Producers of fries refusing to supply to Russia, McDonald’s successor says

Reuters

Producers of fries refusing to supply to Russia, McDonald’s successor says

July 15, 2022

(This content was produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine.)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The head of the company now running the former McDonald’s Corp chain of restaurants in Russia told RBC TV that producers of French fries are refusing to supply to the country and warned that attempts to increase domestic processing are fraught with difficulties.

McDonald’s quit Russia after a Western backlash against Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine, which included a barrage of economic sanctions, and sold all the restaurants it owned to a local licensee in May.

Restaurants began opening under the new name Vkusno & tochka, or “Tasty and that’s it”, on June 12. CEO Oleg Paroev told Reuters the chain had sold almost 120,000 burgers on opening day.

The new ownership was keen to stress that high quality standards would be maintained or even bettered, and that consumers would not notice much difference. It has since been forced to admit that it is facing a shortage of French fries until autumn, blaming a poor harvest in Russia and supply chain woes.

“What has happened now is that due to well known events many foreign companies, I would even say all major producers of fries, have refused to deliver this product to Russia,” Paroev told RBC TV, a business channel, late on Thursday.

Paroev said that factories in both “friendly” and “unfriendly” countries that produce fries belong to five or six major companies, whose headquarters are based in unfriendly nations and which have therefore refused to supply to Russia.

Moscow deems countries that have imposed sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine as “unfriendly”.

Paroev said there was a shortage in Russia’s harvest this year of the specific potatoes needed for French fries and that other issues could arise, with only a few enterprises capable of processing potatoes for French fries in Russia.

Ukrainian forces could wipe out all of ‘exhausted’ Russian troops’ territorial gains, retired US general says

Business Insider

Ukrainian forces could wipe out all of ‘exhausted’ Russian troops’ territorial gains, retired US general says

Jake Epstein – July 14, 2022

Soldiers of Ukraine's special operations unit sit in the car after combat operation on a forest road on the Russian troops' potential way in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, late Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
Soldiers of Ukraine’s special operations unit sit in the car after combat operation on a forest road on the Russian troops’ potential way in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, late Tuesday, June 14, 2022.AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
  • A retired US general told Insider that Ukraine could push Russian troops back to pre-war borders.
  • Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said Ukraine’s ability to do so continues to ride on Western support.
  • He said Russian forces are “exhausted” and “don’t have much else they can do right now.”

Ukraine could push Russian forces back to its pre-war borders by 2023 — wiping out its territorial gains — because President Vladimir Putin’s troops are “exhausted,” a retired US general said on Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, told Insider that Ukraine’s ability to push Russian troops back to the existing borders depends on continued Western support through sanctions and weapons deliveries.

“The Russians are exhausted,” Hodges said. “They don’t have much else they can do right now.”

He added that much of Putin’s military is already committed to the war, but Russia has had little territorial success to show for its efforts after 20 weeks of war.

Related video: Amateur fighters started their own battalion to defeat Russia

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Hodges said the “full weight” of Western support is just now beginning to take shape with the delivery of long-range rocket systems — weapons Ukraine has begged for from the US and its allies for weeks.

He added that one key to Ukraine’s success will be knocking out Russia’s “only advantage:” Putin’s arsenal of artillery and rockets.

“It looks to me that wherever the Russians do not have overwhelming firepower advantage, then the Ukrainians win one hundred times out of a hundred,” Hodges said. “So, providing the Ukrainian’s ability to strike Russian artillery, Russian rockets, their ammunition storage, and command posts, that’s what destroys and disrupts the one thing that the Russians have that is to their advantage.”

Ukraine also maintains a significant advantage in morale, Hodges said, while Russian troops are bogged down by a lack of resources and capabilities — preventing them from making any “meaningful progress” on the battlefield.

Still, Russia has seen some incremental progress in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where the conflict has emerged as a deadly and slow-moving campaign of artillery exchanges after Putin’s troops failed to capture the capital city Kyiv.

Hodges said Russian troops are willing to keep fighting a “war of attrition” because they have “nothing else they can do,” and Putin could drag the conflict through the end of the year with the hopes that the West loses its interest in supporting Ukraine because of domestic issues like gas prices or inflation.

In a war of attrition, Hodges said, Russia needs unlimited time, ammunition, and personnel. They appear to have enough ammunition, he said, while UK intelligence said on Monday that a troop shortage may force the Kremlin to recruit from prisons.

But, Hodges said, “I do think they’re on the clock a little bit. If the West sticks together through this year then I think it will be over.”

Throughout the war, many Western countries have joined in slapping a slew of sanctions on Russia and providing Ukraine with requested weapons. In turn, Putin has tried to threaten and apply pressure on the West for its widespread support of Ukraine.

The war has also pushed Western countries to unite in historic ways. Last month, the European Union accepted Ukraine as a candidate country to join the bloc, while NATO invited Finland and Sweden into the alliance in a show of defiance against Putin.

“If we don’t stick together, if we don’t deliver what we said we would, then I think the Russians will happily settle for a long war, where they just continue intruding away and doing all they can to destroy Ukraine as a country, and destroy its economy, and destroy the idea of Ukraine as a state,” Hodges said.

‘We Will Kill Them Again’: As Russia Advances, Ukrainians Dig In

Rolling Stone

‘We Will Kill Them Again’: As Russia Advances, Ukrainians Dig In

Kimberly Dozier – July 14, 2022

TOPSHOT-UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT - Credit: Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images
TOPSHOT-UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT – Credit: Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

KYIV—Leaning back from the picnic table, Den drowns his cigarette in a murky cup of water cut from the bottom of a plastic bottle and grimaces as I press him on what he and his fellow volunteers did with suspected Russian soldiers they captured during the opening days of the war.

How did you spot them? He shrugs and lights another cigarette. He says he doesn’t want the Russians to know what to fix.

Then he does offer one tale: a Russian who came to a hospital he and his fellow volunteers were guarding, who didn’t want to take his shirt off. They removed it for him, revealing that the man’s shoulders were bruised in the shape of a flak jacket, something no one would take off voluntarily in a city being rocked by explosions and gunfire — unless it revealed something incriminating, like Russian military insignia.

What happened then? Den laughs uncomfortably and looks down. He mumbles something in Ukrainian, and my fixer, a volunteer battlefield medic who has known Den for years, says the Russians were handed over to Ukrainian special forces. And then what? Another shrug.

“Den” is not his real name. The Kyiv native is on a three-day furlough from his Territorial Defense Force duties to visit his family. Blondish, medium height, with the creased face of fatherhood and middle age, he’s recounting how he volunteered to defend Kyiv on the first day of the Russian invasion, together with his grown sons.

He’s still at it, pulling security in the Kyiv suburb of Hostomel, near the war-shattered airport. He hadn’t wanted to be interviewed, saying he’s no hero. He just picked up a gun and volunteered to fight, as did tens of thousands in the capital alone — a sight, he says, that brought tears to his eyes, as men and some women, young and old, poured into Kyiv’s main sports stadium in the hours after Russia invaded, asking for a gun to defend their home.

Den wants to remain anonymous, because he believes the Russians will be back, and he will have to fight them again. Most Ukrainians I spoke to agree with him, gut-punched by the recent loss of Luhansk, half of the eastern territory Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly set his sights on. They once thought Putin would never dare invade. Now, they believe he will never stop. And while they are thankful for foreign military aid, I heard time and again that it’s just enough to keep them going, but not enough to drive Moscow out. War is the past, present, and future for the Ukrainians, and a resigned fatalism has swept across the nation. They don’t want to sound ungrateful, or weak. They vacillate, just like their president, Volodymyr Zelensky, from bravado to panicked warnings to stoic forbearance.

