Russia to pay bonds in rubles, which may cause default
Ken Sweet – April 6, 2022
FILE – People walk in front of a huge TV screen showing banknotes of Russian ruble in Tokyo, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russia said Wednesday, April 6, that it made a debt payment in rubles this week, a move that may not be accepted by Russia’s foreign debtholders and could put the country on a path to a possible historic default. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
NEW YORK (AP) — Russia said Wednesday that it made a debt payment in rubles this week, a move that may not be accepted by Russia’s foreign debtholders and could put the country on a path to an historic default.
The Ministry of Finance said in a statement that it tried to make a $649 million payment toward two bonds to an unnamed U.S. bank — previously reported as JPMorgan Chase — but that payment was not accepted because new U.S. sanctions prohibit Russia from using U.S. banks to pay its debts.
Russia said it has instead transferred the funds in rubles into a special bank account with Russia’s National Settlement Depository, the country’s securities regulator. The ministry added that once the country is allowed to access foreign exchange markets — not something that will happen for the foreseeable future due to sanctions — it will decide whether to allow bondholders to convert the ruble payment back into dollars or euros.
While Russia has 30 days of leeway to catch up with its payments, investors have been betting on a default. The contracts governing Russia’s bonds require in most cases payment in euros or dollars with few and narrow exceptions known as an alternative payments clause. Russia contends that it has met those exceptions but sovereign debt experts have argued otherwise.
“It is not clear to me, even if the clause is there, that Russia would be entitled to use it,” said G. Mitu Gulati, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and an expert on sovereign debt restructurings and contracts, in an email. “That’s a debatable question. I’d argue that they are not. But this would be a question for a court.”
Ratings agencies have downgraded Russia’s debt to “junk” status and said a default is highly likely.
While Russia has signaled it remains willing to pay its debts, the Kremlin warned that if sanctions stayed in place, it would continue to pay debtholders in rubles instead of dollars or euros.
“Russia has all the resources needed to service its debts,” said Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman. “If this blocking continues and transfers for debt repayments are also blocked from these frozen funds, they can be paid out in rubles.”
The U.S. has been attempting to force Russia to use its foreign currency reserves — or any revenue from oil and gas sales — in order to deplete the country’s financial resources. The sanctions placed on Russia this week barred the country from using any of its foreign reserves held in U.S. banks for debt payments.
Previously the Treasury Department had been allowing Russia to make debt payments, which stopped Russia from defaulting last month when it transferred a payment on March 17.
Russia has not defaulted on its foreign debts since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the collapse of the Russian Empire led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Even in the late 1990s during Russia’s sovereign debt crisis the country was able to continue to pay foreign debts with the help of international aid, although it did default on its domestic debt.
U.S. training small number of Ukrainians on Switchblade drones -defense official
Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali – April 6, 2022
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A small number of Ukrainians have been trained in the United States on how to operate killer “Switchblade” drones, single-use weapons that fly into their targets and detonate on impact, a senior U.S. defense official disclosed on Wednesday.
The Ukrainians undergoing training on the Switchblades and other weaponry number less than a dozen. They had arrived in the United States for regular military education programs prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
“We took advantage of the opportunity to pull them aside for a couple of days and provide them some training, particularly on the Switchblades UAV,” the senior U.S. defense official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “UAV” refers to an unmanned aerial vehicle.
The United States withdrew its military advisers from Ukraine ahead of Russia’s invasion, seeking to avoid a direct military confrontation between U.S. and Russian forces that could escalate into a broader war.
As a result of the withdrawal, the United States and NATO have largely constrained their provision of weaponry to Ukraine to systems that Ukrainian forces knew how to operate prior to Russia’s invasion.
That includes U.S. weapons that have given Ukraine an edge against Russian forces, like Javelin anti-tank missiles and portable Stinger surface-to-air missiles that can target Russian aircraft. It also includes Soviet-era systems that are still in the inventories of some NATO nations.
But Switchblades, which are relatively easy-to-use and could be highly effective in attacking Russian ground forces, had not been part of training packages prior to Russia’s invasion. The drones are made by AeroVironment Inc https://www.avinc.com/tms/switchblade-600.
The drones, which have a range of 40 km (25 miles), can be used against vehicles including trucks, tanks and armored personnel carriers.
In recent testimony, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Celeste Wallander, said the United States had committed to sending Ukraine 100 Switchblade systems.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday that the Pentagon is sending Ukraine two variants of the Switchblade, including one with an anti-armor warhead.
“The Switchblade 600 and 300 will move as quickly as they possibly can,” Austin told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
Ukrainians are expected to quickly use the first 100 systems sent.
“I’m convinced that when we get the first set of Switchblades in, there will be an immediate request from the Ukrainians for more,” the top U.S.commander in Europe, Air Force General Tod Wolters, told Congress on March 30.
The senior U.S. official declined to say on Wednesday where in the United States the training of Ukrainians was taking place or offer more information on other weapons systems they’re being trained on.
“Our expectation is that these individuals will be heading back into Ukraine relatively soon as they were originally anyway,” the official told reporters.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Mark Porter, Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)
War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values
Melani McAlister – April 6, 2022
Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, George Washington University had received funding from Princeton’s Davis Center for Historical Studies.
