A Kremlin-Russian War: Why a Common Cold War is Worsening Us, Not the Cold War with the West

Mr. Dugin sought to cast victory in Ukraine as essential to Russia’s survival in an existential battle against the West, which he referred to as a “mortal enemy.”

The timing was not good and it could have been worse. Russia annexed the Donetsk region, as Putin was saying, just as he lost Lyman.

A day earlier, two powerful Putin supporters railed against the Kremlin and called for using harsher fighting methods because Lyman had fallen just as Moscow was declaring that the illegally annexed region it lies in would be Russian forever.

But the soldiers interviewed on the Sunday broadcast said they had been forced to retreat because they were fighting not only with Ukrainians, but with NATO soldiers.

These are not toys anymore. They are part of a systematic and clear offensive by the army and NATO forces,” the unnamed deputy commander of one Russian battalion told the show’s war correspondent, Evgeny Poddubny. The soldier claimed that his unit had been listening in on conversations between other countries on their radios.

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 trying to fight a broader campaign was brought up in an interview with the father of a death victim, who was a nationalist commentator.

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 already accuses us of blowing up the gas pipeline ourselves,” he said. “We must understand the geopolitical confrontation, the war, our war with the West on the scale and extent on which it is unfolding. In other words, we must join this battle with a mortal enemy who does not hesitate to use any means, including exploding gas pipelines.”

But Russia will keep doing this because it works. The reassuring words of US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have been that it works, as well as the fear Russia wants to stoke.

The Ukrainian state in its current configuration will pose a constant, direct and clear threat to Russia, said former President of Russia, Medvedev in a post on Telegram. Therefore, in addition to protecting our people and protecting the borders of the country, the goal of our future actions, in my opinion, should be the complete dismantling of the political regime of Ukraine.”

The David v. Goliath War: A Tale of Two Demonstrations in the London and Tehran Synagogue

Former CNN producer and correspondent Frida Ghitis 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. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinion on it.

Two groups of demonstrators were in London on Sunday. One was waving Ukrainian flags; the other Iranian flags. They chanted, “All together we will win.” when they met.

It’s not known what will happen next. No one has a clue how this ends. The world stands at an inflection point as people fight for freedom and self-determination in Ukraine and Iran. History is waiting to be written.

These David v. Goliath battles show bravery that is almost unimaginable to the rest of us – and is inspiring equally courageous support in places like Afghanistan.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/04/opinions/iran-ukraine-autocracies-struggle-democracy-ghitis/index.html

The Importance of the Death of Mahsa Amini, the Spark of Iran’s Repressive Regimes, and a Decade of War in Syria

In Iran, the spark was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last month. Known as “Zhina,” she died in the custody of morality police who detained her for breaking the relentlessly, violently enforced rules requiring women to dress modestly.

In scenes of exhilarated defiance, Iranian women have danced around fires in the night, shedding the hijab – the headcover mandated by the regime – and tossing it into the flames.

It’s why women are climbing on cars, waving their hijab in the air, like a flag of freedom, and gathering crowds of supporters in city streets, and in universities, where security forces are opening fire to try and silence them.

After all, it was less than a decade ago that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military entered Syria’s long civil war, helping to save the dictator Bashar al-Assad (as Iran had).

Zelensky was nursing the illustion that by getting the aid of Western nations, he would be able to force the withdrawal of Russia from the Black Sea peninsula that it annexed from Ukrainian in the summer of 2014). “We will not talk to anyone under such conditions,” he said.

“Russia’s weak, (but) Russia will be stronger. This is a period where the United States needs to pour in the support. Clark said that Zelensky knows if he defeats the US, he will be attacked by the Russians.

There is a lot of uncertainty about what Putin will mean when he says that a war that has gone through many strategic phases since the invasion in February could be coming to a bloody end. Their revulsion that Putin was again unleashing callous warfare against civilians evoked memories of Europe’s 20th century horrors.

The repressive regimes in Moscow and Tehran are now isolated, pariahs among much of the world, openly supported for the most part by a smattering of autocrats.

Is it any wonder that Putin’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the start of his Ukraine war was to Iran? It is believed that Iran has provided Russian forces with advanced drones and that Russia will use them to kill Ukrainians.

Both of these regimes have a willingness to project power abroad but are very different in their ideologies.

Multiple Putin critics have died. Many have fallen out of windows. According to Freedom House and other advocacy groups, Iran and Russia are among the leading practitioners of large scale repressive actions outside their borders.

For people in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, there’s more than passing interest in the admittedly low probability that the Iranian regime could fall. It would be transformative for their countries and their lives, heavily influenced by Tehran. Iran’s constitution calls for spreading its revolution.

Peter Bergen: The Cost of Chaos: The CNN National Security Analyst and Arizona State University Professor of Law at a Large School of Law in the Middle East

Putin does not want to go the way of either the Soviets or the Romanovs. He wanted to avoid the use of 300,000 extra troops and his nuclear weapons saber-rattling, which could explain his desperate moves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said the threat of nuclear war was growing and suggested his country could abandon its “no first use” nuclear weapons doctrine, under which Russia has said it would only use nuclear weapons to defend its homeland. Putin’s comments came after drone strikes hit military infrastructure deep inside Russia. Russia’s military blamed Ukraine for the strikes.

Russia’s most effective tool of deterrence remains nuclear threats. Over a decade or more of driving home the message of nuclear response if Russia is cornered or humiliated has already made a difference in the discussion about use of nuclear weapons.

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views he gives are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.

The Russian War in Ukraine: Putin’s Revisionist View of History and the Role of Tailoring the Soviet-Swiss Army

But with the ability to target major Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Russia has shown that it can still cause immense damage and dislocation. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has become one of the most dangerous in terms of severity. Tensions were already high from Putin’s earlier statements suggesting that tactical nuclear weapons remain on the table.

With even his allies expressing concern, and hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing partial mobilization, an increasingly isolated Putin has once again taken to making rambling speeches offering his distorted view of history.

His revisionist account explains the rationale for the war in Ukraine, which he believes was always part of Russia despite the country’s independence from the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.

The soviets planned to take control of Afghanistan and install a puppet government as soon as possible, according to a recently published book on the Soviet invasion.