So, the brutal battle grinds on. U.S. officials mutter that Ukraine is asking for too much aid, or enough to threaten Russia itself, which the Biden administration fears could enable Ukraine to attack Russia proper and trigger Putin to go nuclear. The Ukrainian lawmakers laugh openly when I ask them if they would use those weapons to seize Russian territory. We just want our land back, they say, describing Biden as forcing them to fight with hands tied behind their backs.

Ukrainians bristle at what they consider not-so-veiled accusations of asking for handouts in anonymous quotes that they read in U.S. and European media, with their Defense Ministry trumpeting that it intends to amass a million-strong army to retake its lost territory. But the Ukrainian people also know that most of their troops fighting Russia are barely trained volunteers, with some basic marksmanship and first-aid schooling, if they are lucky. Not that training matters when Russia is still firing a fusillade of artillery, 10 times as much as the Ukrainians, and dozens are being killed, and hundreds wounded daily. Yuriy Sak, adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, says the Russians are firing an average of 50,000 rounds of artillery a day. “And we are able to respond with five to six thousand,” he says.

And it’s working. Witness the fall of the eastern cities of Severodonetsk and then Lysychansk, with Ukraine in retreat, though Sak gamely insists that was all part of the plan. Though “outnumbered and outgunned … we have been able to wear down Russians around Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which means that they are kind of running low,” on both manpower and resources, and now need to pause to resupply. Sak, a former crisis-comms executive who used to be in business with now-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, is a prime example of that evolving Ukrainian psyche. He tells me in one call that he is worried that the West isn’t providing Ukraine enough, then tries to reassure me in the next call that losing key territory is part of some cunning plan to exhaust Russia and eventually take all the land back. It doesn’t wash. It makes me wonder if he is trying to convince me, or himself.

Children play at a playground near a residential area destroyed by Russian shelling in the city of Borodyanka, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, on July 7, 2022. - Credit: Sergei Chuzavkov/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Children play at a playground near a residential area destroyed by Russian shelling in the city of Borodyanka, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, on July 7, 2022. – Credit: Sergei Chuzavkov/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Still, it’s easy to pretend otherwise on this late spring day, sitting with Den at a lakeside picnic table in the forests of Holosiivskyi Park, on Kyiv Day, when whole families don their Sunday best to promenade down the capital’s wide picture-perfect avenues, past Victorian icing-topped buildings, and snap selfies at the Dnipro River overlook.

War looks like an afterthought here, in the occasional pile of sandbags still blocking a government building’s windows, or the rusted iron tank traps that multiply in number as you get closer to Zelensky’s offices, as if some gargantuan kids got distracted and ran off, leaving their game of jacks half-played.

And there’s the raging popularity of camouflage, worn as patterned tights, or across a Chanel-like handbag, or anything even resembling a military uniform, a new wartime chic at the city’s numerous cafés and shisha pubs.

Air-raid sirens still go off daily, but despite deadly impacts, few heed them. I saw only one couple leave their table to seek shelter, returning a few minutes later, before their Georgian wine could get warm or their melted-cheese-and-egg bread congealed. It’s partly the government’s fault, as it discourages reporting where Russian projectiles land, lest that sharpens Moscow’s aim. But chosen ignorance is also bliss, a psychological survival tool, when any moment could end you.

The war has also fallen out of the top headlines, even as Finland and Sweden join NATO, and President Biden promises to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” The media is doing what it does with wars, by moving on to the next horror: a Texas school shooting; the overturning of Roe vs. Wade; and a gunman opening fire on a July 4th parade.

Moscow shows no such distraction, its brutal war machine stumbling into high gear. Billions in sanctions may be denting its high-tech weapons supply. But you don’t need those if you don’t care what you hit. Moscow has plenty of the old “Kill ’em all” Soviet-era gear.

And the killing has been plague-strength. Ukrainian former special operator turned military adviser Oleksandr Biletskyi tells me up to 200 troops are killed a day, and sometimes double that are wounded, averaging roughly 1,000 a week taken out of the fight. Ukraine is trying to offset those losses, thanks to volunteers like Den, who have swelled the ranks from 250,000 up to a million, if the government’s recent claims are to be believed. But Ukraine’s prewar population was 44 million, millions of those now displaced. Russia’s is 144 million or so. All Putin has to do is mobilize his whole country by declaring a war. Many who say he can’t or won’t also predicted he’d never invade.

“The Russians tried to eat the whole elephant,” a stressed-out senior Ukrainian security adviser tells me between medicating shots of pepper vodka. “Now, they’re just eating it piece by piece.” In eight to 10 months, they’ll be back, he says, knocking at Kyiv’s gates again.

Listen to the man himself. Putin warned on July 7 that “we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest” in Ukraine, adding a dare to anyone who hopes to defeat Russia on the battlefield: “Let them try.” And Putin has compared his Ukraine invasion to Peter the Great’s conquest of Sweden, saying it’s his “destiny” to recapture the land seized by the 18th-century emperor. He even mentioned the now-Estonian city Narva, sending that small Baltic country into a tizzy.

“I think Putin’s aim is 1) to render Ukraine non-viable — crippled, uninvestable, in political social and economic torment, and 2) to show that the West doesn’t have the willpower to resist him,” says Edward Lucas, of the Center for European Policy Analysis. He and I had just pulsed Baltic opinion at Estonia’s Lennart Meri security conference, where most attendees seem to believe Estonia and its neighbor Lithuania would be next on the menu, if Putin isn’t stopped in Ukraine. “We have/had a choice of confronting Putin with a functioning 40-million-strong country on our side or waiting until Ukraine is defeated and doing it later in the Baltic,” Lucas says.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines agrees that Moscow still wants to swallow Ukraine; she just doesn’t think Moscow can, calling it a “disconnect” between Putin’s ambitions and his military’s abilities.

Ukrainian officials appreciate that vote of confidence, and the nearly $55 billion in promised U.S. aid, including  more than $7 billion in security assistance the U.S. has partly delivered since Russian forces invaded on Feb. 24. Despite the latest infusions of aid, Sak tells me, “I’m grateful, but we need more.” And faster. “Why not start training Ukrainian pilots how to fly advanced jets right now,” because within a few months, the West is finally going to realize Ukraine needs them to survive, he asks.

Ukrainian officials also gripe privately that the West, the Pentagon especially, takes a “father knows best” attitude to Ukraine’s requests, as in “we know better than you what you need to win this war.” For instance, giving them a dozen long-range artillery systems, called HIMARS for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, when they say they could use at least twice that or more to turn the battle.

It’s a question that makes U.S. officials uncomfortable, because as one senior U.S. official tells me, the slow-rolling has come from a Biden White House still concerned that Kyiv might antagonize Moscow if it does too well on the battlefield. “Not getting enough to turn the tide is accurate, and a big debate within the administration,” and with U.S. allies, the official says. The Pentagon is also concerned it will so drain its stocks feeding the Ukraine war effort that it might be less well-prepared to defend U.S. territory. “But we are moving in a better direction,” the official insists.

​​A State Department spokesman, speaking anonymously, would only offer a banal “We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

In Kyiv, what they see as their Western allies’ delayed absorption of battlefield realities is measured in the lives of people they know lost forever, and in territory lost that will be even harder to win back, as the defender almost always has the advantage.

