Monday Reads: “There’s no such thing as a winnable war”
Posted: March 7, 2022 Filed under: Ukraine 23 Comments
irina vitalievna karkabi
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I feel as though I’ve become addicted to War Porn. I usually do not watch TV at all over the weekend but I couldn’t help but check the news. I spent yesterday talking to Alex several times asking about his 8-year-old daughter who is now with her mother in a town near Moldova with papers and passports ready should they need to cross the border. The schools are gone so she is learning English online. His elderly mother refuses to leave and is determined to fight. He’s ready to defend his country on whatever level he can. We get interrupted a few times as he tells me and our other friends from all over the world with similar concerns that the sirens have gone off again. Yesterday, he says, the Russians took out their airport and schools. I haven’t heard from a friend in Hungary all weekend. Refugees are fleeing What next?
I think what next is the question of this decade. Yesterday, as I watched Russian artillary kill a young mother and her two small children while their dog screamed out I was stunned and out of it for hours. The NYT photojournalist Lynsey Addario’s “security advisor (e.g. mercenary) runs and screams medic for a helpful family friend who still had a heart beat while the children and mother lie in the street pale and lifeless. I can’t imagine ever forgetting that image.
https://twitter.com/ewong/status/1500491124116500486
Marie Bashkirtseff, The Umbrella, 1883
These are war crimes, captured as they occur on TV. They are not the grainy black and white film we have as Holocaust survivors appear after being liberated by US and allied troops years but we see these years after the crimes themselves. It’s not the film of Soviet Tanks running over Czechlosavkia, Hungary, or Poland in short snippets during the 6 p.m. news carefully scripted and edited by news editors. This is real-time and we continue to see it. There was the slaughter of the Kurds at the hands of the Turks as Donald Trump abandons them. The flood of refugees trying to flee Afghanistan with their Taliban overlords ready to blow them up. The flattening impact of Russian bombs during the attack on Aleppo. Our shock and awe attack on Baghdad instigated by Cheney and Bush. Over and over we see these things. We see reporters lining up to get their wartime credentials but this time I sense Ukraine has made them shell-shocked early and less enwrapt in the image.
What next?
From The Times of London: “This war will be a total failure, FSB whistleblower says.”
Spies in Russia’s infamous security apparatus were kept in the dark about President Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine, according to a whistleblower who described the war as a “total failure” that could be compared only to the collapse of Nazi Germany.
A report thought to be by an analyst in the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, said that the Russian dead could already number 10,000. The Russian defence ministry has acknowledged the deaths of only 498 of its soldiers in Ukraine.
The report said the FSB was being blamed for the failure of the invasion but had been given no warning of it and was unprepared to deal with the effects of crippling sanctions.
The whistleblower added that no one in the government knew the true figure of the dead because “we have lost contact with major divisions”.
FSB officers had been ordered to assess the effects of western sanctions, they said, but were told that it was a hypothetical box-ticking exercise. “You have to write the analysis in a way that makes Russia the victor . . . otherwise you get questioned for not doing good work,” they wrote. “Suddenly it happens and everything comes down to your completely groundless analysis.
“[We are] acting intuitively, on emotion . . . our stakes will have to be raised ever higher with the hope that suddenly something might come through for us.
“By and large, though, Russia has no way out. There are no options for a possible victory, only defeat.”
The letter said that Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader and an ally of Putin, was on the verge of outright conflict with the Russians after his “hit squad”, sent to kill President Zelensky, was destroyed by Ukrainian forces.
Even if Zelensky were killed, the report said, Russia would have no hope of occupying Ukraine. “Even with minimum resistance from the Ukrainians we’d need over 500,000 people, not including supply and logistics workers.”
Well, that doesn’t sound good does it?
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?
There is no monopoly on common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
Viktor Zaretsky, The night arrest, 1962. Ukrainian Unofficial.
From the Hill: “Blinken: NATO looking at more permanent troop deployments in Baltic region” reported by Mychael Schnell.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said NATO is looking at more permanent troop deployments in the Baltic region as Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine.
Asked if the U.S. will send troops to the Baltic region permanently to protect NATO countries, Blinken told reporters that the alliance is “looking at questions of more permanent deployments.”
“We’re continuously reviewing within NATO our defense posture, including looking at questions of extending the deployment of forces, looking at questions of more permanent deployments,” Blinken said during a joint press conference with Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis in Lithuania.
“All of that is under regular review, and we’re engaged with NATO Allies in doing just that,” he added.
The secretary emphasized that “When it comes to NATO, the line is very clear,” pointing to article five of the North Atlantic Treaty.
“If there is any aggression anywhere on NATO territory, on NATO countries, we the United States, all of our allies and partners, will take action to defend every inch of NATO territory,” Blinken said. “It’s as clear and direct as that.”
It’s good they’re still trying to talk but so far the Russians can’t even deliver safe corridors for the women, children, and elderly fleeing the war zones.
Viktor Zaretsky
I had a friend here in New Orleans who now refers to looking for updates on Ukrainia as “doom-scrolling”. That seems an apt description. However, this has me thinking about little 8-year-old Vera with her mother. From The Washington Post by Chico Harlan: “After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Moldova worries it might be next”. Moldova maintains permanent neutrality per its constitution.
There have been no air raid sirens in Moldova, no explosions and no casualties, but already some of the turbulence and anxiety of war is starting to build.
People trade jittery messages on social media as Russian troops move through neighboring Ukraine. Some Moldovans are stockpiling foreign currency and drawing up plans to flee. Many, seeing how abruptly lives collapsed in Ukraine, say they fear the potential for catastrophe in their own country: All it takes is for Russian President Vladimir Putin to expand his ambitions.
“You never know what is in the mind of a crazy person,” said Evgheni Liuft, 32, who lives in Moldova’s capital of Chisinau.
Ten days into a conflict that is shifting alliances and upending the world order, the repercussions are hitting most directly in countries such as Moldova — post-Soviet nations that balanced for years between East and West, and are now realizing the middle ground is untenable.
In Moldova, the war has accelerated the drive to align fully with Europe. On Thursday, the country signed an application to join the European Union, in what its prime minister described as a vote for “freedom.” Moldova has also strained to accommodate more than 250,000 Ukrainian refugees who have crossed its borders, the prime minister noted. In a visit Sunday to Moldova’s capital, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the country a “powerful” example of a democracy moving forward, not backward.
