Form-annex trick: Russia’s Ukraine-seizure bid

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. Today from London, I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. China's President Xi Jinping is expected to grant himself a third term in office next month, another move toward being leader for life. We introduce our new podcast series which delves deep into Mr. Shi's life to get a better sense of what may lie ahead. And the music of early video games was plinky blonky and never made it outside the game's cartridges. But games music has evolved. It can be heard in concert halls and at award ceremonies. Even music purists are taking it seriously as a genre. First up, though, Today, Russia's President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to declare that four regions in Ukraine will be joining Russia. This annexation follows some referendums that were held in the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. It all comes from a familiar playbook. Back in 2014, a referendum also taken to be a sham resulted in the annexation of Crimea. This time, it seems the world is not going to stand idly by. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, warned yesterday that Mr. Putin's expected announcement would be a dangerous escalation in what he said was a moment of peril.

The UN Charter is clear. Any annexation of a state territory by another state resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the principles of the UN Charter and international law.

Last night, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said attempts at annexation would fail. Russia will only join the disaster it has brought to the occupied territory of our country, he said. But Mr. Putin seems destined to press ahead a means to claim victory when all he's winning is greater risks on the battlefield and at home.

The plan is for a big signing ceremony to take place in one of the magnificent halls of the Kremlin at 3 o' clock this afternoon.

Christopher Lockwood is our Europe editor.

Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, supposedly will sign documents recognizing the annexation of the four provinces, two in the east, two in the south of Ukraine, that Russia partially occupies. That might not, of course, happen. He might do something a little different to that. He might just take recognition of the votes that were held in those provinces asking to join Russia. And at any rate, there'll then be some form of parliamentary process to go through before annexation could actually happen. This all happened very swiftly, though, in Crimea back in 2014, when the signing of a decree and the formal recognition of it all happened within about a day. So this could happen either very quickly or indeed, rather more slowly.

And what's the story behind the votes that you mentioned that brought this about?

Well, well, this was another sudden and very dramatic phenomenon, really. It was only a week ago that Mr. Putin suddenly popped up and declared that there would be these referendums, and they were speedily carried out with just three days notice, spread over a period of five days each. And they then immediately reported the results. Ridiculously high numbers, as high as 99% in the case of Donetsk, a ludicrous number, clearly. And the lowest was 87%, I believe. The referendums were really as D in many places. People were herded into voting stations. These were sometimes in police stations even. There were enormous numbers of armed guards present. People were essentially voting at the point of a gun, and they have absolutely no credibility whatsoever.

So in any case, if this presses ahead and this annexation goes ahead, what does that mean? What's the logic here?

Well, it's hard to discern exactly why Vladimir Putin has decided to do this, but one explanation must be the once the four provinces have been taken formally into Russia, it becomes the case that any fighting in them that's conducted by Ukraine with the support of the west becomes, in effect, the west aiding and abetting an attack on Russian soil. And to my view of this is that Vladimir Putin wants to treat this as a form of escalation to make it more risky for the west, in his mind, for the west to go on continuing with supporting this war. And what he hopes, I'm sure, is to break Western resolve to support Ukraine so that not necessarily America, which is, of course, the biggest and most determined of the supporters of Ukraine, but some of the European countries might start to think, do we really want to be in a position where we're helping with the fight against actual Russian soil? Now, I don't think this is going to work because so far, everyone in the west has been absolutely solid in saying, well, it's not Russian soil. We don't recognize it as such. So nothing changes. And President Joe Biden of America has specifically made it clear that he will never accept these referendums.

The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia's claims on Ukraine sovereign territory. Russia's assault on Ukraine in pursuit of Putin's imperial ambitions is a flagrant. A flagrant violation of the UN Charter and the basic principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.

So I think that that position will remain, and this attempt to try and use it as a tool to make it riskier for the west will fail. I mean, it only works if the west decides it works. And it seems pretty clear to me that they've decided they won't let that happen.

But if this, from the Russian view, becomes a question of a fight of NATO forces on Russian soil, that is a recipe for serious escalation, is it not?

Well, certainly Vladimir Putin wants us to think that. He's repeatedly warned that nothing is off the table. He's talked about having his nuclear forces on high alert. He never quite explicitly says he's going to launch a nuclear weapon, but that's the clear threat. But, you know, he's been saying this sort of thing right from the start. We have to be very clear about this. In the very earliest days of the conflict, he said if any assistance was given to Ukraine, that would be treated as, in effect, a declaration of war against Russia and would meet with the gravest consequences. I think it was a bluff then. I think it's a bluff now. Of course, it might not be, I might be wrong, but I don't think the dangers of escalation have become significantly higher than. Than they were with this action.

So what does it tell you that Mr. Putin is undertaking this action that is clearly never going to be accepted by anybody but himself?