And Ukraine can’t train enough people fast enough to keep up with Russia’s onslaught. Officials welcome a new British initiative to train up to 10,000 soldiers every four months, which Sak tells me is already underway. But that’s 4,000 short of the numbers they are losing every four months, by Biletskyi’s count. And the Ukrainian military’s own training remains slapdash and uneven, multiple officials and military trainers tell me, in part because commanders need troops as fast as they can get them for the front.

And despite Zelensky’s early attempts at rooting out Ukraine’s infamous corruption, it’s still a “telephone society” i.e., you only get things done if you know the right person. Or if you get the right piece of paper to, say, leave the country if you’re a male of “conscription age” between 18 to 60.

At least two men were removed from my train by Ukrainian border guards before we crossed into Poland — a student in his twenties, and a fortyish guy in a wheelchair with visibly wasted legs — apparently for not having the right pieces of paper proving they’d been released from military service. They were left at an empty station platform just inside Ukraine. That the border guards felt they couldn’t allow at least the guy in the wheelchair to pass spoke volumes, to either their commitment to bureaucracy, or their belief that they need every last man to survive the Russian assault. The border-guard agency did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

This was supposed to be a good news story. At the start of the war, I’d heard how Ukraine had overhauled its military, chastened after Moscow’s near-bloodless seizure of Crimea in 2014. Aided and advised mainly by the U.S., U.K., Canada, Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia, the Ukrainians made changes that meant their troops in 2022 were better led, provisioned, and fed than their Russian counterparts. Or so the common wisdom went, as Russian forces turned tail and exited western Ukraine in mid-May.

Among the changes I was told by senior U.S., European, Baltic, and Ukrainian officials that were made: They retired most Soviet-trained, old-school-style generals who did not play well, or share information well, with others. They created a non-commissioned officer corps, sergeants who actually take care of the troops, instead of bullying and beating them, as per traditional Russian, and past Ukrainian practice. They mostly fixed their broken logistics delivery system. Better, but not totally fixed, a Kyiv-based military official explains.

Perhaps most important of all, Ukraine’s special-operations troops learned to fight less like U.S. Army Rangers assault troops, punching through enemy lines in a battle charge, and more like Green Berets, who practice the dark art of unconventional warfare, usually behind enemy lines. Ukrainian special operators worked with volunteers like Den, organizing semi-trained locals into lethal squads to secure neighborhoods, gather intelligence, and sometimes protect elite units, as Den’s crew did for a drone reconnaissance team. Den would saunter into the nearest town to get supplies for the drone operators, passing Russian troops who were none the wiser.

Special operators worked with locals that trapped and decimated the infamous 40-mile Russian convoy headed for Kyiv back in March. One group worked to open dams, turning fields into a muddy quagmire that Russian tanks dared not enter. Armed drones struck the flood-trapped convoy, while commandos hit with tank-killing rockets, usually under cover of dark, leaving the ribbon of surviving Russian troops trapped between smoking wrecks, breathing in the stench of their immolated comrades.

It’s called an asymmetric attack — using inferior numbers with superior local knowledge to harass, kill, maim, and psych out one’s opponent. Such devastating trickery was turned high art by the CIA’s precursor, the World War II era Office of Strategic Services. The OSS’s special-operations branch parachuted “Jedburgh” teams into France in 1944, to work with the French resistance and prepare the way for the Normandy landings.

Ukraine’s special-operations forces have been at work the same way, current and former officials inside Ukraine tell me. They point to the near killing of a senior city official who’d been cooperating with the Russians in occupied Melitopol by a mysterious explosion. “Maybe he just lit a cigarette too close to the stove gas,” a lawmaker smirks at me, refusing to confirm or deny the operation. Even the Pentagon, normally reluctant to comment on actions behind Russian lines, confirmed “growing indications of resistance against the Russian occupation,” including “assassinations of local Russian officials,” a senior U.S. defense official said.

A Ukrainian soldier is in position during heavy fighting on the front line in Severodonetsk, in the Luhansk region, on June 8, 2022. - Credit: Oleksandr Ratushniak/AP
A Ukrainian soldier is in position during heavy fighting on the front line in Severodonetsk, in the Luhansk region, on June 8, 2022. – Credit: Oleksandr Ratushniak/AP

Ukraine is defending itself as it has for centuries, environmental scientist Alex Zakletsky tells me, over a sadly dwindling supply of Crimean tea while sitting outside at Cheburek.UA, one of the few restaurants to stay open throughout the conflict, winning a loyal military, and volunteer, following. “We knew we’d have to save Ukraine ourselves,” because the army is too small to defeat the Russians, and the government is too corrupt, with many senior officials in Russia’s pocket, he says, the beret atop his mismatched camouflage “uniform” striking a revolutionary note.

So, when a fellow scientist offered Zakletsky a detailed topographical map of then-Russian-occupied Chernobyl, he didn’t give it to just anyone. He reached out to a friend’s spouse, high up in the security services — the only person he could think of to trust with such sensitive information, gleaned from tracking wolf packs that thrive in Chernobyl’s irradiated forests. He was led to believe it was very useful in taking back Chernobyl, but he refuses to provide more details, as the troops might have to use whatever they found in those maps to fight Russia on the same ground.

Ukrainians are willing, but winning also takes skill — at least some skill. “I just got asked to train 1,500 guys to go behind enemy lines, in roughly a week,” retired U.S. special operations Marine Col. Andrew Milburn tells me, over omelets at the ironically named Bimbo Café. That’s the kind of skill the U.S. would take months if not years to impart.

White-haired and occasionally limping from an old rugby injury, Milburn has his black retriever-like Ukrainian rescue dog in tow, interjecting excited barks as Milburn relates how his firm, the Mozart Group, is regularly asked to do what he considers impossible: turn out highly skilled troops in the time it would normally take to teach how to simply load and fire a weapon safely. And his funding, from international donations, is due to run out in September, and he can’t seem to convince the Ukrainian government that he can help, or that they need it.

A senior European-based special operator who has advised the Ukrainians for years insists they do have their own training programs, but they’re not always well-organized or well-attended. And the soldiers-turned-trainers hate staying in the rear, away from the fight. It makes them feel like cowards.

“We still have too many heroes,” former Ukrainian special operator Biletskyi tells me. He’s seen how NATO troops work, and he says the disorganized training, for volunteers and regular troops, is just one of the many military systems that’s being exposed as subpar as the war stretches on.

And when Ukrainians see things going wrong, they step up to fix it, hence what Biletskyi, Milburn, and the senior special-operations official all call the “hero” syndrome: Individuals feel they must step up and save the day.

“We have shown that … even people with basic training are able to achieve success because they are fighting for their land,” counters Defense spokesman Sak. “But if you are under a barrage of phosphorus bombs, cluster munitions, and if you’re being shot at incessantly by Russian heavy artillery,” what you need is a way to stop that deadly rain.

European officials are worried that Americans don’t know how bad it’s going, or how bad it will likely get. “The Russians … they are just going to keep coming,” one tells me, making angry waves in her cappuccino with her spoon. “And the West is going to start asking Ukraine, ‘We gave you so many weapons.… Why aren’t you doing better?’”

And we’re just going to stand by and blame the victim and watch a bloody marathon that is measured in years, not days or months, she says. And Putin knows that, biding his time until the Western alliance gets restive, divided, and eventually turns away.

