approach to his adopted subject. He was able to predict the turbulent 2020s by looking at economic and social indicators from 100 historical crises, gathered together in a database called CrisisDB. They range from medieval France to 19th-century Britain, and show that periods of instability are pretty consistently preceded by a decline in wages, the emergence of a wealth pump, and most combustibly, elite overproduction.

Why is the latter so important? Well, the masses may be miserable, but without someone who has the status and resources to organise them, they’ll simply languish. Their revolutionary potential is only realised once a “political entrepreneur” – usually a frustrated elite aspirant – gets involved. Robespierre, Lenin and Castro are all examples of highly privileged individuals who felt excluded from existing power structures and led popular movements to overthrow them. In 19th-century China, a young man from a well-to-do family failed the exams that would have enabled him to become a top flight imperial administrator four times. Hong Xiuquan went on to lead a rebellion in which at least 20 million died.

Things may not be quite as bad as that yet, but it’s not hard to identify modern-day figures who fit the elite aspirant mould. Donald Trump is the most obvious, a beneficiary of the wealth pump whose only route to power was as a political entrepreneur stoking grievance. Nigel Farage? “He’s a good example. He’s personally wealthy, a member of the economic elite. And he has been channelling discontent.” Sometimes counter-elites mount their takeover from the inside. With Brexit, “there was a traditional segment of the Conservative party, but then there was an insurgent part. And they were [also] using this discontent. What we see in history is that one segment of the elite channels popular discontent to advance their political careers. This happened in Republican Rome 2,000 years ago, and it happens now.”

Another distinctive feature of elite overproduction is the fierce ideological competition it generates. Turchin believes we’ve transitioned from the pre-crisis period, where political entrepreneurs largely attacked the established order, to a phase in which newly powerful factions are fighting among themselves. This, he argues, is one of the mechanisms behind “cancel culture”. “Such vicious ideological struggles are a common phase in any revolution,” he writes. There is a race to the extremes, with denunciations becoming more and more intense. “In the struggle between rival factions, the ones willing to escalate accusations win over the moderate ones.”

So how do we fix things? It strikes me that there are some pretty obvious political conclusions to be drawn from Turchin’s research, but he’s reluctant to be led too far down the road of punditry. “I don’t want to enter into the political infighting,” he says. “One thing that we know about historical exits from crisis is that at some point the elites and population have to pull together … the different factions have to be reconciled. That’s why I try to stay away from taking sides.”

He will, however, admit to “several recommendations”, saying that “some of them will please liberals, others will please conservatives”. Liberals, presumably, will be heartened by the idea that “we need to give workers more power”. In order to turn off the wealth pump you have to increase labour’s share of the pie at the expense of business. Partly by redistribution, but partly by beefing up workers’ ability to demand higher pay.

What kind of thing would please conservatives? Here he seems to hesitate slightly. “Let’s say … massive immigration does depress the wages of common workers. Actually, this is a paleo-left position. It’s just now the new left is focusing more on cultural issues, and they are all for immigration, but conservatives are now against immigration.” He elaborates, saying it’s an “iron law” of economics that if you increase the supply of something – in this case, labour – then its price will decline. “But,” he points out, “it won’t happen if workers have enough social power, if there are good labour organisations and, also, if the elites internalise the need for dividing fairly the fruits of economic growth. So if you have those institutions, then immigration is not a problem.”

And what about those surplus elites? Well, if you happen to be one, look away now. Halfway through End Times Turchin remarks, somewhat blithely: “In order for stability to return, elite overproduction somehow needs to be taken care of – historically and typically by eliminating the surplus elites through massacre, imprisonment, emigration, or forced or voluntary downward social mobility.” In fact, CrisisDB allows us to be even more precise: in 40% of crises, rulers were assassinated; 75% ended in revolutions or civil wars (or both), and in 20%, those civil wars dragged on for a century or longer. Sixty percent of the time the state in question disappeared, either through conquest or disintegration.