The US initially shied away from supporting the Afghan resistance in the war because of fear of a bigger conflict with the Soviet Union. It took until 1986 for the CIA to arm the Afghans with highly effective anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, which ended the Soviets’ total air superiority, eventually forcing them to withdraw from Afghanistan three years later.

There’s now a race between the Ukrainians’ ability to acquire new air defense hardware, train on it and deploy it – and the Russians’ ability to inflict massive damage on Ukrainian infrastructure (civilian and military) with their deep stocks of missiles, not all of which are precision weapons.

The range of the satellite-guided HIMARS is currently 80 kilometers. Despite repeated Ukrainian pleas, a 300-kilometer HIMARS isn’t yet authorized. The Biden administration believes that the longer range system could lead to war and that it could expand beyond the borders of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin and the Russian Revolution: How do the officials of the Ministry of Defense have been lying about the cross-border strikes that took place between Kiev and the Soviet Union in 1991?

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.

The loss of Russia in 1905 weakened the Romanov monarchy, as shown in the history books. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. A large part of the Romanov family was killed by the Bolsheviks.

“Our Russian city of Valuyki… is under constant fire,” he said. “We learn about this from all sorts of folks, from governors, Telegram channels, our war correspondents. But no one else. The reports from the Ministry of Defense do not change in substance. They claim to have killed Nazis and destroyed 300 rockets. But people know. Our people are smart. They didn’t want to tell the whole truth. The loss of credibility can be caused by this.

Putin’s gamble may lead to a third dissolution of the Russian empire, which happened first in 1917 as the First World War wound down, and again in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The head of the defense committee in Russia’s State Duma demanded that officials stop lying and level with the Russians.

The Ministry of Defence was not telling the truth about the cross-border strikes that took place in Russian regions.

Valuyki lies in Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukranian. Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance when it comes to striking Russian targets across the border.

Some criticism has also come from Russian-appointed quislings who have been installed by Moscow to run occupied regions of Ukraine. Kirill Stremousov, the Russian official who leads the Kherson region, lambasted Russian military commanders for allowing gaps on the battlefield that enabled the Ukrainian military to make advances.

There is no need to put a shadow on the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of incompetent commanders who didn’t bother, and weren’t accountable for the processes and gaps that exist today. The Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, could potentially shoot himself if he were an officer. 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. In a recent Telegram post, he said he would give the government extraordinary wartime power in Russia if he had his way.

“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.

On Thursday, President Biden stated that the world may be facing the threat of Armageddon if the Russian president uses a nuclear weapon.

His logic came right out of the Cuban Missile Crisis, to which Mr. Biden referred twice in his comments at a Democratic fund-raiser in New York, a good indication of what is on his mind. Sixty years ago this month President John F. Kennedy struck a secret deal to remove American missiles from Turkey, the closest the world came to a full nuclear exchange.

With that deal, which came to light only later, a disaster that could have killed tens of millions of Americans and untold numbers of Soviet citizens was averted.

The attack of Monday on Kiev on the capital, Zaporizhzhia, as reported by CNN’s Michael Bociurkiw

Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst. He was a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe before he joined the Atlantic Council. He is a member of CNN’s opinion team. The opinions he gives are of his own. View more opinion at CNN.

There was a bridge explosion that made Putin feel worse because of the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has seized key pockets of Russian-controlled territory.

The war could be affected by these two headline packages. Russia is now facing a serious threat from the bombardment of energy infrastructure. It is making winter colder and unbearable for some, plunging cities into darkness of up 12 hours a day and sometimes longer, in the hope of sapping high Ukrainian morale.

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.

The area around my office in Odesa was quiet at midday, with reports that three missiles and five drones were shot down. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for 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 17 people were killed and many more were injured.

Russian missiles damaged a glass-bottomed footbridge in Kyiv that is a popular tourist site, tore into intersections at rush hour and crashed down near a children’s playground on Monday. Power outages rolled across the country, in places cutting off water supplies and transport, in strikes that recalled the terror inflicted on civilians in the invasion’s early days but that had largely ebbed in recent months.

When Russian forces neared the capital, some media outlets in Ukraine moved their operations to underground bomb shelters. The large number of people taking cover in a metro station while a small group sings Ukrainian songs shows their respect for the other people.

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.

For Putin, the symbolism of the only bridge linking mainland Russia and Crimea cannot be overstated. The timing of the attack and the creation of a split-screen video of Marilyn Monroe singing, “Happy Birthday, Mr President,” can be taken as added blows to the aging autocrat’s ability to survive.

dictators seem to think hard of newly claimed territory and they like to build expensive infrastructure projects. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. 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 $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.

The Lukacs meme as a reaction to the Russian attack on Crimea: How Putin and the West can try to stop the war by leaving Ukraine

The comical meme that lit up social media channels like Christmas trees was a reaction to the explosion. Many shared their sense of jubilation via text messages.

The message was obvious for the world to see. Putin does not intend to be humiliated. He will not admit defeat. And he is quite prepared to inflict civilian carnage and indiscriminate terror in response to his string of battlefield reversals.

It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.

The US, along with other allies, need to use phone diplomacy to get China and India to stop using more deadly weapons, since they still have some leverage over Putin.

It’s crucial that the west make clear to the Russians that it’s ok to end the war by leaving Ukraine. An orderly withdrawal is unlikely to lead to regime change, let alone the breakup of Russia. Neither outcome is an official goal of Western policy, and talk of them is unhelpful and even counterproductive. Some in the West will be resistant to any such reassurance. If Russian elites conclude that it is dangerous for them to leave Ukraine as they stay, they have no incentive to press for an end to the war. Reassured doesn’t mean compromise.

United States Response to Ukraine’s War Crimes and Atrocities During World War II: Russian Air Defense Missions to Ukraine, as Delivered by the United States

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 also come for the West to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions – but for that to have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board.

The White House didn’t say which air defense systems Biden discussed with Zelensky, but the United States previously pledged to provide Ukraine with national advanced surface to air missile systems. Russian cruise missiles would be capable of hitting NASAMS.

Biden, the statement said, “also underscored his ongoing engagement with allies and partners to continue imposing costs on Russia, holding Russia accountable for its war crimes and atrocities, and providing Ukraine with security, economic, and humanitarian assistance.”

