“The War is Coming” — Vladimir Putin’s warning on the Ukraine’s nuclear annexation and the loss of Lyman-Like property
Winning in Ukraine is essential to Russia’s survival in its battle against the West, which he referred to as amortal enemy.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. As Putin declared that the eastern region of Russia was annexed by it, he lost Lyman.
Two powerful Putin supporters called for using harsher fighting methods when they railed against the Kremlin after Moscow declared that the illegally annexed region would be Russian forever.
The soldiers interviewed on the Sunday broadcast said they had been forced to retreat because of their fighting with NATO soldiers.
The Institute for the Study of War stated that Russian battlefield setbacks and the unease in Russian society were to blame for fundamentally changing the Russian information space. Pro-war milbloggers have provided a detailed picture of the battlefield realities for Russian forces, even if they were harsh criticism from men such as Kadyrov.
The broadcast seemed intended to convince Russians who have doubts about the war or feel anger over plans to call up as many as 300,000 civilians that any hardships they bear are to be blamed on a West that is bent on destroying Russia at all costs.
The idea that Russia is fighting a broader campaign was repeated in an interview with Aleksandr Dugin, a far-right thinker whose daughter, also a prominent nationalist commentator, was killed by a car bomb in August.
Mr. Dugin, like Mr. Putin, has accused Western countries of damaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which ruptured after underwater explosions last month in what both European and Russian leaders have called an act of sabotage.
The West has accused us of blowing up the gas line. “We must understand the geopolitical confrontation, the war, our war with the West on the scale and extent on which it is unfolding. We must join the battle with a mortal Enemy who does not hesitate to use any means, including Bombing the gas pipes.
The nonstop messaging campaign is working at this point. Many Russians feel threatened by the West, said Aleksandr Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who is from Russia.
This pressure from the West may finally be producing real results. Putin’s announced martial law in Ukrainian territories Russia now only partly controls, attacks on civilian targets deep in Ukraine’s interior, and a new, hardline commander in Ukraine, General Sergei Shurokin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” by colleagues, all suggest a growing frustration bordering on fear that the Russian people may begin noticing what has long been blindingly obvious: Putin is losing.
Peter Bergen is a professor at Arizona State University, a vice president at New America and CNN’s national security analyst. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views he gives are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.
In the early hours of that day, President Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered Russian troops into Ukraine. A Russian journalist living in self-imposed exile said that everything they still believed in got completely compromised.
Putin’s troubles have only gotten worse in the wake of the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has resulted in the capture of key pockets of Russian-controlled territory.
He said in Tuesday’s address in the Kremlin that “some countries are attempting to rewrite and remake the history of the world, in a way that would inevitably divide our society, take away our guiding lines and weaken Russia.”
(Indeed, his revisionist account defines his rationale for the war in Ukraine, which he asserts has historically always been part of Russia – even though Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.)
When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, they planned to install a puppet government and get out of the country as soon as it was feasible, as explained in a recent, authoritative book about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, “Afghan Crucible” by historian Elisabeth Leake.
During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US was initially reluctant to escalate its support for the Afghan resistance, fearing a wider conflict with the Soviet Union. The Afghans were given anti-aircraft missiles from the CIA in 1986 which ended the air superiority of the Soviets and forced them to withdraw from Afghanistan three years later.
American weapons are playing a key role on the battlefield. The US was initially hesitant of involvement in the war in Ukranian because of fears of a bigger conflict with the Russians.
But the US put those fears to rest relatively quickly, and American-supplied anti-tank Javelin missiles and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), GPS-guided missiles, have helped the Ukrainians to push back against the Russians.
Putin, Putin’s enemies and his villains: The case of the Russians against the Soviets and the enemy of the throne
Putin is also surely aware that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was hastened by the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan two years earlier.
Looking further back into the history books, he must also know that the Russian loss in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 weakened the Romanov monarchy. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. Subsequently, much of the Romanov family was killed by a Bolshevik firing squad.
Beyond these most recent missile attacks lies a number of horrors Putin has launched, which seems to have pushed his nation further from the pack of civilized powers he once wanted to join.
Russia has seen some criticism of the war being run by the top brass. Within limits, of course: Criticizing the war itself or Russia’s commander-in-chief is off limits, but those responsible for carrying out the President’s orders are fair game.
Putin is an example of how the delusions and illusions of one individual can be allowed to dictate events without any challenge. The autocrats who put their cronies into key positions, control the media to crowd out voices, are able to command their subordinates to follow the most foolish orders.
In a recent interview with Russian arch-propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, the head of the defense committee in Russia’s State Duma demanded that officials cease lying and level with the Russian public.
