The Tarbabys Blog

The New York Times – Opinion

It’s Time to Rage

By Roxane Gay – May 3, 2022

Dr. Gay, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the memoir “Hunger,” and the forthcoming “How to Be Heard.”

My wife’s stepfather began raping her when she was 11 years old. The abuse went on for years, and as Debbie got older, she was constantly terrified that she was pregnant. She had no one to talk to and nowhere to turn.

Debbie’s stepfather often threatened to kill her younger brother and her mother if she told anyone, so when the fear of pregnancy became too consuming, she told her mother she was assaulted at school. Her mother took Debbie to a doctor, who said that because of her scar tissue, she was sexually active and must have a boyfriend. It was the early 1970s.

A pregnancy would have, in Debbie’s words, ruined her life. Today, she is 60 years old. She is still dealing with the repercussions of that trauma. It is unfathomable to consider how a forced pregnancy would have further altered the trajectory of her life.

I was sexually assaulted by several young men when I was 12. I have told the story, and am tired of telling it, and the story is not the point. I had not yet had my first period. And still, in the weeks and months after, of course I worried I was pregnant. I worried I would not know who the father was.

If I had been pregnant, I don’t know what I would have done. I was Catholic. Abortion was a sin. But a 12-year-old is not equipped for childbirth or parenthood. The trauma I endured would have only been compounded by a forced pregnancy. And the trajectory of my life, too, would have been further altered.

It is stunning that a draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked before the justices planned to announce their decision, likely next month. It is also telling. Whoever leaked it wanted people to understand the fate awaiting us.

At least, that is what I am telling myself. And thank God somebody did, so we know. So we can prepare. So we can rage.

We should not live in a world where sexual violence exists, but we do. Given that unfortunate reality, we should not live in a world where someone who is raped is forced to carry a pregnancy to term because a minority of Americans believe the unborn are more important than the people who give birth to them.

And we should defend abortion access not only in cases of sexual violence. All those who want an abortion should be able to avail themselves of that medical procedure. Their reasons are no one’s business. People should not have to demonstrate their virtue to justify a personal decision about how to handle a life-altering circumstance.

We should not live in a country where bodily autonomy can be granted or taken away by nine political appointees, most of whom are men and cannot become pregnant. Any civil right contingent upon political whims is not actually a civil right.

Without the right to abortion, women are forced to make terrible choices. These burdens disproportionately fall upon poor and working-class women without the means to travel across state lines to receive the care they need. Despite promises from the anti-abortion movement to support pregnant women and children, the “pro-life” lobby appears to be invested only in the unborn. The same mostly male politicians who oppose abortion so often do everything in their power to oppose rights to paid parental leave, subsidized child care, single-payer health care or any kind of social safety net that could improve family life.

The leaked document is a draft. Abortion is still legal, though it is largely inaccessible in parts of the country. The Supreme Court has issued a statement emphasizing that the draft, while authentic, may still change. Still, it is a harbinger of terrible things to come. As many as 25 states are poised to ban abortion the moment Roe v. Wade is overturned.

And there are other disturbing considerations in the draft decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito. Some have expressed the concern that by extending Justice Alito’s reasoning, other hard-won rights — such as the rights to contraception and marriage equality — could be struck down too. That is to say, this decision is opening the door for social progress and civil rights to be systematically dismantled on the most absurd of pretexts.

And this is not a theoretical threat. We are already seeing how several states are trying to legislate trans people out of existence with laws banning gender-affirming health care for children, and in Missouri, a proposed law could extend that denial to adults.

I do not know where this retraction of civil rights will end, but I do know it will go down as a milestone in a decades-long conservative campaign to force a country of 330 million people to abide by a bigoted set of ideologies. This movement seeks to rule by hollow theocracy, despite our constitutional separation of church and state. The people behind this campaign do not represent the majority of this country, and they know it, so they consistently try to undermine the democratic process. They attack voting rights, gerrymander voting districts and shove unpopular legislation through so that they can live in a world of their choosing and hoard as much power and wealth as possible.

Where do we go from here? To protect women’s bodily autonomy, the right to abortion must be codified in federal law. But the possibility of that seems very distant. In their joint statement, issued after the Supreme Court leak, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, did not use the word “abortion” even once. President Biden has barely uttered it during his presidency. It’s hard to believe they are as committed as they need to be to protecting a right whose name they dare not speak. Until the Democrats stop lounging in the middle of the political aisle — where no one is coming to meet them — nothing will change.