Asked whether the attacks of the past 24 hours would change the calculus on what the US would consider offering Ukraine, a senior administration official said they had no announcements to make on that front, but that the US will continue to help provide Ukraine with short- and long-range air defense systems, as it has in the past.

The US had yet to deliver NASAMS to Ukraine, according to a Department of Defense briefing. At the time, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said two systems were expected to be delivered in the next two months, with the remaining six to arrive at an undetermined date.

Russia launched a total of 84 cruise missiles against targets across Ukraine on Monday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook post.

Zelensky, Putin and the Ukraine: What do we really need to know to protect ourselves in the coming months of Ukraine’s crisis?

Zelensky’s physical appearance in Washington is surely designed to remind Republicans of the urgency of Ukraine’s fight and how a defeat for Kyiv would lead Moscow’s nuclear-backed brutality right to the doorstep of NATO, and then likely drag the US into a boots-on-the ground war with Russia.

Yes. There is an enormous $45 billion aid package in the works, and while not all military, it is part of a consistent drumbeat from the Biden administration. The message is simple: the aid will not stop and Ukraine is getting it just as much as the US can provide.

Kirby, who was on CNN, said that he could not say how he would react to the pressure at home and overseas.

After spending months in air raid shelters during the war in subways, city dwellers have been able to return to normal but are afraid of new strikes.

The targets on Monday had little in the way of military value and were designed to reflect Putin’s need to find new targets because of his inability to cause significant losses on the battlefield.

The Monday bombing of power installations seemed to be an indication of the misery that the Russian President could cause in the winter when he will be forced to retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops.

Kirby wasn’t able to say if Putin was shifting his strategy from a lost battlefield war to a campaign to kill and destroy civilians and damage infrastructure, though he said it was a trend that had already been in motion.

“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Kirby said that the explosion on the bridge may not have been an accelerated part of their planning.

The President of France underscored the seriousness of the Western concerns about the beginning of another pivot in the conflict.

Alexander Vindman, who served as director of European Affairs on the National Security Council, believes that the attack on targets meant to hurt the Ukrainian population is a message to Putin about how he will prosecute the war in the coming months.

Regardless of whether Russia lost 400 men as Ukraine claims, or 89 as Moscow says, the result of the attack is the same: Russia’s highest single-incident death toll since the war began more than 10 months ago.

“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.

Mr. Putin could make more of a point against Ukraine. The attacks of the past week — particularly striking critical civilian infrastructure — could be expanded across Ukraine if missile supplies hold out, while Russia could directly target the Ukrainian leadership with strikes or special operations.

Even though Putin does not appear to have learned that revenge is not an appropriate way to act on or off the battlefield, in the final analysis it’s most likely to weaken Russia, perhaps irreversibly.

U.S. Air Defenses as a Threat to the Security of Ukraine and the Future: A Report from Olena Gnes at the Cooper Space Telescope

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Olena Gnes stated that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians, from a new round of Russian terror.

She said that this was just another terror to cause panic to scare people in other countries or to show how powerful he really is, and look what fireworks we can arrange.

Ukrainian air defense battalions have become innovative: One video from Monday, referenced by Zelensky, showed a soldier using a shoulder-held missile to bring down a Russian projectile, purportedly a cruise missile.

If the Russians keep using missiles and air defenses, there is a chance that the missiles will wreak havoc on the civilian population, something that is familiar to the government and people of Ukraine.

The great unknown is just how far such a blitz is depleting Russian inventories – and whether increasingly they will resort to stocks of older, less accurate but equally powerful missiles.

The Pentagon’s view at the time was that of its weapons stocks, Russia was “running the lowest on cruise missiles, particularly air-launched cruise missiles,” but that Moscow still had more than 50% of its pre-war inventory.

The inventory was dispatched this week. But Russia has recently resorted to using much older and less precise KH-22 missiles (originally made as an anti-ship weapon), of which it still has large inventories, according to Western officials. They are designed to take out aircraft carriers. A KH-22 was responsible for the dozens of casualties at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk in June.

The S-300 is an air defense missile, and the Russians have been trying to use it as an offensive weapon. Their speed makes them difficult to intercept, and they have caused destruction throughout Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv. But they are hardly accurate.

He told CNN’s Richard Quest that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.

Over the past nine months, the Ukrainians have also had plenty of practice in using their limited air defenses, mainly BUK and S-300 systems. But Yurii Ihnat, spokesman for the Air Force Command, said Tuesday said of these systems: “This equipment does not last forever, there may be losses in combat operations.”

Last month, the US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, Sasha Baker, said the US had seen “some evidence already” that the Iranian drones “have already experienced numerous failures.”

Ukraine’s wish-list – circulated at Wednesday’s meeting – included missiles for their existing systems and a “transition to Western-origin layered air defense system” as well as “early warning capabilities.”

Speaking after the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, he said such a system would not “control all the airspace over Ukraine, but they are designed to control priority targets that Ukraine needs to protect. What you’re looking at really is short-range low-altitude systems and then medium-range medium altitude and then long-range and high altitude systems, and it’s a mix of all of these.”

Western systems are beginning to trickle in. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Tuesday that a “new era of air defense has begun” with the arrival of the first IRIS-T from Germany, and two units of the US National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAM) expected soon.

I hope that they will send more than one. She said there had been reluctance by the US and NATO to provide advanced equipment but that they had seen how effective the Ukrainian military was.

But these are hardly off-the-shelf-items. The IRIS-T was manufactured in Ukraine. Western governments have limited inventories of such systems. And Ukraine is a very large country under missile attack from three directions.

“Brothers in arms”: Implications of a militarization of the Russian air defense system on the army of the XII century

General Valerii Zaluzhidze thanked Poland as “brothers in arms” for training his air defense battalion that destroyed nine of 11 Shaheeds.

Poland gaveUkraine systems to destroy drones, according to him. There were reports that the Polish government had purchased advanced Israeli equipment and that it would be transferred to Ukraine, despite Israel’s policy of not selling advanced defensive technology to Kyiv.

That’s not to say mobilized forces will be of no use. They could be used to ease the burden on Russia’s exhausted professional army. They could also fill out depleted units along the line of contact, cordon some areas and man checkpoints in the rear. They are, however, unlikely to become a capable fighting force. Already there are signs of discipline problems among mobilized soldiers in Russian garrisons.