Kartapolov complained that the Ministry of Defense was evading the truth about incidents such as Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions neighboring Ukraine.
Valuyki is in Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine. In regards to Russian targets across the border, the Kyiv has adopted a neither-confirm nor-deny stance.
The before and after images of Ukranian have something in common with each other. Both caricatures are based on mythology and not knowledge of the country or people who live there. In relation to Russia, this mythology is shaped in Ukraine. Many don’t know what Ukraine is, whether they think of it as Russia or nothing at all. After hundreds of years of oppression by the Imperialist and Soviet empire, Ukraine has a good story to tell about freedom.
Stremousov said that there was no need for anyone to cast a shadow over the entire ministry of defense of the Russian Federation because incompetent commanders did not bother to address the processes and gaps that were present. “Indeed, many say that the Minister of Defense [Sergei Shoigu], who allowed this situation to happen, could, as an officer, shoot himself. But, you know, the word officer is an unfamiliar word for many.”
But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.
Writing on Telegram, Kadyrov personally blamed Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and failing to adequately provide for his troops.
“The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control,” ISW noted in its recent analysis.
Kadyrov – who recently announced that he had been promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general – has been one of the most prominent voices arguing for the draconian methods of the past. He recently said in another Telegram post that, if he had his way, he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.
“Yes, if it were my will, I would declare martial law throughout the country and use any weapon, because today we are at war with the whole NATO bloc,” Kadyrov said in a post that also seemed to echo Putin’s not-so-subtle threats that Russia might contemplate the use of nuclear weapons.
CNN Live News – Michael Bociurkiw Reports the Breakdown of the Kerch Straight Bridge in Kyiv and the City of Kharkiv
Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions he expresses in the commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.
In the aftermath of a huge explosion that hit the important and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of reprisals by the Kremlin were never far away.
The attacks on civilians, which killed at least 14 people, also drove new attention to what next steps the US and its allies must take to respond, after already sending billions of dollars of arms and kits to Ukraine in an effective proxy war with Moscow.
Unverified video on social media showed hits near the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and close to Maidan Square, just a short stroll from the Presidential Office Building. Ukrainian officials said five people were killed as a result of strikes on the capital.
As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five kamikaze drones were shot down. At this time of the day nearby restaurants would be crowded with customers and chatter of upcoming weddings and parties.
Monday’s attacks also came just a few hours after Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings, mostly while people slept. At least seventeen people were killed and many more were injured.
Russian missiles hit a glass-bottomed footbridge in Kyiv that is a popular tourist site tore into intersection at rush hour and crashed down near the children’s playground on Monday. In places that cut off water supplies and transport in the early days of the invasion, there were power cuts, but that had largely ebbed in recent months.
In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, which has seen more bombardments than Kyiv, residents shifted to war footing and stocked up on canned food, gas and drinking water. They were also entertained at the Typsy Cherry. Vladyslav Pyvovar told The Times that the mood was cheerful. People had fun, and wondered when the electricity would come back. (Power came back hours later.)
Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.
Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.
The only bridge connecting mainland Russia and Simferopol is a powerful symbol for Putin. That the attack took place a day after his 70th birthday (the timing prompted creative social media denizens to create a split-screen video of Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President”) can be taken as an added blow to an aging autocrat whose ability to withstand shame and humiliation is probably nil.
This penchant of dictators to hardwiring newly claimed territories with high-end infrastructure projects is seen as a trait. In October of 2018, Putin drove a truck across Europe’s longest bridge. That same year, one of the first things Chinese President Xi Jinping did after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The bridge opened after more than two years of delays.
Kiev versus Putin: the wake of the November 11 terrorist attacks and the fate of the Ukrainian air-strike infrastructure in the region of Crimea
The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. People shared their joy via text messages.
Putin had been put on thin ice because of the increasing criticism at home, an act of selfish desperation.
Before Monday’s strikes, the Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, had told Ukrainian journalist Roman Kravets in late August that, “by the end of the year at the minimum we have to enter Crimea” – suggesting a plan to push back Russian forces to pre-2014 lines, which is massively supported by Ukrainians I’ve spoken to.
What is crucially important now is for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to urge China and India – which presumably still have some leverage over Putin – to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.
Victory will be dependent upon the West maintaining a united front against Russia. Zelensky and his envoys abroad have warned Western leaders that their own security could be at risk if they do not supportUkraine in its fight against Putin.
Furthermore, high tech defense systems are needed to protect Kyiv and crucial energy infrastructure around the country. With winter just around the corner, the need to protect heating systems is urgent.
The time has come for the West to impose more travel and trade restrictions on Russia but only if Turkey and the Gulf states, which receive lots of Russian tourists, come on board.
