Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now
(Reuters) – February 28, 2022
Here’s what you need to know about the Ukraine crisis right now:
HEADLINES
* Russian artillery bombarded residential districts of Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv on Monday, killing possibly dozens of people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow’s invading forces met stiff resistance from Ukrainians on a fifth day of conflict. Talks on a ceasefire ended without a breakthrough. A member of the Ukrainian delegation said the discussions were difficult and the Russian side was biased. read more
* Russian President Vladimir Putin told France’s Emmanuel Macron that a Ukraine settlement was only possible if Kyiv was neutral, “denazified” and “demilitarised” and Russian control over annexed Crimea was formally recognised, the Kremlin said. read more
* Russia faced deepening isolation and economic turmoil as Western nations, united in condemnation of its assault, hit it with an array of sanctions. read more
* Ukraine’s Western allies increased weapons transfers in support. Finland agreed to ship 2,500 assault rifles and 1,500 anti-tank weapons. read more
* Russia’s defence ministry said its nuclear missile forces and Northern and Pacific fleets had been placed on enhanced combat duty, Interfax news agency reported, in line with an order the previous day from President Putin. read more
* The head of a U.N. agency said on Monday over 500,000 people have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries since the start of Russia’s invasion. read more
* The European Union is preparing to grant Ukrainians who flee the war the right to stay and work in the 27-nation bloc for up to three years, EU officials said. read more
* Ukraine and its allies called on Monday for a United Nations inquiry into possible war crimes committed by Russia during its military actions in Ukraine. read more
* The websites of several Russian media outlets were hacked on Monday, Reuters checks showed, with their regular sites replaced by an anti-war message and calls to stop President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. read more
SANCTIONS AND ECONOMIC FALL-OUT
People fleeing Russian invasion of Ukraine arrive at a temporary camp in Przemysl, Poland, February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Supplies for refugees fleeing the Russian invasion in Ukraine are slightly covered in snow at the border checkpoint in Medyka,
Armored vehicles are seen as pro-Russian separatists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian regular forces enter Mykolaivka amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Donetsk Region, Ukraine February 27, 2022 in this still image taken from video. REUTERS/via REUTERS TV
Children board a bus after fleeing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at the border crossing in Siret, Romania, February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Stoyan NenovA woman fleeing from Ukraine cries at Nyugati station, after Russia launched a massive military operation against Ukraine, in Budapest, Hungary, February 27, 2022. REUTERS/Marton MonusDemonstrators march during an anti-war protest, after Russia launched a massive military operation against Ukraine, outside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, February 27, 2022. REUTERS/Fabrizio BenschA father and his daughter attend a protest against the massive military operation by Russia against Ukraine, near the Russian embassy in Seoul, South Korea, February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiDemonstrators attend an anti-war protest march, after Russia launched a massive military operation against Ukraine, in Podgorica, Montenegro February 27, 2022. REUTERS/Stevo Vasiljevic
* Russia’s central bank more than doubled its key policy rate on Monday and introduced some capital controls as the country faced deepening economic isolation, but its governor said sanctions had stopped it selling foreign currency to prop up the rouble. read more
* The United States on Monday blocked Americans from engaging in any transactions involving Russia’s central bank, National Wealth Fund and finance ministry in further punishment of Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. read more
* Airlines on Monday braced for a potentially lengthy dispute after the European Union banned Russian airlines from its airspace and Moscow responded in kind, barring carriers from 36 countries including all 27 members of the EU. Dozens of flights were cancelled or sent on costly detours as the crisis hit airline shares. read more
* FIFA is set to suspend Russia’s national teams from international football until further notice, a source with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters on Monday. read more
* The International Olympic Committee’s executive board has recommended that international sports federations ban Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from competing in events, the IOC said on Monday. read more
* Energy giant BP, global bank HSBC and the world’s biggest aircraft leasing firm AerCap joined a growing list of companies looking to exit Russia on Monday, as Western sanctions tightened the screws on Moscow. read more
* The Russian rouble fell to fresh record lows on Monday while world stocks slid and oil prices jumped, as the West ramped up sanctions against Russia over its Ukraine invasion, with steps including blocking banks from the SWIFT global payments system. read more
QUOTES
* “I took a train from Kyiv to Lviv to a point where the taxi put us. I walked the last 50 kilometres,” a Ukrainian woman said on arrival at a border crossing with Poland in snowy freezing weather. read more
* “There are bombings, sirens, we have to go (downstairs). We also receive treatment here, medications we have, but we need more food…basic stuff,” said a tearful Maryna, a mother at a Kyiv children’s hospital where her nine-year-old son is suffering from blood cancer. read more
Military and Humanitarian Aid Pouring into Ukraine
By AFP – Published February 28, 2022
Greek soldiers wait to unload aid for Ukraine at Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Athens, on Feb. 27, 2022 (Photo by Tatiana BOLARI / AFP)Photo by AFP
Since Russia invaded last Thursday, many countries have started to send military or humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The United States, Canada and 19 European countries have so far responded to Ukrainian appeals for military equipment. Washington is sending an extra $350 million (313 million euros) in military aid to Kyiv to bring its total support to more than a billion dollars over the last year.
For the first time in its history, the EU is financing the buying and delivery of arms after leaders agreed to transport weapons worth 450 million euros to Kyiv. Foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says some nations are sending fighter jets.
Canada is sending lethal military weaponry and loaning Kyiv around $392 million to help the city defend itself.
While Germany has broken the longstanding taboo of not exporting arms to conflict zones by vowing to send Ukraine 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles and nine howitzers. It is also donating 14 armoured vehicles and 10,000 tonnes of fuel.
Sweden is also breaking its historic neutral stance to send 5,000 anti-tank rockets to Ukraine, as well as field rations and body armour. It’s the first time Sweden has sent weapons to a country in armed conflict since Stalin invaded neighbouring Finland in 1939.
France, which has already sent help, is dispatching more military equipment, as well as fuel and humanitarian aid. Paris says it has reacted to earlier Ukrainian requests for defensive anti-aircraft and digital weapons.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to “provide further UK support to Ukraine in the coming days”, without specifying details.
Belgium says it will supply Ukraine with 3,000 more automatic rifles and 200 anti-tank weapons, as well as 3,800 tons of fuel. The Dutch Defence Ministry says it is sending “200 Stinger missiles as soon as possible”, which follows a shipment of sniper rifles and helmets dispatched on Saturday. This is on top of the 20 million euros of humanitarian aid it has already promised.