This time, we’re prepared, counters scientist-turned-volunteer Zakletsky, who insists the Russians won’t pass easily through Chernobyl to Kyiv a second time, because now the locals, renowned hunters, are prepared. He visited what he calls the “werewolf” tribe for a wedding. At night’s end, the wedding guests started baying at the moon like wolves marking their territory. To his surprise, an actual wolf pack answered back, acknowledging the villagers’ claim. Should the Russians come back, he says, the villagers, and the whole country, will fight like a wolf pack.

Den puts it more simply: “We killed them the last time.” If they come back, he says, “we’ll kill them again.”

Ukrainian photojournalist Olena Maksymenko contributed to this report.

Ukrainian Armed Forces destroy Russian ammunition depots, Russian subversion and reconnaissance groups ramp up their activity

Ukrayinska Pravda

Luhansk Oblast: Ukrainian Armed Forces destroy Russian ammunition depots, Russian subversion and reconnaissance groups ramp up their activity

Iryna Balachuk – July 13, 2022

Serhii Haidai, head of the Luhansk Oblast Military Administration, has reported that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are destroying Russian ammunition depots and neutralising Russian subversion and reconnaissance groups almost on a daily basis.

Source: Serhii Haidai on Telegram

Quote: “The Russian army continues its relentless shelling [of Luhansk Oblast – ed.]. However, the Russians are probably saving their ammunition stockpile because new supplies have been interrupted by the attacks of our new long-range weapons.

[Russian – ed.] Military depots in Kadiivka and Luhansk have recently been blown up. Last night, there was turmoil in the Luhansk industrial district. So the occupiers have once again deployed subversion and reconnaissance groups in order to look for weak spots in our defence. The ramping up of the subversion and reconnaissance activity is due to their shortage of ammunition.”

 

Details: Haidai said that the Russians are applying pressure not only from Lysychansk and Popasna, but also from Izium.

He noted that though the Russians are still far from the Ukrainian-held towns and villages in Luhansk Oblast, their actions might threaten bigger cities in Donetsk Oblast and force the Ukrainian Armed Forces to construct new defence fortifications.

The head of the Luhansk Oblast Military Administration also said that Russian occupying forces continued to use artillery and aircraft to apply pressure on the administrative border area between Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. In particular, the Russians are attacking Verkhnokamianske and Bilohorvika, which sustained four rocket strikes and two airstrikes in the past 24 hours.

In addition, Russian occupying forces opened artillery fire on civilian residential buildings in these two villages 13 times over the course of the past 24 hours.

 

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Related:

Associated Press

Ukraine reports striking Russian ammunition depot in south

Maria Grazia Murra – July 12, 2022

FILE - Ukrainian soldiers run after a missile strike hit a residential area, in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Injured residents sat dazed and covered in blood. A crater was now the centre of the courtyard. Last week, the governor of the Donetsk oblast Pavlo Kyrylenko urged the province's more than 350,000 remaining residents to flee to safer towns further West, saying that evacuating the region was necessary to save lives and allow the Ukrainian army to better defend towns against a Russian advance. Many refuse to leave the city. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)
Ukrainian soldiers run after a missile strike hit a residential area, in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Injured residents sat dazed and covered in blood. A crater was now the centre of the courtyard. Last week, the governor of the Donetsk oblast Pavlo Kyrylenko urged the province’s more than 350,000 remaining residents to flee to safer towns further West, saying that evacuating the region was necessary to save lives and allow the Ukrainian army to better defend towns against a Russian advance. Many refuse to leave the city. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FILE - A policeman helps an injured woman after a missile strike hit a residential area, in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Injured residents sat dazed and covered in blood. Last week, the governor of the Donetsk oblast Pavlo Kyrylenko urged the province's more than 350,000 remaining residents to flee to safer towns further West, saying that evacuating the region was necessary to save lives and allow the Ukrainian army to better defend towns against a Russian advance. Many refuse to leave the city. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)
A policeman helps an injured woman after a missile strike hit a residential area, in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Injured residents sat dazed and covered in blood. Last week, the governor of the Donetsk oblast Pavlo Kyrylenko urged the province’s more than 350,000 remaining residents to flee to safer towns further West, saying that evacuating the region was necessary to save lives and allow the Ukrainian army to better defend towns against a Russian advance. Many refuse to leave the city. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A field of sunflowers in Donbas, Donetsk oblast, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting for control of the Donbas, a fertile and industrial region in east Ukraine where a conflict with Moscow proxies has raged since 2014. Russia has made significant gains in recent weeks, and is poised to fully occupy the Luhansk oblast – which, alongside Donetsk oblast, is one of two provinces that make up the region. Attacks on key cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk have dramatically increased, killing and injuring scores of civilians each week. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
A field of sunflowers in Donbas, Donetsk oblast, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting for control of the Donbas, a fertile and industrial region in east Ukraine where a conflict with Moscow proxies has raged since 2014. Russia has made significant gains in recent weeks, and is poised to fully occupy the Luhansk oblast – which, alongside Donetsk oblast, is one of two provinces that make up the region. Attacks on key cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk have dramatically increased, killing and injuring scores of civilians each week. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian military on Tuesday reported destroying a Russian ammunition depot in southern Ukraine, resulting in a massive explosion captured on social media, while authorities said the death toll from a weekend Russian strike in the country’s east grew to 41.

An overnight rocket strike targeted the depot in Russian-held Nova Kakhovka, the Ukrainian military’s southern command said. Nova Kakhovka is located about 35 miles (55 kilometers) east of the Black Sea port city of Kherson, which is also occupied by Russian forces.

The precision of the strike suggested Ukrainian forces used U.S-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to hit the area. Ukraine indicated in recent days that it might launch a counteroffensive to reclaim territory in the country’s south as Russia bombards the eastern Donbas region.

Russia’s Tass news agency offered a different account of the blast in Nova Kakhovka, saying a mineral fertilizer storage facility exploded, and that a market, hospital and houses were damaged in the strike. Some of the ingredients in fertilizer can be used for ammunition.

A satellite photo taken Tuesday and analyzed by The Associated Press showed significant damage. A massive crater stood precisely where a large warehouse-like structure once stood in the city,

Ukraine now has eight of the HIMAR systems, a truck-mounted missile launcher with high accuracy, and Washington has promised to send another four.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian shelling over the past 24 hours killed at least 16 civilians and wounded 48 more, Ukraine’s presidential office said in its Tuesday morning update. Cities and towns in five southeast regions came under Russian fire, the office said.

Nine civilians were killed and two more wounded in Donetsk province, which makes up half of the Donbas. Russian rocket attacks targeted the cities of Sloviansk and Toretsk, where a kindergarten was hit, the presidential office said.

The British military said Tuesday that Russia was continuing to make “small, incremental gains” in Donetsk, where heavy fighting led the province’s governor last week to urge its 350,000 remaining residents to move to safer places in western Ukraine.

The death toll from a Russian rocket attack that struck a Donetsk apartment building Saturday rose to 41, the emergency services agency said Tuesday afternoon. It said four more bodies were found and nine people were rescued from the rubble of the building in Chasiv Yar.

Yet many in the Donbas, a fertile industrial region in eastern Ukraine made of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, refuse — or are unable — to flee, despite scores of civilians being killed and wounded each week.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and its surrounding region, Russian strikes hit residential buildings, killing four civilians and wounding nine, Ukrainian officials said.

“The Russians continue their tactics of intimidating the peaceful population of the Kharkiv region,” Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote Tuesday on Telegram.