Vladimir Putin lights a candle as he attends an Orthodox Church service in 2011. AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all cost.”
The backlash was fast and direct. Graham had not solicited prayers for Ukraine, some observers commented. And he had rarely called on believers to pray for U.S. President Joe Biden.
A significant subset of the U.S. evangelical community, particularly white conservatives, has been developing a political and emotional alliance with Russia for almost 20 years. Those American believers, including prominent figures such as Graham and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice see Russia, Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as protectors of the faith, standing against attacks on “traditional” and “family” values. At the center is Russia’s spate of anti-LGBTQ laws, which have become a model for some anti-trans and anti-gay legislation in the U.S.
Now, with Russia bombing churches and destroying cities in Ukraine, the most Protestant of the former Soviet Republics, American evangelical communities are divided. Most oppose Russia’s actions, especially because there is a strong evangelical church in Ukraine that is receiving attention and prayers from a range of evangelical leaders.
Nonetheless, a small group of the most conservative American evangelicals cannot quite break up with their long-term ally. The enthusiasm for Russia is embodied by Graham, who in 2015 famously visited Moscow, where he had a warm meeting with Putin.
On that trip, Putin reportedly explained that his mother had kept her Christian faith even under Communist rule. Graham in turn praised Putin for his support of Orthodox Christianity, contrasting Russia’s “positive changes” with the rise of “atheistic secularism” in the U.S.
But it was not always so. Once upon a time, American evangelicals saw the Soviet Union and other communist countries as the world’s greatest threat to their faith.
They carried out dramatic and illegal activities, smuggling Bibles and other Christian literature across borders. And yet, today, Russia, still a country with low church attendance and little government tolerance for Protestant evangelism, has become a symbol of the conservative values that some American evangelicals proclaim.
Bible smuggling
Starting in the 1950s, but intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. and European evangelicals presented themselves as intimately linked to the Christians who were suffering at the hands of communist governments.
One evangelical group that emerged at this time was “Open Doors,” whose main aim was to work for “persecuted Christians” around the world. It was founded by “Brother Andrew” Van der Bijl, a Dutch pastor who smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Brother Andrew and other evangelicals argued that what Christians in communist countries really needed were Bibles – reflecting how important personal Bible reading is in evangelical faith.
Brother Andrew turned the smuggling into anti-communist political theater. As he headed toward the border in a specially outfitted vehicle with a hidden compartment that might hold as many as 3,000 Bibles, he prayed. According to one ad that ran in Christian magazines, he said:
“Lord, in my luggage I have forbidden Scriptures that I want to take to your children across the border. When you were on earth, you made blind eyes see. Now I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see these things you do not want them to see.”
Van der Bijl’s memoir, “God’s Smuggler,” became a bestseller when it was published in 1967.
Taking Jesus to the communist world
By the early 1970s, there were more than 30 Protestant organizations engaged in some sort of literature smuggling, and there was an intense, sometimes quite nasty, competition between groups.
For example, in 1966, a Romanian pastor named Richard Wurmbrand appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Internal Security subcommittee, stripped to the waist and turned to display his deeply scarred back.
Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, a refugee Lutheran pastor, stands stripped to the waist to show scars of torture in a prison in Romania, as he testifies to the Senate Internal Security subcommittee in Washington, May 6, 1966. AP Photo/Henry Griffin
A Jewish convert and Lutheran minister, Wurmbrand had been imprisoned twice by the Romanian government for his activities as an “underground” minister before he finally escaped to the West in 1964.
Standing shirtless before U.S. senators and the national news media, Wurmbrand testified, “My body represents Romania, my country, which has been tortured to a point that it can no longer weep. These marks on my body are my credentials.”
The next year, Wurmbrand published his book, “Tortured for Christ,” which became a bestseller in the U.S. He founded his own activist organization, “Jesus to the Communist World,” which went on to engage in a good bit of attention-grabbing behavior.
In May 1979, for example, two 32-year-old men associated with the group flew their small plane over the Cuban coast, dropping 6,000 copies of a pamphlet written by Wurmbrand. After the “Bible bombing,” they lost their way in a storm and were forced to land in Cuba, where they were arrested and served 17 months in jail before being released.
As I describe in my book “The Kingdom of God Has No Borders,” critics hammered these groups for such provocative approaches and hardball fundraising. One leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention complained that the practice of smuggling Bibles was “creating problems for the whole Christian witness” in communist areas.
Another Christian activist, however, admitted that the activist groups’ mix of faith and politics was hard to beat and had the ability to draw “big bucks.”
After communism: Islam and homosexuality
These days, there is little in the way of swashbuckling adventure to be had in confronting communists. But that does not mean an end to the evangelical focus on persecuted Christians.
Meanwhile, Putin’s policies of cracking down on evangelism do not seem to overly bother some of his conservative evangelical allies. When Putin signed a Russian law in June 2016 that outlawed any sharing of one’s faith in homes, online or anywhere else but recognized church buildings, some evangelicals were outraged, but others looked away.
This is in part because American evangelicals in the 2010s continued to see Putin as being willing to openly support Christians in what they saw as a global war on their faith. But the more immediately salient issue was Putin’s opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and nontraditional views of the family.