Prague is sending 4,000 mortars and an arsenal of 30,000 pistols, 7,000 assault rifles, 3,000 machine guns, as well as scores of sniper rifles and a million bullets. The Czechs have already promised Kyiv 4,000 mortars worth 1.5 million euros, which have yet to be delivered.
Portugal is giving Ukraine night-vision goggles, bulletproof vests, helmets, grenades, ammunition and automatic G3 rifles, while Greece is sending “defence equipment”.
Romania, which shares a border with Ukraine, is offering to treat the wounded in its 11 military hospitals. Bucharest is also sending fuel, bulletproof vests, helmets and other “military material” worth three million euros.
Humanitarian Aid
Rome has sent 110 million euros in immediate aid to the Ukrainian government as “a concrete sign of our support”. The US and Britain are also contributing. Washington announced $54 million in new humanitarian aid for Ukraine to be spent through NGOs, with London adding 48 million euros.
France, which is bringing a humanitarian aid resolution to the UN Security Council on Feb. 28, has sent 33 tonnes of aid to Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Another 33 tonnes are being sent for those who have fled into Moldova.
The Dutch government says it is sending 20 million euros in humanitarian aid. Spain has promised to send 20 tonnes of aid to Ukraine, mostly medical and defensive equipment such as bulletproof vests.
Israel says it is sending 100 tonnes of humanitarian aid, such as medical equipment, water purifiers, tents and sleeping bags.
Turkey’s disaster relief agency is sending three lorries full of aid to Moldova for Ukrainian refugees. The Red Crescent is sending help to people fleeing into Romania. Greece is sending a shipment of humanitarian aid through Poland.
The news agency cited three anonymous sources who were in the virtual, 195-nation meeting, which is closed to the press and the public. Politico and the Washington Post also confirmed the report.
“Let me present an apology on behalf of all Russians not able to prevent this conflict,” Russia’s Oleg Anisimov reportedly said at the closing plenary meeting. Those who see what is happening “fail to find any justification for the attack on Ukraine,” he added.
Anisimov, a veteran climate scientist who has authored previous IPCC reports, expressed “huge admiration” for the Ukraine delegation, which has kept working even as its country is under attack from its much larger neighbor.
Participants told AFP that everyone present found Anisimov’s comments moving, especially in light of the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin is known for ruthlessly punishing internal dissidents. “He knows that there is a risk for him; it was a very sincere message,” said one participant.
The comments were made in Russian and simultaneously translated into English. AFP received only the translated remarks, not the original Russian.
Ukrainian tanks on a road in the Luhansk region of Ukraine. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)
“The surprise intervention from Russia’s Oleg Anisimov at the closed-door meeting followed an electrifying live statement from his Ukrainian counterpart, Svitlana Krakovska, who spoke passionately about her country’s plight,” AFP reported.
“We will not surrender in Ukraine, and we hope the world will not surrender in building a climate-resilient future,” Krakovska said in English, according to AFP’s sources.
“Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots — fossil fuels — and our dependence on them,” she added. It is unclear what exactly she meant by that, but Russia’s economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues, and Europe’s dependence on Russian gas has made it unwilling to extend its sanctions to cutting off Russia’s ability to sell gas on the continent. If Europe did not rely on fossil fuels to generate energy, it might be able to more effectively counter Russian aggression, according to global energy market experts.
The IPCC’s Working Group II, which focuses on the human impacts of climate change, is scheduled to release its report for this, the sixth, “assessment cycle,” on Monday morning. Krakovska expressed disappointment that the war in Ukraine will likely overshadow it in media coverage.
Russian billionaires’ yachts and private jets are still traversing the globe despite tough sanctions from the US and its allies
Avery Hartmans – February 28, 2022
The megayacht Nord, which belongs to Russian billionaire Alexey Mordashov.Axel Heimken/picture alliance via Getty Images
Private jets and yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs are still criss-crossing the globe.
They’ve evaded sanctions from global powers in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
If that changes, those high-end assets could be frozen, rendering them unusable.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing economic sanctions against the nation’s elite haven’t deterred some of its wealthiest citizens from continuing to traverse the globe in megayachts and private jets — at least not yet.
Bloomberg’s Benjamin Stupples and Tom Maloney reported Friday that aircraft owned by Russian billionaires continue to fly in and out of Moscow. Jets belonging to Dmitry Mazepin, chairman of chemical firm Uralchem, and steel baron Alexey Mordashov both landed in Moscow Thursday, with Mazepin’s aircraft flying in from New York on a Gulfstream G650 and Mordashov’s Bombardier Global 6000 arriving from the Seychelles.
Mordashov, with a net worth of $23 billion, is Russia’s second-richest person. He also owns the $500 million megayacht Nord, which is currently cruising around the East African island nation, according to Bloomberg.
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich also flew into Moscow from an airport near Monte Carlo last week aboard his Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, Bloomberg reports. Abramovich — who’s worth roughly $14 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index — is the largest shareholder of Russian steelmaker Evraz and the owner of Chelsea Football Club. Amid growing backlash to his ownership of the club, Abramovich announced Saturday that he would hand off stewardship of the team to the club’s charitable foundation, though he remains the team’s owner.
Two other Russian-owned megayachts are currently moored in Barcelona: the 242-foot Aurora, owned by billionaire Andrey Molchanov, and the 230-foot Galactica Super Nova, which is owned by oil and gas company Lukoil CEO Vagit Alekperov, The Guardian reported.
Russian oligarchs are known for owning some of the world’s most expensive private aircraft and sailing vessels in addition to high-end real estate and purchases like Abramovich’s Premier League club. But many of those ultra-wealthy Russians have avoided becoming ensnared by sanctions from the US, UK, and European Union, leaving them free to continue jet-setting.
While some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle have already been the target of stiff sanctions, the yachts and jets of the super-rich could be further targeted in the future — if that comes to pass, those assets would be frozen and rendered unusable, Stacy Keen, a sanctions expert at law firm Pinsent Masons, told The Guardian.
In the case of the yachts currently docked in Spain, for example, EU businesses wouldn’t be allowed to service the yacht in any capacity, whether that’s providing fuel or staffing the crew, Keen said.
“In effect, the yacht wouldn’t be able to function,” she said.
CNBC’s Brian Schwartz reported Monday that multiple billionaires, including Lukoil’s Alekperov, are currently moving their yachts toward Montenegro and the Maldives, possibly with the aim of avoiding them being frozen or seized.