Comments on CNN’s Sean Vance and the Analyticity of Kevin McCarthy’s “Putin-Invasion of Ukraine”

Dean Obeidallah is a former attorney and currently is a columnist and host of a radio show. Don’t Follow him if you don’t follow Dean Obeidallah. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

Vance’s initial reaction was callous and inflammatory, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent comments were even more alarming. McCarthy said that if Republicans win the House in November, Ukraine can no longer expect that US assistance would be a “blank check.”

The US supply of missile systems to the people of Ukraine will prolong their suffering, according to the Kremlin.

The notion that Kevin McCarthy is going to be the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is stunning. Cheney made the comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

I think the fact that he knows better and is willing to sacrifice everything to achieve his goals shows you that he is willing to sacrifice for his own political gain.

Meanwhile, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — who recently declared that if Republicans win the House in next month’s elections that she expects McCarthy “to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway” — blamed Ukraine for the war shortly after Russia’s attack, saying that “Ukraine just kept poking the bear and poking the bear, which is Russia, and Russia invaded.”

Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are some of the stars of Fox News who have been laying the groundwork with republicans so they know the possibility of an end to US assistance for Ukraine.

Carlson tried to portrayUkraine in a bad light in the months before Putin launched an attack on that country. For example, Carlson falsely claimed Ukraine was “not a democracy” and called Ukrainian leader Zelensky a “puppet of the Biden administration.”

And just last week, Ingraham derided former Vice President Mike Pence for referring to the United States as the “arsenal of democracy” and suggested our massive military is too depleted to help other countries such as Ukraine. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Republican from the state of Indiana, was welcomed to the show by Ingraham, who said, “we can’t put America first by giving blank checks to solve their problems.”

As Biden suggested, some of his fellow Republicans might or might not get it. One person who fully comprehends the concept is Vladmir Putin. If the GOP win back control of the House, there will be greater cause for celebration.

A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen is the author of David A. Andelman who is a contributor to CNN. He was a reporter for CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

He is trying to distract his nation from the fact that he is losing on the battlefield and failing to achieve the scaled back objectives of his invasion.

EU President Vladimir Putin Prolonges War Ukraine Winter Andelman: A unified view of EU energy, populism, and competition

There is a host of variables that affect the ability to keep going, including availability and affordable energy supplies for winter, popular will and conflicting priorities, among others.

After a week in which the EU imposed embargoes on Russia and the Kremlin cut natural gas supplies, the powers of the EU agreed a plan to control energy prices.

These include an emergency cap on the benchmark European gas trading hub – the Dutch Title Transfer Facility – and permission for EU gas companies to create a cartel to buy gas on the international market.

While praising the summit, which he said had maintained European unity, he conceded that there was only a clear mandate for the European Commission to start working on a gas cap mechanism.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, 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.

Putin has a dream where divisions are part of it. 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.

Germany and France are already at loggerheads on many of these issues. Though in an effort to reach some accommodation, Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have scheduled a conference call for Wednesday.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/putin-prolonge-war-ukraine-winter-andelman/index.html

Italy’s New Prime Minister: The Last Days of Cold War, Putin’s Legacy, and the Clinton-Biden Promise to End the War on Ukraine

And now a new government has taken power in Italy. Meloni, the new prime minister, tried to forget the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her coalition partners has good things to say about Putin.

Silvio Berlusconi, himself a four-time prime minister of Italy, was recorded at a gathering of his party loyalists, describing with glee the 20 bottles of vodka Putin sent to him together with “a very sweet letter” on his 86th birthday.

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.

This is trickier. Republican Kevin McCarthy warned the Biden administration they can’t expect a “blank cheque” from the new House of Representatives.

Meanwhile on Monday, the influential 30-member Congressional progressive caucus called on Biden to open talks with Russia on ending the conflict while its troops are still occupying vast stretches of the country and its missiles and drones are striking deep into the interior.

Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian counterpart to Antony Blinken, was also called by the Secretary of State to renew America’s support.

The US has offered over $60 billion in assistance since Biden took office, but only Republicans voted against the most recent aid package.

Thirty Years of the War in the Cold War: Russian Procurement of Advanced Semi-Conductors and Microprocessors to the U.S.

In short, there is every incentive for Putin to prolong the conflict as long as possible to allow many of these forces in the West to kick in. A long, cold winter in Europe, persistent inflation and higher interest rates leading to a recession on both sides of the Atlantic could mean irresistible pressure on already skeptical leaders to dial back on financial and military support.

This support in terms of arms, materiel and now training for Ukrainian forces have been the underpinnings of their remarkable battlefield successes against a weakening, undersupplied and ill-prepared Russian military.

All these actions point to an increasing desperation by Russia to access vitally-needed components for production of high-tech weaponry stalled by western sanctions and embargos that have begun to strangle the Kremlin’s military-industrial complex.

Russian production of hypersonic missiles has all but ceased “due to the lack of necessary semi-conductors,” said the report. Plants for anti-aircraft systems have shut down, and Russia has to go back to Soviet-era defense stocks for replenishment. Thirty years ago, the Soviet era ended.

A day before this report, the US announced seizure of all property of a top Russian procurement agent Yury Orekhov and his agencies “responsible for procuring US-origin technologies for Russian end-users…including advanced semiconductors and microprocessors.”

The Justice Department charges individuals and companies for trying to smuggle equipment into Russia in violation of sanctions.

Biden and Xi Jinping Meet in Bali, Indonesia, on the Sidelines of G20 Summit in Support of Ukraine: Why Russia Wasn’t

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. 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.”

It took two years after Joe Biden was elected US President before the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries could finally speak in person, but when Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping finally met in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the timing could not have been any better for the United States, for democracy and for the world.

A well-functioning democratic process in the US is likely disappointing to Xi and other autocrats hoping that deep divisions not only continue to weaken the country from within but also prove that democracy is chaotic and ineffective, inferior to their autocratic systems, as they like to claim. The American President has a stronger hand now that the votes have been counted.

The meeting took place at a perfect time, from the standpoint of the United States and Democracy, because there is much more to this than who controls the US House of Representatives and Senate.

As Biden and Xi were meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional, triumphant return to the devastated, now liberated city of Kherson, the one provincial capital that Russian invaders had conquered.