It would be nice to avoid a century-long civil war. Perhaps instead we can select “voluntary downward social mobility” from Turchin’s grisly menu. This would require elites to be persuaded to give up some of their wealth, or to decide to do so off their own backs. Patriotic Millionaires, a pressure group made up of rich people, including members of the Disney family, who “share a profound concern about the destabilising level of economic and political inequality in America” is probably unrepresentative of the class as a whole. More likely, things will have to get so bad that a new social contract becomes the only alternative to levels of discontent that would threaten private fortunes in any case. That’s what happened in the 1930s. It also happened in Britain in the 1830s, when the prospect of a revolution like the ones sweeping Europe was kept at bay by the Great Reform Act and the repeal of the corn laws (it also helped that frustrated elite aspirants could try their hand at running distant parts of the empire).

In any case, it seems we’ll know what the denouement is before too long. “The nice thing about CrisisDB is that we now have statistics on how long these periods last,” Turchin tells me. “Roughly speaking, it’s 10 to 20 years. Very few shorter, some much longer. But for those who think that we’re [already] out of it in the United States? That’s not very likely.” I nod, and make a mental note to speak to him again in 2033.

• End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin will be published by Allen Lane on 13 June.

The Guardian, USA

Even though he was our boss, for the first two hours of each day we only glimpsed Rudy from a distance when he shuffled back and forth from his office to the break room coffee machine. If we called him -- even if we paged him -- he wouldn't answer.

By around 10 a.m. he was a different person. Upbeat. Encouraging. Chatty. Eager to solve job scheduling or materials bottlenecks that could affect our productivity.

Then, by late afternoon he became yet another person. Instead of chatting, he barked orders. Instead of solving actual problems, he yelled about nonexistent ones. Whether we needed his help or not, we did our best to avoid him.

Hold that thought.

It's easy to assume that some people are good leaders and others are not. But the reality is more nuanced. Sometimes you're a great leader. You're empathetic. Insightful. Collaborative. Decisive.

Other times, you're less effective.

Why? According to research, sleep plays a major role in your effectiveness. A 2015 study published in Academy of Management found that bosses who don't get a good night's sleep are less likely to make good decisions the next day. Less likely to foster engagement and collaboration with, and among, their teams the next day.

And are more likely to be abusive (which the researchers define as "hostile verbal and nonverbal behavior") towards their employees the next day.

As the researchers write:

Emerging evidence suggests that leaders might be more (or less) abusive on some days than on others... abusive supervisory behavior varied more within supervisors than it did between supervisors.

Why does sleep deprivation have such an impact on leadership performance? For one thing, tired people tend to make poorer decisions.

But the researchers speculate the real culprit is ego depletion: Since self-control draws on a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up, when your energy is low, so is your self-control. Which means you're less likely to have the inner "oomph" required to be the kind of leader you want to be.

Which makes you less patient. Less tolerant. Less collaborative. More likely to make snap decisions -- and to snap at people, even if your version of "snapping" is only a nonverbal eye roll.

Rudy? He was chronically sleep-deprived. He needed four cups of coffee and a couple hours of quiet time to face the day, and us. But by the afternoon, no amount of coffee -- or "I really want to be a good leader" willpower -- could overcome his fatigue.

The solution, of course, is to always get a good night's sleep.

But like most solutions, that isn't always possible. So what should you do when you haven't gotten a good night's sleep? According to the researchers, don't just try to power through.

Instead, adapt to the fact -- and it is a fact -- that lower levels of physical and mental energy can impact your leadership performance. If you can, put off major decisions. Force yourself to take a beat and think -- instead of just reacting -- before making smaller decisions. 

Recognize that fatigue naturally decreases your tolerance for frustration, and save potentially difficult or confrontational conversations with employees -- if the issue or problem can be put off -- for the next day.