As rockets fall and tanks roll on the cities and towns of Ukraine, the rest of the world has borne witness with an unprecedented intensity, due almost entirely to the internet. Anyone who has scrolled social media in the last few days has seen dozens of disturbing images from the ground in Ukraine, protests from St. Peterburg to Sydney to Times Square, and iconic buildings around the globe illuminated in blue and yellow. Plus there is the intel gleaned from Twitter and foreign news organizations that are now more globally available than ever, not to mention the internet’s own direct role in the conflict—reports of Ukrainian hackers combating Russian propaganda and Anonymous taking over Russian airwaves to play the Ukrainian national anthem, to name two examples.
In one of the latest displays of the power of the internet, a Twitter account called Russian Oligarch Jets appeared just yesterday that tracks the current movement of the private aircraft of the likes of Roman Abramovich (one of his jets landed in Latvia yesterday) and Alexander Abramov (one of his planes recently landed in Abu Dhabi, another in Munich).
Another, @PutinJet, is also tracking planes owned by Putin and Russian VIPS. Meanwhile, other internet sleuths are tracking oligarch-owned yachts.
The takeaway: Russians with means seem eager to get their assets as far from Russia as possible. Not that foreign shores will necessarily be friendly: a Ukranian sailor in Mallorca was arrested this weekend for sabotaging the $8 million yacht of Russian arms dealer Alexander Mikheev, and Anonymous hackers sent Putin’s yacht, the reportedly $97 million “Graceful,” straight to “hell”
Worried About Stocks? Think of Ukrainians Under Siege First.
If you have an investment portfolio or own a home, you’ve probably experienced big gains. Here’s how to use those winnings to help.
By Ron Lieber – February 28, 2022
A downed aircraft and homes destroyed in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
In the days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, plenty of people have tried to predict what it will mean for gas prices or interest rates or your investments.
There is no harm or shame in this, not exactly at least. Self-preservation — and its attendant instinct, wealth preservation — is an understandable impulse. It is reasonable for prognosticators to try to settle people and markets down, even though forecasters regularly get it wrong.
But as with any act of military aggression that has the potential to rattle global finance, one immediate question ought to be this: Who is most likely to need help right away?
Chances are, it’s babies whom hospital personnel have had to move to basements and the people who are taking shelter in subway stations or fleeing their homes. Many of those adults had no 401(k) in the first place. Even those who have the least among their neighbors may lose more than they ever thought possible.
If you’re reading this, you are probably not among them. We’re entering Year 3 of a global pandemic, but you are still alive, even if you may have lost people close to you. The job market is strong for those who want to work and feel safe doing so.
If you own a big, broad basket of U.S. stocks, they have risen about 40 percent in the past two years, even after the recent correction. If you own a home, thoseprices are up at least 20 percent — over $50,000 for those at the median.
This is incredible. Your net worth may well be higher amid all the death that resulted from disease, and it could stay that way as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to wreak havoc on global markets.
In Kharkiv on Friday night, hundreds of Ukrainians sought safety from bombings by sheltering underground in subway cars and stations.Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
This is not a call for celebration but instead to marvel, briefly, that this may be your reality. And it is true that the ability to dig deep to help others depends in part on preserving what you have.
My colleague Jeff Sommer noted that stock markets posted big gains in the medium-term wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Investors did well during the Cold War years, too, even as millions of people suffered.
For most people, it would not feel good to try to profit off these sorts of events directly, but mere patience is no moral failing.
On Thursday, as stock markets fell steeply and then recovered, Michael Zawadiwskyi, a Ukrainian American financial planner, said he did talk a few clients out of the idea that they should sell various investments to shield themselves from potential losses. About half his clients share his roots.
But he did not get as many calls as you might have expected. Shared heritage aside, he and his clients subscribe to universal principles of sound financial planning. They have their money in buckets of investments, some to use now and some for later. They are prudent about risk and diversification. They don’t deviate from the plan unless radical changes in their own lives demand it.
And he knows his history. “I don’t think war slows the economy down long term,” Mr. Zawadiwskyi said.
That did not keep him from staring in disbelief at pictures of tanks rolling through Ukraine and wondering what will become of its citizens. Most of them, he believes, do not have their bags packed just yet, especially those in the western part of the country, where his family has roots.
“Where are they going to go?” said Mr. Zawadiwskyi, a first-generation American who is part of a tightknit community of Ukrainian Americans in northern New Jersey. “I don’t even want to imagine what that is going to look like. I think they are still intent on fighting for what they have there.”
Tanks in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, on Friday.Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
If he and his clients are, for now, more worried about people than the prospects for their investments, you should consider a similar stance. After all, there is one thing that we can forecast with reasonable certainty in the short term: People will need help.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to Know
Card 1 of 4
Civilians under fire. Russian forces targeted Ukrainian cities with increasingly powerful weapons on the sixth day of the invasion, inflicting a heavy toll on civilians. Explosions shook Kyiv and Kharkiv, while Russian troops moved to capture Mariupol in the south, a critical port city.
American airspace ban. President Biden announced that the U.S. will ban Russian aircraft from flying through American airspace. The ban follows similar moves by the E.U. and Canada to shut airspace to passenger flights from Russia and to planes used by Russian oligarchs.
Russian convoy. Satellite images show a Russian military convoy stretching 40 miles long on a roadway north of Kyiv, with a number of homes and buildings seen burning nearby. Experts fear the convoy could be used to encircle and cut off the capital or to launch a full-on assault.
Migration wave. At least 660,000 people, most of them women and children, have fled Ukraine for neighboring countries, according to the U.N. refugee agency. It’s the most intense wave of European migration since at least the 1990s.
If you have lost little — and certainly if you’ve gained plenty — hark back to your own family’s history of having been helped. Even if your ancestors were never officially refugees, they probably encountered hardship if they moved from country to country.
It’s an old story, with new protagonists each year. For decades, Refugees International has focused on public policy and other initiatives that can ease their struggle. HIAS is another stalwart in this area that is sending money to Right to Protection, its Ukrainian partner. Other established nonprofits are likely to mobilize if the situation worsens.
A few omnibus, ways-to-helpwebsites are already making the rounds, as are suggestions on social media. If recent history is any guide, there will be tools and platforms that you can use to get money directly, electronically, to individuals in need. Most of these efforts will work and are worthy. Inevitably, scams will emerge, too, so be wary and ask questions.
And if it helps, don’t forget that there can often be a direct connection between your own gains and your good will.
You can donate appreciated stock to many charities and avoid paying capital gains taxes on those winnings. You can move a pile of securities into a donor-advised fund and spend it down over time while capturing any charitable tax deductions that you might be eligible for. And if you have investment losses, deduct those if you can and imagine any tax savings as a subsidy toward generous donations.
Maybe the invasion will affect your retirement or the price to fill your S.U.V., and maybe it won’t. But other people are suffering greatly right now. Investing in them is one of the best ways to answer the question of what you could do about Ukraine in the immediate future.