The attacks snatched away the semblance of normality that city dwellers, who spent months earlier in the war in subways turned into air raid shelters, have managed to restore to their lives and raised fears of new strikes.
Ukrain and Kiev had been in the mood for a change: The case against a tactical nuclear weapon from Putin’s defeats on the battlefield
The message was obvious for the world to see. Putin does not intend to be humiliated. He won’t admit defeat. And he is quite prepared to inflict civilian carnage and indiscriminate terror in response to his string of battlefield reversals.
But the targets on Monday also had little military value and, if anything, served to reflect Putin’s need to find new targets because of his inability to inflict defeats on Ukraine on the battlefield.
The bombing of power installations, in particular, Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the Russian President could inflict as winter sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops using Western arms.
President Joe Biden Monday spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and offered advanced air systems that would help defend against Russian air attacks, but the White House did not specify exactly what might be sent.
John Kirby, the coordinating for strategic communications at the National Security Council, said that Washington was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day, and that Washington was looking favorably on Ukrainian requests. “We do the best we can in subsequent packages to meet those needs,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.
Kirby was also unable to say whether Putin was definitively shifting his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to pummel civilian morale and inflict devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, though he suggested it was a trend developing in recent days and had already been in the works.
“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Kirby said it was not clear if the explosion on the bridge had sped up their planning.
The new Russian general in charge of the war had served in Chechnya and Syria. In both places, Russia indiscriminately bombarded civilian areas and razed built-up districts and infrastructure and is accused of committing serious human rights violations.
The rain of fire against the Ukrainian civilians on Monday was chilling, given that this occurred at a time when Putin was threatening to deploy a tactical nuclear weapon and the debate over whether to use a tactical nuclear weapon was going on. If he does not, it seems unlikely – given his obliviousness to civilian pain – that any such decision would be motivated by a desire to spare innocents from such a horrific weapon. Still, Kirby said that there was no indication that Russia was activating nuclear arms or that the US needed to change its own nuclear posture.
But French President Emmanuel Macron underscored Western concerns that Monday’s rush-hour attacks in Ukraine could be the prelude to another pivot in the conflict.
Retired Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, former director for European Affairs on the National Security Council, said that by attacking targets designed to hurt Ukrainian morale and energy infrastructure, Putin was sending a message about how he will prosecute the war in the coming months.
Igor Zhovkva, Zelensky’s chief diplomatic adviser, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” that Ukraine had shot down 56 of the 84 missiles and drones that were fired by Russia, in apparent revenge for an explosion on a strategic bridge leading to annexed Crimea that is critical for Moscow’s war effort and is a symbol of Putin’s rule.
“So imagine if we had modern equipment, we probably could raise the number of those drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or wound and injure Ukrainians,” Zhovkva said.
If a campaign against civilians by Putin was to continue it would cause a new wave of refugees to arrive in Western Europe that would cause divisions among NATO allies who are supporting Ukraine.
The lesson of this horrible war is that everything that Putin has done to undermine the nation he doesn’t believe in has strengthened it.
Olena Gnes, the mother of three and a war film maker, said during a live interview with Anderson Cooper that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians.
She said that he is still a bloody tyrant, that he is still powerful, and that they can arrange fireworks for him to show how strong he is.
“We do not feel desperate … we are more sure even than before that Ukraine will win and we need it as fast as possible because … only after we win in this war and only after Russia is defeated, we will have our peace back here.”
For months, Russia’s state media has insisted that the country was only hitting military targets in Ukrainian, leaving out the suffering of millions of civilians.
On Monday, it was reported on by state television, along with flaunting it. There was smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves, and a long-range forecast saying months of freezing temperatures there.
The role of the Russian president in the invasion of Ukraine by the United Nations and the annexation campaign of Ukrainian territory by the European Union
Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. Her views are her own and expressed in this commentary. You may view more opinions on CNN.
The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian president has turned him into a villain among some people who used to be his biggest fans.
Many former fans are rethinking their admiration because of the pictures of bombed-out schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings that have appeared on a daily basis.
At the United Nations, Putin is more isolated every day. The UN General Assembly Wednesday voted to reject his annexation of Ukrainian territory by a margin of 143 to five, with 35 abstentions. Previous UN resolutions condemning the actions of Russia were overwhelmingly approved.
The leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy, who is now slated to become prime minister, promised to keep sending weapons to support Ukraine after abandoning her previously warm words towards Putin. Likewise, Matteo Salvini, who once called Putin “the best statesman on Earth” and used to sport a shirt with Putin’s face on it, now insists he supports Ukraine.
The source of their reconsideration may be found in a separate Pew poll that revealed favorable opinions of Putin and Russia among far-right members have collapsed since Russia invaded Ukraine. In the last year confidence in Putin has fallen from 62% to 10% among Lega backers.