Ukrainian authorities also said that Russian fire struck the southern city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday morning, hitting residential buildings. Twelve people were wounded as the result of the Russian shelling, with some of the rockets hitting two medical facilities, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.

Air raid sirens sounded Tuesday in the western city of Lviv — the first daytime sirens there in over a week — and in other areas of Ukraine as Russian forces continued to make advances.

In eastern Luhansk, “fighting continues near the villages” on the administrative border with neighboring Donetsk, Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

“The Russian army burns down everything in its way. The artillery barrage doesn’t stop and sometimes continues for four to six hours on end,” Haidai said.

The British Defense Ministry’s intelligence briefing said Russia had seized the Ukrainian town of Hryhorivka and continued to push toward the Donetsk province cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

“Russian forces are likely maintaining military pressure on Ukrainian forces whilst regrouping and reconstituting for further offensives in the near future,” the intelligence briefing said.

However, Russia may be relying more heavily on private military contractors, like the Wagner Group, to avoid a general mobilization, the British ministry said. Western officials have accused Wagner of using mercenaries to fight in Africa and elsewhere.

In other developments:

— The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin would visit Iran next week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin will travel to Tehran next Tuesday to attend a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, a format for Syria-related talks. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday that Russia was seeking hundreds of surveillance drones from Iran, including weapons-capable ones, for use in Ukraine.

— Russian and Turkish military representatives plan to meet in Istanbul on Wednesday to discuss the transport of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said. Pyotr Ilyichyov, head of the ministry’s department for international organizations, told Russian news agency Interfax that “representatives of Ukraine, as well as U.N. (officials) in the role of observers” are also expected to take part in the talks. Ilyichyov reiterated that Moscow was ready “to assist in ensuring the navigation of foreign commercial ships for the export of Ukrainian grain.”

— Germany’s justice minister said investigating war crimes in Ukraine would likely take “many years” but he was confident they ultimately will be successful. Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said there will “probably be hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of pieces of evidence that have to be sifted through, documented and evaluated.” The German federal prosecutor’s office said in early March that it had started looking into possible war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. Buschmann spoke Tuesday in Prague, where he and his European Union counterparts were meeting.

Jon Gambrell in Lviv, Ukraine, and Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Poll shows Tight Race for Control of Congress as Class Divide Widens

THe New York Times

Poll Shows Tight Race for Control of Congress as Class Divide Widens

Nate Cohn – July 13, 2022

The fight for control of Congress may come down to the big contrast in voters who cite the economy as their top issue and those who cite abortion and guns as their foremost concern.   (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times)
The fight for control of Congress may come down to the big contrast in voters who cite the economy as their top issue and those who cite abortion and guns as their foremost concern. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times)

With President Joe Biden’s approval rating mired in the 30s and with nearly 80% of voters saying the country is heading in the wrong direction, all the ingredients seem to be in place for a Republican sweep in the November midterm elections.

But Democrats and Republicans begin the campaign in a surprisingly close race for control of Congress, according to the first New York Times/Siena College survey of the cycle.

Overall among registered voters, 41% said they preferred Democrats to control Congress compared with 40% who preferred Republican control.

Among likely voters, Republicans led by 1 percentage point, 44% to 43%, reflecting the tendency for the party out of power to enjoy a turnout advantage in midterms.

The results suggest that the wave of mass shootings and the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade have at least temporarily insulated the Democrats from an otherwise hostile national political environment while energizing the party’s predominantly liberal activist base.

But the confluence of economic problems and resurgent cultural issues has helped turn the emerging class divide in the Democratic coalition into a chasm, as Republicans appear to be making new inroads among nonwhite and working-class voters — perhaps especially Hispanic voters — who remain more concerned about the economy and inflation than abortion rights and guns.

For the first time in a Times/Siena national survey, Democrats had a larger share of support among white college graduates than among nonwhite voters — a striking indication of the shifting balance of political energy in the Democratic coalition. As recently as the 2016 congressional elections, Democrats won more than 70% of nonwhite voters while losing among white college graduates.

With four months to go until the election, it is far too soon to say whether the campaign will remain focused on issues such as abortion and gun control for long enough for the Democrats to avoid a long-expected midterm rout. If it does, a close national vote would probably translate to a close race for control of Congress, as neither party enjoys a clear structural advantage in the race. Partisan gerrymandering has slightly tilted the map toward the Republicans in the House, but Democrats enjoy the advantages of incumbency and superior fundraising in key districts.

Recent unfavorable news for Democrats, in the form of Supreme Court rulings, and some tragic news nationally might ordinarily mean trouble for the party in power, but that is not what the results suggest.

The survey began 11 days after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, when cellphones were still buzzing with news alerts about the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.

In an open-ended question, those who volunteered that issues related to guns, abortion or the Supreme Court were the most important problem facing the country represented about 1 in 6 registered voters combined. Those voters preferred Democratic control of Congress, 68% to 8%.

Some of the hot-button cultural issues thought to work to the advantage of Republicans at the beginning of the cycle, such as critical race theory, have faded from the spotlight. Only 4% of voters combined said education, crime or immigration was the most important issue facing the country.

The Times/Siena survey is not the first to suggest that the national political environment has improved for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. On average, Democrats have gained about 3 points on the generic congressional ballot compared with surveys taken beforehand.

In the wake of the court’s ruling, the poll finds greater public support for legal abortion than previous Times/Siena surveys. Sixty-five percent of registered voters said abortion should be mostly or always legal, up from 60% of registered voters in September 2020.

The proportion of voters who opposed the court’s decision — 61% — was similar to the share who said they supported Roe v. Wade two years ago.

Democrats are maintaining the loyalty of a crucial sliver of predominantly liberal and highly educated voters who disapprove of Biden’s performance but care more about debates over guns, democracy and the shrinking of abortion rights than the state of the economy.

Voters who said issues related to abortion, guns or threats to democracy were the biggest problem facing the country backed Democrats by a wide margin, 66% to 14%.

For some progressive voters, recent conservative policy victories make it hard to stay on the sidelines.

Lucy Ackerman, a 23-year-old graphic designer in Durham, North Carolina, said Biden had repeatedly failed to live up to election promises. She recently registered with the Democratic Socialists of America. Nonetheless, she has committed herself to getting as many Democrats elected this fall as possible.

She said the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe made politics personal: She and her wife married after the decision leaked, out of fear that the court might roll back same-sex marriage rights next.

“The recent events have given me this push to do more,” she said. “I’ve gotten more involved in political efforts locally. I’ve helped sign friends up to vote.”

The liberal backlash against conservative advances in the court appears to have helped Democrats most among white college graduates, who are relatively liberal and often insulated by their affluence from economic woes. Just 17% of white college-educated Biden voters said an economic issue was the most important one facing the country, less than any other racial or educational group.

Overall, white college graduates preferred Democratic control of Congress, 57-36. Women propelled Democratic strength among the group, with white college-educated women backing Democrats, 64-30. Democrats barely led among white college-educated men, 46-45.

Although the survey does not show an unusually large gender gap, the poll seems to offer some evidence that the court’s abortion ruling may do more to help Democrats among women. Nine percent of women said abortion rights was the most important issue, compared with 1% of men.

The fight for congressional control is very different among the often less affluent, nonwhite and moderate voters who say the economy or inflation is the biggest problem facing the country. They preferred Republican control of Congress, 62% to 25%, even though more than half of the voters who said the economy was the biggest problem also said abortion should be mostly legal.