Irina Karkabi
Despite calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine Airspace, people in the know say it’s ” War with Russia by Another Name”. This is from Crisis Group: Some current and former officials, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, call for Western powers to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. This Q&A explains what a no-fly zone would entail, where similar zones have been established before and the dangers of that option in Ukraine.
Those advocating for a no-fly zone over Ukraine have not clarified the precise contours of such a military operation, including whether it would be limited to excluding Russian aircraft from Ukrainian airspace or, as occurred in Libya with different actors, also entail attacks against Russian ground forces. In any event, a no-fly zone would likely require not merely the threat of the use of force, but actual U.S. and/or allied attacks on Russian forces. To be very clear, a U.S. no-fly zone over Ukraine would necessitate a direct military confrontation with Russia, and as noted above, President Putin has said he would regard this as bringing the U.S. into the conflict.
Yevgenia Albats, who serves as editor-in-chief of the independent The New Times magazine, says Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to have the kind of international order that Stalin agreed to have with Roosevelt and Churchill,” at the end of World War II.
“That’s what he wants, he wants to think himself as a nowadays Stalin.”
Albats says she believes Putin decided to invade Ukraine months ago, “when he realised that he was unable to force the West to provide him with the kind of world – international arrangements – that he wanted, that is to say that he wanted to divide the world into spheres of influence and assign Russia all the former Soviet Republics … he decided to start the war”.
On UpFront, Yevgenia Albats, a journalist and author; Stefanie Babst, the former deputy assistant secretary-general of NATO; and Agnia Grigas, an author and Atlantic Council senior fellow, join Marc Lamont Hill for a roundtable discussion looking at Putin’s possible reasons for launching the invasion of Ukraine and the likely consequences of his war – not just for Ukrainians, but for Russian citizens as well.
Well, this is another mess you’ve gotten us into Vlad the Mad Bomber! I’m going to read something and quit doom-scrolling for a while. The artists featured are all Ukrainian.
What’s on your reading and blogging list!?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Putin’s Propaganda War
Posted: March 5, 2022 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: brainwashing, caturday, propaganda, Russian media, Ukraine crisis, Vladimir Putin 28 Comments
Cat in traditional Ukrainian costume
Good Morning!!
We all know that Fox “News” has seemingly brainwashed many Americans into believing things that simply aren’t true, like Trump’s claims that he actually won the presidential election in 2020. But Russian media is even worse than Fox, and most Russians don’t have alternate news sources readily available. The Russian government is lying to it’s people about what is happening in Ukraine, and many Russians completely buy into the false narratives.
Here’s an example of what some people in Ukraine are going through in trying to get their loved ones in Russia to understand what’s really going on. BBC News: Ukraine war: ‘My city’s being shelled, but mum won’t believe me.’
Oleksandra and her four rescue dogs have been sheltering in the bathroom of her flat in Kharkiv since the shelling began.
“When I heard the first explosions, I ran out of the house to get my dogs from their enclosures outside. People were panicking, abandoning their cars. I was so scared,” she says.
The 25-year-old has been speaking regularly to her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos from her heavily bombarded hometown, Oleksandra is unable to convince her mother about the danger she is in.
“I didn’t want to scare my parents, but I started telling them directly that civilians and children are dying,” she says.
Painting by Francine Van Hove
“But even though they worry about me, they still say it probably happens only by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. That it’s Ukrainians who’re killing their own people.”
It’s common for Ukrainians to have family across the border in Russia. But for some, like Oleksandra, their Russian relatives have a contrasting understanding of the conflict. She believes it’s down to the stories they are told by the tightly-controlled Russian media.
Oleksandra says her mother just repeats the narratives of what she hears on Russian state TV channels.
“It really scared me when my mum exactly quoted Russian TV. They are just brainwashing people. And people trust them,” says Oleksandra.
“My parents understand that some military action is happening here. But they say: ‘Russians came to liberate you. They won’t ruin anything, they won’t touch you. They’re only targeting military bases’.”
Masha Gessen wrote about Russian media disinformation at The New Yorker: The War That Russians Do Not See.
A majority of Russians get their news from broadcast television, which is fully controlled by the state. “This is largely a country of older people and poor people,” Lev Gudkov told me. Gudkov is the director of the Levada Center, which was once Russia’s leading public-opinion-research organization and which the state has now branded a “foreign agent.” There are more Russians over the age of forty-five than there are between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. Even those who get their news online are still unlikely to encounter a narrative that differs from what broadcast television offers. The state continues to ratchet up
pressure on the few surviving independent media outlets, blocking access to their Web sites, requiring them to preface their content with a disclaimer that it was created by a “foreign agent,” and, ultimately, forcing them to close. On Thursday, the radio station Echo of Moscow and the Web-based television channel TV Rain, both of which had had their sites blocked earlier in the week, decided to stop operations. What the vast majority of Russians see, Gudkov said, are “lies and hatred on a fantastical scale.”
Woman and Cat by Lucian Bernhard
State television varies little, aesthetically and narratively, from channel to channel. Aside from President Vladimir Putin interrupting regular programming in the early hours of February 24th to announce a “special military operation” in Ukraine, the picture has changed little since before the war. There is no ongoing live coverage, no acknowledgment that what’s happening is extraordinary, even as Russian bombs fall on Ukraine’s residential areas and the Russian economy enters a tailspin. The news lineup, too, changes little day to day. On Thursday, the 7 a.m. newscast on Channel One lasted six minutes and contained six stories: a new round of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks in which Russia was eager to seek “common ground”; the “shelling of the Donetsk People’s Republic by the Ukrainian armed forces,” from which “twenty-five civilians have died.” A segue: “And now let’s look at footage from the Chernigov region, an area that is now controlled by the Russian armed forces. . . . Civilians continue driving around on their regular business.” (There were no civilians in the footage shown, only an endless sequence of armored vehicles.) Then: “Russia has prepared more than ten and a half thousand tons of humanitarian aid for the people of Ukraine”; “The West is pumping Ukraine full of offensive weapons”; “Aeroflot is organizing charter flights to return Russian citizens stranded in Europe.” Then the young male host announced, “The next scheduled program is ‘Good Morning.’ ” There was no mention of Kharkiv or Kyiv, which had been bombed the day before. Most remarkably, there was no mention of Russian military casualties, even though on Wednesday the defense ministry had acknowledged four hundred and ninety-eight deaths. (Ukraine has put Russian military losses at more than ten times that number.) The government has banned the use of the words “war,” “aggression,” and “invasion” to describe its “special military operation” in Ukraine. Media outlets that violate these bans face fines and closure. On Friday, the upper chamber of parliament passed a bill making the dissemination of “false information” about the conflict punishable by up to fifteen years in prison. The bill was responsible for TV Rain deciding to stop broadcasting on YouTube: the risks of calling things what they are have become too high—and the cost of trying to walk a fine line, as TV Rain had been doing, was morally unsustainable. Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper edited by Dmitry Muratov, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, took a vote among people it calls its “co-conspirators”—those who support the paper through private donations. Sixty-four hundred and twenty people have voted; about ninety-four per cent of them asked the paper to submit to the censorship requirements and continue publishing.