The possibility of so many civil rights being rolled back is terrifying. Millions of Americans now wonder which of our rights could be stripped away from us, our friends and family, our communities. The sky is falling, and a great many of us are desperately trying to hold it up.

As Debbie and I discuss the strong likelihood of Roe v. Wade being overturned, we have started worrying about potential legal consequences for our very happy marriage. In June, we will celebrate our second wedding anniversary.

When we exchanged our vows, everything changed. We were already committed, but our commitment deepened. There was a new and satisfying gravity to our relationship. In an instant, I understood that marriage is far more than a piece of paper — but that having that paper mattered.

We have each worked very hard to overcome the traumas we endured as children, to allow ourselves to love and be loved wholly. This life we share would not be possible had we ended up pregnant far too young and against our will, with no recourse. This life we have made together isn’t political. It is deeply personal. And yet our lives and our bodies remain subject to political debate. In one way or another, they always have.

How are we free, under these circumstances? How can any of us be free?

The New York Times – Opinion

A Message to the Biden Team on Ukraine: Talk Less

By Thomas L. Friedman – May 3, 2022

Growing up in Minnesota, I was a huge fan of the local N.H.L. team at the time, the North Stars, and they had a sportscaster, Al Shaver, who gave me my first lesson in politics and military strategy. He ended his shows with this sign-off: “When you lose, say little. When you win, say less. Goodnight and good sports.”

President Biden and his team would do well to embrace Shaver’s wisdom.

Last week, in Poland, standing near the border with Ukraine, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin got my attention — and certainly Vladimir Putin’s — when he declared that America’s war aim in Ukraine is no longer just helping Ukraine restore its sovereignty, but is also to produce a “weakened” Russia.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” he said. “So, it has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

Please tell me that this statement was a result of a National Security Council meeting led by the president. And that they decided, after carefully weighing all the second- and third-order consequences, that it is in our interest and within our power to so badly degrade Russia’s military that it will not be able to project power again — soon? ever? not clear — and that we can do that without risking a nuclear response from a humiliated Putin.

Have no doubts: I hope that this war ends with Russia’s military sharply degraded and Putin out of power. I’d just never say so publicly if I were in leadership, because it buys you nothing and can potentially cost you a lot.

Loose lips sink ships — and they also lay the groundwork for overreach in warfare, mission creep, a disconnect between ends and means and huge unintended consequences.

There has been way too much of this from the Biden team, and the messes have required too much mopping up. For instance, a short time after Austin’s statement, a National Security Council spokesperson said, according to CNN, that the secretary’s comments reflected U.S. goals, namely “to make this invasion a strategic failure for Russia.”

Nice try — but that was a contrived cleanup effort. Forcing Russia to withdraw from Ukraine is not the same as declaring that we want to see it weakened so badly that it can never do this again anywhere — that’s an ill-defined war aim. How do you know when that is achieved? And is it an ongoing process — do we keep degrading Russia?

In March in a speech in Poland, Biden said that Putin, “a dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase a people’s love for liberty,” and then the president added, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

In the wake of that statement, the White House contended that Biden “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” but rather was making the point that Putin “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.”

Another cleanup word salad that just convinces me that the National Security Council didn’t have a meeting that set limits on where U.S. involvement to assist Ukraine stops and starts. Instead, people are freelancing. That’s not good.

Our goal began simple and should stay simple: Help Ukrainians fight as long as they have the will and help them negotiate when they feel the time is right — so they can restore their sovereignty and we can reaffirm the principle that no country can just devour the country next door. Freelance beyond that and we invite trouble.

How so? For starters, I don’t want America responsible for what happens in Russia if Putin is toppled. Because one of three things will most likely result:

(1) Putin is replaced by someone worse.

(2) Chaos breaks out in Russia, a country with some 6,000 nuclear warheads. As we saw in the Arab Spring, the opposite of autocracy is not always democracy — it’s often disorder.

(3) Putin is replaced by someone better. A better leader in Russia would make the whole world better. I pray for that. But for that person to have legitimacy in a post-Putin Russia, it’s vital that it does not appear that we installed him or her. That needs to be a Russian process.