Jordan Bardella, the acting president of the RN, warned anyone who suggested there were financial ties between the party and Russia that they would be sued. A loan from Russia was part of the funding of the presidential campaign of Le Pen. French banks refused to give her a loan according to Le Pen.
In Germany, the leadership of the Alternative for Germany party tried to minimize the impact of openly supporting Russia, but they did it because it creates hardships for Germans.
A couple of weeks ago, CPAC, a conservative political group, called on Democrats to end the gift-giving to Ukraine and concentrate on the US, because it was framed along Putin’s preferred lines. The group soon deleted the post, apologetically, with claims that it didn’t go through proper vetting.
At the far-right America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in February, days after Russian started bombing Ukraine, AFPAC founder and notorious White nationalist Nick Fuentes bellowed, “Can we get a round of applause for Russia!”
Former President Donald Trump was already under fire at the CPAC conference. Trump was in favor of Putin as Putin inched toward war, describing his approach to Ukraine as genius.
In the US – where 73% of the people want continued support for Ukraine even after Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons – a few prominent far-right figures still defend him.
Tucker Carlson is a useful voice for Putin propaganda, and some clips from his nightly show are a staple in Russian state-controlled television. The spectacle caused a host at an even more right-wing network, Newsmax, to lambast him. Eric Bolling referred to Carlson as an “alleged American” for defending “our archenemy Russia and the sociopath Putin…”
The manager, a woman named Olya, said that half of their customers have left. Many of the clients — along with half of the barbers, too — have fled Russia to avoid President Vladimir V. Putin’s campaign to mobilize hundreds of thousands of men for the flagging military campaign in Ukraine.
Many men have been staying indoors out of fear of getting a draft notice. She said that she watched the authorities at the exits of the metro station as Olya came to work last Friday.
“Every day is hard,” acknowledged Olya, who like other women interviewed did not want her last name used, fearing retribution. “It is hard for me to know what to do. We always planned as a couple.
The French-German War on the War: Donald Andelman’s Battle for the Throat, and Why he’s Not Here
David A Andelman is an author, two time winner of the Deadline Club award, and a contributor to CNN. He formerly was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.
First, he’s seeking to distract his nation from the blindingly obvious, namely that he is losing badly on the battlefield and utterly failing to achieve even the vastly scaled back objectives of his invasion.
It depends on a host of variables, including affordable energy supplies for the coming winter, popular will across a broad range of nations and conflicting priorities.
In the early hours of Friday in Brussels, European Union powers agreed a roadmap to control energy prices that have been surging on the heels of embargoes on Russian imports and the Kremlin cutting natural gas supplies at a whim.
Emergency caps on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility, and permission for gas companies to form a cartel to buy gas on the international market are included.
The French president admitted that there was only a “clear mandate” for the European Commission to start work on a gas cap mechanism after he left the summit.
Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, is skeptical of price caps. Now energy ministers must work out details with a Germany concerned such caps would encourage higher consumption – a further burden on restricted supplies.
These divisions are part of Putin’s plan. Manifold forces in Europe could prove central to achieving success from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, which amounts to the continent failing to agree on essentials.
France and Germany are at each other’s throats on many issues. The conference call for Wednesday was scheduled by the French and German leaders in order to reach an agreement.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/putin-prolonge-war-ukraine-winter-andelman/index.html
The Italian PM, Berlusconi, and the U.S. Congress as a challenge to the EU: The case for a resolution of the Ukraine crisis
A new government has been formed in Italy. The woman who became Italy’s first woman prime minister attempts to brush aside the postfascist aura of her party. One of her coalition partners has a deep appreciation for Putin.
During a gathering of his supporters, Berlusconi said that Putin gave him 20 bottles of alcohol on his 86th birthday and that it was very sweet.
The other leading member of the ruling Italian coalition, Matteo Salvini, named Saturday as deputy prime minister, said during the campaign, “I would not want the sanctions [on Russia] to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit by them.”
At the same time, Poland and Hungary, longtime ultra-right-wing soulmates united against liberal policies of the EU that seemed calculated to reduce their influence, have now disagreed over Ukraine. Poland has taken deep offense at the pro-Putin sentiments of Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban.
Similar forces seem to be at work in Washington where House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, poised to become Speaker of the House if Republicans take control after next month’s elections, told an interviewer, “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They will not do it.
The influential 30-member congressional progressive caucus called on Biden on Monday to open talks with Russia in order to end the conflict while its troops are still occupying vast areas and missiles and drones are hitting inside the country.
Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba to renew America’s support.