In the 21st century, then, the most conservative wing of evangelicals was not promoting its agenda by touting the number of Bibles transported across state lines, but rather on another kind of border crossing: the power of Putin’s reputation as a leader in the resurgent global right.
For the moment, Putin’s status as the global right’s moral vanguard is being severely tested, and the border-crossing advocates of traditional marriage may find themselves on the brink of divorce.
This article includes material from a piece pub. on September 4, 2018.
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In a first, wind power is second-leading U.S. source of electricity in one day
David Knowles, Senior Editor – April 6, 2022
Power generated by wind turbines in the United States hit a milestone last week, becoming the second-highest source of electricity in the country for a 24-hour period, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Wind turbines generated more than 2,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in the U.S. on Tuesday, March 29, more than was provided by nuclear and coal power plants that day. Wind power, which is renewable and does not release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, still trailed the electricity produced by natural gas, but it was the first time in U.S. history that wind turbines outperformed nuclear and coal power.
On its website, the EIA notes, “The amount of wind electricity generation has grown significantly in the past 30 years. Advances in wind energy technology have decreased the cost of producing electricity from wind. Government requirements and financial incentives for renewable energy in the United States and in other countries have contributed to growth in wind power.”
In total, electricity generated from wind power has gone from roughly 6 billion kilowatt-hours in 2000 to 380 billion in 2021, EIA says. Wind turbines now account for roughly 9.2% of the U.S.’s total “utility-scale electricity generation,” according to the agency.
Power-generating Siemens 2.37-megawatt wind turbines are seen at the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility in California. (Bing Guan/Reuters)
The rush toward wind energy has picked up steam as the country looks for ways to ween itself from oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. In 2020, 42% of new electricity generation capacity came from land-based wind energy, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Energy. Spurred on by federal tax incentives, wind turbines have been going up in states such as Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Minnesota.
In an effort to help the U.S. reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, President Biden announced leases in January for nearly 500,000 acres off the coast of New York and New Jersey for the construction of offshore wind farms.
“This week’s offshore wind sale makes one thing clear: The enthusiasm for the clean energy economy is undeniable and it’s here to stay,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a written statement at the time. “The investments we are seeing today will play an important role in delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis and create thousands of good-paying, union jobs across the nation.”
In a report issued this week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, global greenhouse gas emissions have to start dropping in 2025 and go down 43% from current levels by 2030 — and 84% by 2050. To do so, experts say, wind power will need to ramp up significantly in the coming years.
Ukraine says Russia is using ‘mobile crematoriums’ to burn the bodies of civilians in Mariupol and hide evidence of war crimes
Jake Epstein – April 6, 2022
A view of devastation in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists, on April 4, 2022. Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkraine says Russia is using ‘mobile crematoriums’ to burn the bodies of civilians in Mariupol and hide evidence of war crimes
Mariupol City Council said Russia is using mobile crematoriums to “cover their tracks.”
“They collect and burn the bodies of Mariupol residents murdered and killed,” it alleged on Telegram.
The council said Russia ordered the cover-up after international outrage over mass civilian killings in Bucha.
The city council of besieged Ukrainian port city Mariupol accused Russian forces of using mobile crematoriums to burn the bodies of civilians killed in the brutal assault and hide evidence of war crimes.
“Killers cover their tracks. Russian mobile crematoriums have started operating in Mariupol,” Mariupol city council alleged Wednesday on Telegram.
“They collect and burn the bodies of Mariupol residents murdered and killed as a result of the Russian invasion,” the city council added.
It said Russian leadership “ordered the destruction of any evidence of crimes committed by its army in Mariupol” in the wake of international outrage over the death of hundreds of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha at the hands of President Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Russian forces have continuously shelled Mariupol in a weeks-long campaign, targeting schools, hospitals, and even a theater marked as a shelter with children inside.
The US State Department has suggested that Russian forces have “brutalized” the city because President Vladimir Putin is angry at Ukraine’s fierce resistance.
Attempts to evacuate civilians or create humanitarian corridors from Mariupol have been difficult, and it’s not immediately clear how many civilians have died there.
In a conservative estimate, the city council said around 5,000 civilians have been killed as a result of Russia’s siege.
But, the city council warned, “given the size of the city, catastrophic destruction, the duration of the blockade, and fierce resistance, tens of thousands of civilians from Mariupol could fall victim to the invaders.”
The city council also said that all potential witnesses to Russian forces’ “atrocities” are being hunted through filtration camps — which Ukrainians have said are relocation camps for abducted civilians along the Russia-Ukraine border.
“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the Nazi concentration camps. The Russian fascists turned our whole city into a death camp,” Mariupol’s Mayor Vadym Boichenko said in the Telegram post.
He added: “Unfortunately, the eerie analogy is gaining more and more confirmation. This is no longer Chechnya or Aleppo. This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek. The world should help punish Putin’s villains.”
Ukrainian MP tweets image with claims that Russian soldiers carved a swastika onto a woman they raped and killed
Cheryl Teh – April 6, 2022
Russian soldiers seen in the Volnovakha district of the separatist-controlled Donetsk region of Ukraine on March 26.Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images. Ukrainian MP tweets image with claims that Russian soldiers carved a swastika onto a woman they raped and killed.
Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko said Russian soldiers raped, tortured, and killed a woman.
She shared an image on Twitter of what appeared to be a swastika carved crudely onto someone’s skin.
Reports of war crimes like mass killings and rapes have emerged from Ukraine in recent weeks.
A Ukrainian MP said this week that Russian troops carved a swastika onto a woman they tortured, raped, and killed.
MP Lesia Vasylenko tweeted a graphic image on Monday of what appeared to be an exposed torso featuring a large swastika that appeared to be carved into burned skin.
“Tortured body of a raped and killed woman. I’m speechless. My@mind is paralyzed with anger and fear and hatred. #StopGenocide#StopPutinNOW,” Vasylenko wrote in the post.
In a separate tweet on April 5, Vasylenko claimed that the Ukrainian government had found records of 5,000 war crimes committed by Russia.
Insider was unable to independently verify Vasylenko’s claims.
However, footage posted on YouTube by independent journalist Patrick Lancaster from a school basement in Mariupol appears to show the same body lying on the ground. Lancaster’s video has since been removed but appears to still be circulating on Twitter.
Supreme Court reinstates Trump-era water rule, for now
Jessica Gresko – April 6, 2022
Visitors walk outside the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 21, 2022. The Supreme Court reinstated for now a Trump-era rule that had curtailed the power of states and Native American tribes to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute rivers, streams and other waterways. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Frozen water pools in a corn field near a Keystone pipeline pumping station in rural Milford, Neb., Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020. The Supreme Court reinstated for now a Trump-era rule that had curtailed the power of states and Native American tribes to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute rivers, streams and other waterways. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated for now a Trump-era rule that curtails the power of states and Native American tribes to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute rivers, streams and other waterways.
In a decision that split the court 5-4, the justices agreed to halt a lower court judge’s order throwing out the rule. The high court’s action does not interfere with the Biden administration’s plan to rewrite the rule. Work on a revision has begun, but the administration has said a final rule is not expected until the spring of 2023. The Trump-era rule will remain in effect in the meantime.
The court’s three liberal justices and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented. The court’s other conservative justices, including three nominated by President Donald Trump, voted to reinstate the rule.
Writing for the dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan said the group of states and industry associations that had asked for the lower court’s ruling to be put on hold had not shown the extraordinary circumstances necessary to grant that request.
Kagan said the group had failed to demonstrate their harm if the judge’s decision were left in place. She said the group had not identified a “single project that a State has obstructed” in the months since the judge’s decision and had twice delayed making a request, indicating it was not urgent.
Kagan said the court’s majority had gone “astray” in granting the emergency petition and was misusing the process for dealing with such requests. That process is sometimes called the court’s “shadow docket” because the court provides a decision quickly without the full briefing and argument. The liberal justices have recently been critical of its use.
As is typical, the justices in the majority did not explain their reasoning.
Kagan wrote that her colleagues’ decision “renders the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all.”
Alsup was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton.
The section of federal law at issue in the case is Section 401 of the Clean Water Act. For decades, it had been the rule that a federal agency could not issue a license or permit to conduct any activity that could result in any discharge into navigable waters unless the affected state or tribe certified that the discharge was complied with the Clean Water Act and state law, or waived certification.
The Trump administration in 2020 curtailed that review power after complaints from Republicans in Congress and the fossil fuel industry that state officials had used the permitting process to stop new energy projects. The Trump administration said its actions would advance then-President Donald Trump’s goal to fast-track energy projects such as oil and natural gas pipelines.
States, Native American Tribes and environmental groups sued. Several mostly Republican-led states, a national trade association representing the oil and gas industry and others have intervened in the case to defend the Trump-era rule. The states involved in the case are: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, West Virginia, Wyoming and Texas.
Putin and Ukraine backfire by Dave Granlund, PoliticalCartoons.com
Putin has commenced blaming (firing, exiling to Siberia, jailing or who knows what else) those he believes failed his vision of a reborn Soviet Empire. Based on a keen sense of self preservation, browbeaten close advisors surely decided to refrain from trying to stop him blundering into the senseless and self destructive war/invasion of a Democratic, peaceful, industrious and successful neighbor, for merely exposing Putin and his Kleptocratic criminal enterprises tenuous hold on an emerging partially-woke Russian populace.
Putin believed Ukrainian’s would welcome his poorly trained military conscripts with open arms and kisses of gratitude for rounding-up all the Nazi’s left over from WWII. Unfortunately, no one with an ounce of authority dared remind him Ukraine was a Democratic nation led by a Democratically elected Jew, who’s great grand-parents died when the Nazis burned their village and his grandfather and his grandfather’s brothers all entered the Soviet Red Army, but only his grandfather survived.
He also believed those hoodwinked low paid conscripts would engender as much nationalistic determination as the patriotic Ukrainian’s fighting for their lives and loved ones and their nation and Democracy.
Likewise, the cowed generals seated at the block long conference table, peed their highly decorated uniforms every time they had to fend off taunts and darts fired by Putin at 60 paces. No one had the courage to stop a madman bent on destroying a peaceful neighbor, and with it their own Russian Federation.