Putin’s adventure turned to disaster as the Ukrainians defended their country with unexpected tenacity and as Biden rallied allies in a muscular push to support Ukraine.

By the time Xi and Putin met again in September, China had done little to support Russia militarily, and Putin admitted that Xi had “questions and concerns” about Ukraine. After the Russian President threatened to use nuclear weapons, it was Xi that rebuked him.

Putin didn’t go to the G20 summit in Indonesia, avoiding confrontations with world leaders as he becomes a pariah on the global stage.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/opinions/biden-xi-meeting-democracy-ghitis/index.html

The Rise and Fall of the Russian Empire: The Problems of President Biden, the State of the State and of the Powers of the United States

Biden isn’t the only leader with a strong hand. China’s leader,Xi, can rule for as long as he wants after he just secured a third term. He doesn’t have to worry about elections, the press or the opposition party. He is the ruler of a very powerful country for a long time to come.

A mountain of daunting problems has been faced by Xi. China is hesitant to reveal economic data because of the slowing economy. China’s Covid-19 vaccine is a disappointment. China is putting in place a lot of restrictions because of that as the rest of the world slowly returns to normal.

Also crucial in the epochal competition between the two systems is showing that democracy works, defeating efforts of autocratic countries such as China and Russia to discredit it and proving that unprovoked wars of aggression, aimed at suppressing democracy and conquering territory, will not succeed.

A Ukrainian anti-aircraft rocket may have shot down a Russian missile that was about to land in Lviv, according to Polish and NATO leaders. (President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, has insisted the missile was not Ukrainian)

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.

But beyond these most recent missile attacks lies a laundry list of horrors Putin has launched that only seems to have driven his nation further from the pack of civilized powers that he once sought so desperately to join.

That said, a growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they have been asked to do and refused to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

The Telegram channel, launched as a Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live,” has taken off, reportedly booking 3,500 calls in its first two months of activity.

Above all, many of the best and brightest in virtually every field have now fled Russia. This includes writers, artists and journalists as well as some of the most creative technologists, scientists and engineers.

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 US Army may be sending a large jet to Ukraine: a warning from the US embassy in the Donetsk region?

Rumbling in the background is the West’s attempt to diversify away from Russian oil and natural gas in an effort to deprive the country of material resources 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.

It has been proved that the burden of the conflict on Western countries is not going to drive any further wedges into the Western alliance. 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.

But news, first reported by CNN, that the US is finalizing plans to send the system to Ukraine triggered a cryptic warning from Russia’s US embassy Wednesday of “unpredictable consequences.”

Many experts questioned the rationality of such a step, which would lead to an escalation of the conflict and raise the risk of the US army being dragged into combat.

The US Army’s Phased array Tracking radar is considered to be one of the most capable long range air defense systems on the market.

The officials from a country that brutally attacked its neighbor in an illegal and unprovoked invasion would use provocative words to describe defensive systems that are meant to save lives and protect civilians.

In what may be a subtle message about the deployment of the Patriot missile system in the US, the defense ministry shared video of the installation of a Yars intercontinental missile in the Kaluga region.

Appearing this week on Russian state TV, Commander Alexander Khodakovsky of the Russian militia in the Donetsk region suggested Russia could not defeat the NATO alliance in a conventional war.

The story of Will Zelensky during a visit to Ukraine during the Russian-Russian War-Torn Kyiv (Vlasov)

Unlike smaller air defense systems, the batteries need larger crews and many people to operate them. The training for missiles in the United States takes many months and will now take place under the constant attacks from Russia.

Zelensky was quoted by The Economist as saying that he did not agree with the idea of Ukraine regaining only land seized by Russia since February 22nd, 2022.

At their summit in March last year, NATO leaders agreed to equip, arm and train Ukraine to NATO standards. It wouldn’t be a member, but the message to Moscow was unequivocal: In the coming years, Ukraine would look and fight like it was in NATO.

After the recent Makiivka strikes, the Ministry of Defense of Britain said that the Russian military had a record of unsafe ammunition storage prior to the current war.

The official told reporters that when you load the bullets, you cross your fingers that they will fire or explode.

The effect of months of military aid. CNN reported a month ago that the US is running low on some weapons systems it provides to Ukraine. Look for that storyline to become part of the US aid debate after Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next month and promise more scrutiny of US aid for Ukraine.

In the trenches. CNN’s Will Ripley filed a video report from trenches and fortifications being built along Ukraine’s border with Belarus, where there is growing concern about Russia once again assembling troops. Ripley talks to a sewing machine repairman turned tank driver.

Zelensky, a media savvy comedian-turned-president, who has cleverly tapped into the history and patriotic mythology of Western nations in a series of video addresses toLawmakers from war-torn Kyiv, will be going on a public relations coup with his pre- Christmas trip. Often, while grateful for outside support, he has seemed to be trying to shame the West to do more and to create a deeper understanding among voters for the trials facing Ukraine.

During a visit to Paris, I saw how Zelensky pulled up to the lysée Palace in a small car, while Putin drove away with an armored limousine. Putin was hugged by the host, but he chose to shake hands with Zelensky.

Zelensky is immediately recognizable as the wartime president in trademark green, as he stirs the imagination of his citizens, as he names and shames allies who don’t arm his military.

It is difficult to determine how much stagecraft the president and his inner circle has done to Zelensky’s popularity, but it certainly can’t hurt.

He knew what he was supposed to do when he got into a place of being bullied by Putin, according to his former political journalist and think tank founder.

The leader who when offered a ride from the US as Russia launched its full scale invasion joked that he needed bullets, not a ride.

Revisiting President Vladimir Zelensky in the midst of the fog: Towards a diplomatic legacy for the United Nations and the G7

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 in shock as he stood on stage, and saw he had defeated Petro Poroshenko.

The war appears to have made a difference in his ratings. After the invasion, Zelensky’s ratings approval went up to 90% and still remain high to this day. Even Americans early in the war rated Zelensky highly for his handling of international affairs – ahead of US President Joe Biden.

His bubble includes many people from his previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatrical group Kvartal 95. Even in the midst of the war, a press conference held on the platform of a Kyiv metro station in April featured perfect lighting and curated camera angles to emphasize a wartime setting.

As a comforter in chief, he was well-equipped to comfort his people during times of air raid sirens and explosions.