For many people, watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine has felt like a series of “He can’t be doing this” moments. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has launched the largest ground war in Europe since the Second World War. It is, quite literally, mind-boggling.
That’s why I reached out to Fiona Hill, one of America’s most clear-eyed Russia experts, someone who has studied Putin for decades, worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations and has a reputation for truth-telling, earned when she testified during impeachment hearings for her former boss, President Donald Trump.
I wanted to know what she’s been thinking as she’s watched the extraordinary footage of Russian tanks rolling across international borders, what she thinks Putin has in mind and what insights she can offer into his motivations and objectives.
Hill spent many years studying history, and in our conversation, she repeatedly traced how long arcs and trends of European history are converging on Ukraine right now. We are already, she said, in the middle of a third World War, whether we’ve fully grasped it or not.
“Sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again,” Hill told me.
Those old historical patterns include Western businesses who fail to see how they help build a tyrant’s war chest, admirers enamored of an autocrat’s “strength” and politicians’ tendency to point fingers inward for political gain instead of working together for their nation’s security.
But at the same time, Hill says it’s not too late to turn Putin back, and it’s a job not just for the Ukrainians or for NATO — it’s a job that ordinary Westerners and companies can assist in important ways once they grasp what’s at stake.
“Ukraine has become the front line in a struggle, not just between democracies and autocracies but in a struggle for maintaining a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force,” Hill said. “Every country in the world should be paying close attention to this.”
There’s lots of danger ahead, she warned. Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones. It’s important not to have any illusions — but equally important not to lose hope. “Every time you think, ’No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would,” Hill said. “And he wants us to know that, of course. It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared…. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off.”
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Maura Reynolds: You’ve been a Putin watcher for a long time, and you’ve written one of the best biographies of Putin. When you’ve been watching him over the past week, what have you been seeing that other people might be missing?
Fiona Hill: Putin is usually more cynical and calculated than he came across in his most recent speeches. There’s evident visceral emotion in things that he said in the past few weeks justifying the war in Ukraine. The pretext is completely flimsy and almost nonsensical for anybody who’s not in the echo chamber or the bubble of propaganda in Russia itself. I mean, demanding to the Ukrainian military that they essentially overthrow their own government or lay down their arms and surrender because they are being commanded by a bunch of drug-addled Nazi fascists? There’s just no sense to that. It beggars the imagination.
Putin doesn’t even seem like he’s trying to make a convincing case. We saw the same thing in the Russian response at the United Nations. The justification has essentially been “what-about-ism”: ‘You guys have been invading Iraq, Afghanistan. Don’t tell me that I can’t do the same thing in Ukraine.”
This visceral emotion is unhealthy and extraordinarily dangerous because there are few checks and balances around Putin. He spotlighted this during the performance of the National Security Council meeting, where it became very clear that this was his decision. He was in a way taking full responsibility for war, and even the heads of his security and intelligence services looked like they’ve been thrown off guard by how fast things were moving.
Reynolds: So Putin is being driven by emotion right now, not by some kind of logical plan?
Hill: I think there’s been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007 when he put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO. And then within a year in 2008 NATO gave an open door to Georgia and Ukraine. It absolutely goes back to that juncture.
Back then I was a national intelligence officer, and the National Intelligence Council was analyzing what Russia was likely to do in response to the NATO Open Door declaration. One of our assessments was that there was a real, genuine risk of some kind of preemptive Russian military action, not just confined to the annexation of Crimea, but some much larger action taken against Ukraine along with Georgia. And of course, four months after NATO’s Bucharest Summit, there was the invasion of Georgia. There wasn’t an invasion of Ukraine then because the Ukrainian government pulled back from seeking NATO membership. But we should have seriously addressed how we were going to deal with this potential outcome and our relations with Russia.
Reynolds: Do you think Putin’s current goal is reconstituting the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire, or something different?
Hill: It’s reestablishing Russian dominance of what Russia sees as the Russian “Imperium.” I’m saying this very specifically because the lands of the Soviet Union didn’t cover all of the territories that were once part of the Russian Empire. So that should give us pause.
Putin has articulated an idea of there being a “Russky Mir” or a “Russian World.” The recent essay he published about Ukraine and Russia states the Ukrainian and Russian people are “one people,” a “yedinyi narod.” He’s saying Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same. This idea of a Russian World means re-gathering all the Russian-speakers in different places that belonged at some point to the Russian tsardom.
I’ve kind of quipped about this but I also worry about it in all seriousness — that Putin’s been down in the archives of the Kremlin during Covid looking through old maps and treaties and all the different borders that Russia has had over the centuries. He’s said, repeatedly, that Russian and European borders have changed many times. And in his speeches, he’s gone after various former Russian and Soviet leaders, he’s gone after Lenin and he’s gone after the communists, because in his view they ruptured the Russian empire, they lost Russian lands in the revolution, and yes, Stalin brought some of them back into the fold again like the Baltic States and some of the lands of Ukraine that had been divided up during World War II, but they were lost again with the dissolution of the USSR. Putin’s view is that borders change, and so the borders of the old Russian imperium are still in play for Moscow to dominate now.
Reynolds: Dominance in what way?
Hill: It doesn’t mean that he’s going to annex all of them and make them part of the Russian Federation like they’ve done with Crimea. You can establish dominance by marginalizing regional countries, by making sure that their leaders are completely dependent on Moscow, either by Moscow practically appointing them through rigged elections or ensuring they are tethered to Russian economic and political and security networks. You can see this now across the former Soviet space.
We’ve seen pressure being put on Kazakhstan to reorient itself back toward Russia, instead of balancing between Russia and China, and the West. And just a couple of days before the invasion of Ukraine in a little-noticed act, Azerbaijan signed a bilateral military agreement with Russia. This is significant because Azerbaijan’s leader has been resisting this for decades. And we can also see that Russia has made itself the final arbiter of the future relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia has also been marginalized after being a thorn in Russia’s side for decades. And Belarus is now completely subjugated by Moscow.
But amid all this, Ukraine was the country that got away. And what Putin is saying now is that Ukraine doesn’t belong to Ukrainians. It belongs to him and the past. He is going to wipe Ukraine off the map, literally, because it doesn’t belong on his map of the “Russian world.” He’s basically told us that. He might leave behind some rump statelets. When we look at old maps of Europe — probably the maps he’s been looking at — you find all kinds of strange entities, like the Sanjak of Novi Pazar in the Balkans. I used to think, what the hell is that? These are all little places that have dependency on a bigger power and were created to prevent the formation of larger viable states in contested regions. Basically, if Vladimir Putin has his way, Ukraine is not going to exist as the modern-day Ukraine of the last 30 years.