Putin can’t blame the Russian zombie nation he keeps behind his Iron Curtain of propaganda, but the rest of the world can and will. His facade though, is showing as many cracks as the vaunted Russian war machine. In spite of Putin’s flashback to Czarist Russia, this is the 21st Century, where information grapevines steeped with minute-by-minute news and world views are influenced and possibly distorted by Facebook, Instagram, twitter, Snapchat etc. etc.
Putin’s information wack-a mole isn’t keeping pace with modern day technology. Each time he quashes another independent media source, a couple more pop up.
It could be Radio Free Europe broadcasting through the maze. It might be a courageous state sponsored news room producer dancing across the nightly news set behind an unaware spokesperson, with a sign begging viewers to open their eyes and ears.
Or Arnold Schwarzenegger using Twitter and Telegram to speak directly to his Russian followers, telling them about his fathers actions during the siege of Leningrad, which caused him a lifetime of both physical pain from a broken back and shrapnel and mental pain from guilt, for participating in an unjust war. He pleaded for the Russian soldiers to keep from making the same tragic mistakes his father made.
It might even be a few reformed self preserving oligarchs clearing their conscience and or spilling the beans in return for titles to their confiscated multimillion dollar condos, yachts and jets.
It could be the more than 200,000 Russians fleeing the country, a massive brain drain not witnessed since the worst of the Soviet Union’s dark days. It could be the growing thousands of Russian protestors courageous enough to risk a quick trip to a gulag and 15 years in prison for calling Putin’s invasion and war just what it is.
Yes, the lack of information/abundance of ignorance will be a challenge to overcome; approximately 65% of the Russian public believe Putin is acting responsibly, is standing up for and preserving the mother-land, is not a diabolical monster, is going god’s work faithfully endorsed by the State Sponsored Russian Orthodox Church Military Industrial Kleptocratic Complex, all based on what stories Putin jambs down their throat.
It’s unlikely Putin’s ultra ego will allow him to turn tail and flee back to Russia in disgrace; he will continue to pummel and plunder innocent civilians until the heavily sanctioned citizens of Russia get tired of living in terror, in financial depravation and in national disgrace. Will Putin take a bullet, fire himself, hang himself, flee the country, maybe to one of his yachts and just drift into oblivion.
During an interview, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked spokesperson for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, about his intension of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
“I need to ask you this, because the world is afraid, and I want to know whether Putin intends the world to be afraid of the nuclear option. Would he use it?” the CNN anchor asked Peskov.
Putin “intends to make the world listen to and understand our concerns” about the perceived “anti-Russia” threat from the West, said Peskov.
“I want to ask you again. Is President Putin, because, again, the Finnish president said to me that when he asked Putin directly about this, because President Putin has laid that (nuclear) card on the label, President Putin said that, if anybody tries to stop him, very bad things will happen. And I want to know whether you are convinced or confident that your boss will not use that option.”
“Well, we have a concept of domestic security, and, well, it’s public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used,” Peskov responded. “So, if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used, in accordance with our concept.”
But since the only existential threat to the Russian Federation is clearly Putin himself, I guess he should nuke himself and all the cowards in the Kremlin and the Federal Assembly, who failed to stop him from blundering into his existential threat to humanity.
Putin claimed he was invading Ukraine in order to save it from Nazi overlords who disdain Russian speaking Ukrainians. But what exactly does President Putin and the Russian war mongers have to offer Ukraine, or anyone for that matter? Terrorized families, more than 10 million refugees, millions of women and children fleeing for their lives, grand parents hiding in cellars because they’re too disabled or feeble to flee. Beautiful historic cities bombed into dust. Starving innocent people dogging rockets and missiles, and mass graves when they fail that. A ruling government that commanders 85% of a nations wealth and hands it over to a handful of connected oligarchs. Leadership that invests the balance of that GDP in military weapons of war and a domestic police state apparatus that suppresses descent, choice, individualism and above all, freedom. Ukraine has clearly seen this playbook before and are determined to fight with every ounce of their battered bodies to preserve their Democracy.
Putin has no one to blame but himself, for creating this Putinopia of his own imagination and for investing in a brutally structured Kleptocratic czarism, instead of in the Russian people.
When and if Putin finally cries uncle, there must be no plausible justifications or excuses condoned and no face saving plea deals negotiated this time. Ukraine, Europe and the entire world demands long overdue justice from this Russian marauder. Only a reckoning before the World Criminal Court for the perpetrators and supporters of this conflagration will suffice, and reparations for a plundered, innocent, sovereign nation must be exacted.
This time, for the good of the world and human existence, the civilized world cannot let this megalomaniac off the hook; the businesses who pulled out of Russia must refuse to return until Putin and his lot are disposed of. A free and fair election of all government officials supervised by a United Nations tribunal could go a long way to eventually returning Russia to some semblance of respect and legitimacy.
The crippling sanctions must remain in place until Ukraine is guaranteed security, reparations and justice. The thousands of war protestors, including political prisoners like Alexis Navalny must be exonerated. I guess it’s better late than never that countries who prospered from riches stolen from Russia are finally taking international money laundering laws serious, but if they and the U.S. had done more to crack down on Russia’s ruling Kleptocrats during the last two decades of Putin’s criminal reign, maybe he wouldn’t have had the means to launch this war.