Well, to me, it's just further evidence that Mr. Putin knows the war is going very badly for him. On one level, he may be going to use annexation as a way of saying, I've won a great victory. It's really not much of a victory to hold a bunch of territory where you are constantly fighting to hold onto it. Or of course, he may be doing it to rally support at home and to bring in a lot more troops. The declaration of these referendums coincided with his call for a, well, he calls it a limited mobilization. It's actually a sort of unlimited mobilization because no one really knows how many people he's going to try and bring in. And both of them are signs that the war is not going to the way he wanted it to be. He's taken almost no new territory in the last four to five months.

And in the meantime, what should the west, what should Ukraine's allies do as this theater plays out?

I think they must do more of the same. The supply of highly accurate, fairly long range rocket systems, the so called Himars systems, has absolutely changed the terms of engagement. Ukraine is now able to hit Russian ammunition centers, logistics centers, command and control at considerable distance, and the Russians can't hit them back. This is key. The Russians can only use highly inaccurate artillery and rockets against civilian targets. Essentially. They can't reliably hit any military ones. And the west needs to just keep on doing that. And I think that is what's happening. Germany's sending more equipment even, and just in the last couple of days, America has announced another tranche of money to send more of the long range missiles. So they are doubling down, I think, in the west and they need to continue to do that.

Chris, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Leaders in China are preparing for the biggest event in the country's political calendar. The Communist Party's National Congress convenes once every five years. At its conclusion, a handful of officials emerge from behind closed doors to reveal themselves as China's next ruling elite. This year, we'll probably see seven men dressed in black suits and red ties and and led by the party's General Secretary, Xi Jinping. That would mark the start of Mr. Xi's third five year term in office. He'd be breaking with conventions on term limits, cementing himself as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. But until the start of the congress on October 16, other officials will quietly vie for influence. Only when Mr. Xi leads the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee onto the stage will we understand just how powerful he's become at this climactic moment in his reign. The Economist has released a new podcast series about Xi Jinping. It's called the Prince.

Xi Jinping has a really extraordinary life story.

Su Lin Wong is the Economist's China correspondent and host of the Prince.

Our podcast series describes how he came to power, how he's changed China over the past 10 years, and what that means for the rest of the world.

And tell me about the title of the podcast, why the Prince.

So Xi Jinping is the son of Chinese Communist Party royalty. His dad was one of the founders of modern China. And so Xi Jinping feels like he's the inheritor of this incredibly powerful enterprise, the Communist Party, and he's very motivated to carry out the vision of his father's generation. It's also a reference to Machiavelli's famous guide for how royals could hold onto power in the 1500s, which is also titled the Prince. And that book is known for arguing that, ideally, a prince is both loved and feared. But, you know, if that's impossible, then it's better to be feared than loved. And that's a theme we explore in the podcast and in terms of Xi Jinping's relationship with the political elite, but also ordinary Chinese people. And his life story is a sort of masterclass in how to win power, how to wield power, but also how far you can fall if you lose power.

But what does Mr. Xi know about losing power? He's only ever gained it.

So even though Xi Jinping was born into immense privilege, when he was nine years old, his dad was purged from the party leadership. And as a result, a young Xi Jinping was ostracized. He was publicly shamed at mass assemblies, he was repeatedly detained and threatened by Mao's street mobs, and his family was ripped apart. Then, as a teenager, he was shipped off to the countryside and spent seven years doing hard labor. And so we've tried to understand how those childhood experiences set him on a path to power.

And how did you go about doing that?

It wasn't particularly easy, because the private lives of China's leaders really is the most sensitive topic in China. And Xi Jinping himself doesn't give interviews. He doesn't hold press conferences. It would be too dangerous for a Chinese journalist to try to make a podcast like this. And as a result of all that, very few people inside China were willing to speak with me. But even people outside of China often didn't want to talk once they found out that what we were doing on top of that I wasn't actually able to enter China while we were making this podcast, partially because of COVID restrictions, but also because last year, the Hong Kong government declined to renew my work visa. So it's a bit like trying to make a podcast about Joe Biden but not being able to go to America or speak to Americans there. But that having been said, there really is a wealth of material available about Xi Jinping. He is someone who wants some version of his story told. The challenge is picking apart the truth from the propaganda.

Clearly. And how did you navigate that?

In this series, we've looked at the people who influence him. We looked at Xi Jinping in his own words through both sort of leaked secret speeches as well as publicly available speeches that he's given. We've looked at events from modern Chinese history and global history that have shaped him. But one. One method that was particularly important was speaking to people who shared similar life experiences. So in the first episode, I interviewed Nan Yang Li, and she's the daughter of one of Mao Zedong's personal secretaries, Li Rui. Like Xi Jinping, Nanyang lived through China's famine in the 1950s, where millions and millions starved. And she told me what it felt like growing up with an empty stomach.

Oh, I was always hungry.

Nanyang says she had too little to eat at her boarding school. Xi Jinping has described a similar experience, and she told us a story about how one day they learned that not everyone was living with the same level of hunger.

And one day, one naughty student just pulled off the curtain to separate the teachers and us. We found the teacher had really wonderful food. Yeah. And we were really shocked. We were really shocked. And some kids reported to their parents.