There’s also a good piece on Russian media by Aaron Rupar at Substack: Putin fights the propaganda war at home.
Because of the new law banning what Putin calls “fake news,” but is actually the truth, some western news organizations will no longer broadcast in Russia. The New York Times: Several Western news organizations suspend operations in Russia.
Several Western media organizations moved on Friday to suspend their journalistic operations in Russia in the wake of a harsh new crackdown on news and free speech by President Vladimir V. Putin’s government.
Bloomberg News and the BBC said their correspondents in Russia could no longer freely report because of the new censorship law signed by Mr. Putin on Friday, which effectively criminalized independent journalism on the invasion of Ukraine. Under the legislation, which could take effect as early as Saturday, journalists who simply describe the war as a “war” could be sentenced to prison.
Cat Nap, by Donna Hillman-Walsh
“The change to the criminal code, which seems designed to turn any independent reporter into a criminal purely by association, makes it impossible to continue any semblance of normal journalism inside the country,” Bloomberg’s editor in chief, John Micklethwait, wrote in a note to staff.
CNN International, the global arm of CNN, said it had stopped airing in Russia, and ABC News said that it would not broadcast from the country on Friday. “We will continue to assess the situation and determine what this means for the safety of our teams on the ground,” ABC News, which is based in New York, said in a statement.
News organizations are not necessarily asking their correspondents to leave Russia, at least not yet.
“We are not pulling out BBC News journalists from Moscow,” Jonathan Munro, the interim director of BBC News, wrote on Twitter. “We cannot use their reporting for the time being but they remain valued members of our teams and we hope to get them back on our output as soon as possible.”
The Washington Post: Russia’s independent media, long under siege, teeters under new Putin crackdown.
More on Putin’s crackdown on the press from Anton Troianoveski at The New York Times: Last Vestiges of Russia’s Free Press Fall Under Kremlin Pressure.
As President Vladimir V. Putin wages war against Ukraine, he is fighting a parallel battle on the home front, dismantling the last vestiges of a Russian free press.
On Thursday, the pillars of Russia’s independent broadcast media collapsed under pressure from the state. Echo of Moscow, the freewheeling radio station founded by Soviet dissidents in 1990 and that symbolized Russia’s new freedoms, was “liquidated” by its board. TV Rain, the youthful independent television station that calls itself “the optimistic channel” said it would suspend operations indefinitely.
By Belinda Del Pesco
And Dmitri A. Muratov, the journalist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said that his newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which survived the murders of six of its journalists, could be on the verge of shutting down as well.
“Everything that’s not propaganda is being eliminated,” Mr. Muratov said.
Precipitating the outlets’ demise were plans by the Russian Parliament to take up legislation on Friday that would make news considered “fakes” about Russia’s war in Ukraine punishable by yearslong prison terms. The Russian authorities have already made it clear that the very act of calling it a “war” — the Kremlin prefers the term “special military operation” — is considered disinformation.
“We’re going to punish those who spread panic using fakes by up to 15 years,” a senior lawmaker, Sholban Kara-ool, said on Thursday. During World War II, he said, such people “were shot on the spot.”
The crackdown on independent journalists — many of whom fled the country this week, fearing that even worse repressions were to come — added to the sense of crisis in Russia. The economy continued to reel from Western sanctions as airlines canceled more international flights and more companies suspended operations — including Ikea, the Swedish furniture retailer, a totem for Russia’s middle class and the employer of some 15,000 Russians.
And we thought Fox News propaganda was bad. I’ll post more news links in the comment thread. Have a great weekend, Sky Dancers!
Friday Reads: A Grim update and Prognosis
Posted: March 4, 2022 Filed under: Ukraine | Tags: Refugee Crisis, Russian Invasion of Ukraine 23 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I am so late getting started on this! Today I finally got some reprieve from the 8 days of dawn to dusk grinding, sawing, and hammering from my neighbor’s next door. They have a covered porch in the back now and I have a migraine. Then, I spent my evening in disbelief that some Russian Batallion fired on, hit, set on fire, then captured the largest Nuclear Power Plant in Europe. All that while I nurse whatever I did to my little left toe while managing to pull a heavy garbage bin onto it. I’m exhausted.
The refugee crisis from the Russian Invasion of Ukraine is worsening. This article in Vox investigates where the refugees are headed and who is helping them and how. “Where are Ukrainian refugees going? The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees is straining humanitarian resources.” has the byline.
The number of Ukrainians who have fled Russia’s war on their country surpassed 1 million on Thursday, and that number is rising hourly.
“I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years, and rarely have I seen an exodus as rapid as this one,” United Nations Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement Thursday.
European governments and humanitarian organizations have been planning for their arrival for weeks, but the number of refugees has surpassed those expectations. The UN has projected that 4 million Ukrainian refugees could arrive in neighboring countries just in the coming weeks.
Such a heavy influx would be a “huge burden for receiving states and would no doubt stress reception systems and related resources,” Grandi said during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Monday.
So far, at least 505,000 Ukrainians have gone to Poland, 139,000 to Hungary, 97,000 to Moldova, 51,000 to Romania, 72,000 to Slovakia, and 90,000 to other European countries. Nearly 48,000 have also gone to Russia and a few hundred have gone to Belarus. Most of the refugees are women and children, including a growing number of unaccompanied children. Ukraine has conscripted men between the ages of 18 and 60 to fight, prohibiting them from leaving.
I haven’t heard from my Ukrainian friend Alex for two days now. He’s in the north but is west so he still might be out of the warzone.