If we get Door No. 1 or Door No. 2, you wouldn’t want the Russian people or the world holding America responsible for unleashing prolonged instability in Russia. Remember our fear of “loose nukes” in Russia after the fall of communism in the 1990s?

We also don’t want Putin to separate us from our allies — not all of whom would sign on for a war whose goal is not just liberating Ukraine but also ousting Putin. Without naming names, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently complained that some NATO allies actually “want the war to continue. They want Russia to become weaker.”

Remember: A lot of countries in the world are neutral in this war because, as much as they might sympathize with Ukrainians, they really don’t like to see America or NATO act like a bully — even toward Putin. If this is going to be a long war, and Ukraine is able to recover all or most of its territory, it is vital that this be perceived as Putin vs. the world, not Putin vs. America.

And let’s be careful not to raise Ukrainian expectations too high. Small countries that suddenly get the backing of big powers can get intoxicated. Many things have changed about Ukraine since the end of the Cold War — except one: its geography. It is still, and it will always be, a relatively small nation on Russia’s border. It is going to have to make some hard compromises before this conflict is over. Let’s not make it even harder for it by adding unrealistic goals.

At the same time, be careful about falling in love with a country you could not find on a map with 10 tries a year ago. Ukraine has a history of political corruption and thuggish oligarchs, but it was making progress toward democratic reforms before the Russian invasion. It has not become Denmark in the last three months, although, God bless them, a lot of young people there are really trying, and I want to support them.

But I saw a play in 1982 that I cannot get out of my head. Israelis fell in love with the Christian Phalangists in Lebanon, with whom they teamed up to drive Yasir Arafat’s P.L.O. out of Beirut. Together they were going to remake the Levant but overreached. This led to all kinds of unintended consequences — the Phalangist leader got assassinated; Israel got stuck in the mud in Lebanon; and a pro-Iranian Shiite militia emerged in south Lebanon to resist the Israelis. It was called “Hezbollah.” It now dominates Lebanese politics.

The Biden team has done so well so far with its limited goals. It should stay there.

“The war in Ukraine gave the administration an opportunity to demonstrate the U.S.’s unique assets in the world today: Its ability to forge and hold a global alliance of countries to confront an act of authoritarian aggression; and second, the capacity to wield an economic super weapon in response that only the dominance of the dollar in the global economy makes possible,” explained Nader Mousavizadeh, founder and C.E.O. of Macro Advisory Partners, a geostrategic consulting firm.

If the U.S. can continue to effectively deploy those two assets, he added, “it will vastly improve our long-term power and standing in the world and send a very powerful deterrent message to both Russia and China.”

In foreign affairs, success breeds authority and credibility, and credibility and authority breed more success. Just restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty, and frustrating Putin’s military there, would be a huge achievement with lasting dividends. Al Shaver knew what he was talking about: When you lose, say little. When you win, say less. Everyone can see the score.

The New York Times

Missiles hit power stations in Lviv and along crucial railways in central and western Ukraine

Jane Arraf – May 3, 2022

LVIV, Ukraine — Russian missiles struck power plants in Lviv on Tuesday night, knocking out electricity in much of the western Ukrainian city near the Polish border where tens of thousands of civilians fleeing fighting in the east have sought refuge.

The attacks were the most widespread strikes inside the city since the war began, and came as the Russian military pressed its attacks on Ukraine’s railway system, the country’s lifeline to Poland, carrying both humanitarian aid and supplies for the military.

Altogether, Russian forces hit six electrical substations along the railway system in central and western Ukraine, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the Ukrainian Railway.

The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, said two power stations had been hit in the city, adding that there was “serious damage to the municipal infrastructure.” The head of the Lviv regional administration, Maksym Kozytskyy, later said that three power stations had been hit. Two people were reported injured.

A missile last month hit a garage near railway tracks on the outskirts of Lviv, killing at least seven people.

In addition to cutting off electricity, Tuesday’s attacks also halted water pumping in some areas of Lviv.

The explosions were heard in the center of Lviv on Tuesday evening. Near the railway tracks on the outskirts of town, black smoke billowed in the distance while ambulances and fire trucks sped from the site.

Police cruisers blocked roads to prevent vehicles from getting closer. Houses and apartment buildings were dark in many neighborhoods with the only light coming from streetlights still operating. City officials said emergency equipment in hospitals, which were also plunged into darkness, had kept going with backup electrical systems.

