Belarusian roulette: a mutiny’s aftermath

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Speed slow. 135 gigabytes of network busy taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com. Hello, and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Ora Ogumbiyi.

And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Chicago is known for many things. Deep dish pizza, its city skyline and an extensive transport system. But residents have fallen out of love with its buses and trains. And this troubling situation is being mirrored across the country.

And for dignitaries visiting China, there's clearly an unwritten fashion rule that's being observed. Our correspondent looks into why it's so important. First up, though, Last night, Russia's President Vladimir Putin took to the airwaves again with a blast of vitriol for what he called the organizers of the rebellion against. Mr. Putin mentioned betrayals and all sorts of national traitors. But he didn't name Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group of mercenaries who led what was to be a march on Moscow. He spoke directly to Wagner group fighters, saying they could sign up to join the regular forces, return home or go to neighboring Belarus, where Mr. Prigozhin has been given safe passage. Reportedly, not long before Mr. Putin's speech, Mr. Prigozhin made his first public comments since the mutiny. He again said the march had not been an attempt to overthrow the state, but rather to avoid destruction of the Wagner group and to seek justice for those who have made mistakes, that is the Russian military leaders he's railed against for months. Belarus is a notionally sovereign country with democratic ambitions. In reality, it's a Russian client state and its president, Alexander Lukashenko, is enormously dependent on Mr. Putin, who helped keep him in office after a stolen election in 2020. With Mr. Prigozhin and some number of Wagner fighters allegedly heading there, the spotlight is back on a country that maybe didn't want much spotlighting.

Alexander Lukashenko, the longtime dictator of Belarus, is the only that seems to have come out of this very bizarre mutiny over the past day or two in Russia with any sort of improved standing.

Christopher Lockwood is the Economist's Europe editor.

He's been the person who has helped to broker and end things, and he seems to be the place where now Mr. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner military group, is going to relocate to. So that's actually kind of a plus for him as well. So all in all, he's had a rather good couple of days.

So let's wind back a bit that the last time we spoke a lot about Mr. Lukashenko on the show, it was after a stolen election and truly not much since then. What spent his and Belarus role in the war?

Well, Lukashenko's done a pretty smart job of keeping himself out of the war. Russia has constantly tried to get him to commit Belarusian troops into the war. Now, of course, Belarus was used as a staging post for one of the main axes of attack at the beginning of the war last year. That was the direct assault on Kyiv, the capital, which really is very close to the Belarusian border. But Belarusian troops themselves have not been used despite entreaties. And of course, the fighting hasn't really been coming out of Belarus for quite a long time. The one area where he hasn't completely kept out of the conflict is by agreeing reportedly to house Russian tactical nuclear weapons that Russia wants to move to Belarus. So far we haven't seen any transfer and, you know, one wonders whether it is actually going to go ahead or not. And he's boasted that he has plenty of places to put these nuclear weapons. It's almost as if he's rather happy to be having them.

And you say that he's been good at keeping Belarus largely out of the war until very recently, but what's his relationship been with Vladimir Putin?

Well, Belarus is a small country, highly dependent on Moscow, but it's always tried to maintain a kind of independent look towards the West. Obviously, that's very difficult at the moment, ever since he stole the election. But in the past he used to try and play both sides off against each other. But of course he is critically dependent on Moscow. He might well have been overthrown after the stolen election, had not Russia made it very clear they were going to support him. And it's a very one sided relationship too. Lukashenko has been 14 or 15 times since the start of the war last February to Moscow to see Mr. Putin. Putin's only been to see him once. I think that tells you pretty much everything you need to know. He could not exist, could not continue in power were it not for Russia. And he knows that very well.

And you're saying that amid all this talk of heroism for brokering this deal, that role was probably exaggerated?

Almost certainly exaggerated. We have talked to senior Ukrainian officials who, speaking anonymously, have told us that Lukshenko really wasn't involved in any of the detail of the negotiation, only came in on it at the very last minute as much as anything else, really, to put his seal on it and make it look as though this was a sort of proper sovereign agreement. But he has helped to solve a problem for WAGNER and for Mr. Putin. And the problem is what happens to this private army. The Wagner group did not want to be dissolved. Putin was insisting that it should be absorbed into the Russian military. And this is the fix that it can continue to exist, but not in Russia.