The Russians are regrouping in the North where that column of vehicles is still stalled. However, they are consolidating hold over the southern parts of Ukraine capturing a city with a major port.
The U.S. and European allies scramble to find ways to stop Putin but it looks like a more severe, deadly phase of its invasion. Russia is currently hitting small villages, towns, and cities with all its got. Reporters indicate that several towns north of Kyiv have been flattened. Putin is adding to his list of war crimes. There have been failed assassination attempts on the Ukrainian President’s life. This is from Axios and written by Ivana Saric.
Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council chief Oleksiy Danilov announced during a briefing Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had foiled an assassination plot against President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a Telegram post from Ukrainian authorities.
Why it matters: Zelensky has said since the start of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that he would be a prime target for assassination. Last Thursday, he warned that Russian “sabotage groups” had entered Kyiv and were hunting for him and his family.
The big picture: According to the Telegram message, Danilov said that a unit of elite Chechen special forces, known as Kadyrovites, had been behind the plot and had subsequently been “eliminated.”
- “We are well aware of the special operation that was to take place directly by the Kadyrovites to eliminate our president,” Danilov said, per the post.
- Ukrainian authorities had been tipped off about the plot by members of Russia’s Federal Security Service who do not support the war, he added.
- Danilov elaborated that the Kadyrovite group had been divided into two, with one being destroyed in Gostomel and the other “under fire.”
As I write, I’m listening to our Secretary of State talk about the situation and our relationship with our allies.
Our country and our allies are doing as much as they feel able to do. From CNN: “US officials say Biden administration is sharing intelligence with Ukraine at a ‘frenetic’ pace after Republicans criticize efforts.”
The US has multiple channels open and is sharing intelligence with Ukraine at a “frenetic” pace, US officials said Thursday, disputing criticism that the Biden administration is not sharing battlefield intelligence fast enough.
Still, the US’ secure communications with Ukrainian officials are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain as the war rages on, the sources told CNN. Officials also acknowledged that the US is now more limited in its ability to collect real-time intelligence with no one on the ground, and the apparent lack of military drones flying overhead. The CIA has not acknowledged whether it is flying its own drones to surveil the conflict.
Republican Sens. Ben Sasse and Marco Rubio, the top GOP member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have both said publicly in recent days that they are concerned intelligence isn’t getting to the Ukrainian military quickly enough. House Republicans began amplifying those concerns this week, ramping up criticism of the Biden administration for allegedly “withholding” intelligence from the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians, though, have not complained publicly about any lack of intelligence-sharing by the US.
One Senate source familiar with GOP concerns said that lawmakers were concerned both that the intelligence was being downgraded, or made less specific, and that it wasn’t being conveyed to the Ukrainians fast enough.
Sources familiar with the intelligence said it is indeed being downgraded, but primarily to scrub sensitive sources and methods — a particular concern given the logistical challenges with establishing fully secure lines with Ukrainian officials amid the Russian onslaught.
Many UK people and NGOs also believe the UK may not be doing enough. This is from The Guardian. The two difficult topics are a no-fly zone which could lead to a direct battle between Russian and NATO forces. The other appears to be the degree to which Russia can be cut off from the international oil markets. There are also calls for more help to get on top of the expanding refugee crisis. “Charities and opposition parties urge UK to do more for Ukrainian refugees. Lib Dems call for fully funded refugee scheme and Mark Drakeford wants Wales to be a ‘nation of sanctuary’ ”
Charities and opposition parties have urged the government to do more to help with an expected surge in refugees fleeing Ukraine after the Russian invasion, with concerns also raised about the issuing of visas now UK diplomats have left the country.
With the UN refugee agency warning that as many as 5 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee, the Liberal Democrats called for a comprehensive and fully funded refugee scheme. Mark Drakeford, the Labour Welsh first minister, said he wanted his country to be a “nation of sanctuary”.
Dozens of refugee charities have jointly called for an evacuation and resettlement plan similar to the one that housed thousands of families in the UK after the Balkans conflicts in the 1990s.
I was in London during the Balkans conflict. I sat up in the Parliament’s small balcony and watched PM Thatcher taking questions from the opposition party. I have to admit it was one of the most thrilling moments of all my travels given my heritage and my interests. I can’t imagine I’d feel the same watching Bojo.
Foreign Policy indicates that “There Could Be 10 Million Ukrainians Fleeing Putin’s Bombs. Europe has opened its borders to the continent’s biggest exodus of refugees since 1945.” This is written by Bart M. J. Szewczyk, a nonresident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund and an adjunct professor at Sciences Po. We better settle into watching this escalating suffering. I’m just relieved we have President Biden who knows how to build consensus.
.As Ukrainians flee in massive numbers, Europeans have opened their countries and homes with unprecedented speed and generosity. The scale and pace of the Ukrainian refugee exodus—more than 1 million within only a week—dwarfs even the worst of recent humanitarian crises and is quickly approaching the epic dislocations last seen in Europe in 1945. In Syria, it took two years before refugee flows reached a similar level. In 2015 and 2016, the European Union took in 1 million asylum-seekers each year from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, and this so-called migration crisis quickly turned into an existential issue for the continent. Ukraine, with twice the population of Syria and three times its territory, could generate over 10 million refugees and internally displaced people in the coming months and years. Nonetheless, recent international experience and initial European responses suggest that the open-door strategy is sustainable—not to mention morally right.
We already know that most refugees seek shelter in neighboring countries. Syrians primarily fled to Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan; Afghans to Pakistan and Iran; and South Sudanese to Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan. This makes sense since families fleeing conflict, often on foot or by any immediately available transport, will search for refuge in the closest area where they can find protection. In principle, staying close to home can also expedite returning home once the conflict ends. Neighboring countries are also likely to host diaspora communities that can help ease the hardship and transition for refugees.
This global rule applies fully to the crisis in Ukraine. Over the past week, a majority of refugees fled to Poland—which already had a large and well-integrated Ukrainian community of over 300,000—with the rest going primarily to the other states on Ukraine’s western border: Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, and Romania. Some Ukrainians are moving and will move to other parts of Europe or countries with large diasporas, such as the United States and Canada, but many will stay in the front-line states of first refuge. Being uprooted is difficult every time.