Indeed, while the US has proffered more than $60 billion in aid since Biden took office, when Congress authorized $40 billion for Ukraine last May, only Republicans voted against the latest aid package.
This support in terms of arms, materiel, and now training for Ukrainian forces has been the key to their remarkable battlefield successes against a weakened and ill-prepared Russian military.
Russia is struggling to get vital components for the production of high-tech weaponry because of western sanctions and embargos.
According to the report, Russian hypersonic missiles have stopped production due to the lack of necessary semi-conductors. Russia has reverted to Soviet-era defense stocks for replenishment after plants producing anti-aircraft systems have shut down. The Soviet era ended more than 30 years ago.
Putin has also tried, though he has been stymied at most turns, to establish black market networks abroad to source what he needs to fuel his war machine – much as Kim Jong-un has done in North Korea. The United States has already uncovered and recently sanctioned vast networks of such shadow companies and individuals centered in hubs from Taiwan to Armenia, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, and Luxembourg to source high-tech goods for Russia’s collapsing military-industrial complex.
The Justice Department also announced charges against individuals and companies seeking to smuggle high-tech equipment into Russia in violation of sanctions.
How Ukrainians Returned to Russia: The Last Day of the Russian–Donetsk–Reionization War in Kherson
Still, there remain hardliners like Pavel Gubarev, Russia’s puppet leader in Donetsk, who voiced his real intention toward Ukrainians: “We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”
Billboards around the city that once read “Ukraine is Russian forever” have reportedly been spray-painted over with the message: “Ukraine was Russia’s until November 11.”
For much of the journey through smaller towns and settlements, our team of CNN journalists was forced to drive through diversions and fields: bridges over canals were blown up, and roads were full of craters and littered with anti-tank mines.
On Friday, Russia withdrew from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital to the Ukrainians.
Russian troops were gone, except for a Ukrainian checkpoint five miles out of the city center, and there was no military presence on the outskirts.
The city’s residents don’t have a working internet connection or water. But as a CNN crew entered the city center on Saturday, the mood was euphoric.
The streets of Kherson are now filled with residents singing, shouting and huddling around Ukrainian flags or painted faces, following a protest against the Russian plan to turn the region into a pro-Russian republic.
The military presence is limited but there is huge cheers from the crowds on the street every time a truck full of soldiers drives by, with the Ukrainian soldiers being offered soup, bread, flowers, hugs and kisses by ecstatic passers by.
As CNN’s crew stopped to regroup, we observed an old man and an old woman hugging a young soldier, with hands on the soldier’s shoulder, exchanging excited “thank yous.”
The Russian War on Ukraine and the Leaves of the World: What Have We Learned in the First Six Months of Putin’s Resilience?
Some Russians leaving the country have left because of persecution or to avoid Western sanctions while other Russians have left out of principle. Thousands have been detained, according to rights groups. Many others have lost their jobs and had to drop out of public life after hundreds of western companies left Russia.
Everyone wants to understand what the occupiers have been through and how much they are grateful to the countries that helped them.
Everyone in the room is aware that there are tougher days to come and that the Russians could shell them here. It is also unclear whether all Russian troops have left Kherson and the wider region. Behind this euphoria, there’s still that uncertainty.
Poland is facing repercussions from the attacks, and that is not the only bordering country. Russian rockets have also knocked out power across neighboring Moldova, which is not a NATO member, and therefore attracted considerably less attention than the Polish incident.
Whatever the exact circumstances of the missile, one thing is clear. “Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday.
Russian retaliation – an onslaught of missile attacks – has expanded as Ukrainian forces have continued to push back Russian units and reclaim territory seized in the early days of the war.
Russian soldiers have rebelled against what they have been told to do and refuse to fight. The defense ministry thinks Russian troops may be prepared to desert or shoot retreating soldiers.
Indeed a hotline and Telegram channel, launched as a Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live,” designed to assist Russian soldiers eager to defect, has taken off, reportedly booking some 3,500 calls in its first two months of activity.
Diplomatically, Putin finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage. He was one of the few heads of state that did not attend the G20 session. Even though Putin once wanted to return to the G7 in the wake of his removal from the G8, inclusion is no longer a priority. Russia’s sudden ban on 100 Canadians, including Canadian-American Jim Carrey, from entering the country only made the comparison with North Korea more striking.
Almost 50,000 Russian citizens requested asylum in another country in the first six months of the year, but it’s unclear how many left for political reasons. That is more than any of the last 20 years.
One leading Russian journalist, Mikhail Zygar, who has settled in Berlin after fleeing in March, told me last week that while he hoped this is not the case, he is prepared to accept the reality – like many of his countrymen, he may never be able to return to his homeland, to which he remains deeply attached.
