Security

Moscow: Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russia’s aerospace forces, has reportedly been detained after U.S. intelligence revealed that he had prior knowledge of Wagner paramilitary group’s attempted rebellion. Moscow denied Surovikin’s arrest, saying, instead, that he was “on vacation at home.”

Tokmak: Satellite imagery reviewed by open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat shows that Russia is likely flooding the Tokmachka river in Zaporizhzhya Oblast to slow down Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Both Moscow and Kyiv have blown up floodgates and dams costing billions in damage to complicate offensive efforts.

Tokyo: Japanese engineering company IHI will begin repairing engines used in U.S.-made F-35 fifth generation fighter jets in Tokyo. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have already put the faster, less bulky F-35As to service, and will soon deploy F-35B planes. Nikkei reported that the Australian military and other security forces will also have access to the two types of jets, which will be possibly deployed in the event of military combat in the Asia-Pacific.

— Karina

What Wagner could do in Belarus

THE NEWS

Four years ago, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was an English teacher and translator living in Minsk with her political activist husband. Today, she’s Belarus’s leader-in-exile who has a sharp warning for the West about Russian mutineer and mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s recent move to her homeland in eastern Europe.

Prigozhin and his men won’t stay quiet or contained in Belarus, she told Semafor in an interview on Wednesday from Brussels. But they’ll serve as a praetorian guard for Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko and potentially launch strikes on Ukraine from bases in the former Soviet republic.

“We actually should watch closely what will be the consequences of the situation for Lukashenko himself because, as far as I understand, he doesn’t know what to do with Prigozhin now,” Tsikhanouskaya said. “He’s explaining it to the Belarusian people: These Prigozhin troops will educate the Belarusian army or the Belarusian military officers, how to fly, how to control helicopters. But I think the only thing that these Prigozhin thugs can teach is to how to rape, how to murder, how to kill people.”

Lukashenko asserted himself last Saturday as a self-proclaimed peacekeeper when he brokered the end of Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny against Russia’s military leadership. After a string of calls with Lukashenko, Prigozhin agreed to stop his march on Moscow in exchange for safe passage to Belarus and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreeing to drop treason charges against the Wagner Group commander and his men.

Tsikhanouskaya said that she doesn’t think Lukashenko’s intervention was driven by altruism, or a sincere desire to prevent bloodshed. “Lukashenko was scared, but not for the fate of the Kremlin. He was worried only about his own power,” she said. “He knew that if Russia, with the Kremlin, starts collapsing or scrambling, Lukashenko will be the next … He wanted to save himself.”

STEP BACK

Tsikhanouskaya emerged on the global stage in July 2020 when she stood in for her jailed husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, to challenge Lukashenko in presidential elections. The strongman seemed to discount the prospects of a female candidate and allowed her to campaign.

But electoral monitors and most Western governments concluded Lukashenko systematically rigged the vote and then arrested many opposition leaders in its wake. The European Union and U.S. never recognized the results, and slapped sanctions on Belarusian officials allegedly involved in executing the fraud. She was sentenced in absentia by a Belarusian court this March to 15 years in prison for high treason and conspiracy to seize power.

Tsikhanouskaya fled first to Poland, and then Lithuania, from where the 40-year-old now leads a government-in-exile, called the United Transitional Cabinet. She told Semafor that she covertly maintains contact with a network of sympathetic Belarusian government officials, military officers, and civil society leaders to monitor events. She said she’s specifically focused on gauging the entrance of Wagner fighters into her country and assessing whether they’re being activated for military purposes. Satellite images obtained by news organizations this week appeared to show a new military base being constructed for Wagner south of Minsk.

“We have our people’s intelligence inside the country, people watching closely which cars are coming to Belarus … and if such a big quantity of people will arrive to our country,” she said. “But we don’t have such evidence yet.”

Tsikhanouskaya has been pressing Belarusians to resist Russia’s growing military presence in their country, which includes the stationing of forward troops and the expected deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. The opposition leader wrote recently about how the Belarusian underground is staging increasingly aggressive operations to sabotage the Russian war machine. This included a March drone attack on a Kremlin surveillance aircraft stationed at the Machulishchy airfield near Minsk.

Tsikhanouskaya today is pushing the international community to stop engaging the Lukashenko administration and recognize her United Transitional Cabinet. She said her organization has made advances: She attended the Council of Europe Summit in Iceland last month, and has had a regular dialogue with the Biden administration, including a meeting and phone call with Biden himself. But she said the international community’s isolation of the Lukashenko regime hasn’t been uniform enough, and the opposition has yet to rightfully fill the void.

“Wonderful, so let’s move further,” Tsikhanouskaya said. “And this is what I want to see from the world: Don’t legitimize Lukashenko yourself and don’t leave an empty chair instead of the voice of Belarus.”

For Next Steps, read here.