Zelensky is projecting confidence and competence in a modern way to a younger, global audience that recognizes it as such by wearing T-shirts and hoodies.

“He is probably more comfortable than Putin on camera, too, both as an actor and as a digital native,” she added. “I believe both of them want to come across as relatable, not aloof or untouchable, although Zelensky is definitely doing a better job balancing authority with accessibility.”

Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective international fora speaker by her communication skills and style. Most recently, she met with King Charles during a visit to a refugee assistance center at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. TIME magazine didn’t include Zelenska on its cover, but provided a reference in the support text.

Despite the strong tailwinds at Zelensky’s back, there are subtle signs that his international influence could be dwindling. Despite pleas from Zelensky that the cap on Russian oil prices should have been set at $30, the G7 imposed a $60 a barrel cap on Russian crude last week.

Zelensky said in his nightly address that when the world is united, the world does not determine how events will develop.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s White House visit Wednesday will symbolically bolster America’s role as the arsenal of democracy in the bitter war for Ukraine’s survival and send a stunning public rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky’s arrival will draw poignant echoes of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s arrival in Washington, 81 years ago on Thursday, days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That Christmas visit cemented the alliance that would win World War II and built the post-war democratic world.

His visit is unfolding amid extraordinary security. On Tuesday evening, Pelosi wouldn’t even confirm the early reports that she’d welcome Zelensky to the US Capitol in an unexpected coda. We don’t know.

Zelensky was going to Washington on a specific mission, according to Democrat Ruben Gallego of Arizona who visited Ukraine earlier this month. “What he is trying to do is draw a direct correlation between our support and the survival and support and future victory of Ukraine,” Gallego, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said.

If that’s not the message the US and the West want other aggressor states around the world to receive, then supply of Patriot should be followed by far more direct and assertive means of dissuading Moscow.

The former NATO supreme Allied Commander, Europe said that Zelenskys trip demonstrates a critical moment where the destiny of the war between Russia and Ukraine will be decided before Russia regroups.

His visit to Congress will also play into an increasingly important debate on Capitol Hill over Ukraine aid with Republicans set to take over the House majority in the new year. Some pro-Donald Trump members, who will have significant leverage in the thin GOP majority, have warned that billions of dollars in US cash that have been sent to Ukraine should instead be shoring up the US southern border with a surge of new migrants expected within days.

The Kremlin and the War on Everybody: And What It Means for You, a Commentary on Zelensky and Keir Giles

In March, for instance, Zelensky evoked Mount Rushmore and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream Speech” during a virtual address to Congress. Two days of infamy in modern history was when Americans experienced the fear of aerial bombardment.

It was the morning of December 7, 1941 when the sky was black because of the planes attacking Pearl Harbor. Zelensky said to just remember. Remember the terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn your cities and territories into battlefields. When people were attacked from the air, you couldn’t stop it. Our country experiences the same every day.”

The wartime British leader sailed to the United States aboard HMS Duke of York, dodging U-boats in the wintery Atlantic and took a plane from the coast of Virginia to Washington, where he was met on December 22, 1941, by President Franklin Roosevelt before their joint press conference the next day.

Over days of brainstorming and meetings – fueled by Churchill’s regime of sherry with breakfast, Scotch and sodas for lunch, champagne in the evening and a tipple of 90-year-old brandy before bed – the two leaders plotted the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and laid the foundation of the Western alliance that Biden has reinvigorated in his support for Ukraine.

Churchill, who had pined for US involvement in World War II for months and knew it was the key to defeating Adolf Hitler, said during his visit, “I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, and yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.”

The Ukrainian leader is likely to appreciate the historical parallels. He gave an emotional address to the British parliament in March, which was based on a speech byChurchill.

Editor’s Note: Keir Giles (@KeirGiles) works with the Russia and Eurasia Programme of Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in the UK. He wrote ” Russia’s War on Everybody: And What it Means for You.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinions on CNN.

The Kremlin pretended that it was not at war but was in fact in a special military operation. In effect, it has protected Russia from the consequences of its own aggression.

Russian efforts at deterrence have brought success in the form of arguments for a ceasefire as a preferable outcome to a Ukrainian victory because of fear of a Russian victory.

The example set is disastrous for other aggressive powers around the world. It says possession of nuclear weapons allows you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbors, because other nations won’t intervene.

There are two key headline deliverables: first, the Patriot missile systems. Complex, accurate, and expensive, they have been described as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO preciously guards them, and they require the personnel who operate them – almost 100 in a battalion for each weapon – to be properly trained.

The precision-guided munitions are for Ukrainian jets. Russia and Ukraine both have weapons that are roughly fired towards a target. More and more Western standard precision weaponry like howitzers and HIMARS have been given to the Ukrainians.

The new deal will likely include the supply of guidance kits, which can be used to shoot down unguided missiles or bombs. This will increase the rate at which they burn through their army rounds. A lot of the $1.8 billion is expected to fund munitions replacements and stocks.

Russian-Putin Fighting in Ukraine: Where Do We Stand? Why Do We Need More? How Will the West Deal With It?

But Moscow is struggling to equip and rally its conventional forces, and, with the exception of its nuclear forces, appears to be running out of new cards to play. China and India have joined the West in open statements against the use of nuclear force, which has made that option even less likely.

Western analysts have said that Russia has complained about these deliveries and that it hasn’t been much of a response to the crossing of what may have been considered red lines.

The remnants of the Trumpist “America First” elements of that party have echoed doubts about how much aid the US should really be sending to the edges of eastern Europe.

The bill for the slow defeat of Russia is light for the US because of its trillion-dollar annual defense budget.

Her comments came after Zelensky delivered a historic speech from the US Capitol, expressing gratitude for American aid in fighting Russian aggression since the war began – and asking for more.

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.

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.

Kyiv and its Western allies are “set for a long confrontation with Russia” following President Volodymyr Zelensky’s momentous visit to Washington, Moscow said as the war in Ukraine approaches 10 months.

Russia’s foreign ministry condemned what it called the “monstrous crimes” of the “regime in Kyiv,” after US President Joe Biden promised more military support to Ukraine during Zelensky’s summit at the White House on Wednesday.

Maria Zakharova said that the West will achieve nothing if they give military support to the Ukrainian government.

