The Tarbabys Blog

Politico

Targeting Putin’s Holy Man

Michael Schaffer – April 15, 2022

Like a lot of insiders associated with Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev has faced calls for international ostracism in the weeks since the invasion of Ukraine. It’s no surprise why: He’s used his powerful Moscow perch to endorse the Kremlin’s attack on its neighbor, cheering on the troops and casting their mission as part of a civilizational battle against western decadence.

But unlike the owner of a Russian airline or retail behemoth or energy concern, he’s not the sort of figure consumers can simply boycott or suppliers can just cut off. Gundyayev — formal name: Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia — is the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. Which makes the process of kicking him out of polite society a bit trickier, and explains why that process at least partially runs through a small, iconoclastic Washington think tank.

The bill of complaints against Patriarch Kirill is long and ugly. Since taking over Russian orthodoxy’s highest job in 2009, he’s rearranged the church on more authoritarian lines, cemented a close alliance with Putin, and lent ecclesiastical legitimacy to the quasi-mystical, hyper-nationalist Russkiy Mir theory that Putin has used to dismiss the existence of Ukraine as a separate country.

Since the war began, it’s been uglier still. He delivered a sermon calling on Russians to rally around the authorities and “repel enemies both external and internal.” In another, he likened the battle to the struggle between the church and the antichrist. He’s said the war for “Holy Russia” has “metaphysical significance,” the conquest of Ukraine a matter of eternal salvation. For good measure, he’s also said that part of what the Russian forces are combating is the horrific possibility of gay pride parades. Plenty of oligarchs have been canceled for less.

The problem with targeting religious leaders is that they don’t simply have yachts the police can seize or air-overflight rights the government can revoke. In the United States, where the Orthodox Church in America is formally separate from Moscow (and critical of the war), there aren’t even many places where activists could protest a Kirill-aligned cleric’s sermon. Within Russia itself, a group of Orthodox priests signed a letter opposing the invasion. Outside Russia, it’s largely been other religious leaders who have taken the Patriarch to task.

And in the U.S., an evangelical minister named Rob Schenck, who leads a small D.C.-based institute named after the martyred anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, has championed another venue to exhibit displeasure: He has helped organize a campaign to get the Russian Orthodox Church kicked out of the World Council of Churches, the Geneva-based international organization founded after World War II to promote ecumenical understanding.

“Instead of the Patriarch challenging Putin and calling him to account, he is essentially enabling him and offering him a moral imprimatur for the invasion of Ukraine,” says Schenck, an administrative bishop of the Methodist Evangelical Church and a one-time conservative activist who later wrote a memoir of his journey into and out of the religious right. “He has styled it as a religious war of sorts, the danger of western liberalism and its encroachment on Orthodox culture. He’s made it a culture war as much as a religious crusade.”

Working with allies overseas, Schenck has been circulating letters, lobbying colleagues and otherwise trying to wrangle the array of denominations that make up the world council. Prelates including a former Archbishop of Canterbury have embraced the idea, and last week the organization’s general secretary predicted it would be on the agenda for the next gathering. “What Rob and so many people from around the world are calling for, for the first time in Christian history as far as I can tell, is an ecumenical response to war,” says Michael Hanegan, an Oklahoma theologian and Bonhoeffer fellow who’s been working with Schenck.

But if losing McDonald’s or getting kicked off of SWIFT wasn’t going to deter Russia, would anyone really care about their national church being booted from a kumbaya society of international religious yakkers — even one that fashions itself as a kind of United Nations of churches?

Schenck says there’s some precedent (South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church quit amidst threats expulsion for defending Apartheid) but also sees it as a matter of principle: “It violates the very message, ministry and model of Christ himself. He rebuked his disciples when they took up the sword of violence.”

At any rate, it would also be another small instance of decoupling between Russia and the broader international world. In this case, the relationship being severed is one that actually predates the end of the Cold War, going back to 1961. At the time, the Soviet Union was officially atheist, but authorities had found the church could occasionally be useful in maintaining support. Top clerics tended to have the blessing, so to speak, of the Kremlin — and the security services. The relationship ran both ways. But the church was still welcome in the WCC, where it reliably articulated Soviet positions. In 1971, then-Archimandrite Kirill became Moscow’s representative.

Religious politics, in fact, have factored into the Ukraine situation in a number of ways, most of which haven’t gotten a lot of attention in the U.S. In 2018, Patriarch Kirill was enraged after Ukraine’s Orthodox Church, up to then located under Moscow on the org chart, was made autocephalous, or able to govern itself, just like the churches in a number of other independent countries. The decision spurred a major rupture in relations between the Russian church and the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch, traditionally the leading figure in Eastern Orthodoxy. (The Orthodox Church in America has been officially autocephalous since 1970; its official statement on the Ukraine invasion calls it a “war of aggression waged by the Russian Federation.”)