None of the front-line states are as affected as Poland, which immediately mobilized for the influx. The mass deployment of Polish government officials, municipal workers, emergency services, and ordinary civilians on behalf of Ukrainian refugees is as admirable as it is unsurprising. Etched deep into Poland’s DNA is the memory of Soviet and Nazi aggression—and the experience of facing impossible odds against an occupying power. Poland’s support to Ukrainian refugees is visceral as much as rational.
NPR explores one issue we’ve discussed here: “Race, culture and politics underpin how — or if — refugees are welcomed in Europe.” None of these three should influence the degree we commit to being our “brother’s keeper” and providing refuge to those in need but there it is.
More than a million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries to escape the Russian invasion — and that number could soar to more than 4 million in coming months, the United Nations refugee agency says.
More than half have entered Poland, with others going to Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia and Romania — and they have been receiving a warm welcome.
Ukrainians arriving in Hungary are coming to a “friendly place,” Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said.
“We will do everything to provide safe shelter in Poland for everyone who needs it,” said Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski.
At the Polish border, guards hand out sandwiches to Ukrainians in waiting rooms. Polish citizens donate piles of toys and meet migrants with hot tea and free rides to where they need to go.
The open-arm welcome for those fleeing Ukraine stands in sharp contrast to the treatment of previous waves of refugees from places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Just two months earlier, Orbán said Hungary was keeping its restrictive immigration policies: “[W]e aren’t going to let anyone in.”
Earlier this week, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov drew a distinction between those fleeing Ukraine and others.
“These people are Europeans,” Petkov said. “These people are intelligent, they are educated people. … This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists …”
Some folks sure haven’t read their Jesus teachings. And this is another reason why:
An alliance of prominent civil rights lawyers from around the world on Wednesday announced it will file an appeal to the United Nations on behalf of Black refugees facing discrimination while trying to flee Ukraine.
The group includes Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney for the families of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery; attorney Jasmine Rand, who represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; Peter Herbert, one of Britain’s few nonwhite judges; Jamaican Member of Parliament G. Anthony Hylton; British solicitor Jacqueline McKenzie; and Carlos Moore, president of the National Bar Association in the U.S. They plan to file the appeal to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as well as the U.N.’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Earlier this week Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, and Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs, acknowledged that some Africans looking to escape the Russian invasion of Ukraine had experienced discriminatory practices at the country’s borders.
“Such blatant racism cannot be tolerated,” Zita Holbourne, the chairwoman of the Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts U.K. told The Independent. “Human rights of Black and brown people, predominantly students situated in Ukraine, must be honored and safe exit facilitated for all, free of discriminatory selection processes at borders. The targeting of Black and brown people in this way is a racist human rights abuse on top of a human rights crisis impacting all people forced to flee Ukraine.”
So, I’m hearing that many parts of the United States are already preparing to accept refugees. This is from KOMO news in the Puget Sound area of Washington state.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is sparking concerns worldwide. In Puget Sound, groups like Lutheran Community Services Northwest are gearing up to help.
The agency has helped resettle more than 2,100 Ukrainians in Washington and Oregon in the past five years. That includes placing 100 Ukrainians in the past year in Washington state.
The group is helping Ukrainian refugees even now. David Duea is CEO/President of LCS Northwest.
“We have been scheduled to resettle 55 in the next couple of weeks. We don’t know if they are coming. I don’t know if we are ready. But we have to be,” said Duea.
Months ago, there was an urgent plea for help from the community when Afghans started arriving from their war-torn country.
According to LCS Northwest, since last summer the agency helped resettle 700 Afghans in the Pacific Northwest after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
“What the overall community can do (now) is continuing what we do with Afghans–which is donating furniture; We have welcome kits. Just being ready,” said Duea. “It is a bit of a deja vu. We know the community is already starting to rally and people are volunteering their homes to be host homes–which we are going to take them up on because of the housing crisis in our area. It’s all hands on deck.”
Yes, people of Earth. It’s all hands on decks.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: March 3, 2022 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: House January 6 Committee, January 6 investigation, Joshua James, Maria Prymachenko, Oath Keepers, Roger Stone, Russia, seditious conspiracy, Stuart Rhodes, Ukraine crisis 30 Comments
May That Nuclear War Be Cursed!, 1978, Maria Priymachenko
Good Morning!!
There was so much breaking news yesterday, and the flood of information continues this morning. I’ve been focused on the crisis in Ukraine lately, but yesterday the January 6 investigation came back into prominence.
Ukraine
Before I get to the latest news from Ukraine, I want to share an article from Vice about Maria Prymachenko, a Ukrainian folk artist whose work Dakinikat and I have been using for our recent posts: Russian Forces Destroyed the Wild and Beautiful Art of Maria Prymachenko.
Amid the intense battles that broke out approximately 50 miles northwest of Kyiv on February 25 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum was burned, according toThe Kyiv Independent. “Another one of the irreparable losses of the historical-cultural authority of Ukraine is the destruction of the Ivankiv Historical-Cultural Museum by the aggressor in these hellish days for our country,” wrote the museum’s director in a message on Facebook. As a result, the Ukrainian Minister of Culture, Olexandr Tkachenko, requested that Russia lose its UNESCO membership.
It is not yet confirmed how many pieces in the museum’s holdings survive, but the destroyed artifacts reportedly include roughly 25 works by the celebrated Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko, who died in 1997 at the age of 88. Beloved for her saturated gouaches and watercolors on paper, Prymachenko was known to transform cultural motifs (yellow suns and graphic, stencil-like flowers) into vivid and wildly imagined narratives, in which elephants longed to be sailors, horses traveled to outer space, and villagers hijacked giant serpents.Today, nearly 650 of her works, dating from 1936 to 1987, are also held by the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Applied Art, in nearby Kyiv. Whether or not the Ivankiv museum was targeted intentionally, its loss is pointedly a blow to Ukraine’s cultural history, its collective spirit, its artistic soul.
Maria Prymachenko was born in 1908 close to Ivaniv, in the village of Bolotyna. Her father was a craftsman and carpenter; from her mother and grandmother, she learned Ukrainian arts of embroidery and hand-painting Easter eggs. From an early age, with no formal fine art training, Prymachenko began to create a way of working that stemmed from her encounters in forests and wildflower fields, surrounded by animals….