There were no calls for peace according to Peskov. But during his address to the US Congress on Wednesday, Zelensky did stress that “we need peace,” reiterating the 10-point plan devised by Ukraine.

Peskov told journalists, however, that Wednesday’s meeting showed the US is waging a proxy war of “indirect fighting” against Russia down “to the last Ukrainian.”

“It’s like the central nervous system of the human body: If you mess with it, you put all sorts of systems out of whack,” says Rajan Menon, a director of the Defense Priorities think tank who recently returned from a trip to the Ukrainian capital, speaking about Russia’s power grid attacks. An enormous economic cost is what it is, an interruption that is not only an annoyance. It’s an effort to create pain for the civilian population, to show that the government can’t protect them adequately.”

Menon points out that his comments could be applied to Russia’s earlier waves of cyberattacks on the country’s internet, like when the NotPetya malware was released by Russia’s GRU hackers five years earlier. The goal is the same even though they are different in some areas. Demoralizing and punishing people.

Authorities have been cautioning for days that Russia was preparing to launch an all-out assault on the power grid to close out 2022, plummeting the country into darkness as Ukrainians attempt to ring in the New Year and celebrate the Christmas holidays, which for the country’s Orthodox Christians falls on January 7.

Halyna Hladka made breakfast for her family when she got water in the capital because they would not have enough to eat. After nearly two hours, they heard the sounds of explosions. She told CNN that it didn’t seem like they were close to our area, but that it was air defense. “Not a single attack will cancel the fact that we will celebrate the new year with the family.”

After the sirens went off, Hryn met her neighbours in the elevator and they were on their way to the movie theater. Some people continued with holiday plans even though their children went to school, while others went to work.

Russian troops will not negotiate with Zelensky’s peace formula in the face of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, insisting Putin is open to diplomatic solutions

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow will not negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace formula if it includes Russia’s withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory.

Still, he stressed Russia was open for diplomatic solutions, echoing comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent days that he wanted an end to the war. Putin’s claim that he is open to negotiating was roundly dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a ruse.

Authorities in Odesa, in southern Ukraine, said that emergency power outages had been rolled out amid the missile attacks. They are introduced because of the threat of missile attacks and the fact that energy facilities can be damaged.

At least three people, including a 14-year-old, were injured and two people pulled from a damaged home on Thursday, Klitschko said earlier. Homes, an industrial facility and a playground in the capital were damaged in attacks on Kyiv, according to the city military administration.

“Senseless barbarism.” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said those were the only words that came to mind watching Moscow launch a fresh wave of attacks on Ukrainian cities ahead of the New Year, adding there could be “no neutrality” in the face of such aggression.

At the time, Putin insisted his forces were embarking on a “special military operation” — a term suggesting a limited campaign that would be over in a matter of weeks.

War against Ukraine has left Russia isolated and struggling with more turbulent-ahedral-times: An alternative to repressive regimes, or what we can do about it

Yet the war has also fundamentally upended Russian life — rupturing a post-Soviet period in which the country pursued, if not always democratic reforms, then at least financial integration and dialogue with the West.

Since February, there have been strict laws passed banning criticism of military or leadership. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained for demonstrating against the war — 45% of them women — according to a leading independent monitoring group.

Lengthy prison sentences have been meted out to high profile opposition voices on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army by questioning its conduct or strategy.

The human rights group in Russia, which was to be a co-recipient of the 2022, was forced to suspend its activities because of violations of the foreign agents law.

The state has also vastly expanded Russia’s already restrictive anti-LGBT laws, arguing the war in Ukraine reflects a wider attack on “traditional values.”

For now, there are still targets for repressive acts. Some of the new laws are still unenforced. Should the moment arise, most people believe the measures are intended to crush dissent.

Leading independent media outlets and a handful of vibrant, online investigative startups were forced to shut down or relocate abroad when confronted with new “fake news” laws that criminalized contradicting the official government line.

Internet users also have restrictions. American social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook were banned in March. Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s internet regulator, has blocked more than 100,000 websites since the start of the conflict.

Technical workarounds such as VPNs and Telegram still offer access to Russians seeking independent sources of information. Older Russians prefer state media propaganda over angry TV talk shows.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

The Russian War and the Economic Recovery: The Times of the Great Recession and the Problem of Security and Security in the Cold Cold Cold War with NATO and Russia

Many of them political activists, civil society workers and journalists were left in the early days of the war because of fears of persecution.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled to border states in effort to escape the draft, when Putin ordered 300,000 additional troops to be sent in September.

Some countries that have absorbed the Russian exodus see their economies growing even as Russians remain a sensitive issue for former Soviet republics.

Helped by Russian price controls, the ruble regained value. McDonald’s and several other brands ultimately relaunched under new names and Russian ownership. By year’s end, the government reported the economy had declined by 2.5%, far less than most economists predicted.

Ultimately, President Putin is betting that when it comes to sanctions, Europe will blink first — pulling back on its support to Ukraine as Europeans grow angry over soaring energy costs at home. He instituted a ban on oil exports to countries that do not adhere to the price cap, a move likely to make the pain worse in Europe.

The government’s tone doesn’t change when it comes to the Russian military campaign. Russia’s Defense Ministry gives a daily update on its successes. Everything is going according to plan, even though Putin assures it.

Yet the sheer length of the war — with no immediate Russian victory in sight — suggests Russia vastly underestimated Ukrainians’ willingness to resist.

Russian troops have proven unable to conquer Ukraine’s capital Kyiv or the second city of Kharkiv. Kherson, the sole major city seized by Russia, was abandoned amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive in November. Russian forces have shelled the city repeatedly since retreating.

Moscow’s problems were underscored by its illegal annexation of four territories of Ukraine and the fact that it hasn’t been able to establish full control over its own lands.

The true number of Russian losses – officially at just under 6,000 men – remains a highly taboo subject at home. Western estimates place those figures much higher.

Russia’s invasion has backfired in its main goal; NATO looks set to expand towards Russia’s borders, with the addition of long-neutral states Finland and Sweden.

Longtime allies in Central Asia have criticized Russia’s actions out of concern for their own sovereignty, an affront that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. China and India have purchased discounted Russian oil, but have stopped supporting Russia’s military campaign.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

The fate of the Russian ‘official’ state of the nation, or what has happened to the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

A state of the nation address, originally scheduled for April, was repeatedly delayed and won’t happen until next year. Putin’s annual “direct line” — a media event in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians — was canceled outright.