The fairy tale of Ievheniia, the daughter of a Syrian refugee and the fate of her father in a time of war
The West is trying to get rid of Russian oil and natural gas in order to deny the country of material resources in order to pursue this war. “We have understood and learnt our lesson that it was an unhealthy and unsustainable dependency, and we want reliable and forward-looking connections,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday.
Putin believed that the conflict would bring wedges into the Western alliance, but this is not true. On Monday, word began circulating in aerospace circles that the long-stalled joint French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System – Europe’s largest weapons program – was beginning to move forward.
Long nights with the promise of a miracle: December is the month of fairy tales, when we peer into the darkness only to be reassured of the “happily ever after.”
“We used to joke that our life was like a dark fairy tale inclined towards a happy ending. Ievheniia, a Ukrainian woman who fled her homeland in order to find refuge in Poland, is nursing a two-month-old son and grieves for the child’s father.
Among thousands of Ukrainian men and women, Ievheniia and Denys tried to join the army after Russia launched its full-scale attack. Denys joined immediately and persuaded Ievheniia to evacuate his relatives from the west of the country.
The key moments of the Ukrainian fairy tale can be seen via video link. This is what love looks like in a time of war, shifted to the digital space and disrupted mid-plot.
A sports medicine physician and reserve officer, Ievheniia has too been ready to join Ukraine’s army these eight years, if called upon. She said that she was not the kind of person who would flee.
Ievheniia’s story about a girl in Poland and the fate of Christmasfairytales in Ukraine was told by her mother in Poland
As we hurry to bring gifts to our loved ones, enchanted by the flickering of Christmas lights, we must remember the country in Europe plunged into darkness by Russia’s barbaric imperialist war.
After driving westwards across the country under Russian bombardment, Ievheniia finally arrived at an enlistment office. After interviewing on the Friday, she was told to sign the contract the next day.
She decided to take a pregnant test over the weekend, just in case. “With war and evacuation, the ground was slipping under one’s feet,” she said with a laugh. “On top of that, it turned out that I was pregnant.”
A pregnant woman joining the flow of refugees in Poland provided a twist to the plot.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html
The magic of Denys and Ievheniia: Two young brothers who met through a video call in Kiev during the first few months of marriage
Separated by war, Ievheniia and Denys sought to validate their partnership in the eyes of the state. The everyday ingenuity of the country at war was at work; now, Ukrainian servicemen are allowed to marry via a video call. “Instead of (by) boring civil servants, we got married remotely by a handsome man in a uniform. Ievheniia didn’t have anything to complain about.
After the war ended, Denys kept the magic alive through the Internet, with flower deliveries and professional pictures for Ievheniia.
Denys raised the alarm after Ievheniia didn’t pick up the phone and a rescue squad was able to save her. There could have been a delay in death. A section from the Caesarean section followed. Because the baby was born two months early, the father was able to meet his new son.
Under martial law, Ukrainian men of fighting age, let alone servicemen, are not currently allowed to leave the country. Denys was allowed to cross the border, and spent five days with his family.
“It was a magical time filled with ordinary things: shopping, registering with a pediatrician, laughing, talking. Then he left. On his birthday, Ievheniia sent him greetings. He was killed the next day.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html
War is an escape for young men, but it’s too late for Ukrainians to be consoled: The story of Ievheniia told by Ilila Calvino
Italo Calvino, the celebrated Italian journalist and editor of folktales, among other works, called them “consolatory fables” because it is that a rare fairy tale ends badly. If it does, it means the time to be consoled has not yet come. It’s time to act.
We shouldn’t be fooled by the narrative logic of a fairy tale. The wily kid will not defeat the monster with the aid of magic. Ukrainians need military aid to bring a decisive victory over Russia instead of just prolonging the fight. The victory of the Ukrainians depends on collective effort.
I was wondering how I would act against absolute evil as a teenager while reading a lot of fantasy books. Would I be able to turn away and proceed with my daily life?” I was told by Ievheniia. All of us have a chance to find out.
Russian propaganda videos posted on social networks in the last few days are designed to appeal to Russian men through their stories of patriotism, morality and upward social mobility.
A young man in one of the videos is choosing to fight rather than partying with his male friends and buying himself a car with the money he made from fighting, and he surprises everyone by doing so.
In another video, posted on December 15, the former girlfriend of a soldier is newly impressed with his courage and begs him to get back together with her. A middle-aged man leaves his factory job and walks to the front of the army because he couldn’t afford a military contract.
Another of the videos shows a group of 30-something, well-off Russian men loading a car as they are asked by elderly women where are they going. One of the men replies: “To Georgia. That’s forever. When one woman spills a bag of groceries, men just take the car and leave while younger Russian men are rushing to get the groceries. One of the old women said that the boys had left and the men stayed.