At another impact site, white smoke billowed from near the train tracks. Only a sliver of a moon illuminated the pitch-dark streets.

Mykhailo, a security guard who did not want to give his last name, said he took cover behind a concrete wall when the blasts hit.

“I haven’t felt an explosion this close before,” he said.

Yahoo! News

Vladimir Putin is ‘the biggest war criminal of the 21st century’, Ukrainian prosecutor says

Jimmy Nsubuga – May 3, 2022

Vladimir Putin has been described as “the biggest war criminal of the 21st century” amid allegations Russia used rape as a tactic of war during its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has been accused of widespread atrocities since attacking its neighbour in February, with Ukraine saying it was investigating around 7,600 potential war crimes and at least 500 suspects.

On Tuesday, the country’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said Putin bore responsibility for what happened as commander-in-chief.

“Putin is the biggest war criminal of the 21st century,” she said, recalling Russian military interventions in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Russia’s Chechnya region, Syria and in Ukraine in 2014.

“If we speak about (the) crime of aggression, we all know who started this war, and this person is Vladimir Putin,” she added.

Watch: Ukraine’s prosecutor general says ‘Putin is main war criminal of the 21st century’ https://s.yimg.com/rx/martini/builds/43771998/executor.htmlScroll back up to restore default view.

Venediktova and her team have in the last few weeks been evaluating sites where atrocities have allegedly taken place, including where Russian troops have recently withdrawn.

On 12 April, Venediktova visited Bucha, near Kyiv, where French forensic experts had arrived to help Ukraine authorities establish what happened in the town where hundreds of bodies were discovered.

Bucha’s mayor said dozens were the victims of extra-judicial killings carried out by Russian troops.

Human rights group Amnesty International published testimony detailing accounts of Russian forces executing Ukrainian civilians and repeatedly engaging in “unlawful violence”.

Lyudmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, added 25 women and girls, aged from 14 to 24, had called a helpline reporting they had been raped in Bucha.

Read more: What is a war crime? Russia investigated over actions in Ukraine

While visiting the devastated city of Irpin near Kyiv, Venediktova said allegations there included the rape of women, men, children and an old woman.

When asked whether rape was a deliberate Russian strategy in the war, she said: “I am sure actually that it was strategy.

“This is, of course, to scare civil society… to do everything to (force Ukraine to) capitulate.”

Venediktova provided no specific details of the rape allegations, saying some of the victims remained in Ukraine and were afraid of speaking out for fear of Russian forces returning.

Read more: Boris Johnson confirms £300m aid to Ukraine in address to country’s MPs

Venediktova is in charge of the effort to gather evidence across Ukraine of alleged atrocities committed by Russia so it can be used in prosecutions at a later date.

Moscow denies committing war crimes in Ukraine or targeting civilians during a war that has killed thousands, devastated many cities and towns and forced five million people to flee abroad.

Russia has accused Kyiv of genocide against Russian speakers, which Kyiv strongly denies.

Moscow has also opened criminal cases into Ukrainian servicemen’s alleged torture of their Russian counterparts

Watch: Survivor describes ‘animal fear’ as Russian forces begin storming Mariupol steelworks

Ukraine war: Survivor describes ‘animal fear’ as Russian forces begin storming besieged Mariupol steelworks

Russian forces have begun storming the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol – as survivors reached safety and began to tell their stories.

On Tuesday, Russian troops shelled and bombed the Azovstal steel plant in Ukraine’s southern port city of Mariupol, confirming earlier reports of strikes on the encircled plant, where the mayor said more than 200 civilians were still trapped.

According to the RIA news agency, Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had started to destroy Ukrainian firing positions established after a UN-brokered ceasefire had allowed several groups of civilians to escape the plant in the previous two days.

Mariupol is a major target for Russia as it seeks to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea and join up Russian-controlled territory in the south and east.

The steelworks lies adjacent to southern Ukraine’s main east-west highway.

Fox News

Ukraine intelligence says Russia’s war may end in September

Caitlin McFall – May 3, 2022

Russia may be looking to conclude its war in Ukraine within four months’ time, according to Kyiv’s Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense, which said Tuesday it believes September is Moscow’s intended deadline.

“There is information among the occupier’s military that … the so-called ‘special military operation’ is set for September 2022,” the ministry said.