America and the West must also come to terms with it’s own failings. Access to Russia’s oil and gas can no longer justify allowing Vladman the Madman to threaten the entire world order and existence with a nuclear holocaust. And if the Russian people and their cowed institutions can’t keep Putin or his successors in check, NATO and the United Nations must.
And blindly obedient Trump cult followers, far right government haters and our right wing media must also wake up. Idolizing, enabling and refusing to hold Autocrats and tyrants like Putin and his adoring want-a-be Donald J. Trump accountable for criminal conduct encourages and enables catastrophic tragedies like we’re witnessing in Ukraine today.
The blatant lies used by Putin to invade a peaceful, sovereign Democratic nation reminds us of the 2020 election “Big Lie” Trump still propagates to delude his faithful. But as Ukraine and the world tragically now realizes, condoning lies and ignoring the truth and facts can have apocalyptic consequences. In addition to Putin’s senseless war of choice, Trump and his sheeple used lies and conspiracies to try to overturn a free and fair election and attempt to overthrow our own Democracy. Putin and Trump are one in the same when it comes to truth telling.
Fake news collaborators can’t be ignored or downplayed. The Foxification of Russia’s state run media and the Russification of our own far right wing nationalistic media, undermines democratic fundamentals and the rule of law in both countries.
The Biden administration just finally passed a $1.2 trillion long overdue infrastructure bill. If Russia stopped the war today, it would probably cost more than that to rebuild Ukraine. And how many generations will it take before the millions of tons of forever chemicals and toxic military materials can be scrubbed and leached from Ukraine’s homeland soil and water. This war has set back environmental and climate change progress in Europe for a decade or more and self serving maniacs like Putin and Trump couldn’t care less.
I’ve written about tarbabys many times and said that a certain one might be the biggest one yet, but this Ukraine tarbaby latched on by Putin might just top all those others combined. Brer Rabbit Putin thought he could just waltz into his neighbors backyard and take by force what the industrious and forward thinking Ukrainians have nurtured since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But considering the crippling lasting sanctions on Russia’s economy and Russian society, Putin’s blatant disregard for anyone but himself, the consequential damages inflicted on Ukraine and it’s defenders, the pain and grief and misery suffered by so many, this tar on Russia’s national reputation will take many generations to erase.
Bucha survivors recount ‘senseless’ horror as they emerge from hiding
James Longman – April 6, 2022
As Mykola Pavlyuk stood outside his apartment building in Bucha, tears streamed from his eyes, cutting through the grime on his face. He was desperate to share his story but shook from the trauma of it.
Pavlyuk, 53, was one of the surviving residents of the besieged Ukrainian town, northwest of Kyiv, where gruesome evidence of killings and torture has come to light following the withdrawal of Russian forces. He told ABC News that when Russian troops came to his apartment building, they killed all the men who were younger than 50, including two of Pavlyuk’s friends.
Pavlyuk said he was given 20 minutes to bury them. He showed ABC News the shallow graves he hastily dug in the backyard, each marked with a plank of wood and topped with a religious icon. He wanted to give them whatever dignity he could.
“But it’s too shallow,” Pavlyuk said. “I just wanted to protect them from the dogs.”
Pavlyuk and other residents spoke with ABC News in the days after Russian forces departed Bucha, leaving an apparent trail of death, destruction, terror and trauma that has shaken the international community. Hundreds of people were said to have been killed during the occupation. When ABC News arrived on Tuesday, bodies still lay in the streets. World leaders have called for an investigation into whether war crimes, including genocide, were committed.
PHOTO: ABC News’ James Longman reports from Bucha, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022, where he spoke with resident Mykola Pavlyuk who detailed alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces, as human rights groups document the atrocities. (ABC News)
When Russian troops arrived in Bucha in late February, they asked everyone for documentation and forced the men to strip down naked to reveal any tattoos, according to Pavlyuk. They immediately shot and killed anyone whom they deemed a threat, without asking any questions, he said.
The mayor of the nearby village of Motyzhyn, Olga Sukhenko, and her family appear to have met the same fate. ABC News witnessed their lifeless bodies in a wooded area.
Another Bucha resident, who declined to give her name, told ABC News her husband was also forced to remove his clothes to show whether he had any tattoos.
Russian soldiers took over Pavlyuk’s apartment building, turning the homes of Ukrainian families into wartime dormitories for drunk, violent thugs, he said. Rooms that Pavlyuk showed ABC News were strewn with blankets and old food.
Pavlyuk said he and his wife lived in the basement for more than month with little food or water, only leaving to cook on a stove outside.
He told ABC News they faced the constant fear of an arbitrary killing or a random act of violence, like when a friend was killed by a grenade he said was thrown as a joke by a drunk soldier. The friend’s body parts lay outside on the ground for days until Pavlyuk was allowed to gather them, put them in a bag and bury them in a grave next to his two other friends, he said.
PHOTO: A mass grave is seen behind the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in the town of Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 3, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)
More bodies were dumped in a mass grave outside a church. Residents had gone out to collect some of the dead from the streets while the town was under Russian occupation. The trench was filled with bodies in black plastic bags that lay on top of other victims, who were either wrapped in sheets or nothing at all. Locals told ABC News there could be as many as 90 people buried there.