And don't answer emails that require deep thought, or nuance, or fine judgment late at night. Save them for the next morning when you're fresh.

The key is to remember that no one is able, no matter how hard they may try, to always be the exceptional leader they aspire to be -- especially when they're tired.

So do your best to ensure you are at your best.

And when you're not, to adjust accordingly.

Inc

Enyimba International have emerged as Champions of the Nigeria Premier Football League for a record-extending ninth time after they played out a 1-1 draw against Rivers United in the last game of the Super Six in Lagos.

Ekene Awazie shot the People’s Elephant in front in the 39th minute, but Nyima Nwagua restored parity for Rivers United three minutes into the second half.

Despite the myriad of chances afterwards, the game ended in a 1-1 stalemate, a result that saw Enyimba emerging champions of the league for the first time since 2019.

For George Finidi, this is his first title with the Aba Landlords after a disappointing outing last season.

The Game

Having kept each other at bay for the first 20 minutes, both teams began to look for possible openings to explore.

Rivers United made an attempt when Ebube Duru’s cross towards Mark Gibson was parried, and Enyimba’s Olorunleke Ojo also thwarted the resultant header.

Five minutes before the stoppage time, Enyimba broke the deadlock after Pascal Eze’s cross was defended in Rivers United’s box and broke to Ekene Awazie, who ferociously slotted the ball past Sochima Victor.

While Enyimba thought they could keep their lead in the second half, Nyima Nwagua levelled for Rivers United in the 48th minute.

Olorunleke Ojo was called into action on several occasions, but he did very well to deny Rivers United from shooting into the lead.

With the draw on Sunday, Enyimba, Rivers United and Remo Stars all finished on nine points and were only separated by their goal difference.

For finishing top, Enyimba won the giant trophy, N100m and a ticket to the Champions League. Remo Stars are second on the log and would also be competing for the first time in the Champions League, while dethroned Rivers United will have to make do with CAF Confederation Cup.

PT

Nigeria’s secret police took the nation’s suspended central bank governor into custody, hours after he was removed by the nation’s new president, as a power struggle in Africa’s biggest economy took a dramatic turn.

The State Security Service announced Godwin Emefiele’s detention on Saturday for “investigative reasons.” President Bola Tinubu revealed the governor’s dismissal in a brief statement that was issued after financial markets closed on Friday.

The secret police have been investigating Emefiele for alleged wrongdoing related to multibillion-dollar public lending programs initiated by the governor. Emefiele’s suspension is a “sequel to the ongoing investigation,” the presidency said, without providing further details, leaving it unclear whether its statement referred to the same probe.

The central bank and Emefiele didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tension between Emefiele and the president has escalated since campaigning began for an election that Tinubu won in February. Tinubu was sworn in as the leader of Africa’s most populous nation less than two weeks ago and used his inauguration speech to criticize the central bank, calling for an end to Nigeria’s multiple-currency regime and a reduction in interest rates to boost economic growth.

Nigeria’s currency has weakened 2.4% this year and touched a fresh record low on Friday of 471.92 naira to the dollar.

Losses have accelerated since Tinubu called for changes to the bank’s currency policy and urged it to close the gap between the official and unofficial exchange rates. The spread between the managed and parallel markets in Nigeria can be as wide as 60%.

Emefiele became one of the most influential figures in Nigeria under Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari. The central bank made significant interventions in the economy, including lending unprecedented sums to the government and extending credit to multiple sectors.

The governor played an unorthodox yet central role in promoting Buhari’s agenda, including propping up the naira and banning access to foreign exchange for imports of dozens of goods from rice to cement in a bid to boost domestic production.

Critics slammed the governor for paying undue attention to development finance and excessive regulation of banks at the expense of price stability. The nation’s monetary policy committee has raised borrowing costs by 700 basis points since May 2022 to contain an inflation rate that’s been at more than double the top end of its 6% to 9% target range for 11 months. 