Russia’s deadly war has persisted for nearly 70 days with Moscow focusing all its efforts in eastern and southern Ukraine after its forces failed to take Kyiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has attempted to justify his illegal invasion by claiming Russian forces are working to “denazify” and liberate regions he has claimed have been subject to Ukrainian oppression.

NATO allies and Ukrainian officials have flatly rejected this attempt to guise his brutal campaign as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and was democratically elected.

Defense officials have been sounding the alarm that Putin’s real aim is to bridge Russian-occupied Crimea – which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 – with regions in eastern Ukraine that share a border with Russia.

But Putin’s ambitions have extended beyond the eastern Donbas regions and a Russian general announced last month that Moscow will seek to take Ukraine’s southern regions that sit along the Black Sea – a move that would give Russia seaport dominance.

Ukraine’s defense ministry said Tuesday that Mariupol continues to be pummeled by Russian forces and claimed it is carrying out a “big cleaning” to rid the city of the masses of causalities.

UKRAINE CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL PASSES 3,000, UN SAYS

“The Russians are searching for and destroying the bodies of the dead,” the ministry said. “To do this, the city has three mobile crematoria since April 15.”

Mariupol has been among the hardest-hit cities in Ukraine.

The strategically important port city would not only bridge access from Russian-controlled territory in the southeast but would effectively help Russia to pinch the Donbas region by pushing forces up through the south as well as through the north.

Russia has not made any major militaristic advances in the Donbas. But Ukraine’s intelligence sector reported Tuesday that Moscow has ordered private enterprises in the Russia Rostov region – which borders Ukraine’s eastern front – to produce seals and stamps for “occupation administrations” in Mariupol.

“The ordered stamps and seals contain the inscription: ‘Russia, the Republic of Donbas, Mariupol, the military-civil administration’,” the ministry said.

“The list of institutions that will receive new ‘attributes’ includes educational institutions, hospitals, police, registry offices and administrative institutions. Even though most of them are now completely destroyed by Russian troops,” the defense ministry added.

Similar steps are believed to be in the works in the Kherson region and will be rolled out in June – an area that officials have warned for weeks that Russia will also attempt to annex.

Daily Beast

Tapped Calls Expose Russia’s Heinous Treatment of Own Dead Troops

Shannon Vavra – May 2, 2022

Russian authorities are transporting the dead bodies of Russia’s fallen soldiers from Ukraine back to Russia in “small batches” in the dead of night in an attempt to conceal just how many Russian troops are dying in Ukraine, according to intelligence shared by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

The intelligence—intercepted calls between Russian troops the SBU said it picked up in the Zaporozhye region—suggests that Russia is also transporting the corpses back to Russia in small groups in order to avoid suspicion that Russia’s invasion is sustaining massive losses or faltering in Ukraine, the SBU said.

“They are bringing them in small packs, so that people don’t freak out,” one of the callers said.

But the process is delaying the transport of the dead, forcing the parents and families of the troops to grieve over “half-decomposed cargo of 200” that are sometimes unrecognizable by the time they arrive, the SBU said.

The two soldiers allegedly caught on the call mention that the body of one of their dead comrades, Makeyevich, was in the process of getting transported back for approximately six days, and that his wife was getting worried.

‘There Is Such Fuckery Going on Here’: Russian Soldiers ‘Revolting’ as They Get Stiffed on Ukraine Payouts

“Did you send Makeyevich?”

“They brought him today, according to preliminary information,” one of the callers said. “They are supposed to identify him today.”

Many Russian troops and their families weren’t even aware they were headed into war in the last several months, a step that has likely left families already in the dark about the fate of their family members serving in the military as Russia has invaded Ukraine.

The Daily Beast has not independently verified the intercept or its claims.

But it wouldn’t be Russia’s first rodeo running sketchy operations to cover up war losses back home. Russia has long sought to cover up casualties of its service members. During the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Russia had its dead soldiers transported back to Russia in the middle of the night. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, families of Russian troops killed there were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements to avoid discussing how the soldiers died, according to a Kavkazsky Uzel report.

Putin Finally Cops to Dead Russian Troops in Ukraine

In other cases, the Russian government claimed soldiers that are suspected to have died in Ukraine were actually killed during training, or that they entered Ukraine in a volunteer capacity. In still more cases, Russian solders’ dead bodies were delivered to their families with simple notes stating they succumbed to their injuries, but without details about where or why they were injured.