Just 74% of the voters who backed Biden in the 2020 election, but who said the economy or inflation was the most important problem, said they preferred Democratic control of Congress. In contrast, Democrats were the choice of 87% of Biden voters who saw abortion or guns as the most important issue.

The economy may be helping Republicans most among Hispanic voters, who preferred Democrats to control Congress, 41-38. Although the sample size is small, the finding is consistent with the longer-term deterioration in Democratic support among the group. Hispanics voted for Democrats by almost a 50-point margin in the 2018 midterms, according to data from Pew Research, but President Donald Trump made surprising gains with them in 2020.

No racial or ethnic group was likelier than Hispanic voters to cite the economy or inflation as the most important issue facing the country, with 42% citing an economic problem compared with 35% of non-Hispanic voters.

Republicans also appear poised to expand their already lopsided advantage among white voters without a college degree. They back Republicans by more than a 2 to 1 ratio, 54-23. Even so, nearly one-quarter remain undecided, compared with just 7% of white college graduates.

As less-engaged working-class voters tune in, Republicans may have opportunities for additional gains. Historically, the party out of power excels in midterm elections, in no small part by capitalizing on dissatisfaction with the president’s party.

Only 23% of undecided voters approved of Biden’s job performance.

Silvana Read, a certified nursing assistant who lives outside Tampa, Florida, is one of the Hispanic voters whom Republicans will try to sway to capitalize on widespread dissatisfaction with Biden.

An immigrant from Ecuador, she despised Trump’s comments about women and foreigners but voted for him because her husband convinced her it would help them financially. Now she and her husband, 56 and 60, blame Biden for their falling 401(k)s.

“My husband, he sees the news on the TV, he says, ‘I don’t think I can retire until 75,’” she said. “We can’t afford to finish paying the mortgage.”

Still, her allegiance to the Republican Party does not extend far beyond Trump. She offered no preference in the fight for control of Congress. She does not plan to vote in the midterms.

Russians claim massive strike by Ukrainian Armed Forces on air defence system near Luhansk

Ukrayinska Pravda

Russians claim massive strike by Ukrainian Armed Forces on air defence system near Luhansk

Olha Glushchenko — July 13, 2022

After explosions in Luhansk, the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” has said that the Ukrainian army has struck an enemy air defence system.

Source: Kremlin-aligned Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Telegram channel for LuhanskInformCentreInterfax.ru

Details: The Tochka-U missile was shot down over Luhansk, according to preliminary reports.

The missile was allegedly shot down near the village of Yuvileine, which is part of Luhansk.

At the same time, RIA Novosti reports that at least four anti-aircraft missiles had been launched at aerial targets west of Luhansk.

Updated: A spokesman for the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” people’s militia, Andrii Marochko, said that the Ukrainian army had launched a massive strike on an air defence military unit (air defence system), which protects the sky over Luhansk.

Quote: “Ukraine’s armed forces have launched a massive strike on the air defence military unit that ensures the protection of the city of Luhansk.”

Updated at 03.00: Later, the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” stated that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had fired nine missiles from American-made HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems at Luhansk.

Russia is using rape as a weapon of war in Ukraine. Here’s what can be done about it.

USA Today

Russia is using rape as a weapon of war in Ukraine. Here’s what can be done about it.

Carli Pierson, USA TODAY – July 13, 2022

Warning: This column contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence against women, men and children.

“This is how an 11 year old boy sees the world after having been raped by #Russia soldier in front of his mother.” That was the caption above a photograph of chaotic swirls of black marker on a white background painted by a Ukrainian child tweeted by that country’s lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko.

There are many more equally horrific reports, too many to detail here.

As Russian dictator Vladimir Putin continues the onslaught of Ukraine, and this week, as Bosnian Muslims remember the massacre at Srebrenica 27 years after it happened, the unlearned lessons from the horrors of Balkan war scream out at us: “What can we do better?”

The answer isn’t as elusive as it might seem. In fact, it has been proposed by international criminal law and human rights experts for years.

‘Sexual violence can be used strategically as a method of warfare’

Rape has been considered a war crime since the 1949 Geneva Conventions. But it has not been prosecuted like other war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It wasn’t until 1993 that the United Nations Security Council officially recognized mass rape as a weapon of war, and made it eligible for prosecution in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Bosnian refugees carry bags of relief aid near the besieged town of Srebrenica in 1993.
Bosnian refugees carry bags of relief aid near the besieged town of Srebrenica in 1993.

Catherine Dunmore specializes in international criminal law, human rights law and sexual and gender-based violence. She has served on legal teams that have investigated and prosecuted war crimes, including conflict-related sexual violence.

I reached out about her work investigating sexual violence as a war crime. She said, “The vast majority of victims of conflict-related sexual violence are women and girls, although it’s also perpetrated against men, boys and the LGBTIQ+ community in many settings.”

“Sexual violence” Dunmore said, “can be used strategically as a method of warfare, for instance as a deliberate tactic to undermine the opposition or strike fear in civilian populations.”

She also pointed out that sexual violence can be committed by any party to the conflict, including humanitarian actors.

What is Russia doing in Ukraine?

►Over the past five months of conflict, Russia has carried out repeated, deadly assaults on civilian targets, including a shopping mall and apartment buildings.

►Last week, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova told USA TODAY that the number of cases of war crimes is likely more than 10,000.

►As of June 3, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights’ monitoring team had received over 120 reports of alleged conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine.

►On July 5, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet reported that her team had “verified 28 cases of conflict-related sexual violence, including cases of rape, gang rape, torture, forced public stripping, and threats of sexual violence. The majority of cases were committed in areas controlled by Russian armed forces, but there were also cases committed in government-controlled areas.”

An independent investigative organization

While investigators inside and outside Ukraine work to collect evidence of war crimes with the hope of eventually prosecuting those crimes, additional options have long been proposed.

A protest in front of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest, Romania, on May 16, 2022.
A protest in front of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest, Romania, on May 16, 2022.

In an interview on National Public Radio in May, British lawmaker Arminka Helic talked about her work to “create a permanent, independent and international body to investigate and prosecute rape and sexual violence as war crimes,” reported Leila Fadel.

Helic explained, “If we had a body that is funded, in existence, that has forensic trauma and medical experts already available to be deployed or to be approached by the investigators in Ukraine, we would have by now had an opportunity to collect this evidence, either from the internally displaced people or from the people who have crossed the border.”

My late mentor, the godfather of international criminal law, M. Cherif Bassiouni, had been proposing the same idea since the Balkan war.

The knowledge of a swift, efficient and powerful investigative body charged with the full U.N. authority might also serve as a deterrent to potential war criminals. For instance, fighters would be on notice that it would be much harder to get away with the evidence of their crimes, including the so-called silent ones like rape. Perhaps they would think twice before joining in on the criminal sadism.

We’ve known for decades what we need to do – it’s about time we call on world leaders to make it happen.

Carli Pierson, a New York licensed attorney, is an opinion writer with USA TODAY and a member of the USA TODAY Editorial Board

Could this SCOTUS case push America toward one-party rule?

The Week

Could this SCOTUS case push America toward one-party rule?

Grayson Quay, Weekend editor – July 12, 2022

The Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court. Illustrated | Getty Images

The Supreme Court has announced its intention to take up Moore v. Harper this fall, a case that critics claim is “perhaps the gravest threat to American democracy since the Jan. 6 attack.” Here’s everything you need to know: 

What’s at stake in ‘Moore v. Harper’?