His most controversial policy was a demonetization program introduced in the run-up to Nigeria’s presidential elections in February. The attempt to replace high-denomination naira notes with new ones resulted in a shortage of bills that hobbled day-to-day business in the cash-dominant economy.

Politicians, including Tinubu and those backing his presidential campaign, accused Emefiele of pursuing the unpopular reform to damage the ruling party’s electoral prospects. State governors successfully challenged the policy at the Supreme Court, which nullified a deadline for phasing out the old notes.

Emefiele, who’s been at the helm of the regulator since 2014, will be replaced in an acting capacity by Folashodun Shonubi, a deputy governor in charge of operations at the bank.

Shonubi joined the central bank’s board in 2018 from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc, where he was managing director, according to a profile published on the central bank’s website. He has more than three decades of experience in banking and served as the head of treasury at Citigroup Inc.’s Nigerian unit from 1990 until 1993.

Bloomberg

Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja on Saturday played three video clips as evidence in Labour Party’s presidential candidate Peter Obi’s suit challenging President Bola Tinubu’s victory.

Mr Tinubu, who won Nigeria’s presidency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the February presidential election, is battling to sustain his victory in court.

In a bid to prove his allegation of Nigeria’s electoral commission, INEC’s, non-compliance with its guidelines in the conduct of the 25 February presidential election, Obi’s legal team tendered two flash drives containing INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, and another top official’s press interviews.

Another video recording contained Tinubu’s press interview at Daura, Katsina State, where he had gone to intimate former President Muhammadu Buhari of his intention to pick Kashim Shettima as his running mate at the polls.

Obi’s lawyer, Jibril Okutepa, had on Friday tendered the videotapes containing the interviews before the five-member panel of the court chaired by Haruna Tsammani.

At the resumed proceedings on Saturday, Okutepa called a Channels Television journalist, Lucky Obewo-Isawode, as a witness who mounted the witness box to testify concerning the video clips.

The court directed the playing of the videos.

In the first video clip, INEC chair, Yakubu, a professor, was seen seated with members of political parties and civil society organisations.

Prominent among them was Iyiola Omisore, the National Secretary of the APC.

Yakubu, decked in a brown kaftan and a cap to match, walked into a room and exchanged pleasantries with attendees at the press briefing.

Immediately after he took his seat, Yakubu began to reel out some of the innovative measures the electoral umpire had taken to boost the credibility of Nigeria’s electoral process.

“There is no going back on the deployment of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machine,” Yakubu began.

He went on to assure that “There is no going back on the electronic transmission of election results from the polling units in real-time to the INEC IReV Portal.”

Yakubu’s interview also aired on Channels Television – a broadcast station headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria.

In the second video recording, INEC’s national commissioner on Voter Education, Festus Okoye, was seen on Channels Television’s primetime programme, ‘Sunday Politics.’

Okoye, while being interviewed by the show host, Seun Okinbaloye, regretted INEC’s failure to electronically transmit the presidential election results in real-time as it had promised in the build-up to the general elections.

The failure of the electoral commission to promptly upload the results from polling stations during the presidential election across Nigeria forms is one of the issues raised by Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in their separate petitions seeking to overturn Tinubu’s victory.

Tinubu’s video clip evidence

In the final video played in court on Saturday, Tinubu, who was a presidential flagbearer of the APC, was seen dressed in a blue flowing gown bearing his signature infinity symbol, addressing journalists at Buhari’s country home, Daura, Katsina State, on 10 July 2022.

“I have chosen Kashim Shettima as my running mate. He is competent and reliable,” Tinubu said in the interview, which aired on Channels Television.

Obi urged the court to nullify Tinubu’s victory over the allegation of double nomination against Shettima.

However, the Supreme Court, in a recent judgement, dismissed a suit filed by the PDP challenging Shettima’s alleged dual nomination as a senatorial candidate of the APC in Borno Central Senatorial District as well as holding the vice presidential ticket of the party in the February polls.