The invasion in Ukraine now seems no different. Just in recent weeks Moscow has shared Russian casualty numbers that U.S. authorities say vastly undershoot the reality of the human toll of Putin’s war.

Russia’s casualties in the war in Ukraine continue to mount. Russia has so far lost 23,800 troops, with the greatest losses in recent days in Izyum, according to an analysis the General Staff of the Armed Services of Ukraine shared Monday. Ukrainian forces claimed in recent hours they had destroyed Russia’s command center in Izyum, along with a Russian general, Gen. Andrei Simonov.

Associated Press

Push to arm Ukraine putting strain on US weapons stockpile

Ben Fox, Aamer Madhani, Jay Reeves and Dan Huff – May 2, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — The planes take off almost daily from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware — hulking C-17s loaded up with Javelins, Stingers, howitzers and other material being hustled to Eastern Europe to resupply Ukraine’s military in its fight against Russia.

The game-changing impact of those arms is exactly what President Joe Biden hopes to spotlight as he visits a Lockheed Martin plant in Alabama on Tuesday that builds the portable Javelin anti-tank weapons that have played a crucial role in Ukraine.

But Biden’s visit is also drawing attention to a growing concern as the war drags on: Can the U.S. sustain the cadence of shipping vast amounts of arms to Ukraine while maintaining the healthy stockpile it may need if a new conflict erupts with North Korea, Iran or elsewhere?

The U.S. already has provided about 7,000 Javelins, including some that were delivered during the Trump administration, about one-third of its stockpile, to Ukraine, according to an analysis by Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies international security program. The Biden administration says it has committed to sending about 5,500 to Ukraine since the Russian invasion more than two months ago.

Analysts also estimate that the United States has sent about one-quarter of its stockpile of shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to Ukraine. Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes told investors last week during a quarterly call that his company, which makes the weapons system, wouldn’t be able to ramp up production until next year due to parts shortages.

“Could this be a problem? The short answer is, ‘Probably, yes,’” said Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and former government specialist on Pentagon budget strategy, war funding and procurement.

He said that Stingers and Javelins were where “we’re seeing the most significant inventory issues,” and production of both weapons systems has been limited in recent years.

The Russian invasion offers the U.S. and European defense industry a big opportunity to bolster profits as lawmakers from Washington to Warsaw are primed to increase defense spending in response to Russian aggression. Defense contractors, however, face the same supply chain and labor shortage challenges that other manufacturers are facing, along with some others that are specific to the industry.

Military spending by the U.S. and around the world was rising even before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. Biden’s proposed 2023 budget sought $773 billion for the Pentagon, an annual increase of about 4%.

Globally, total military spending rose 0.7% to more than $2 trillion for the first time in 2021, according to an April report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia ranked fifth, as its spending on weapons increased ahead of its invasion of Ukraine.

The war will mean increased sales for some defense contractors, including Raytheon, which makes the Stinger missiles Ukrainian troops have used to knock out Russian aircraft. The company is also part of a joint venture with Lockheed Martin that makes the Javelins.

Biden will visit Lockheed Martin’s facility in Troy, Ala., which has the capacity to manufacture about 2,100 Javelins per year. The trip comes as he presses Congress to quickly approve his request for an additional $33 billion in security and economic assistance for Kyiv, Western allies and restocking weapons the U.S. has sent to those countries.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday he hoped quick bipartisan agreement on the security package could be reached so the Senate could begin considering it “as early as next week.”

The president is expected to use his remarks to highlight the importance of the Javelins and other U.S. weaponry in helping Ukraine’s military put up a vigorous fight as he makes the case to keep security and economic assistance flowing.

A White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity, said the Pentagon is working with defense contractors “to evaluate the health of weapons systems’ production lines and examine bottlenecks in every component and step of the manufacturing process.” The administration is also considering a range of options, if needed, to boost production of both Javelins and Stingers, the official said.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Monday that America’s military readiness is not dependent on one system, such as the Javelin. He said that every time the Pentagon develops a package of weapons to send to Ukraine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the department assesses the broader impact.