Our Army, Our Protectors, (1978), Maria Prymachenko
Around 1936, Tetiana Floru, an artist from Kyiv, saw Prymachenko’s embroideries for sale in the Ivankiv market and invited her to join the Central Experimental Workshop of the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art, an assembly of folk artists from all over the country. It was life-changing for Prymachenko, who in Kyiv underwent surgeries for complications from childhood polio that finally allowed her to walk. In 1936, her works were included in the First Republican Folk Art Exhibition in Kyiv, which later traveled to Moscow and Leningrad, and the following year some of her drawings were presented in the International Exhibition in Paris, where she received a gold medal and the blurb of a lifetime from Pablo Picasso….
“I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian,” Picasso reportedly said, visiting her exhibit in the same year he painted Guernica. Another admirer, Marc Chagall, also fell under the spell of her paintings: When he began to paint animals into his own magic realist scenes in his native Belarus, he called his creatures “the cousins of the strange beasts of Maria Prymachenko.” Other relatives in this imaginary zoo: the animal renderings of Henri Rousseau, Niki de Saint Phalle.
If you’re interested, read the rest at Vice.com.
Here’s the latest on what’s happening in Ukraine:
Newsweek: Ukraine Forces Reportedly Kill Russia General Andrei Sukhovetsky in Blow to Invading Army.
A top Russian military figure has been killed in the war in Ukraine according to local news outlets citing a social media post by his colleague.
Ukrainian news outlets were reporting that Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District, had been killed on Wednesday.
Media outlets cited a post on VKontakte announcing the death, written by Sergei Chipilev, a deputy of the Russian veterans group, Combat Brotherhood.
Black Beast, 1936, Maria Prymachenko
“It is with great sorrow that we learned of the tragic news about the death of our friend, Major General Andrei Aleksandrovich Sukhovetsky, on the territory of Ukraine during a special operation,” his post said, without specifying the circumstances.
Christo Grozev, executive director of fact-checking website Bellingcat, tweeted news of the death, adding that if confirmed it would be a “major demotivator” for Russian forces….
News of the death was also reported by Russian media outlets. Lenta.ru carried the story, while Alexander Kots, a correspondent for the mass circulation tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, described the death in a post on social network Telegram.
Defense One: ‘The Convoy Is Stalled’: Logistics Failures Slow Russian Advance, Pentagon Says.
A 40-mile column of Russian invaders has stalled on the way to Kyiv, opening itself to attack by Ukrainians, a senior defense official told reporters Wednesday.
“We believe that the convoy is stalled,” the official said. “They are not moving at any rate that would lead one to believe that they’ve solved their problems,” which still include a lack of food, fuel, and spare parts.
Some Ukrainian troops have also targeted the convoy, although in limited fashion, the official said.
The Threat of War, 1986, Maria Prymachenko
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s security service posted a video of a captured Russian soldier who says he and his unit were sent across the border with only three days’ food.
“Putin expected to capture Ukraine in three days,” Ukraine’s security service wrote above the video, which could not be independently verified. “By the order of the top Russian leadership, the phones and documents were taken from the fire brigades, removed food and water for three days and sent to war with Ukraine,” the agency said, according to the English translation of the post.
Insufficient food is among the missteps that have slowed the Russian advance, and perhaps edged Russia into more ferocious and indiscriminate use of missiles and airstrikes. As of Wednesday, Pentagon officials had counted roughly 450 such strikes on Ukrainian targets.
The senior defense official said Pentagon leaders expect the invasion to accelerate as Russia adjusts and gets provisions to its forces inside Ukraine.
Nataliya Gumenuk: We have no illusions: we know Putin will try everything to bomb us into submission.
As soon as the curfew was lifted in Kyiv, I drove around to understand what had happened to our capital overnight. For two full days residents had not been allowed to go out, even during the daytime. Russian saboteur groups were identified, and random street fights took place.
I did not recognise my city, with checkpoints in the old town, with people digging trenches, bridges being fortified and the subway turned into a bomb shelter.
“Do you enrol everybody who shows up?” we asked a young guy in charge. “Almost all, but I do not accept those under 18,” he said. “And there are a lot of them. I wouldn’t be able to look their mothers in the eyes. I fought in 2014-2015 in Donbas, so I know what the war is.”
It’s a predominantly male group but there are three women. The youngest is a lawyer. “What Russia has already done to the civilians has made us act,” she said. She had not told her family of her decision to fight. They live in a small town on the Ukrainian-Russian border, which has been partially destroyed. Another woman, in her 60s, said she was a nurse. Her husband had joined the defence units and she felt she needed to be with him. The last was a retired officer. She enrolled because her son had already joined the Ukrainian army. “When our grandparents, who remember the second world war, were wishing for peace, we didn’t understand why,” she said. “But now I know.”
Four Drunkards Riding a Bird,1976, Maria Prymachenko
The figures say one thing, experience another. The official toll of civilian deaths is 350, but after seven days’ fighting, there cannot be a single Ukrainian who doesn’t know somebody who has been touched by tragedy. There are more than 1,600 wounded….
“Those of you who have come to ‘rescue us’, just go away,” cries a woman holding a baby at Kyiv’s main station. “We were all right before you came. Just leave. All I have is some cash and a backpack.” Like thousands of people here, her mission is to go somewhere else, anywhere. The Ukrainian railway allows everybody to ride without tickets, including foreign citizens, and is running extra trains to the west.
We count the hours: seven, 20, 70, 100, 144: hours of the Ukrainian army on its own, its citizens holding off one of the mightiest armies in the world, which is now being bolstered by support from Belarus. The count becomes symbolic. For those under bombardment, each hour seems like a year.
Read more at the Guardian link.
AP News: Russian forces seize key Ukrainian port, pressure others.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces captured a strategic Ukrainian port and besieged another Thursday in a bid to cut the country off from the sea, as the two sides met for another round of talks aimed at stopping the fighting that has set off an exodus of over 1 million refugees.
Moscow’s advance on Ukraine’s capital has apparently stalled over the past few days, with a huge armored column north of Kyiv at a standstill, but the military has made significant gains in the south as part of an effort to sever the country’s connection to the Black and Azov seas.
The Russian military said it had control of Kherson, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed that forces have taken over local government headquarters in the Black Sea port of 280,000, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.
Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea, plunging it into darkness, isolation and fear. Electricity and phone service were largely down, and homes and shops faced food and water shortages.
Without phone connections, medics did not know where to take the wounded.
More Ukraine reads:
The New York Times: A War the Kremlin Tried to Disguise Becomes a Hard Reality for Russians.