After playing the video recordings of the trio, the court admitted them in evidence despite the respondents’ objections to their admissibility.

The court promised to rule on the respondents’ opposition to the admissibility of the video clips at the end of hearing the suit.

In addition, the court admitted more electoral documents as exhibits from some Local Government Areas of Benue State.

After that, the court adjourned further proceedings until Tuesday, 13 June.

PT

Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, on Saturday, struck out an application the candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi, filed for permission to interrogate the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on the technology it deployed for the conduct of the general elections.

Specifically, Obi, who is challenging the outcome of the presidential election that was held on February 25, had in the application, prayed the court to compel the electoral body to answer 12 key questions he listed on an interrogatory he filed on May 22.

He wanted INEC to among other things, tell the court the date it conducted the functionality test on the purported improved technological system it deployed for the elections, as well as the names and details of those that conducted the test.

He equally urged the court to compel INEC to supply its answers to the following questions; “Who created/deployed the four (4) Applications Patches/Updates to fix the HTTP 500 error that prevented the e-transmission of the results of the Presidential election on 25th February 2023?

“What was the exact time of the occurrence of the technical glitch which prevented the e-transmission of the result of the Presidential election on 25th February 2023?

“What time were the technological glitches fixed and or repaired?

“What percentage of the result of the Presidential election was uploaded on the I-Rev on 25th February 2023?

“What percentage of the result of the Presidential election was uploaded on the I-Rev as at the time of the declaration of the Result of the Presidential election on 1st March 2023?

“If the Presidential Election was conducted concurrently with the National Assembly Elections on the same day and at the same time using the same technological devices, why were there glitches only with respect to the Presidential Election?,” Obi and his party added.

They maintained that answers the Commission would provide to the questions, would be very vital to the determination of the petition they filed to challenge the declaration of President Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, as the winner of the presidential election.

However, all Respondents in the matter urged the court to dismiss the application for want of competence.

Cited as 1st to 4th Respondents in the petition, are INEC, President Bola Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima, and the APC.

Meanwhile, in a unanimous decision on Saturday, Haruna Tsammani-led’s five-member panel struck out the application on the premise that it was filed outside the pre-hearing period.

Vanguard

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine's army reports new gains against Russian forces near Bakhmut

Counterattacking Ukrainian forces have advanced up to 1,400 metres at a number of sections of the front line near the eastern city of Bakhmut in the past day, a military spokesman said on Saturday.

The advance is the latest in a series of similar gains reported this week by Kyiv near Bakhmut, which Russia said it had fully captured last month after the bloodiest and longest battle since it began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

"We're trying...to conduct strikes on the enemy, we're counterattacking. We've managed to advance up to 1,400 metres on various sections of the front," the spokesperson for the eastern military command said, when asked about fighting near Bakhmut.

Serhiy Cherevaty, the official, said in televised comments that Russian forces were themselves trying to counterattack but that they had not been successful.

Ukrainian forces, he said, had inflicted heavy Russian troop casualties and destroyed military hardware in the area.

Reuters was not able to independently verify that assertion or the situation on the battlefield.

Moscow and Kyiv both reported heavy fighting in Ukraine on Friday, with bloggers describing the first sightings of German and U.S. armour, signalling that Ukraine's long-anticipated counterattack was under way.

Russia, which has built extensive fortifications in Ukraine's occupied east and south, said this week that a big push by Kyiv had failed to break through Russian lines.

Britain's Ministry of Defence said that Ukrainian forces have penetrated the first line of Russian defences in some areas but that Kyiv's progress had been slower in others.

Officials in Ukraine, which has been poised to launch a broad counteroffensive for weeks, denies its much-anticipated push has begun and says that when it does it will be obvious.

** Russian strikes kill three in Odesa, hit Poltava air base, Ukraine says

Russia fired missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday, killing three civilians in the Black Sea city of Odesa and striking a military air field in the central Poltava region, Kyiv authorities said.