The big press conference is an annual affair that allows the Russian leader to handle questions from mostly pro-Kremlin media.

The Kremlin did not give a reason for the delays. Many suspect it might be that, after 10 months of war and no sign of victory in sight, the Russian leader has finally run out of good news to share.

America has done this before. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous nuclear confrontation so far, the Soviet Union’s position shifted in a matter of days, ultimately accepting an outcome that favored the West. Had “red lines” thinking been in vogue, America might well have accepted an inferior compromise that weakened its security and credibility.

The US has provided armored vehicles for Ukraine before, including MRAP vehicles and utility vehicles. The US spent money to repair Soviet-era T 72 tanks.

Biden affirmed the new commitment in a telephone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday. New fighting vehicles will also be sent to Ukranian, as well as a missile battery to protect against Russian air attacks.

Is it possible to explain how the Russian army failed to break up large arms depots as promised by Zelensky in a war with Russia?

Zelensky wanted those systems to allow his military to target Russian missiles flying at higher altitudes, which would allow them to shoot down their own missiles in the event of a war.

The Russian account states that the inexperienced troops used cell phones that were in violation of regulations that allowed the Ukrainians to target them most accurately. The Ukrainians have not indicated how the attack was done. Russia is conducting its war now with deeper implications.

It’s clear that after the attack on Russian servicemen, President Vladimir Putin called for a temporary ceasefire. The move was viewed as a cynical attempt to seek breathing space by both the US and the people of Ukraine, who were dealing with a terrible start to the year for Russia.

Russian officials said that four Ukrainian-launched HIMARS rockets hit the vocational school where its forces were housed, apparently adjacent to a large arms depot. (Another two HIMARS rockets were shot down by Russian air defenses).

Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow for the Defense Program and co-head of the gaming Lab at the center for new American security, told me that Russia failed to break up large arms depots due to their inability to communicate adequately.

It’s a view shared by other experts. “Bad communications security seems to be standard practice in the Russian Army,” James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told me in an e-mail exchange.

The troops killed in Makiivka appear to be recent conscripts who had little or no training and were shipped to the front lines.

Indeed, a number of the most recent arrivals to the war are inmates from Russian prisons, freed and transferred immediately to the Ukrainian front. I can only imagine how appealing the use of cell phones would be if they were used by prisoners who had not been in the outside world in years.

Semyon Pegov, who was personally awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin two weeks ago, claimed that the Ministry of Defense had a blatant attempt to blame the troops for their own use of cell phones.

He questioned how the Ministry of Defense could be “so sure” that the location of soldiers lodging in a school building could not have been determined using drone surveillance or a local informant.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/opinions/russia-makiivka-deaths-cell-phones-andelman/index.html

Putin, Ukraine, and the War with the West: A Brief History of a Truncated Service to the Armed Forces in the Cold War

The question is when the blame will be shifted from the military to Putin, since he seems prepared to change the leadership at very the top. The last change was the appointment of Sergei Surovikin as the first person to be placed in overall command of all Russian forces on the Ukraine front — an army general formerly in charge of the brutal Russian bombardment of Aleppo in Syria.

A month earlier, the defense ministry underwent a change in leadership when Maj. Gen. Mikhail Y. Mizintsev became deputy defense minister for overseeing logistics. The location of the arms depot, adjacent to the Makiivka recruits, would likely have been on Mizintsev’s watch.

As recently as Saturday, before the Makiivka attack, Shoigu had a message for his forces: “Our victory, like the New Year, is inevitable.”

And there seems to be little suggestion that the West will be letting up on its support for Ukraine. The US and Europe, which recently committed to raising their funding by $2 billion in three years, seem determined to see Ukrainians through this winter and beyond.

Russia wanted to increase global sales and its economic leverage in Europe due to its heavy use of power-hungry industries. Germany, a leading consumer, was on board from the get-go. Washington was not.

The United States didn’t want the new, high-capacity subsea supply to supplant old overland lines that transited Ukraine, providing vital revenue to the increasingly Westward-leaning leadership in Kyiv.

A decision on tanks by Biden and Scholz is not likely to stop Russia from reaching its goals, said Putin’s spokesman.

Europe has been slow to respond to the deep fissures in US politics and the uncertainty another Trumpian-style presidency could wreak on its allies. Decades of a reasonably unshakable reliance, if not complete trust, in the US, has been replaced by stubborn European pragmatism – and Germany leads the way.

Former Chancellor Merkel was Europe’s moral compass. He found unexpected metal in his ponderous, often stop/go/wait coalition and won thunderous applause in Germany’s Bundestag on Wednesday as he showed a rare moment of steely leadership.

Ukraine’s ongoing metamorphosis from legacy Soviet force to NATO clone hasn’t just been about the mechanics or even diplomacy of getting tanks, fighting vehicles, air defenses and artillery, it’s been about bringing NATO member states’ near-billion people along with their politicians. Scholz made that point in parliament.

He said that they wouldn’t put you in danger. He explained that his government had already handled Russia’s aggression, and that it had not understood the risks of a freezing winter and economic collapse. He said the government handled the crisis well, and that they were in a better position.

The applause at each step of the speech was louder than his words. Scholz gave Germany a population that is typicallyverse to war and willing to projection their own power, as well as deeply divided over how much they should aid Ukraine in killing Russians and potentially angering the Kremlin.

Putin’s repressed anger at the recent Russian crisis: a CNN look at Medvedev’s frustrations with the US, Germany and Ukraine

Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and deputy chairman of its national security council, has said Russia would never allow itself to be defeated and would use nuclear weapons if threatened.

CNN spoke with some Russians who were confused by Biden’s announcement on tanks confused. Some said that the US and Germany would be the loser, but a lot of people were not happy with how the war was going.

How much Scholz is aware of Putin’s softening popularity or whether he believes it relevant at this moment is unclear, but his actions now, sending tanks, may help ease Putin’s iron grip on power.

Longer debates about the next military moves for Ukraine could be coming and will likely signal to Zelensky that weapons supplies will be on more of a German leash, and less unilaterally led by Washington.

The power dynamic may not change the way the war is fought but it could change the shape of the final deal and bring about a lasting peace when it comes.