Many of the videos portray the war as an escape for men from a bleak daily reality of drinking vodka, poverty and helplessness. Meanwhile, reports and complaints of shortages of provisions and equipment in the Russian military continue to emerge.
During a meeting with mothers of the mobilized in November, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that it was better to be killed fighting for the motherland than to drink oneself to death on vodka.
In late September, Putin announced a “partial” military mobilization which saw more than 300,000 people across Russia mobilized as its war in Ukraine failed to make progress. The number of people killed and injured in fighting between Russia and the Ukrainians has not been made public.
Putin tried to assure the public that there was no plan for further deployment at the news conference after the summit.
Questioned about reports of continuing military equipment shortages on the front lines, Putin said he was working closely with the Russian defense ministry and that the issue was being resolved.
Zelensky said the prisoner swap was a first step towards ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which claimed the lives of over 15,000 people, and he believed it to be a victory after the summit.
In Paris at the time, I witnessed how Zelensky pulled up to the Élysée Palace in a modest Renault, while Putin motored in with an ostentatious armored limousine. (The host, French President Emmanuel Macron, hugged Putin but chose only to shake hands with Zelensky).
In the days leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelensky was in a steep, downward trajectory in popularity ratings from the all-time high in the first days of his administration.
Zelensky’s upbringing in the rough and tumble neighborhoods of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine shaped him into a scrappy kid who learned how to respond to bullies.
“After the full-scale invasion, once he got into a position of being bullied by someone like Vladimir Putin he knew exactly what he needed to do because it was just his gut feeling,” Yevhen Hlibovytsky, former political journalist and founder of the Kyiv-based think tank and consultancy, pro.mova, told me.
This, after all, is the leader who when offered evacuation by the US as Russia launched its full-scale invasion, quipped: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
The Rise and Fall of A Fresh-faced Zelensky in the Light of World War II: The Faceless, Cold, and Hot Spacetime Revisited
Amid the fog of war, it all seems a long, long way since the heady campaign celebration in a repurposed Kyiv nightclub where a fresh-faced Zelensky thanked his supporters for a landslide victory. He looked as if he had just lost to Petro Poroshenko when he stood on stage.
The war appears to have turned his ratings around. Just days after the invasion, Zelensky’s ratings approval surged to 90%, and remain high to this day. Zelensky was ranked high by Americans early in the war for his handling of international affairs.
His bubble includes many people from his previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatrical group Kvartal 95. In the midst of the war, a press conference held on the platform of a Kyiv metro station in April featured camera angles and lighting perfect for a wartime setting.
As for his skills as comforter in chief, I remember well the solace his nightly televised addresses brought in the midst of air raid sirens and explosions in Lviv.
“By wearing T-shirts and hoodies, the youthful, egalitarian uniform of Silicon Valley, rather than suits, Zelensky is projecting confidence and competence in a modern way, to a younger, global audience that recognizes it as such,” Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, a fashion historian and author of “Red, White, and Blue on the Runway: The 1968 White House Fashion Show and the Politics of American Style,” told NPR.
Journeying to where her husband can’t, Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective communicator in international fora – projecting empathy, style and smarts. She met with King Charles while visiting a refugee assistance center at the Holy Family Cathedral in London. (Curiously, TIME magazine did not include Zelenska on the cover montage and gave only a passing reference in the supporting text).
Despite the strong tailwinds at Zelensky’s back, there are subtle signs that his international influence could be dwindling. For example, last week, in what analysts called a pivotal moment in geopolitics, the G7 imposed a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian crude – despite pleas from Zelensky that it should have been set at $30 in order to inflict more pain on the Kremlin.
All this adds up to a complex path ahead for the Zelensky administration, especially if liberating Crimea from Russia is part of the definition of victory envisioned by most Ukrainians. The tough guy from Kryvyi Rih shows no signs of giving up.
Zelensky was able to achieve the thing that Putin would most like to achieve but failed to do, which was to rally support domestically with a patriotic war in order to distract from his failures at home. In Putin’s mind, to be shown up by a mere ‘decadent’ comedian must be excruciatingly painful for him,” New York-based geopolitical and business analyst Michael Popow told me.
As Zelensky said in a recent nightly video address: “No matter what the aggressor intends to do, when the world is truly united, it is then the world, not the aggressor, determines how events develop.”
The speech “connected the struggle of Ukrainian people to our own revolution, to our own feelings that we want to be warm in our homes to celebrate Christmas and to get us to think about all the families in Ukraine that will be huddled in the cold and to know that they are on the front lines of freedom right now,” Clinton said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” Wednesday.