The attacks, in which a 29-year-old was also killed in the northeast Kharkiv region according to officials, were the latest in a spate of overnight strikes that Russia has intensified as Kyiv sets its sights on a major counter-offensive.

The Air Force said the attacks involved eight ground-launched missiles and 35 strike drones. Air defence units managed to down 20 drones and two cruise missiles, it said.

"As a result of the air fight, debris from one of the drones fell onto a high-rise apartment, causing a fire," the southern military command's spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said of the attack on Odesa.

Firefighters battled overnight to put out the fire in the 10-storey block in a residential area of the city, footage released by the military showed.

The morning light revealed a gaping crater in the ground several metres wide next to the damaged building and a children's playground, a Reuters photographer said.

Three people were killed including a couple who lived on the eighth floor of the building and a man who had been outside at the time of the attack, authorities said.

At least 27 other people, including three children, were hurt, the emergency services said.

The first drone strike came around midnight and was followed by three more. Air raid sirens blared repeatedly through the night.

Russia also fired drones and ballistic and cruise missiles at the Poltava region, inflicting "some damage of infrastructure and equipment" at the Myrhorod military airfield, the regional governor said.

Ten drones attacked two areas of the Kharkiv region, which borders Russia and also backs onto the front line, wounding a 39-year-old man and killing one other person, governor Oleh Synehubov.

Ukraine also shot down two drones over the Dnipropetrovsk region where no damage was reported, its governor Serhiy Lysak said.

** Trudeau announces military aid, addresses Ukraine parliament

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $500 million in new military aid for Ukraine during an unannounced trip to war-time Kyiv on Saturday, as Ukraine girds for a counteroffensive against Russian forces and grapples with regular air strikes.

Trudeau paid his respects at a memorial to Ukrainian soldiers killed fighting pro-Russian forces since 2014, met President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and addressed Ukraine's parliament.

"We will be there with (you) as much as it takes, for as long as it takes," he said, in footage of the talks released by Kyiv authorities, as he sat across from the Ukrainian leader.

NATO member Canada, which has one of the world's largest Ukrainian diasporas, has supplied military and financial assistance to Kyiv since Russia invaded in February 2022.

Ukraine wants to join the NATO military alliance as fast as it can, but Zelenskiy has recognised that cannot happen while the war with Russia is raging.

"Canada supports Ukraine to become a NATO member as soon as conditions allow for it. Ukraine and Canada look forward to addressing these issues at the NATO Summit in Vilnius in July 2023," said a joint declaration adopted after the talks.

Trudeau was applauded at length as he spoke in parliament for 25 minutes, denouncing the Russian invasion and praising Ukraine's democratic development.

He said Ukraine's resistance was about "the future of us all. You are the tip of the spear that is determining the future of the 21st century."

Zelenskiy said Ukraine was grateful to Canadians for their support and extended thanks.

As Trudeau visited Kyiv, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced that a Russian-registered Antonov-124 cargo plane was seized at Toronto's airport, Ottawa's first such seizure of an asset aimed at putting pressure on Moscow.

The Canadian prime minister was accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian speaker.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

West doesn’t want to listen to Russia’s concerns – Kremlin

The West’s accusations of Russia are an attempt to cover up its lack of desire to listen to Moscow’s concerns, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Peskov made the statement in an interview with Pavel Zarubin for the "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin." program, a fragment of which the journalist posted to his Telegram channel.

"There are accusations from Washington, from European capitals that Russia is aggressive and so on. This is just an attempt to camouflage their unwillingness to listen to our concerns," he said.

** Russian forces eliminate about 60 Ukrainian troops in Krasny Liman area

Russian forces neutralized an enemy subversive and reconnaissance group and destroyed up to 60 Ukrainian troops in the Krasny Liman area and an ammo depot in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) over the past 24 hours, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Saturday.