Military Times: Ukraine jets hit Russian column; Russia has used thermobarics, Ukraine military says.
The New York Times: Anxiety Grows in Odessa as Russians Advance in Southern Ukraine.
January 6 prosecutions
This is huge: yesterday a January 6 defendant w ho worked closely with Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes has agreed to cooperate with investigators. Law and Crime: Oath Keepers Member Pleads Guilty to Seditious Conspiracy and Obstruction in Jan. 6 Capitol Attack, Will ‘Fully Cooperate’ with Feds.
A member of the Oath Keepers right-wing militia group charged in the Jan. 6 siege at the U.S. Capitol has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. He vowed to “fully cooperate” with the federal investigation into the attack.
Joshua James, 34, is the first member of the militia group charged with seditious conspiracy to plead guilty to that charge. At a hearing Wednesday, he confirmed that under the plea agreement, he will “fully cooperate” with the government’s prosecution and testify before a grand jury and at trial.
The seditious conspiracy and obstruction charges, both felonies, carry potential jail sentences of 20 years each. The seditious conspiracy charge is the most serious charge yet in the federal government’s sprawling prosecution of those who participated in the Jan. 6 siege.
This Ukrainian Ram Did Not Gather His Crop, Maria Prymachenko, 1976
James was named in a 17-count indictment that also charged Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. According to prosecutors, James and the other Oath Keepers made plans to bring a variety of weapons to support the mob of Donald Trump supporters who violently overran police to swarm the Capitol building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden‘s win in the 2020 presidential election.
At Wednesday’s hearing before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, James confirmed the Statement of Offense submitted in connection with his plea, which outlines the actions James took in support of the plan to overturn the election and keep Trump in office…
Here are a couple of things James admitted to:
In advance of and on January 6, 2021, James and others agreed to take part in the plan developed by Rhodes to use any means necessary, up to and including the use of force, to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power….
In the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, Rhodes instructed James and other coconspirators to be prepared, if called upon, to report to the White House grounds to secure the perimeter and use lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump from the White House, including the National Guard or other government actors who might be sent to remove President Trump as a result of the Presidential Election.
Read the rest at Law and Crime.
James is also close to Roger Stone and was communicating with him the morning of January 6, 2021.
House January 6 Committee investigation:
The New York Times: Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.
In a court filing in a civil case in California, the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman and other allies could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.
The filing also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been stolen amounted to common law fraud.
Corncob Horse in Outer Space, 1978, Maria Pryachenko
The filing disclosed only limited new evidence, and the committee asked the judge in the civil case to review the relevant material behind closed doors. In asserting the potential for criminality, the committee largely relied on the extensive and detailed accounts already made public of the actions Mr. Trump and his allies took to keep him in office after his defeat.
The committee added information from its more than 550 interviews with state officials, Justice Department officials and top aides to Mr. Trump, among others.
It said, for example, that Jason Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior campaign adviser, had told the committee in a deposition that Mr. Trump had been told soon after Election Day by a campaign data expert “in pretty blunt terms” that he was going to lose, suggesting that Mr. Trump was well aware that his months of assertions about a stolen election were false. (Mr. Trump subsequently said he disagreed with the data expert’s analysis, Mr. Miller said, because he thought he could win in court.)
The evidence gathered by the committee “provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated” the obstruction count, the filing, written by Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, said, adding: “The select committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
The filing said that a “review of the materials may reveal that the president and members of his campaign engaged in common law fraud in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”
This post is way too long, but so much is happening! Have a great Thursday, Sky Dancers, and please share your thoughts a recommended reads with us.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: March 1, 2022 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Joe Biden, Russia, State of the Union Address March 1 2002, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin 20 CommentsGood Morning!!
So much is happening in the Ukraine story right now. Whatever I post this morning is likely to change rapidly. But before I get to the Ukraine news and analysis, I want to call attention to the State of the Union Address tonight. We can probably use this post as a live thread, but if necessary we’ll put up a new thread for the speech.
Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post: Opinion: Biden’s State of the Union address should build on his record.
“My fellow Americans, the state of the union is … better. Much, much better.”
I doubt President Biden will use those exact words in his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night — not with inflation still in the headlines — but they encapsulate the truth. Biden has not solved all the problems of the nation or the world in his first year in the White House. But he has done a heck of a lot.
Recall where we were on the day Joe Biden took the oath of office.
The nation was gripped by the covid-19 pandemic, and there was no workable process or plan to get everyone vaccinated. The economy was in crisis; restaurants and hotels were shuttered, and airports were like ghost towns. Schools were closed. Two weeks earlier, a shocking and unprecedented violent assault on the U.S. Capitol was waged by insurrectionists bent on overturning the presidential election and keeping Biden’s predecessor in power. That defeated incumbent, bitter because the putsch had failed, lacked the respect for tradition and country to attend Biden’s inauguration.
Look where we are now.
Some 65 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and nearly 44 percent has also had a booster shot. Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are in free fall. During Biden’s first year, the economy added a record 6.6 million jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 4 percent. Schools are open and functioning normally. Mask mandates are being lifted. Our political discourse has returned to Democrats and Republicans shouting at each other across a yawning divide, but they are once again fighting with words, not cudgels and bear spray.
NBC News: Biden’s State of the Union address to focus on Ukraine, U.S. economy.
President Joe Biden will come before Congress on Tuesday seeking to sell his domestic and foreign policy agenda to an American public that has given him persistently low approval ratings as he faces the intensifying conflict in Ukraine.
A key focus of the prime-time address before Congress will be the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Biden planning to highlight the united efforts by the U.S. allies and the impact sanctions have already had on Russia’s economy, administration officials said.
On domestic issues, Biden plans to talk extensively about efforts he has taken to improve the U.S. economy and control the pandemic, while pressing Congress to revive his stalled domestic policy agenda.
The speech comes at a pivotal moment for Biden, both at home and abroad. Among recent presidents, only his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, came before Congress with a lower approval rating, with voters giving Biden low marks on everything from his leadership style to his handling of the economy.
The address may mark Biden’s last opportunity to make the case for his domestic policy agenda before a Congress controlled by his own party, with many Democrats facing a tough fight in the midterms.
The president’s team has been reworking his remarks in recent days to more heavily emphasize the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. White House press secretary Jen Psaki, in an interview with MSNBC this week, compared the moment to the remarks before Congress by President Barack Obama during the financial crisis or the one President George W. Bush gave after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Here’s where things stand In Ukraine right now:
The Russians have unleashed an all-out attack on Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv.