Reynolds: How far into Ukraine do you think Putin is going to go?
Hill: At this juncture, if he can, he’s going to go all the way. Before this last week, he had multiple different options to choose from. He’d given himself the option of being able to go in in full force as he’s doing now, but he could also have focused on retaking the rest of the administrative territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. He could have seized the Sea of Azov, which he’s probably going to do anyway, and then joined up the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with Crimea as well as the lands in between and all the way down to Odessa. In fact, Putin initially tried this in 2014 — to create “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia,” but that failed when local support for joining Russia didn’t materialize.
Now, if he can, he is going to take the whole country. We have to face up to this fact. Although we haven’t seen the full Russian invasion force deployed yet, he’s certainly got the troops to move into the whole country.
Reynolds: You say he has an adequate number of troops to move in, but does he have enough to occupy the whole country?
Hill: If there is serious resistance, he may not have sufficient force to take the country for a protracted period. It also may be that he doesn’t want to occupy the whole country, that he wants to break it up, maybe annex some parts of it, maybe leave some of it as rump statelets or a larger rump Ukraine somewhere, maybe around Lviv. I’m not saying that I know exactly what’s going on in his head. And he may even suggest other parts of Ukraine get absorbed by adjacent countries.
In 2015, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was at the Munich Security Conference after the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. And he talked about Ukraine not being a country, saying pointedly that there are many minority groups in Ukraine — there are Poles and there are Romanians, there are Hungarians and Russians. And he goes on essentially almost inviting the rest of Europe to divide Ukraine up.
So what Putin wants isn’t necessarily to occupy the whole country, but really to divide it up. He’s looked at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other places where there’s a division of the country between the officially sanctioned forces on the one hand, and the rebel forces on the other. That’s something that Putin could definitely live with — a fractured, shattered Ukraine with different bits being in different statuses.
Reynolds: So step by step, in ways that we haven’t always appreciated in the West, Putin has brought back a lot of these countries that were independent after the Soviet collapse back under his umbrella. The only country that has so far evaded Putin’s grip has been Ukraine.
Hill: Ukraine, correct. Because it’s bigger and because of its strategic location. That’s what Russia wants to ensure, or Putin wants to ensure, that Ukraine like the other countries, has no other option than subjugation to Russia.
Reynolds: How much of what we’re seeing now is tied to Putin’s own electoral schedule? He seized Crimea in 2014, and that helped to boost his ratings and ensure his future reelection. He’s got another election coming up in 2024. Is any of this tied to that?
Hill: I think it is. In 2020, Putin had the Russian Constitution amended so that he could stay on until 2036, another set of two six-year terms. He’s going to be 84 then. But in 2024, he has to re-legitimate himself by standing for election. The only real contender might have been Alexei Navalny, and they’ve put him in a penal colony. Putin has rolled up all the potential opposition and resistance, so one would think it would be a cakewalk for him in 2024. But the way it works with Russian elections, he actually has to put on a convincing show that demonstrates that he’s immensely popular and he’s got the affirmation of all the population.
Behind the scenes it’s fairly clear that there’s a lot of apathy in the system, that many people support Putin because there’s no one else. People who don’t support him at all will probably not turn out to vote. The last time that his brand got stale, it was before the annexation of Crimea. That put him back on the top of the charts in terms of his ratings.
It may not just be the presidential calendar, the electoral calendar. He’s going to be 70 in October. And 70 you know, in the larger scheme of things, is not that old. There are plenty of politicians out there that are way over 70.
Reynolds: But it’s old for Russians.
Hill: It’s old for Russians. And Putin’s not looking so great, he’s been rather puffy-faced. We know that he has complained about having back issues. Even if it’s not something worse than that, it could be that he’s taking high doses of steroids, or there may be something else. There seems to be an urgency for this that may be also driven by personal factors.
He may have a sense that time is marching on — it’s 22 years, after all, and the likelihood after that kind of time of a Russian leader leaving voluntarily or through elections is pretty slim. Most leaders leave either like Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko thought that he might leave, as the result of massive protests, or they die in office.
The only other person who has been Russian leader in modern times longer than Putin is Stalin, and Stalin died in office.
Reynolds: Putin came to power after a series of operations that many have seen as a kind of false flag — bombings of buildings around Russia that killed Russian citizens, hundreds of them, followed by a war in Chechnya. That led to Putin coming to power as a wartime president. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 also came at a difficult time for Putin. Now we’re seeing another big military operation less than two years before he needs to stand for election again. Am I wrong to see that pattern?
Hill: No, I don’t think you are. There’s definitely a pattern here. Part of Putin’s persona as president is that he is a ruthless tough guy, the strong man who is the champion and protector of Russia. And that’s why Russia needs him. If all was peaceful and quiet, why would you need Vladimir Putin? If you think of other wartime leaders — Winston Churchill comes to mind — in peacetime, Winston Churchill got voted out of office.
Reynolds: Speaking of Chechnya, I have been thinking that this is the largest ground military operation that Russia has fought since Chechnya. What did we learn about the Russian military then that’s relevant now?
Hill: It’s very important, that you bring this point up because people are saying Ukraine is the largest military operation in Europe since World War II. The first largest military action in Europe since World War II was actually in Chechnya, because Chechnya is part of Russia. This was a devastating conflict that dragged on for years, with two rounds of war after a brief truce, and tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties. The regional capital of Grozny was leveled. The casualties were predominantly ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. The Chechens fought back, and this became a military debacle on Russia’s own soil. Analysts called it “the nadir of the Russian army.” After NATO’s intervention in the Balkan wars in the same timeframe in the 1990s, Moscow even worried that NATO might intervene.
Reynolds: What have we learned about NATO in the last two months?
Hill: In many respects, not good things, initially. Although now we see a significant rallying of the political and diplomatic forces, serious consultations and a spur to action in response to bolster NATO’s military defenses.
But we also need to think about it this way. We have had a long-term policy failure going back to the end of the Cold War in terms of thinking about how to manage NATO’s relations with Russia to minimize risk. NATO is a like a massive insurer, a protector of national security for Europe and the United States. After the end of the Cold War, we still thought that we had the best insurance for the hazards we could face — flood, fire etc. — but for a discounted premium. We didn’t take adequate steps to address and reduce the various risks. We can now see that that we didn’t do our due diligence and fully consider all the possible contingencies, including how we would mitigate Russia’s negative response to successive expansions. Think about Swiss Re or AIG or Lloyds of London — when the hazard was massive, like during Hurricane Katrina or the global financial crisis in 2008, those insurance companies got into major trouble. They and their clients found themselves underwater. And this is kind of what NATO members are learning now.