But what's been unclear from the start is what that actually means for WAGNER and for Mr. Prigozhin in Belarus. What do we know about that?

Well, as with everything else concerning this episode, all the details are murky and unclear. And of course, things that might be said to have been promised might not actually be, or they might be promised and the promises might be broken. But, you know, what we know at the moment is roughly this, that Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was supposed to be being arrested and tried for treason, has not been arrested. He's been allowed to go with safe passage into Belarus, and that Wagner soldiers can go with him and that Wagner continue to exist as a legal entity, but not in Russia. Putin has made enormous concessions in the face of this uprising because initially you would have thought he would need to follow through on his threat to arrest and try and quite possibly imprison or even execute Prigozhin, who he thinks has turned against him. He hasn't been able to do that and he hasn't been able to disband Wagner and bring it in into the Russian army. They were required to give them, as the price of this deal, the possibility of continuing to exist, albeit outside Russia. So it's been a big, big, big climb down for Mr. Putin.

Well, even that part is not clear. He said that Mr. Prigozhin would get safe passage, but then spoke last night in very critical terms of the Wagner leadership. What do you think's going on there?

Well, again, another fascinating question. As far as we know, they have not yet withdrawn the treason charges against Prigozhin, but at they definitely did have this arrangement that said that he would be allowed to go into exile. So you can't tell which of those two contradictory statements is currently operative or currently the most operative. And equally, we haven't actually seen the Wagner mercenaries moving into Belarus yet at all. So we don't know whether that part of the deal will be honoured. And then another thing we don't know is what the fate of the Russian officials that Prigozhin said he wanted removed is. Now, this is actually really the centre of the whole thing. Mr. Prigozhin had two issues. One was he didn't want to see his Wagner group disbanded. Well, he seems to have been successful at that. But the other big thing is he wanted justice, as he called it, against the two people who he blames for the mismanagement of the war, which has cost very many of his men's lives. And those two people are Sergei Shoigu, who is the Defense Minister of Russia, and Valeriy Gerasimov, who is the head of the general military staff, the top soldier in Russia. He's demanded that both of them lose their jobs. Well, as far as we know, they haven't lost their jobs. Shoigu was shown on Russian television yesterday going about his business, inspecting troops and so forth. But there are endless rumours going around that he is about to be fired and someone else appointed in his place. And the person that's talked about is someone who's actually quite friendly towards Mr. Prigozhin, which is very interesting. So we don't know whether Mr. Prigozhin has achieved that objective or not. That's another thing that we'll have to wait and see in the next few days, I guess.

But whatever the outcome of all of these questions, Belarus and Mr. Lukashenko have been thrust back onto the world stage here. What do you see for the country's role in the war from here on out?

Well, I think that part of this deal will be that Lukashenko doesn't have to contribute troops to the Ukraine war effort. He really does not want to get involved in this war. It will be extremely unpopular with people at home. But where he is going to be involved in the war is if Wagner, as we expect from the deal, continues to exist as an entity in that it could mount operations from Belarus into Ukraine, that way through the north, raids on Kyiv, raids on bits of northern territory, which would tend to have the effect of forcing the Ukrainian military to guard their northern flank and therefore, you know, have less troops available to do the fighting down in the south and the east. So, so there will be that involvement. I think through Wagner. That's probably what the deal will look like. Whether that actually does happen in practice, we'll have to wait and see. But I'm sure that's the plan.

Chris, than taking us through what we know so far. Anyway, thank you. For our listeners who have completed one of our surveys lately. Thanks. We really appreciate it. Your views are going to help make the economists podcasts even better. But let me impose on you just a tiny bit more. We've got a short follow up survey that will really help us and let you share what you like and what you don't about our shows. It'll just take a couple of minutes. Head over to economist.com podcastsurvey and like always, the link is in the show Notes.

Chicago's got what is America's second biggest public transport system after that of of New York. It's kind of extensive. It's been around a long time. It has elevated trains which are very famous. There's eight lines and they kind of all go into the city center, what they call the loop, which is this literal loop of train lines.

Doors closing.

Daniel Knowles is our American Midwest correspondent.

Division and Milwaukee is next.

Doors open on the left at Division and Milwaukee.