Michael Schwirtz at The New York Times: An explosion rocks Kharkiv a day after shelling in a residential neighborhood.
A large explosion struck central Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, on Tuesday, directly in front of the city’s administrative building, creating a huge fireball that appeared in a video to engulf several cars driving through an area called Freedom Square.
The cause of the blast and number of casualties were not immediately clear, though the city’s mayor said there were dead and wounded. CCTV footage of the attack captured what appeared to be a rocket striking directly in front of the building. Video of the aftermath showed a large crater in the middle of the city’s cobble-stoned central square.
Residential areas in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, were being pounded by Russian shells while a massive 40-mile convoy of Russian tanks and vehicles rolled toward the capital of Kyiv on Tuesday as the war entered its sixth day.
At least 11 people were killed and 35 wounded in the rocket strikes on Kharkiv, Interior Ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said. He said the rubble was still being cleared and the death toll was expected to rise.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack on the city’s main square “frank, undisguised terror. Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget. This attack on Kharkiv is a war crime.”
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said Tuesday that his government remained under control but said the city is surrounded by Russian troops.
The Washington Post: Russian invasion escalates as massive convoy threatens Kyiv, Kharkiv ‘surrounded.’
The Washington Post: Dozens wounded in shelling of Kharkiv as Russia strikes buildings with suspected cluster munitions.
The Washington Post: Satellite images show 40-mile convoy of Russian forces bearing down on Kyiv.
A massive convoy of Russian ground forces is wending its way closer to Kyiv, drawing within 20 miles of the center of the Ukrainian capital Monday, satellite images showed.
The line of Russian military vehicles stretched along the road for roughly 40 miles, far longer than initial estimates, according to the U.S. firm Maxar Technologies, which captured the photos Monday morning local time. The convoy includes armored vehicles, tanks and towed artillery, Maxar said, and it appears to be making steady progress along the war-scarred roads leading to Kyiv.
On Sunday, Maxar released images that showed the same group of Russian forces roughly 40 miles from the capital. The company’s analysts estimated then that the convoy was about three miles long but revised their assessment dramatically upward one day later, noting that cloud cover interfered with initial projections.
The convoy cuts a menacing figure through the countryside near Kyiv, but Ukrainian troops remained defiant Monday after weathering the most intense shelling since the invasion began, in the eastern city of Kharkiv.
The images come amid questions over whether Russian forces will use siege tactics against Kyiv, encircling the city, cutting off supplies and escape routes, and then moving in.
Russia is attempting to surround Kyiv, a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Post on Monday, adding that Moscow has used siege tactics elsewhere in Ukraine, including in the northern city of Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
The possibility of such an attack on the capital city of nearly 3 million people adds to concerns that the death toll could increase significantly in the coming days. House lawmakers briefed Monday by senior Biden administration officials were told Ukraine has suffered 1,500 civilian and military casualties, according to two people in the briefing. It was unclear whether the count referred only to fatalities or included injuries. “It’s likely going to be very significant loss of life,” said Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who was born and raised in Ukraine.
So that’s the latest on the war front.
Ukraine Analysis
From the Politico piece:
[Fiona] Hill spent many years studying history, and in our conversation, she repeatedly traced how long arcs and trends of European history are converging on Ukraine right now. We are already, she said, in the middle of a third World War, whether we’ve fully grasped it or not.
“Sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again,” Hill told me.
Those old historical patterns include Western businesses who fail to see how they help build a tyrant’s war chest, admirers enamored of an autocrat’s “strength” and politicians’ tendency to point fingers inward for political gain instead of working together for their nation’s security.
But at the same time, Hill says it’s not too late to turn Putin back, and it’s a job not just for the Ukrainians or for NATO — it’s a job that ordinary Westerners and companies can assist in important ways once they grasp what’s at stake.
“Ukraine has become the front line in a struggle, not just between democracies and autocracies but in a struggle for maintaining a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force,” Hill said. “Every country in the world should be paying close attention to this.”
There’s lots of danger ahead, she warned. Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones. It’s important not to have any illusions — but equally important not to lose hope.
“Every time you think, ’No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would,” Hill said. “And he wants us to know that, of course. It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared…. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off.”
Read the full interview at Politico. Also check out this piece by Mattathias Schwartz at Insider: ‘Putin might do the unthinkable’: Former intelligence chief warns that the conflict in Ukraine has increased the risk of nuclear war.
https://twitter.com/RosaLSmothers/status/1497419029174235136?s=20&t=6pSIVOzL5MTjh_V6rei73g
One more from CNN: US intelligence agencies make understanding Vladimir Putin’s state of mind a top priority.
The US intelligence community has made evaluating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state of mind a top priority in recent days as it seeks to establish how that is affecting his handling of the rapidly escalating Ukraine crisis, according to two sources familiar with the effort.
The efforts come as longtime Putin-watchers have publicly speculated that his behavior has become increasingly erratic and irrational. Since he launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last Wednesday, senior US officials have asked intelligence agencies to gather any new information they can on how the Russian leader is faring and how his mindset has been impacted by the unexpectedly unified and tough response from European neighbors and allies around the world.
The US intelligence community has spent decades decoding the former KGB officer, who has effectively ruled Russia since 1999. But while the United States has tremendous institutional knowledge of the man, it has a notoriously poor view into his day-to-day decision-making. The Kremlin remains what intelligence officials call a “hard target” — incredibly difficult to penetrate through traditional espionage.
There has not been any new comprehensive assessment that indicates a particular change to Putin’s overall health, said one US official. And officials have been on guard for the possibility that Putin’s strategy may well be to project instability, in an attempt to push the US and allies to give him what he wants for fear that he could do worse.
But the sudden burst of interest reflects a sense among some intelligence officials that Putin’s decision-making in Ukraine has been out of character — perhaps due to what some previous intelligence reports suggest has been protracted isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Everything US has [is] in [the] realm of conjecture because Putin’s decisions and statements don’t seem to be making sense,” said one source familiar with recent intelligence reporting on the topic. “For years, decades Putin has acted according to a pretty specific template.”
In a classified briefing for lawmakers on Monday evening, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, said the US intelligence community does not have good insight into Putin’s state of mind, according to a lawmaker who was present.
One bit of good news:
Everything is in flux right now. What will today bring? What do you think?
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