Zelensky gave a historic address and strengthened both the Democrats and Republicans who understand what is at stake in the fight against Putin and Russian aggression, as well as with their ally, Iran.
“I hope that they will send more than one,” she added. She noted there has been a reluctance by the US and NATO to give advanced equipment, but added they have seen how effective the Ukrainian military is.
Clinton, who previously met Russian President Vladimir Putin as US secretary of state, said the leader was “probably impossible to actually predict,” as the war turns in Ukraine’s favor and his popularity fades at home.
“I think around now, what [Putin] is considering is how to throw more bodies, and that’s what they will be – bodies of Russian conscripts – into the fight in Ukraine,” Clinton said.
When he moved to Russia, he found that the country was far away from the idea of democracy but still had some established institutions which he would almost take for granted.
She said she stopped attending demonstrations when they became too dangerous after the war broke out. She doesn’t think the regime in Russia could be overthrown soon, because all of the opposition leaders are in jail or have been killed.
CNN is using a pseudonym to protect the woman’s personal safety, because they aren’t publishing her name. Speaking to foreign journalists about her involvement in the demonstrations – and even the use of the word “war” as opposed to the Kremlin-approved term “special military operation” – puts her at risk of arrest and potentially a lengthy prison sentence.
The suppression of dissent has been very brutal. According to independent human rights monitor OVD-Info, there have been more than 19,400 detentions for protesting against the war in Russia and dozens are prosecuted every week under a new law that made it illegal to disseminate “fake” information about the invasion.
A court in Moscow used the law earlier this month when it sentenced Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin to more than eight years in prison for speaking up about the alleged killing of civilians by Russian troops in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, outside Kyiv. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the mass killings, while reiterating baseless claims that the images of civilians bodies were fake.
Since the beginning of the war, all of the free press has been erased. Western publications and social media sites have been blocked online, forcing Russians seeking alternatives to the official propaganda to go underground using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allow people to browse the internet freely by encrypting their internet traffic. Data from Sensortower, an apps market research company, show the top eight VPN apps in Russia were downloaded almost 80 million times in Russia this year, despite the government’s efforts to crack down on their use.
36,272 encounters with Russian citizens were recorded by the US Border Patrol. The number of people who were expelled by the border force in the past two fiscal years was much higher than the 13,240 recorded this fiscal year.
OK Russians said that those leaving are more educated and younger than the general Russian public.
“If you take the Moscow liberal intelligentsia, and of course, I’m talking only about the people I know and I know of, I would say that maybe 70% left. It’s journalists, it’s people from universities, sometimes schools, artists, people who have clubs and [foundations] in Moscow that got closed down,” Soldatov said.
Maria said she remains determined to stay in Russia, even though all of her friends and her son have left. Her elderly mother can’t – and doesn’t want to – travel abroad, and Maria is not willing to leave her. “If I knew for sure that the borders would not be closed and I could come at any time if my mother needed my help, it would probably be easier for me to leave. She told CNN that she does not like to know that something else could happen at any moment.
She said she is struggling to see hope for the future but still thinks her work is important. She said that her life was a constant cycle of panic, horror, shame and self-doubt.
Are you to blame? Is there more you could have done? Can you do something else or not, and how should you act now?” She said it was true. “There are no prospects. I’m an adult, and I didn’t exactly have all my life figured out, but all in all I understood what would happen next. Now nobody knows anything. People don’t understand what is going to happen tomorrow.
The man said he was questioning his own identity. “The things we held dear, like the memory of the Second World War, for instance, became completely compromised,” he said, referring to Putin’s baseless claim that Russian forces are “denazifying” Ukraine.
“It’s part of the Russian national identity that the Russian army helped to win the war (against Hitler’s Germany) and now it feels absolutely wrong because this message was used by Putin. You start questioning the history,” he said, adding that the favorable reaction by some parts of the Russian society to the invasion prompted him to research pre-war rhetoric in Germany.
Maria, a historian by training, has spent years taking part in anti-government protests, describing herself as a liberal deeply opposed to Putin, a former KGB agent. “I always knew that our country should not be led by a person from the KGB. She said that it was too deeply entrenched in horrors and deaths.
Berzina said that the expectation of some in the west is that once people start feeling as if their leaders are doing wrong, that there is an immediately wave of protests on the streets and call for government change that actually has an effect.
Almost all of the opposition leaders and opinion leaders are currently in prison or abroad. There is not a leader or power base for the people, so they have a lot of potential for political action.
“It is probably difficult for people from democratic countries to understand the realities of life in a powerful autocracy,” she said. “It’s a terrifying feeling of one’s own insignificance and helplessness in front of a gigantic machine of death and madness.”