“It’s not about counting say Javelins and being able to say that when you reach a certain level then all your readiness is gone,” Kirby said. “The Javelin is an anti-armor capability, so we judge it all as a conglomerate of what’s our ability to meet this particular mission set, realizing that a Javelin isn’t the only capability you have against armor.”

Cancian, the former government specialist on defense budget strategy, said the fact that Stingers and Javelins were not included in the most recent tranche of weapons the Biden administration announced it was sending to Ukraine could be a sign that Pentagon officials are mindful about inventory as they conduct contingency planning for other possible conflicts.

“There’s no question that whatever war plan they’re looking at there is risk associated with the depleting levels of Stingers and Javelins, and I’m sure that they’re having that discussion at the Pentagon,” he said.

The U.S. military effort to move weaponry to Eastern Europe for Ukraine’s fight has been Herculean. From Dover Air Base in Delaware, U.S. airmen have carried out nearly 70 missions to deliver some 7 million pounds of Javelins, Stingers, 155mm howitzers, helmets and other essentials to Eastern Europe since February. Col. Matt Husemann, commander of the 436th Airlift Wing, described the mission as a “whole of government approach that’s delivering hope.”

“It is awesome,” said Husemann, after providing AP with a recent tour of the airlift operation.

The lightweight but lethal Javelin has helped the Ukrainians inflict major damage on Russia’s larger and better-equipped military. As a result, the weapon has gained almost mythic regard, celebrated with a Javelin song and images of Mary Magdalene carrying a Javelin becoming a meme in Ukraine.

Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet said in a recent CNBC interview that demand for the Javelin and other weapon systems would increase broadly over time because of the Russian invasion. He said the company was working “to get our supply chain ramped up.”

“We have the ability to meet current production demands, are investing in increased capacity and are exploring ways to further increase production as needed,” Lockheed Martin said in a statement.

Pentagon officials recently sat down with some of the leading defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman to discuss efforts to ramp up production.

The big defense contractors face some serious challenges.

Raytheon, for example, can’t simply crank out Stingers to replace the 1,400 that the U.S. sent to Ukraine. Hayes, the Raytheon CEO, said in a recent conference call with analysts that the company has only limited supplies of components to make the missile. Only one undisclosed country has been buying them in recent years, and the Pentagon hasn’t bought any new ones in nearly 20 years.

Sanctions further complicate the picture. Companies must find new sources of important raw materials such as titanium, a crucial component in aerospace manufacturing that is produced in Russia.

Concerns about the Stinger stockpile have been raised by House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and the top Republican on the committee, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama. The two in March wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, describing the stockpile issue as one of “urgency.”

Rogers said he remains concerned that the matter hasn’t been properly addressed.

“I’ve been asking the DoD for almost two months for a plan to replenish our Stinger stockpile as well as our Javelin launch units,” Rogers said. “I worry that without a readily available replacement or fully active production lines, we could leave Ukraine and our NATO allies in a vulnerable position.”

Reeves reported from Birmingham, Ala., and Huff from Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.

Insider

Russian troops stole $5M worth of farm vehicles from a John Deere dealership, which remotely locked the thieves out of the equipment

Katherine Tangalakis – May 2, 2022

• Russian troops stole nearly $5 million worth of farm equipment from a John Deere dealership in Melitopol.
• The stolen equipment was located by remote GPS and locked, preventing it from being used. 
• “When the invaders drove the stolen harvesters to Chechnya, they realized that they could not even turn them on,” a source told CNN.

Russian troops occupying the Ukrainian city of Melitopol stole nearly $5 million of farm vehicles from a John Deere dealership and shipped some of them more than 700 miles to Chechnya, CNN reported, only to find they had been rendered useless by a remote-locking system that prevented the thieves from turning the equipment on. 

Two compound harvesters, valued at $300,000 each, as well as 27 other tractors, seeders, and additional pieces of equipment were stolen from the dealership. But the remote access technology of the equipment, which allows for GPS tracking and some of the vehicles to be remotely operated, prevented them from being used. 

“When the invaders drove the stolen harvesters to Chechnya, they realized that they could not even turn them on, because the harvesters were locked remotely,” a source familiar with the incident told CNN.

While the equipment could still be scrapped and sold for parts by Russian troops, the source said it is currently lying idle on a farm near Grozny. 

Melitopol – a city in the country’s southeast – has been under Russian occupation since early March. Other recent reports from the area have said invading troops looted a museum of gold artifacts and stole hundreds of thousands of tons of grain from the region. 