North Carolina House Speaker Timothy Moore (R) is suing a voter named Rebecca Harper as part of a dispute over a federal electoral map drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. According to The Carolina Journal, the case will test a legal theory known as the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which asserts that “only the state legislature has the power to regulate federal elections, without interference from state courts.”

Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution states that the “Times, Places, and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Proponents of the “independent state legislature doctrine” argue that this clause gives state legislatures the power to draw congressional districts, set rules for federal elections, and appoint presidential electors, and that state courts have no power to interfere — even if the legislature blatantly violates the state constitution.

Which, in this case, it totally did. The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in February that the proposed map, which would have guaranteed Republicans easy wins in 10 of the state’s 14 districts, was “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt under the … North Carolina Constitution.”

The situation in North Carolina is not so clear-cut, however. Robert Barnes noted in The Washington Post that the state’s General Assembly passed a law two decades ago empowering state courts to review electoral maps and even create their own “interim districting plan[s].” Moore’s lawyers must therefore prove that the legislature violated the U.S. Constitution by abdicating its own authority over redistricting.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case in March but agreed on June 30 to hear it. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh have all signaled their openness to Moore’s argument. The Washington Post‘s editorial board suggests that Chief Justice John Roberts — who three years ago left open the possibility that state courts could override partisan gerrymanders — is now “poised” to side with Moore as well. The board considers Justice Amy Coney Barrett “a possible swing vote.” All three of the court’s liberals are expected to reject the independent state legislature doctrine.

The case will be heard during the term beginning in October 2022, with a decision expected in the summer of 2023 — just in time to upend the 2024 elections.

What about the Electoral College?

In January, Ryan Cooper wrote for The Week that the state of Wisconsin “effectively exists under one-party rule.” Democrats can still win statewide elections — say, for governor or U.S. Senate — but state legislative districts are hopelessly gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. If the Supreme Court sides with Moore, GOP-controlled legislatures in states like Wisconsin would have full authority to rig not only their own states’ legislative elections, but elections to the U.S. House of Representatives as well.

And it might not stop there. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution empowers each state to “appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors” equal to that state’s number of senators and representatives. The clause doesn’t say anything about the popular vote. This means, in theory, that state legislators can appoint whoever they want to the Electoral College. If SCOTUS side with Moore next summer on the question of federal redistricting, they’re likely to apply the same reasoning to presidential elections. This interpretation was floated by conservative justices — including Thomas — during the Bush v. Gore (2000) case that handed George W. Bush the presidency.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887 stipulates that each state’s slate of electors must be certified by the governor of that state. In states like Wisconsin— which has a Democratic governor — this law could prevent the Republican-led legislature from handing the state’s electoral votes to a losing Republican candidate.

But wait — if the independent state legislature doctrine is correct, then the governor has no right to usurp the legislature’s constitutionally granted powers. That provision of the Electoral Count Act (ECA) would be struck down.

This idea “is quickly becoming dogma among Republican legal apparatchiks,” Cooper wrote. Convincing Republican-controlled states won by President Biden to submit alternate slates of Republican electors was a key part of Trump lawyer John Eastman’s strategy to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His plan also rested on the assumption that the ECA is “likely unconstitutional.”

What’s the worst-case scenario?

Zach Praiss of the nonprofit Accountable Tech and progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann have laid out similar nightmare scenarios that could arise if SCOTUS rules in Moore’s favor.

Hartmann imagines a 2024 presidential contest between Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in which Biden wins the popular vote in Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. The GOP-controlled legislatures of these six states then decide to disregard the will of the voters and award their 88 electoral votes to DeSantis, making him the winner and president-elect.

Republicans control both legislative houses in 29 states, plus the unicameral legislature of Nebraska, and they might soon gain the power to gerrymander themselves into a permanent majority. Those states control 306 electoral votes, more than enough to elect a president.

“It is difficult … to see the desire to put sole control of election rules in the hands of a partisan legislative body as anything more than a power grab,” argued Christine Adams in The Washington Post. Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut were even blunter in the Los Angeles Times: “Adopting the independent state legislature theory would amount to right-wing justices making up law to create an outcome of one-party rule.”

This Is Putin’s Precious Key to Invading More Countries

Daily Beast

This Is Putin’s Precious Key to Invading More Countries

Shannon Vavra – July 12, 2022

MIKHAIL METZEL/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
MIKHAIL METZEL/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images

While Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to redraw the boundaries of Europe, a pair of lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., are trying to scrap his playbook before he can take it even further.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation, and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who serves on the same committee, are introducing legislation later Tuesday in an attempt to conjure up ways to further box Putin in.

The concerns rumbling through the halls of Congress center on whether the United States has done enough to prepare for and deter Russian aggression in the Black Sea region, so that Putin doesn’t end up feeling empowered to strike out further beyond Ukraine.

“As Putin continues his war in Ukraine, the United States must be prepared to address the challenges he’s created in the immediate and long term for European and U.S. security,” Shaheen told The Daily Beast. “That is precisely what our legislation seeks to do by looking at a critical geopolitical region: the Black Sea.”

Putin has long been interested in leveraging Russia’s access to the Black Sea to course through other sovereign nations and obliterate their borders. Russia invaded Georgia, which borders the sea, in 2008 and annexed Crimea in 2014. Russia has been attacking Ukraine since 2014, re-invading again this year. But Sens. Shaheen and Romney are banking on the idea that if the United States pays more attention to the Black Sea region and makes a concerted effort to shore up security concerns there, the United States might have a shot at stymying Putin’s progress on his imperialistic crusade through Europe.

Putin’s Cronies Told to Ditch Summer Vacation for Mystery ‘Emergency Meeting’

Focusing on the Black Sea region is necessary to cut Putin off at the source, Shaheen told The Daily Beast.

“Control over access to the Black Sea is fundamental to his delusional dream of building a Russian empire and the United States cannot allow that to happen,” she said.

The legislation from Shaheen and Romney, which is also backed by Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Roger Wicker (R-MS), would require the administration to develop an interagency strategy to increase military assistance with NATO and the European Union and increase security assistance to Black Sea countries.

The Biden administration must step up and pump out a strategy before it’s too late to prevent another Russian campaign, Romney told The Daily Beast.

“The Black Sea has become increasingly critical as Vladimir Putin continues to wage his unprovoked war in Ukraine, and it has become clear that the United States must have both a strategy and presence in the region,” Romney said. “Our legislation aims to accomplish this by requiring the Biden administration to develop a strategy to strengthen coordination between the U.S., NATO, and partners in the Black Sea in an effort to increase security, support economic prosperity, and promote democracy.”

Already, world leaders from around the globe have raised concerns that Putin isn’t interested in just going after Ukraine. Ukrainian President Zelensky warned just last month that Putin will not stop with his country.

Putin’s allies have hinted themselves at grander scenarios beyond Ukraine in which Putin takes on more far-flung battles to fulfill his imperialistic fantasies. Russia’s lower house speaker warned last week that the United States ought to remember that Russia gave the United States Alaska in the 1800s and that Moscow could seek to take it back. Others have suggested Putin could go head to head with Poland, the United States, or the U.K.

If the United States and allies had stepped up and developed a weightier strategy in the Black Sea region years ago, we might not be facing a Russian war in Ukraine now, according to Ian Brzezinski, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy.

”A more assertive policy is long overdue. The failure of the United States and NATO allies to having a more robust defense of its interests in the Black Sea has actually provoked Russia and prompted Putin to be more aggressive,” Brzezinski told The Daily Beast. “He sees that as a sign of weakness and opportunity to fulfill his revanchist territorial ambitions.”