Washington has never been a huge hub of interreligious statecraft, but Schenck, 63, says it’s the natural place for an outfit dedicated to promoting “morally courageous” leaders. “Bonhoeffer’s mission was to persuade government actors as much as anyone else to do what is right and good and ethical,” he says. “I’ve been 30 years in Washington and I know the lay of the land. I know the actors and players. So many denominations have their government relations offices here.”

Schenck’s earlier years in the city featured rather different sorts of headlines: A onetime Operation Rescue adviser, he was once questioned by the Secret Service after confronting former President Bill Clinton over abortion at a Christmas Eve service at the National Cathedral. He also wrote a treatise connecting the Second Amendment with the Ten Commandments. But he later experienced a second evangelical conversion and now supports gun control and Roe v. Wade. (Gun violence prevention is one of the Bonhoeffer Institute’s subject areas.)

For the record, Schenck says his real goal is to see Patriarch Kirill grow and change, too. “As Christians we believe in repentance,” he says. “We believe in making amends for one’s misdeeds, and redemption. It doesn’t have to be a permanent expulsion.”

Yahoo! News

Russian war disinformation — from the Bucha massacre to the sinking of the Moskva battleship — keeps growing

Zach Dorfman, National Security Correspondent – April 15, 2022

From the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and throughout the conflict, Moscow has pursued a strategy of aggressive public dissembling, prevarication and disinformation aimed at creating an alternative reality to explain how events have unfolded on the ground.

In Russia itself, the rules for even talking about Ukraine have become Orwellian, with citizens now facing lengthy potential prison sentences for simply stating that their country is at war, let alone expressing opposition to it. (The Kremlin-approved term for the conflict is “special military operation,” not war.)

While Ukraine has also focused on using social media to showcase its military victories in the conflict and to spread the hortatory powers of its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the information war fought by Kyiv has been largely reflective of that which can actually be documented.

In contrast, Russian state media and top Russian officials have repeatedly propagated an entirely false reality in which Moscow, not Kyiv, is faced with an existential military threat; where Ukrainians, not Russians, are committing horrific war crimes against Ukrainian civilians; where Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis; and where Russia’s war aims are proceeding entirely according to plan.

Here are some of the most flagrant falsehoods advanced by Moscow about Russia’s attack on Ukraine:

The massive buildup of troops on Ukraine’s border preceding the invasion was for ‘training exercises’

Beginning last summer, a spike in Russian military personnel and equipment amassing on Ukraine’s border set off alarm bells in Western capitals. Russia repeatedly and strenuously denied that the buildup was for anything other than routine military exercises. Moscow even continued denying its aim to invade Ukraine after troops it had sent to Belarus for joint military drills did not return to Russia after the drills’ conclusion.

As roughly 200,000 Russian troops swelled on Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern borders, and an invasion appeared imminent, Russian officials called U.S. warnings about an attack “absurd” and “hysterical” just a few short weeks before Moscow’s aggression sparked the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.

Russia’s invasion is operating on schedule and according to plan

Moscow has repeatedly claimed that its “special military operation” in Ukraine is proceeding as planned. But this is demonstrably false. Russia’s original plan was to make a lightning strike on the capital, Kyiv, capture or kill Ukrainian leadership and force Ukrainian legislators to vote in a pro-Russia puppet government.

But that plan disintegrated amid fierce Ukrainian resistance, including a critical victory at an airport near Kyiv that foiled Russian troops from establishing a beachhead near the capital. Buoyed by these early victories, Ukrainians have managed to beat back Russia’s assault on Kyiv and other major cities such as Kharkiv, preventing Moscow’s forces, so far, from taking those major population centers.

Further undercutting the claim that the war is proceeding to plan, up to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far, according to NATO estimates, including over half a dozen generals. Ukraine has also claimed responsibility, via rocket attack, for sinking Russia’s Moskva cruiser, the flagship vessel of Russia’s Black Sea fleet and the largest military ship sunk since World War II. (Russia has said the vessel sank because of a storm after catching fire.)

Russia, having pulled its troops back entirely from Kyiv and its environs, has refocused its assault on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Moscow now claims that carving that region out of Ukraine to create an independent statelet — in reality a Russia puppet regime — was always its primary war aim. But this is a wholesale rewriting of very recent history in which Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted that the central goal was the “de-Nazification” of the whole of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government is run by neo-Nazis

Putin’s attempts to link Ukraine with Nazism have also proved a stretch. Russia has claimed that the Ukrainian government is an outlaw state run by neo-Nazi extremists. In fact, Zelensky is Jewish and won election in 2019 as a moderate. And though Ukraine has struggled with corruption, its government is squarely mainstream in nature — and, in fact, far less right-wing than some European states like Hungary.