Associated Press

Death in Ukraine’s Kharkiv is everywhere, rarely explained

Felipe Dana – May 2, 2022

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — The outskirts of Kharkiv have the feel of an open-air morgue, where the dead lie unclaimed and unexplained, sometimes for weeks on end, as Ukrainian and Russian forces fight for control of slivers of land.

There is the charred body of a man, unidentifiable, propped on an anti-tank barrier made of crossed I-beams outside a town that has been under the control of both sides in recent days. There are the dead soldiers, apparently Russian, four of them arranged in a Z like the military symbol found on Russian armored vehicles, visible to the Russian drones that continuously buzz overhead. The door to an apartment opens to three bodies inside.

Precisely how any of this happened will likely never be known.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has been under sustained Russian attack since the beginning of the war in late February. With the Russian offensive intensifying in the east, the Russian onslaught has grown fiercer.

Considered a strategic and industrial prize, territory on the eastern city’s outskirts has gone back and forth between Russian and Ukrainian forces for weeks now as the fighting shifts from village to village. Many, but by no means all, of Kharkiv’s 1 million residents have fled.

Associated Press journalists saw the bodies formed into a Z, wearing the white arm bands commonly used by Russian soldiers, and with some Russian medical kits alongside them. They were found on a front line where fighting had been taking place for days. They, along with the burned man, were taken to a morgue on Monday. There was no explanation for the Z formation — a symbol of the Russian invasion — nor the burned body propped on the barrier. Either could be considered a war crime, for disrespecting the dignity of the dead.

Next will come the investigation into their identities, maybe an attempt to notify family.

But even that is hard to untangle. The body of a man with Ukrainian insignia turned out to have the identity papers of a Russian soldier. The apartment where the three bodies were found had been badly shelled, but it wasn’t clear what killed them.

Shelling and airstrikes are a daily threat everywhere here, to everyone. And, as long as that remains true, death can come at anytime, without anyone around to answer why.

It was a rare glimpse into the death and atrocities of the war. Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in eastern Ukraine has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for journalists to move around. Russia has severely restricted reporting in the combat zone; Ukraine’s government has imposed fewer limits, mostly on how quickly material can be published or about military installations.

In Washington on Monday, a senior U.S. defense official said Ukrainian forces had over the last 48 hours succeeded in pushing Russian forces further away from Kharkiv, even as it came under Russian aerial bombardment. The Russians have now been pushed some 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the east of the city, further into the Donbas region, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. military assessment.

According to the Red Cross, mutilating dead bodies in international armed conflicts is covered by the war crime of “committing outrages upon personal dignity” under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, which according to the Elements of Crimes also applies to dead persons.

Associated Press Pentagon Writer Lolita Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

Yahoo! News

War in Ukraine: First civilians evacuated from Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol

Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – May 2, 2022

Evacuation efforts are underway for hundreds of Ukrainian civilians who have been sheltering for months inside the Azovstal steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol, officials said Monday.

The giant factory has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance — and a key target of relentless Russian bombardment since the war started in February. Approximately 1,000 civilians have been sheltering in the tunnel complex underneath the plant, Ukrainian military officials say.

Last week, Ukrainian forces said that Russian troops had bombed a field hospital in the plant, and about 600 people, including civilians, were wounded in the attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that more than 100 civilians from the plant were expected to arrive in the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday.

“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” Zelensky said.

Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the strategic port city have failed, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russian forces of shelling agreed-upon evacuation routes.

Video posted online Sunday showed Ukrainian forces helping women and children climb over a steep pile of rubble at the steel plant. They then boarded a bus, part of a United Nations-backed convoy organized to assist in the civilian evacuation.

According to Reuters, Russian forces resumed shelling the plant after the convoy of buses departed.

Hundreds of civilians who remain trapped in the Azovstal complex are said to be running out of water, food and medicine.

“The situation has become a sign of a real humanitarian catastrophe,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

According to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 2,899 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Feb. 24, when Russia’s invasion began. But the agency believes the actual death toll is probably much higher.

The mayor of Mariupol has estimated that more than 20,000 civilians have been killed in his city alone. A Russian blockade has choked off food, water and other supplies from the once bustling seaport occupying a strategic position between the Russian mainland and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. The city is now reduced to rubble.