"A Ukrainian subversive and reconnaissance group was eliminated near Chervonaya Dibrova in the Lugansk People’s Republic. Over the past 24 hours, the enemy losses [in the Krasny Liman area] amounted to over 60 Ukrainian personnel, an infantry fighting vehicle, two armored fighting vehicles, three motor vehicles, Krab, Gvozdika and Akatsiya self-propelled artillery systems, as well as a D-20 howitzer," Konashenkov said.

According to the general, Battlegroup Center’s aircraft and artillery hit enemy units near Yampolovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Nevskoye and Belogorovka in the LPR, as well as in the Serebryansky forestry area.

"An ammunition depot of the 66th mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces was destroyed near Petrovskoye in the Lugansk People’s Republic," he added.

Reuters/Tass

Sudanese capital quiet as 24-hour ceasefire takes hold

The Sudanese capital Khartoum was relatively calm on Saturday morning as a U.S. and Saudi-brokered 24-hour ceasefire took effect, providing a window for humanitarian assistance and giving the public a break from the intense fighting.

The short ceasefire follows a string of violated truces between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose power struggle erupted into violence eight weeks ago, sparking a humanitarian crisis.

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia said they shared "frustration" over the violations in a statement announcing the latest truce, and they threatened to adjourn the talks, which have continued indirectly, if fighting continues.

The fighting has turned the metropolitan area including Khartoum and its sister cities Bahri and Omdurman into a war zone, and led to conflict in the Darfur and Kordofan regions to the west.

Before the start of the truce at 6 a.m. (0400 GMT), residents reported anti-aircraft missiles firing in southern Khartoum and the Sharg el-Nil district across the Nile, which also saw air strikes.

The fighting has displaced more than 1.9 million people, 200,000 or more of whom have crossed the border into Egypt.

Those who have taken the long journey have complained of poor conditions and long wait times.

On Saturday two people attempting to cross the Ashkeit border said they had been turned back as a new rule had come into effect requiring all Sudanese to obtain a visa before entering Egypt, reversing a longtime exemption for women, children, and the elderly.

"We spent two nights in the neutral territory and now they are turning us back," said Sundus Abbas, a doctor speaking to Reuters by phone from between the countries' checkpoints. "Some people are refusing to leave," she said.

Confirming the new rule, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said authorities had detected "the spread of unlawful activities by some individuals and groups on the Sudanese side" including issuing fraudulent visas.

Egypt did not aim to prohibit entry but to organise it, he said, adding the necessary equipment had been provided for the visas to be issued promptly.

SATELLITE MONITORING

In the week since the last ceasefire lapsed on June 3 there has been intense fighting, including around crucial army bases.

The U.S. State Department said late on Friday it was supporting a platform called the Sudan Conflict Observatory that would release results of satellite monitoring of the fighting and ceasefires.

An initial report by the observatory documented "widespread and targeted" destruction of water, power and telecom facilities.

It also documented eight "systematic" arson attacks that razed villages in Darfur and several attacks on schools, mosques and other public buildings in El Geneina, country's westernmost city, which has seen fierce militia attacks amid a telecom blackout.

A doctors' union in the city called it a "ghost town" and alleged several human rights abuses, including blockading the city, depriving civilians of water, and killing the elderly.

Citizens have said that some of the men who have attacked the city wore RSF uniforms.

Previous ceasefires had allowed some humanitarian access, but aid agencies reported still being impeded by the fighting, bureaucratic control and looting.

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Medical aid agency MSF said on Saturday its staff had been stopped by RSF soldiers and "obliged" to make a statement that was later circulated by the forces.

Sudan's army and the RSF, a parallel force that has operated legally since 2017, fell out over plans to integrate their troops and reorganise their chain of command as part of a transition toward civilian rule four years after a popular uprising ousted strongman President Omar al-Bashir.

Reuters