She was at a school with the kids of other leaders. So the food got better after that. But her biggest similarity to Xi Jinping was that their fathers both got on Mao's bad side.

I was 9 years old, exact same age. Like Xi Jinping, his father got trouble. My mom said, your dad made a mistake, but so many people made mistakes.

Nanyang's dad would be shipped off to a prison camp and held in solitary confinement for the next nine years.

And what happened to her?

Well, she eventually lost faith in Mao's Communist revolution and left China. So she lives in America now. But the interesting thing is that even after her dad was jailed by Mao, she kept faith for a long time in the mission of the Chinese Communist Party, the ccp.

I really, really want to be the member of the ccp. I want to show I was the daughter of the ccp. I was not the daughter of my father.

Why was that like, what was it that made you so desperately want to be a daughter of the ccp?

It's very hard for the kids from the really bad family. You had to try so hard. You should understand our time 1950s to be a revolutionary, that's the only way. Become a revolutionary, that's only your future.

One of our big questions on the show was, given Xi Jinping had such a traumatic childhood, and given that the party destroyed both his life and his family's life, why did he decide to dedicate himself to that party? But as Nanyang says, the only way to safety from that sort of chaos was either by leaving China like she did, or by finding power within that communist revolution. And how Xi Jinping has gathered that power in himself is a fascinating story. And that's the story I tell in the podcast.

And having listened to it already, I can confirm it is a fascinating story. Soo Lin, thanks very much for running through it with us.

As always, thanks very much, Jason.

All eight episodes of Soo Lin's podcast series are available now. Search for the Prince wherever fine podcasts are sold and traded. If you subscribe to this show, you'll also see episodes of the Prince appear on your app over the next few weekends.

When people think about video game music, they often cast their minds back to their younger days when they may have been playing something like Super Mario Brothers or Tetris.

Colin Campbell writes about video games for the Economist.

Those soundtracks were limited by the sound chips of the day, but of course things have moved on a lot in the last 30 years, and there are virtually no technological limitations on music today. Video game music today is being performed in some of the greatest classical music venues in the world, and every year you'll find performances by the great orchestras who are celebrating the best of games music. Video game music has definitely followed in the footsteps of movie scores. For example, the Berlin Philharmonic recently paid tribute to the work of John Williams, the Oscar winning composer whose landmark soundtracks include the wonderful Indiana Jones. Those concerts bring in people who might not normally go to a classical musical venue, and the same thing is happening with video games. Video game music as a live event has been around for at least 20 years. So there's a composer called Tommy Talarico who launched a program called Video Games Live. And that has staged more than 500 shows in 42 countries around the world. And at the recent BBC Proms, perhaps the most prestigious classical music festival in the world, they had their first ever performance dedicated to the Musical universe of gaming, and they included segments from Pokemon and Final Fantasy, as well as role playing games like the Legend of Zelda. The challenge of writing this sort of music is different from linear scores because games are interactive. And just to give you an example, if you're in a role playing game and as a character you're picking flowers to make a poultice or something.

The.

Next second you might be fighting a monster. And the music needs to transition from one to the other. And so it's written by the composers in a modular way. This can pose all sorts of challenges as you transition from one style to another. And one player might be fighting that monster and another might just wander off and shoot a deer or something. So you never know what's going to happen as you're composing the music, which is obviously not the case when you're composing for a film. The other difference is that people will play these games for, you know, sometimes 100 hours. They might play a game for eight or nine hours a day with the best will in the world. It's hard to imagine somebody watching the same movie three or four times a day or listening to the same movie soundtrack. So the music needs to have a lot of variety as well as having a strong theme as well. I was talking to a London composer called Jessica Curry, and she won a BAFTA for her haunting score for Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, which is a very sad and minimalist piece of music. But she made the point that games, composers and games music covers every genre that you can think of. For example, you've got Ape out, which is a sort of jazzy, drummy piece of music. The heavy electronics of Ridge Racer, a driving game. And then you've got something like Persona 5, which it's impossible to really classify what sort of music is in that game. And then you've got other games like Austin Wintery's Journey, which was played at the broadcast, which is just this beautiful piece of music. I think it's important for games music to have these moments because it legitimizes something that is already legitimate in the minds of people who care about these things. But it legitimizes it for, say, classical music lovers who are only now really understanding that video game music is something special. But I think it's also good for classical music and for these venues because it brings in a younger, more diverse crowd, crowds to enjoy the music that they've grown up with or the music that they enjoy for hours and hours every week.

That's all for this episode of the intelligence. The show's editors are Marguerite Howell and Chris Impey. Our sound engineer is Will Rowe. Our senior producers are Sam Westrin, Jack Gill and John Jo Devlin. Stevie Hertz is our US Audio correspondent and our creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Rory Galloway, Alize Jean Baptiste and Kevin Kaynors. With extra production help this week from Sam Colbert and Elna Schutz. We'll all see you back here on Monday. It.