Russian forces invaded neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, seizing territory and bombing entire cities. As the war grinds on, Russia faces strong resistance from Ukraine, whose troops managed to take back some territory in recent days as Russian forces retreated.
According to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktova, at least 410 civilians have been found dead in Bucha and other recently recaptured towns near Ukraine’s capital, where there’s an ongoing investigation into possible war crimes committed by Russian forces. Graphic images have emerged from Bucha showing unarmed individuals in civilian clothes who appear to have been executed with their hands or legs bound, sparking outrage from the United States as well as a number of other nations and institutions.
Russia has denied responsibility, calling the images “fake” and saying all of its units withdrew completely from Bucha around March 30. An ABC News analysis of videos and satellite imagery confirms some of the bodies seen lying in the streets of Bucha were there as early as March 19, when the town was still occupied by Russian forces, contradicting Russia’s claims that the scene was “staged” after its troops left.
PHOTO: A body of a man with hands bound by white cloth and a bullet wound to the head, who according to residents was shot by Russian soldiers, lies in the street in Bucha, Ukraine on April 3, 2022. (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)
While in Bucha, ABC News encountered a Human Rights Watch team gathering evidence of war crimes.
“What we’ve seen so far and what we’ve heard from residents — what we’ve been documenting — is really horrific, including reports that Russian forces have pulled people out of their homes, briefly interrogated them and then executed them,” said Richard Weir, a researcher in the Crisis and Conflict division at Human Rights Watch.
A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross was also on scene in Bucha, assessing needs and delivering humanitarian aid.
“Humanitarian situation is dire,” ICRC spokesperson Alyona Synenko told ABC News. “We have seen extremely vulnerable people — elderly, people with limited mobility, people who are sick, who are alone in their unheated apartments with no electricity, with no running water, with medical needs.”
PHOTO: Bags containing bodies of civilians are seen at the cemetery after being picked up from the streets before they are taken to the morgue, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Bucha, Ukraine April 4, 2022. (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)
Bucha residents Tatyana Chernysh and her husband told ABC News they must have survived “by God’s will” when so many of their neighbors did not.
“At any time, the occupiers could enter our premises and do with us whatever they wanted,” said Chernysh’s husband, who said he was too frightened to give his first name. “It was terrifying. It was awful.”
The couple didn’t leave their house while Russian troops occupied the town. They said “good people” brought them food and medicine. Although the Russian soldiers camped away from their home, Chernysh and her husband said they heard unyielding gunfire and that stray bullets pockmarked their house.
Since the withdrawal of Russian forces and the recent arrival of aid, Chernysh and her husband have finally come out of hiding to see what remains of their battered town. They recalled seeing bodies strewn across the streets and sidewalks.
“It is obvious their intention was to destroy Ukraine, destroy our people, destroy our economy, destroy our culture,” Chernysh’s husband said of the Russian troops. “They claimed they came to liberate. They didn’t. They are terrorists.”
PHOTO: Soldiers walk amid destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, April 3, 2022. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
After surviving such “senseless” horror, the family said they “feel safe” and intend to stay in Bucha, despite a lack of electricity, running water and reliable communication.
“It’s where we live. We don’t want to yield our homes to occupiers,” Chernysh’s husband said. “It is our town. It is our home. We are going to stay.”
Putin has 2, maybe 3, daughters he barely ever talks about who just got hit by US sanctions — here’s everything we know about them
Mia Jankowicz, Ellen Cranley, Michelle Mark – April 6, 2022
Russian President Vladimir and his now ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva.Sergey Ponomarev/AP
Russian president Vladimir Putin has at least two, possibly three, daughters he rarely talks about.
He has two adult daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva: Maria, 36, and Katerina, 35.
On April 6, 2022, the White House put both on its sanctions list because of the war in Ukraine..
The international community has been laser-focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 69-year-old leader has fought hard to prevent the media and the world from knowing much about his personal life. But five weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US applied sanctions to both women, barring them from the US financial system.
Putin’s carefully curated macho image — he’s often photographed riding horses, lifting weights, and posing shirtless — has colored much of the public’s understanding of him. He has also made a concerted effort to shield his children from the spotlight, prompting many to question whether he even has children at all.
Putin has never publicly acknowledged his children, though media outlets have for years speculated and reported about the two daughters Putin had with his ex-wife, and even that a girlfriend may have had another daughter in 2015.
One of them, Katerina Tikhonova, appears to be building a public profile, and was seen last year speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia — the country’s equivalent of Davos. But as with her earlier media appearances, nobody explicitly linked her with Putin.
Here is what we know about the lives of Putin’s secret kids.
Pat Ralph contributed reporting to previous versions of this article.
Putin had two daughters in his first marriage to former flight attendant Lyudmila Shkrebneva, to whom he was married for three decades until their divorce in 2013.
AP
Their daughter’s names are Maria and Katerina. Maria was born in Leningrad in 1985, and Katerina was born in Germany in 1986 when the family lived there during her father’s time in the KGB.
Maria and Katerina Putin, from their father’s personal archive.Reuters
Both girls are named after their grandmothers. Maria’s nickname is Masha and Katerina’s nickname is Katya.