Reynolds: And then there’s the nuclear element. Many people have thought that we’d never see a large ground war in Europe or a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, because it could quickly escalate into a nuclear conflict. How close are we getting to that?
Hill: Well, we’re right there. Basically, what President Putin has said quite explicitly in recent days is that if anybody interferes in Ukraine, they will be met with a response that they’ve “never had in [their] history.” And he has put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. So he’s making it very clear that nuclear is on the table.
Putin tried to warn Trump about this, but I don’t think Trump figured out what he was saying. In one of the last meetings between Putin and Trump when I was there, Putin was making the point that: “Well you know, Donald, we have these hypersonic missiles.” And Trump was saying, “Well, we will get them too.” Putin was saying, “Well, yes, you will get them eventually, but we’ve got them first.” There was a menace in this exchange. Putin was putting us on notice that if push came to shove in some confrontational environment that the nuclear option would be on the table.
Reynolds: Do you really think he’ll use a nuclear weapon?
Hill: The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t? He’s already used a nuclear weapon in some respects. Russian operatives poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium and turned him into a human dirty bomb and polonium was spread all around London at every spot that poor man visited. He died a horrible death as a result.
The Russians have already used a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok. They’ve used it possibly several times, but for certain twice. Once in Salisbury, England, where it was rubbed all over the doorknob of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who actually didn’t die; but the nerve agent contaminated the city of Salisbury, and anybody else who came into contact with it got sickened. Novichok killed a British citizen, Dawn Sturgess, because the assassins stored it in a perfume bottle which was discarded into a charity donation box where it was found by Sturgess and her partner. There was enough nerve agent in that bottle to kill several thousand people. The second time was in Alexander Navalny’s underpants.
So if anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again. Every time you think, “No, he wouldn’t, would he?” Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.
It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared. That’s exactly what he wants us to be. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off.
Reynolds: So how do we deal with it? Are sanctions enough?
Hill: Well, we can’t just deal with it as the United States on our own. First of all, this has to be an international response.
Reynolds: Larger than NATO?
Hill: It has to be larger than NATO. Now I’m not saying that that means an international military response that’s larger than NATO, but the push back has to be international.
We first have to think about what Vladimir Putin has done and the nature of what we’re facing. People don’t want to talk about Adolf Hitler and World War II, but I’m going to talk about it. Obviously the major element when you talk about World War II, which is overwhelming, is the Holocaust and the absolute decimation of the Jewish population of Europe, as well as the Roma-Sinti people.
But let’s focus here on the territorial expansionism of Germany, what Germany did under Hitler in that period: seizure of the Sudetenland and the Anschluss or annexation of Austria, all on the basis that they were German speakers. The invasion of Poland. The treaty with the Soviet Union, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, that also enabled the Soviet Union to take portions of Poland but then became a prelude to Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Invasions of France and all of the countries surrounding Germany, including Denmark and further afield to Norway. Germany eventually engaged in a burst of massive territorial expansion and occupation. Eventually the Soviet Union fought back. Vladimir Putin’s own family suffered during the siege of Leningrad, and yet here is Vladimir Putin doing exactly the same thing.
Reynolds: So, similar to Hitler, he’s using a sense of massive historical grievance combined with a veneer of protecting Russians and a dismissal of the rights of minorities and other nations to have independent countries in order to fuel territorial ambitions?
Hill: Correct. And he’s blaming others, for why this has happened, and getting us to blame ourselves.
If people look back to the history of World War II, there were an awful lot of people around Europe who became Nazi German sympathizers before the invasion of Poland. In the United Kingdom, there was a whole host of British politicians who admired Hitler’s strength and his power, for doing what Great Powers do, before the horrors of the Blitz and the Holocaust finally penetrated.
Reynolds: And you see this now.
Hill: You totally see it. Unfortunately, we have politicians and public figures in the United States and around Europe who have embraced the idea that Russia was wronged by NATO and that Putin is a strong, powerful man and has the right to do what he’s doing: Because Ukraine is somehow not worthy of independence, because it’s either Russia’s historical lands or Ukrainians are Russians, or the Ukrainian leaders are — this is what Putin says — “drug addled, fascist Nazis” or whatever labels he wants to apply here.
So sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again. The other thing to think about in this larger historic context is how much the German business community helped facilitate the rise of Hitler. Right now, everyone who has been doing business in Russia or buying Russian gas and oil has contributed to Putin’s war chest. Our investments are not just boosting business profits, or Russia’s sovereign wealth funds and its longer-term development. They now are literally the fuel for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Reynolds: I gather you think that sanctions leveled by the government are inadequate to address this much larger threat?
Hill: Absolutely. Sanctions are not going to be enough. You need to have a major international response, where governments decide on their own accord that they can’t do business with Russia for a period of time until this is resolved. We need a temporary suspension of business activity with Russia. Just as we wouldn’t be having a full-blown diplomatic negotiation for anything but a ceasefire and withdrawal while Ukraine is still being actively invaded, so it’s the same thing with business. Right now you’re fueling the invasion of Ukraine. So what we need is a suspension of business activity with Russia until Moscow ceases hostilities and withdraws its troops.
Reynolds: So ordinary companies…
Hill: Ordinary companies should make a decision. This is the epitome of “ESG” that companies are saying is their priority right now — upholding standards of good Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance. Just like people didn’t want their money invested in South Africa during apartheid, do you really want to have your money invested in Russia during Russia’s brutal invasion and subjugation and carving up of Ukraine?
If Western companies, their pension plans or mutual funds, are invested in Russia they should pull out. Any people who are sitting on the boards of major Russian companies should resign immediately. Not every Russian company is tied to the Kremlin, but many major Russian companies absolutely are, and everyone knows it. If we look back to Germany in the runup to the Second World War, it was the major German enterprises that were being used in support of the war. And we’re seeing exactly the same thing now. Russia would not be able to afford this war were it not for the fact that oil and gas prices are ratcheting up. They’ve got enough in the war chest for now. But over the longer term, this will not be sustainable without the investment that comes into Russia and all of the Russian commodities, not just oil and gas, that are being purchased on world markets. And, our international allies, like Saudi Arabia, should be increasing oil production right now as a temporary offset. Right now, they are also indirectly funding war in Ukraine by keeping oil prices high.