They have buses and they have a suburban train network as well that goes out to the, you know, to various suburbs all over the region. But the system in Chicago is definitely in trouble. They have multiple problems. A ridership has not come back since the pandemic. And the cta, which runs the elevator trains and the buses, their ticket sales are $300 million, almost a year less than they were in 2019. And this is what's causing what a lot of transport systems all over the United States are facing up to, which is a fiscal cliff. Basically the threat is that in the next few years a lot of public transport systems across America might run out of money.

Doors closing.

Chicago and Milwaukee is next.

And why might they run out of money?

In the pandemic, people really stopped using public transport usership sort of collapsed. And obviously with that, you know, people stopped paying for fares. And so transport systems lost a lot of money. But the federal government stepped in during the pandemic and provided a lot of money which kept most systems going. It meant that they didn't have to make enormous cuts to service. They were able to keep operating with the very low ridership of the pandemic. But it's been quite slow for ridership to recover in the US Particularly compared to other countries. And the result is that the federal Covid relief money is due to run out as soon as next year in some cities. Others have been able to stretch it out a bit longer. But in the next kind of two to three years, basically that money is going to be gone. And if the ridership hasn't come back and the fare revenue with it, then a lot of public transport systems are going to be in real trouble. They're going to face cuts, fare hikes, or a mix of both, unless they're bailed out in some way. So it's a big worry for public transport systems across America.

You mentioned low ridership levels. Have people just fallen out of love with public transport?

So it's an interesting question why kind of usage hasn't returned in America in the same way it has elsewhere? Ridership on the London Underground is sort of back up to 90% of what it was, whereas the New York subway, It's more like 60 to 70%. Some of it is a kind of positive thing that Americans have quite large homes, and so working from home is more appealing. I think a negative part of it is that American transport systems were very set up for that sort of 9 to 5 model. They're not that flexible for ridership. That's not just kind of getting to an office in the morning and getting home again in the evening. And so that kind of demand for transport, you know, around your neighborhood hasn't come back onto systems in the way it has elsewhere. But there are some other big problems that come from the worsening of service that's sort of happening now before the money's running out. And so it's a really dangerous time for public transportation.

And how badly is this affecting public finances?

It varies kind of from where you are. I mean, if you look at systems like the Los Angeles kind of network, it's not going to be that much in trouble from money, because it never relied that much on fares to begin with. If you look at the Bay Area or Chicago or New York, the kind of running out of money is a really Big risk. And these older public transport systems that did used to have an awful lot of ridership and raised quite a lot of revenue and fares, they're the ones that are in trouble. And in New York, York and in California and actually in Minnesota too, the states have stepped up to provide money to fill the gap so that the worst cuts will be avoided. But that's not happened everywhere. And I think, you know, Chicago is one of those places where it's still a bit unclear where this money is going to come from. They're projecting to be $730 million short by 2026.

So then, Daniel, what will it take for people to get back on public transportation?

Well, I think right now the big challenge is refitting and making public transport work for this post lockdown, post pandemic environment. Some of the sort of commuting to offices is never going to come back. But what they need to do is work out how to formulate transport so that you can get around neighbourhoods, not just into the city centre for work. But I think right now the most urgent thing is just to stop the service getting worse. Because what's been happening even before the money runs out, a lot of the people who used to drive buses and drive trains have retired or have got jobs elsewhere. So service has worsened. There's also been a lot of concerns about crime on public transport and people kind of using public transport as a place to sleep. So solving some of those problems, I think that's the really urgent priority. But then longer run, there's also yet this idea of how do you reformulate public transport? So it's not only for a sort of 9 to 5 commute, because that may never come back to the same extent that it used Daniel.

I'm not going to lie, none of this is sounding very good. So I have to ask, if local governments can't pay for the service, if riders aren't willing to take the service, shouldn't governments just cut back on how much public transport they're providing?

No, I don't think that would work. And one of the people we interviewed for this piece was the chief economist of the City of San Francisco. And he basically said it would be impossible for the city to recover if its public transport system doesn't work. There's not enough space for people to drive in. And if you look at these older cities that do have what were well used public transport systems, places like Chicago, like Boston, like Philadelphia and like San Francisco, they have these very dense employment clusters which are very important to the local economy of those cities. And without good public transport, it will be a real challenge for those employment clusters to come back and to generate as much revenue as they have. And so cities will be in economic trouble if they don't get ridership back and they don't begin to fix public transport. So no, cutting it is not an option or not a good one. Anyway.

Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you ever so much for having me.

Recently, Honduran President Xiomara Castro traveled to Beijing for the first time since her country broke ties with Taiwan in March.

Rosie Blore writes about China for the Economist.

Her visit produced multiple agreements with China, but one of the things that interested me was her sartorial selection. She was greeted with a huge motorcade in Tiananmen Square, marching bands, red carpet, a military inspection, cannons and welcoming children. And she expressed her newfound loyalty and delight at being in Beijing by wearing a red trouser and a shirt with a red flowing necktie. Wearing red has actually become a bit of a thing, a diplomatic fashion statement for visiting dignitaries when they go to Beijing. It's a way to pay homage both to the country and its leaders.

Okay, but Rosie, why red?

So in China, red represents wealth, luck, happiness. A number of emperors have blasted about how wonderful the color red is. Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the Ming, the bright dynasty in the 14th century, famously painted the country red. He said it was the most distinguished color and it became associated with lots of popular customs, like giving red envelopes containing money, wearing scarlet for celebrations like marriages. By happy coincidence, red is of course, the color of communism as well. It's been linked to uprisings since the French Revolution. And kids in China used to be taught that the red of the communist flag in China represented the fresh blood of martyrs. So for some wearing red, the national color is a way to make a positive impression.

And Rosie, who else has worn red to impress in Beijing?

This has become a global clique of foreign dignitaries who did this. Pat Nixon, the wife of Richard Nixon, wore red when she went to China in 1972 on the famous tour where ties with America were re established. The queen wore red when she met hu Jintao in 2005. More recently, America's first lady, Michelle Obama wore red. So did her daughter Sasha. They went to China on an apparently non political trip in 2014. They wore a very political color. Melania Trump did the same. Even male leaders, they have a slightly harder time getting in on the act. But Putin, Robert Mugabe, many others have donned red ties to meet Mr. Xi, even Narendra Modi, India's Prime Minister, who really doesn't like to kowtow to China or make any concessions to look like he is, has a couple of times slotted a red handkerchief in his Nehru jacket when he's greeting China's president.

And do you think it actually plays into diplomacy?

Well, I guess the thing about diplomatic trips is that they are heaped with symbolism. I mean, that's exactly what the red carpet is, you know, and so wearing red is a form of flattery, but of course, it's just one of many aspects of the wider geopolitical jockeying. Isiomara Castro left Beijing with several deals that she hopes will be on the table, but it doesn't work for everyone. A very clear example from the time I was in China was when President Park Geun Hye of South Korea, she seemed to wear red many times to meet Mr. Xi. She had said she wanted to improve South Korea's relationship with China, but in the end that all went sour when South Korea agreed to host an American missile system, and then there were boycotts of South Korean firms and they stopped tour parties and the whole sort of relationship went sour. Another of the famous occasions was during the so called golden era of relations between Britain and China when Xi Jinping made a state visit to the UK And Kate Middleton, then Duchess of Cambridge, sat next to Xi Jinping at Buckingham palace wearing the beautiful red gown and her diamond tiara. It's a famous shot that you often see from that trip of her clinking glasses with Xi Jinping. Theresa May wore red several times to meet Xi Jinping, but we know what happened to that relationship. It was literally consigned to history in recent months by Rishi Sunak. So it doesn't always work for the long term.

And Rosie, I'm not sure anyone's really coming to the Economist for fashion advice, but just in case they are, I want your opinion. If leaders want to impress Mr. Xi, what should they consider when picking their next red outfit for a trip to Beijing?

Well, I think it's absolutely right that it is seen as a form of flashery to wear red in China. And obviously red is a great color. Who wouldn't want to? But it's worth knowing a little bit more about the history of the color. So the reason it's a lucky color is because it wards off monsters. And the specific myth about red is the tale of a beast called Nian, which means year, who apparently terrorized as the lunar New year dawned. He would eat their food, he would terrify them. And then villagers discovered that this monster was scared off by a small child who was wearing red. And so the story goes that that's when the custom started of hanging red lanterns to ward off the beast. So in that sense, I suppose if you're thinking about red warding off evil spirits, then it can show the vulnerability of the wearer as well as their strength. Something to think about.

Anyway, Rosie, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Oro.

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