Putin’s father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, and his mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova.Kremlin
Masha and Katya are common Russian shortenings for Maria and Katerina.
When the family moved to Moscow in 1996, the girls attended a German-language school. The children were reportedly removed from school when Putin became acting president, and teachers educated them at home.
Then-acting President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila applaud during a concert after an award ceremony in Gudermes on January 1, 2000.REUTERS
“Not all fathers are as loving with their children as he is,” Lyudmila said in a quote on Putin’s government website. “And he has always spoiled them, while I was the one who had to discipline them.”
Vesti.ru screengrab
Maria studied biology in college and went to medical school in Moscow, while Katerina majored in Asian Studies in college. Both girls attended university under false identities.
Putin and wife Ludmila arrive at the airport in Rostock-Laage, Germany on June 6, 2007.Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
Maria, now 36, is a medical researcher and lives in Moscow with her Dutch husband, Jorrit Faassen.
AP
Maria and Faassen reportedly have a child — Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone in 2017 that he was a grandfather. When Stone asked if he played with his grandchild, Putin replied, “Very seldom, unfortunately.”
“The Putin Interviews” was a four-part series that premiered on Showtime in May 2017.Showtime
Meanwhile, Katerina reportedly lives a high-flying life, living in lavish apartments and acquiring a fortune.
Russian President Vladimir Putin makes a toast during an award ceremony in the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 28, 2017.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool Photo via AP
Katerina, now 35, is an accomplished acrobatic dancer and has a senior position at her alma mater, Moscow State University, heading a $1.7 billion startup incubator.
Katerina Tikhonovna, daughter of Vladimir Putin, dancing.Jakub Dabrowski/Reuters
Katerina married Russian billionaire Kirill Shamalov in 2013. But the couple divorced in 2018, and the divorce case revealed they were worth $2 billion.
Kirill Shamalov, the former husband of Putin’s daughter KaterinaReuters/Kommersant Photo/Dmitry Dukhanin
There are no official current photos of the girls. For Katerina, we found the slightly varying first names “Katerina”, “Katya”, and “Yekaterina,” and the last names “Putina,” “Tikhonova,” and “Shamalov.”
Katerina Tikhonova (L), daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, dances with Ivan Klimov during the World Cup Rock’n’Roll Acrobatic Competition in Krakow, Poland, on April 12, 2014.REUTERS/Jakub Dabrowski
Finally, there are rumors that Putin has a third daughter with girlfriend and former Russian rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva.
Putin greets rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabayeva during a meeting with candidates to the Russian Olympic team for Summer Olympics 2004 at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow on March 10, 2004.REUTERS/Pool AS
But neither the child nor the relationship with Kabaeva have been confirmed.
Putin smiles next to Russian gymnast Alina Kabaeva during a meeting with the Russian Olympic team at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia on November 4, 2004.REUTERS/ITAR-TASS/PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE
Putin has tried to shelter his children from the media, attempting to keep them out of politics so they can live normal lives.
Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images
Despite this, Katerina made her debut on Russian state TV as a biotechnology expert in December 2018.
Katerina Tikhonova (R) on Rossiya 1 on December 7, 2018.Rossiya 1
Her appearance did not include comment on her being related to Putin. The link was briefly made public in the course of a dance competition, but later retracted.
Katerina Tikhonova (L) and Vladimir PutinREUTERS
In June 2021, Katerina addressed a conference that is Russia’s equivalent of Davos — but nobody called her Putin’s daughter, apparently out of fear of reprisal from the Kremlin.
Katerina Tikhonova, deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University, on screen taking part in a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia, on June 4, 2021.Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters
In late 2020, Putin announced Russia had completed its COVID-19 vaccine, although it had yet to complete clinical assessments. Putin said he gave the shot to one of his two daughters, but wouldn’t specify which one.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, on August 11, 2020.Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS
Putin said his daughter’s temperature decreased after getting two shots. “She has taken part in the experiment,” he said, adding, “She’s feeling well and has a high number of antibodies.”
Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo / AP Images
It was a rare acknowledgment for Putin, but one still shrouded in mystery.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting of the Russian Security Council at Moscow’s Kremlin.Alexei Nikolsky\TASS via Getty Images
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting condemnation from around the world. Three weeks later an activist filmed himself inside what he said was a Biarritz apartment owned by Katerina’s ex-husband, saying he wanted to host Ukrainian refugees there.
An image showing an activist flying a Ukrainian flag from the balcony of a villa linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Biarritz, France. Russia Today
In April, the US sanctioned Maria and Katerina, saying that they had “enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people.” A statement said “This action cuts them off from the US financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States.”
Getty/Reuters
The Wall Street Journal said that the EU could also sanction the two women, but it was not immediately clear whether this had taken place.
Visitors walk outside the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 21, 2022. The Supreme Court reinstated for now a Trump-era rule that had curtailed the power of states and Native American tribes to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute rivers, streams and other waterways. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Frozen water pools in a corn field near a Keystone pipeline pumping station in rural Milford, Neb., Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020. The Supreme Court reinstated for now a Trump-era rule that had curtailed the power of states and Native American tribes to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute rivers, streams and other waterways. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