This has to be an international response to push Russia to stop its military action. India abstained in the United Nations, and you can see that other countries are feeling discomforted and hoping this might go away. This is not going to go away, and it could be “you next” — because Putin is setting a precedent for countries to return to the type of behavior that sparked the two great wars which were a free-for-all over territory. Putin is saying, “Throughout history borders have changed. Who cares?”
Reynolds: And you do not think he will necessarily stop at Ukraine?
Hill: Of course he won’t. Ukraine has become the front line in a struggle, not just for which countries can or cannot be in NATO, or between democracies and autocracies, but in a struggle for maintaining a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force. Every country in the world should be paying close attention to this. Yes, there may be countries like China and others who might think that this is permissible, but overall, most countries have benefited from the current international system in terms of trade and economic growth, from investment and an interdependent globalized world. This is pretty much the end of this. That’s what Russia has done.
Reynolds: He’s blown up the rules-based international order.
Hill: Exactly. What stops a lot of people from pulling out of Russia even temporarily is, they will say, “Well, the Chinese will just step in.” This is what every investor always tells me. “If I get out, someone else will move in.” I’m not sure that Russian businesspeople want to wake up one morning and find out the only investors in the Russian economy are Chinese, because then Russia becomes the periphery of China, the Chinese hinterlands, and not another great power that’s operating in tandem with China.
Reynolds: The more we talk, the more we’re using World War II analogies. There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III.
Hill: We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I. And we had an interwar period between them. And in a way, we had that again after the Cold War. Many of the things that we’re talking about here have their roots in the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire at the end of World War I. At the end of World War II, we had another reconfiguration and some of the issues that we have been dealing with recently go back to that immediate post-war period. We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait.
All of the conflicts that we’re seeing have roots in those earlier conflicts. We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.
But this is also a full-spectrum information war, and what happens in a Russian “all-of-society” war, you soften up the enemy. You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war. I mean he has got swathes of the Republican Party — and not just them, some on the left, as well as on the right — masses of the U.S. public saying, “Good on you, Vladimir Putin,” or blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome. This is exactly what a Russian information war and psychological operation is geared towards. He’s been carefully seeding this terrain as well. We’ve been at war, for a very long time. I’ve been saying this for years.
Reynolds: So just as the world didn’t see Hitler coming, we failed to see Putin coming?
Hill: We shouldn’t have. He’s been around for 22 years now, and he has been coming to this point since 2008. I don’t think that he initially set off to do all of this, by the way, but the attitudes towards Ukraine and the feelings that all Ukraine belongs to Russia, the feelings of loss, they’ve all been there and building up.
What Russia is doing is asserting that “might makes right.” Of course, yes, we’ve also made terrible mistakes. But no one ever has the right to completely destroy another country — Putin’s opened up a door in Europe that we thought we’d closed after World War II.
17-mile-long Russian convoy reaches outskirts of Kyiv
Grayson Quay, Weekend editor – February 28, 2022
Police officer in Kyiv hris McGrath/Getty Images
A 17-mile-long convoy comprising hundreds of Russian military vehicles reached the outskirts of Kyiv on Monday, CNN reported.
Per CNN, the convoy was originally identified on Sunday in satellite imagery provided by Maxar Technologies. At the time, it was approximately 40 miles from Kyiv. By around 11:00 a.m. on Monday, the convoy was positioned near Antonov air base, about 17 miles from the city center of Kyiv.
Russian forces captured the air base on Friday after heavy fighting, BBC reported.
A source described as a “western official” told CNN on Monday that Russia is “well behind the schedule it set” for the invasion. Kyiv has already outlasted the worst-case scenario U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley outlined before the invasion when he said the Ukrainian capital could fall within 72 hours.
According to Ukrainian military sources, Russian reconnaissance forces made several attempts to push into Kyiv on Friday night but were repelled after vicious street fighting. Russian troops have also fired missiles into the Ukrainian capital.
The main body of Russian troops pushing south from Belarus has not yet attacked the city, but the large number of tanks, artillery pieces, and other vehicles in the convoy could signal that a major assault is imminent.
Russia takes aim at urban areas; Biden vows Putin will ‘pay’
Yuras Karmanau, JimHeintz, Vladimir Isachenkov and Dasha Litvinovay
February 28, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces escalated their attacks on crowded urban areas Tuesday in what Ukraine’s leader called a blatant campaign of terror, while U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to make his Russian counterpart “pay a price” for the invasion.
“Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed after the bloodshed on the central square in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, and the deadly bombing of a TV tower in the capital.
Biden used his first State of the Union address to highlight the resolve of a reinvigorated Western alliance that has worked to rearm the Ukrainian military and adopt tough sanctions, which he said have left Russian President Vladimir Putin ”isolated in the world more than he has ever been.”
“Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson — when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos,” Biden said. “They keep moving. And the costs and threats to America and the world keep rising.”
Biden devoted the first 12 minutes of his Tuesday evening address to Ukraine, with lawmakers of both parties repeatedly rising to their feet and applauding as he praised the bravery of Ukraine’s people and condemned Putin’s assault.
As Biden spoke, a 40-mile (64-kilometer) convoy of hundreds of Russian tanks and other vehicles advanced slowly on Kyiv, the capital city of nearly 3 million people, in what the West feared was a bid by Putin to topple the government and install a Kremlin-friendly regime.
The invading forces also pressed their assault on other towns and cities, including the strategic ports of Odesa and Mariupol in the south.
Day 6 of the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II found Russia increasingly isolated, beset by the sanctions that have thrown its economy into turmoil and left the country practically friendless, apart from a few nations like China, Belarus and North Korea.
As the fighting in Ukraine raged, the death toll remained unclear. One senior Western intelligence official estimated that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers had been captured or killed. Ukraine gave no overall estimate of troop losses.
The U.N. human rights office said it has recorded 136 civilian deaths. The real toll is believed to be far higher.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said it had seen an increase in Russian air and artillery strikes on populated urban areas over the past two days. It also said three cities — Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol — were encircled by Russian forces.
Many military experts worry that Russia may be shifting tactics. Moscow’s strategy in Chechnya and Syria was to use artillery and air bombardments to pulverize cities and crush fighters’ resolve.
Ukrainian authorities said five people were killed in the attack on the TV tower, which is near central Kyiv and a short walk from numerous apartment buildings. A TV control room and power substation were hit, and at least some Ukrainian channels briefly stopped broadcasting, officials said.
The bombing came after Russia announced it would target transmission facilities used by Ukraine’s intelligence agency. It urged people living near such places to leave their homes.
Zelenskyy’s office also reported a missile attack on the site of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial, near the tower. A spokesman for the memorial said a Jewish cemetery at the site, where Nazi occupiers killed more than 33,000 Jews over two days in 1941, was damaged, but the extent would not be clear until daylight.