<div class="inline-image__caption"><p>The pier in Ukraine's Black Sea city of Odessa on Feb. 21. </p></div> <div class="inline-image__credit">OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images</div>
The pier in Ukraine’s Black Sea city of Odessa on Feb. 21.OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images

“We learn from Ukraine alone that the failure of a robust response to aggression just invites further aggression by Putin,” Brzezinski added.

It’s not just about the prospect of future Russian attacks. Putin’s already leveraging the Black Sea to his advantage, holding hostage grain and wheat exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which could cause famine in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and beyond, as the International Rescue Committee has warned.

The United States hasn’t had a comprehensive strategy towards the Black Sea region, and Russia’s aggression shows we need to step it up, Bill Taylor, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, told The Daily Beast.

“There’s a political strategy that all needs to be put together. We haven’t had that in a coherent form, and we need it,” Taylor said.

Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports shows just how impactful a better policy in the Black Sea region might be in helping to rein Putin in, Shaheen said.

“We are already seeing the fallout from Putin’s action toward that end by suffocating key ports in Ukraine that have spurred a global food crisis,” Shaheen told The Daily Beast. “His belligerence toward Ukraine today is reaping global consequences, which is why strategic action is crucial to thwart those efforts. “

The proposed legislation would touch on more than just military action. It would require the administration to develop a report on democracy, security, and economic initiatives in the region and new policy options for a more assertive engagement there.

The strategy would include plans to increase NATO capabilities in the region, including land and air forces, and military assistance specifically to Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Georgia. The strategy would also include schemes to improve coordination with NATO forces, better intelligence operations and systems to track Russian ops in the region, and help defending against hybrid warfare—including plans to support more independent media to counter Russian influence operations.

Intel Reveals Putin Plan to Weasel His Way Into American Hearts

The National Security Council and other departments would be tasked with providing a plan for speeding up transitions away from legacy Russian military equipment, according to the draft bill text. The legislation would also kick off an assessment of establishing a multinational three-star headquarters on the Black Sea to coordinate all military activities.

It would also require a breakdown of plans on reducing the region’s dependence on energy from Russia, an issue that’s been left unresolved for years and which has been a key flashpoint in the diplomacy surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in recent months.

The Pentagon is already picking up what Shaheen and Romney are putting down. Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in April the steps the Pentagon is taking in the region now must be focused on two main objectives: “to assure allies and deter any adversary—specifically Russia.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin noted while testifying on Capitol Hill in April that Putin’s decision to wage war in Ukraine has forever altered the geopolitics of the region.

“This unlawful and unprovoked aggression by Putin has had the effect of changing the security architecture in the region for some time to come,” Austin said.

‘Fatigued’: Republicans eyeing 2024 reluctant to support Trump election lie amid Jan. 6 hearings

Yahoo! News

‘Fatigued’: Republicans eyeing 2024 reluctant to support Trump election lie amid Jan. 6 hearings

Tom LoBianco, Reporter – July 12, 2022

WASHINGTON — For the past six years, backing up Donald Trump on his wildest claims became a veritable art form among ambitious Republicans, but through the run of the Jan. 6 House committee hearings, those same Republicans now eyeing the White House in 2024 have been remarkably quiet about the attack on the Capitol.

On the first anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, top-tier 2024 contender Ron DeSantis blasted commemorations of the attack as a “smear on Trump supporters.” But in the middle of the hearings last month, instead of repeating Trump’s election lies or conspiracy theories about voter fraud, the Republican Florida governor dismissed talk of Jan. 6 outright, saying it was a “loser” as an issue with voters.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mark Meadows when he was White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, is seen as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds a public hearing on Capitol Hill on June 28.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, at a hearing of the House Jan. 6 select committee on June 28. (Jabin Botsford/Washington Post via Getty Images)

When former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson captivated Washington and the country with her testimony that Trump had attempted to wave through rioters carrying military-style weapons past Secret Service security screens and then march with them down Pennsylvania Avenue to join the insurrection, typically outspoken Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz skipped weighing in all together.

Instead, Cruz launched into a Twitter battle with Elmo of “Sesame Street” over coronavirus vaccines for children, which generated plenty of coverage for the possible 2024 contender. A person familiar with Cruz’s thinking said the Texas senator hasn’t been watching the Jan. 6 hearings and, like other Republican senators, considers the House hearings a “clown show.”

And former Vice President Mike Pence, who was the subject of an entire committee hearing last month headlined by his own top aides, has avoided almost all talk of Jan. 6 — much less any defense of Trump.

The reasons are myriad — Republicans are tired of carrying water for Trump, he’s burned too many bridges, he doesn’t command the power he used to, GOP voters aren’t engaged by Trump’s election lies — but they all land at the same conclusion: This is Trump’s fight alone, according to interviews with more than a half dozen Republican strategists, campaign workers and veteran staffers keeping tabs on the pre-campaign for the party’s nomination in 2024.

“They’re fatigued,” said one former Trump aide. “They feel like, ‘Hey, I don’t agree with everything that happened in the election, I don’t agree with X, Y, Z. But I don’t want to have to relitigate your issues every day.’”

Former President Donald Trump prepares to walk onstage after a panel on policing and security on July 8 in Las Vegas.
Former President Donald Trump in Las Vegas on July 8. (Bridget Bennett/Getty Images)

For more than a month now, the select committee investigating Trump’s effort to hold onto power, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, has dominated headlines. And Trump, without the White House or Twitter, has been relegated to sending “truths” from his beleaguered social media company to reporters to stem the deluge of stunning revelations.

A small coterie of House Republicans, led by Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to seat on the committee, have pushed back on select items from the panel.

But the glaring absence of Trump supporters at the hearings has led to the former president lambasting House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for abandoning the committee after fighting with Pelosi over it.

“Unfortunately, a bad decision was made. This committee — it was a bad decision not to have representation on this committee,” Trump told a right-wing radio host last month, shortly after the hearings started.

Most of the Republican Party apparatus has instead been hammering away at the issues they see resonating with their voters — inflation, the rise of China as a global threat, social issues like transgender women participating in female sports and other hot-button topics.

At the same time, Trump’s standing as the de facto frontrunner for the nomination in 2024 has continued to slip, while others like DeSantis are seeing their stock go up. A University of New Hampshire poll released last month showed the Florida governor overtaking Trump in that early-voting state. And a Yahoo/YouGov poll released at the end of June found DeSantis coming within 9 percentage points of ousting Trump as the party favorite for 2024.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a press conference. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

And as his standing has dropped throughout the past few months, Trump has been telling Republican operatives who meet with him that he wants to launch a third bid for the White House this summer. One of his advisers noted that Trump had said he planned to announce on July 4, but Independence Day came and went without an announcement.

“It’s the most selfish, f***ed-up thing he can do. He’s got to change the channel, because it’s all bad for him,” one veteran Republican strategist said.

And it’s the years of those games that have caused Republicans to sour on supporting Trump.

“I’ve got two words for you: Mo Brooks,” said another Republican strategist. The Alabama congressman helped Trump attempt to overthrow the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the House committee as a result, yet Trump still withdrew his endorsement of Brooks for the Senate because Brooks was trailing in the polls.

“He’s broken his word too many times to too many people,” the veteran strategist said. “If you defend him, you look like a lunatic. If you look like a lunatic, he cuts ties.”