Stephen Sestanovich is the George F. Kenan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Security Check

The Biden administration’s point man on Iran, Robert Malley, has been placed on official leave following the State Department’s revoking of his security clearance.

Malley essentially disappeared from performing his most important duties more than a month ago, according to U.S. officials who spoke to Semafor, with the White House’s Middle East point man, Brett McGurk, taking his place. McGurk led a recent U.S. mission to Oman to try and advance a new nuclear agreement with Iran, according to these officials, as well as seeking the release of Americans held in detention in Iran. (McGurk is married to a Semafor editor, who had no part in this story.)

Malley’s status was further muddied in recent weeks by the fact that he continued to take part in some public events as the administration’s special envoy in which he officially spoke about Biden’s policy on Iran.

The State Department on Thursday officially announced that Malley was on leave, but without stating why. Spokesman Matthew Miller said Abram Paley has stepped in as interim special envoy.

Malley then issued a statement to a number of media outlets explaining his absence. “I have been informed that my security clearance is under review. I have not been provided any further information, but I expect the investigation to be resolved favorably and soon. In the meantime, I am on leave,” he said. Axios was the first to publish Malley’s comments.

One person briefed on Malley’s situation told Semafor the official was being investigated for the mishandling of classified information.

Malley continued to engage in sensitive missions for the Biden administration as recently as April when he met with Iran’s envoy to the United Nations. These talks were focused on cooling tensions between Washington and Tehran after Iranian-backed militias killed an American contractor in Syria — resulting in retaliatory missile strikes from the Pentagon, these U.S. officials said.

Malley has been a lightning rod on Iran policy going back 15 years through both the Biden and Obama administrations. He was brought on to then-candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as a Middle East advisor. But he was forced out due to his extensive contacts with members of Iran-allied Hezbollah and Hamas — both U.S. designated terrorist organizations — while conducting his academic and research work.

Malley, though, was rehabilitated during Obama’s second term when outreach to Tehran became a core foreign policy objective. Malley was one of a small number of U.S. officials who engaged in the direct negotiations with Iran that led to the 2015 nuclear agreement, called the JCPOA.

Malley’s appointment as special envoy drew sharp criticism from many in the Iranian diaspora who believed he was too soft on Tehran. A senior Congressional staffer who works on Middle East issues told Semafor that Malley had alienated many on the Hill for what he said was the diplomat’s lack of forthrightness in describing the Biden administration’s dealings with Iran’s government. “So, now he will have to answer for that and this security clearance issue,” said the staffer.

The number of direct weekly flights between the U.S. and China, down from 314 before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Chinese government. Increasing the frequency of these fights was a central issue discussed between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese officials in Beijing this month, according to U.S. and Chinese officials.

⋉ ADVANCE: Offensive capabilities. The U.S. Navy’s amphibious ships — vessels that can partially submerge and also move over land — will begin housing and launching unmanned aircraft and vessels and are likely to get more upgrades, partly to justify high costs of maintaining the fleet, Defense News reported.

⋊ RETREAT: Defensive systems. Israel will not allow the U.S. to send the jointly-made Iron Dome air defense system to Ukraine, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told The Wall Street Journal. He raised concerns that Israeli military equipment captured on the battlefield could end up in Iran.

– Karina

Xie Feng, China’s New Ambassador to the U.S.

Beijing’s new ambassador to Washington has been working on U.S.-China relations for more than 30 years. But Xie Feng’s arrived this summer in a U.S. capital that’s now hostile territory.

Xie has begun making the rounds with senior U.S. officials to try and right a relationship that Beijing describes as at an historic low. He talked on Tuesday with the State Department’s No. 2 diplomat to build on discussions Secretary of State Antony Blinken held in China this month, according to U.S. and Chinese officials. Chief among them is bringing more senior Chinese officials to Washington, including Foreign Minister Qin Gang, for direct consultations. “We are finding ourselves in a world of turbulence, with serious challenges in China-U.S. relations. We are again at a crossroads,” Xie said this month.

Xie, 59, studied at China Foreign Affairs University and quickly began focusing on the U.S. upon entering the Foreign Ministry. He was initially placed in the Department of North American and Oceanian Affairs and later became Vice Minister in charge of managing the relations with Washington.

The depth of the disputes between the U.S. and China won’t be easy for Xie to resolve. The two sides didn’t seem to make much ground in Beijing on issues like Taiwan, free access in the South China Sea, tech exports, or Beijing’s growing military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. Xie is also going to find a Congress and American public that’s incensed about China’s role in shipping the precursor chemicals to Mexico that’s fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S.

Blinken spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations this week and said counter-narcotics may be the most pressing area for U.S.-China cooperation. The diplomat said the U.S. was building a broader international coalition of countries to fight the synthetic opioids scourge, and that Beijing could find itself isolated if it doesn’t join. “I don’t think China is going to be immune to that,” Blinken said. “So I have some modest hope that we can find a way to elicit their cooperation.”

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