In Kharkiv, with a population of about 1.5 million, at least six people were killed when the region’s Soviet-era administrative building on Freedom Square was hit with what was believed to be a missile.
The Slovenian Foreign Ministry said its consulate in Kharkiv, located in another large building on the square, was destroyed in the attack.
The attack on Freedom Square — Ukraine’s largest plaza, and the nucleus of public life in the city — was seen by many Ukrainians as brazen evidence that the Russian invasion wasn’t just about hitting military targets but also about breaking their spirit.
The bombardment blew out windows and walls of buildings that ring the massive square, which was piled high with debris and dust. Inside one building, chunks of plaster were scattered, and doors, ripped from their hinges, lay across hallways.
“People are under the ruins. We have pulled out bodies,” said Yevhen Vasylenko, an emergency official.
Zelenskyy pronounced the attack on the square “frank, undisguised terror” and a war crime. “This is state terrorism of the Russian Federation,” he said.
In an emotional appeal to the European Parliament later, Zelenskyy said: “We are fighting also to be equal members of Europe. I believe that today we are showing everybody that is what we are.”
Another Russian airstrike hit a residential area in the city of Zhytomyr, the town’s mayor said. Ukraine’s emergency services said Tuesday’s strike killed at least two people, set three homes on fire and broke the windows in a nearby hospital. About 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Kyiv, Zhytomyr is the home of the elite 95th Air Assault Brigade, which may have been the intended target.
Zelenskyy said 16 children had been killed around Ukraine on Monday, and he mocked Russia’s claim that it is going after only military targets.
“Where are the children? What kind of military factories do they work at? What tanks are they going at?” Zelenskyy said.
Human Rights Watch said it documented a cluster bomb attack outside a hospital in Ukraine’s east in recent days. Residents also reported the use of such weapons in Kharkiv and Kiyanka village. The Kremlin denied using cluster bombs.
Cluster bombs shoot smaller “bomblets” over a large area, many of which fail to explode until long after they’ve been dropped. If their use is confirmed, that would represent a new level of brutality in the war and could lead to further isolation of Russia.
The first talks between Russia and Ukraine since the invasion were held Monday, but ended with only an agreement to talk again. On Tuesday, Zelenskyy said Russia should stop bombing first.
“As for dialogue, I think yes, but stop bombarding people first and start negotiating afterwards,“ he told CNN.
In his speech, Biden announced that the U.S. was joining several other countries in closing its airspace to Russian planes. He also warned the country’s oligarchs that the Department of Justice was assembling a task force to investigate any crimes they committed.
“We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets,” he said. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.”
Biden trumpeted the toll global measures had taken on the Russian economy already, including a stock market plunge and currency devaluation.
Moscow made new threats of escalation, days after raising the specter of nuclear war. A top Kremlin official warned that the West’s “economic war” against Russia could turn into a “real one.”
Inside Russia, a top radio station critical of the Kremlin was taken off the air after authorities threatened to shut it down over its coverage of the invasion. Among other things, the Kremlin is not allowing the fighting to be referred to as an “invasion” or “war.”
Roughly 660,000 people have fled Ukraine, and countless others have taken shelter underground. Bomb damage has left hundreds of thousands of families without drinking water, U.N. humanitarian coordinator Martin Griffiths said.
“It is a nightmare, and it seizes you from the inside very strongly. This cannot be explained with words,” said Kharkiv resident Ekaterina Babenko, taking shelter in a basement with neighbors for a fifth straight day. “We have small children, elderly people, and frankly speaking it is very frightening.”
A Ukrainian military official said Belarusian troops joined the war Tuesday in the Chernihiv region in the north, without providing details. But just before that, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country had no plans to join the fight.
A senior U.S. defense official said that Russia’s military progress — including by the massive convoy — has slowed, plagued by logistical and supply problems. Some Russian military columns have run out of gas and food, the official said, and morale has suffered as a result.
Overall, the Russian military has been stalled by fierce resistance on the ground and a surprising inability to completely dominate Ukraine’s airspace.
The immense convoy, with vehicles packed together along narrow roads, would seemingly be “a big fat target” for Ukrainian forces, the senior Western intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.
“But it also shows you that the Russians feel pretty comfortable being out in the open in these concentrations because they feel that they’re not going to come under air attack or rocket or missile attack,” the official said.
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Isachenkov and Litvinova reported from Moscow. Mstyslav Chernov in Mariupol, Ukraine; Sergei Grits in Odesa, Ukraine; Robert Burns, Zeke Miller and Eric Tucker in Washington; Francesca Ebel, Josef Federman and Andrew Drake in Kyiv; Lorne Cook in Brussels; and other AP journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
The Kremlin says Russia’s ‘economic reality’ has ‘considerably changed’ in the face of ‘problematic’ Western sanctions
James Dean – February 28, 2022
Crippling Western sanctions have changed the “reality” of the Russian economy, the Kremlin said Monday.
The Russian ruble crashed Monday and Russia’s central bank nearly doubled its base interest rate.
Western sanctions were “heavy” and “problematic” but could be countered, a Kremlin spokesperson said.
The Kremlin said Monday that Russia’s “economic reality” had “considerably changed” in the face of “heavy” and “problematic” Western sanctions.
The admission came after Russia’s ruble plunged 30% against the US dollar and the country’s central bank more than doubled its base interest rate, to 20%. Russians were reportedly waiting in long lines to withdraw foreign currencies from ATMs.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin would meet with Russia’s top central banking and finance officials, as well as the CEO of Sberbank, one of the country’s leading lenders. An FT reporter described the planned meeting as “an emergency meeting.”
Peskov said Russia had “the potential to offset the harm” caused by the West’s sanctions. However, per Reuters, he said: “The economic reality has considerably changed. These are heavy sanctions, they are problematic.”
He continued: “Russia has been making plans for quite a long time for possible sanctions, including the most severe ones. There are response plans, they were developed and are being implemented as problems appear.”
He added: “We have had no reason to doubt the effectiveness and reliability of our central bank. There is no reason to doubt it now.”
Peskov also said that Putin was “quite indifferent” about the sanctions leveled against him directly. “The sanctions contain absurd claims about some assets,” Peskov said.
The European Central Bank said Monday that Sberbank’s European operations “are failing or likely to fail.”
The ECB said that Sberbank’s European operations “experienced significant deposit outflows as a result of the reputational impact of geopolitical tensions. This led to a deterioration of its liquidity position. And there are no available measures with a realistic chance of restoring this position at group level and in each of its subsidiaries within the banking union.”