Russia’s reference to “neo-Nazis” seems to spring from the activities of the Azov Battalian, a Ukrainian militant group with neo-fascist leanings that was integrated into Ukraine’s national guard in 2014. But Azov affiliates make up a tiny percentage of Ukraine’s total military forces, and Azov’s own leadership has sought to distance the organization from its more overtly neo-fascist past.

Moreover, Russia’s purported “de-Nazification” objectives ring particularly hollow since Russia has employed its own neo-fascist paramilitary operatives to fight in Ukraine, including the Wagner Group, which is closely connected to the Russian government, and the Russian Imperial Movement, which the U.S. designated a terrorist group in 2020.

The massacre in Bucha was staged (and if it’s not, Ukraine is to blame)

After Russian troops retreated from the Kyiv region, Ukrainian forces fanned out across the city’s suburbs, which had seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war. What the Ukrainians discovered shocked them as well as much of the world: widespread evidence of war crimes and atrocities committed by Russian forces. Russian forces in Bucha appeared to have wantonly executed people it knew to be civilians, including women and children, and forced women into sex slavery.

Russia immediately offered a series of contradictory explanations for the scenes in Bucha: that Russian troops had left the town before the killings began (which was false); that the killings were staged (false); and that if the killings were real, the massacre was a “false flag” by the Ukrainians (also false).

In fact, the transference of blame to Ukraine for Russia’s own heinous actions has been a hallmark of the war. Russia also claimed that its attack on the Kramatorsk train station, which killed over 50 civilians trying to flee violence in Ukraine’s east, was committed by the Ukrainians themselves.

And Russia has a long history of attempting to commit false flag operations to misattribute blame for the war. In the run-up to the invasion, these included plans for a staged, or even real, chemical attack perpetrated by Russia in eastern Ukraine that U.S. officials warned was going to be made to look like the work of Kyiv’s forces, in order to provide Moscow with a casus belli.

Moscow has also claimed, without any evidence, that the U.S. is planning on using an army of infected birds to send bioweapons into Russia.

U.S. officials have continued to worry that Russia will employ chemical weapons and blame their use on Ukraine.

The New York Times

Hiding in Plain Sight, a Soviet-Era Air Defense System Arrives in Ukraine

Andrew Higgins – April 14, 2022

DOBRA, Slovakia — Driving back to his village near the Ukrainian border last Thursday, the mayor had to stop to let a train pass, and assumed he wouldn’t have to wait long. But the flatbed wagons, stacked high with military equipment, just kept coming. He waited for nearly half an hour.

“It was a very long train, much longer than usual,” recalled Mikolas Csoma, the mayor of Dobra, a previously sleepy village in eastern Slovakia that, over the past month, has become a key artery funneling weapons and ammunition into Ukraine by rail from the West.

The train that delayed Csoma’s drive home was not only unusually long but also signaled a singular escalation in Western efforts to help Ukraine defend itself. It carried an air defense system made up of 48 surface-to-air missiles, four launchers and radars to guide the rockets to their targets, which in Ukraine means Russian warplanes and missiles.

As President Vladimir Putin of Russia vows to fight the war to its “full completion” and his forces regroup for an expected push in Ukraine’s east, NATO countries, including the United States, are scrambling to keep the weapons flowing and bulk up the country’s defenses.

Bolstering Ukraine’s long-range air defense capabilities is seen as especially critical. Ukraine already had its own S-300 and other air defense systems, but some of these have been destroyed, leaving Russia with a large degree of freedom to hit Ukrainian targets from the air with warplanes and cruise missiles.

Increasingly desperate to reverse this imbalance, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has repeatedly pleaded with NATO to “close the sky over Ukraine” by imposing a no-fly zone. But NATO has been unwilling to send its own warplanes into Ukraine.

Instead, the United States offered Slovakia, a fellow NATO member, a substitute battery of U.S.-made Patriot missiles if it would “donate” its aging S-300 system to Ukraine.

Jaroslav Nad, Slovakia’s defense minister and a gung-ho supporter of Ukraine, said it would have been unthinkable before Russia’s invasion for his country to send large quantities of even basic weapons across its eastern border free of charge, never mind an old but still powerful Soviet-made anti-aircraft system.

“But this is the world’s new reality,” he said in Bratislava, the Slovak capital. “We are a front-line state. We have war on our border and more than 330,000 Ukrainians coming to our country. The paradigm is completely different now.”

Putin, he said, “is equal to Hitler” and must be stopped in Ukraine before he can move further West. “Ukraine is literally fighting for our future,” he said.

Like Slovakia, other countries are also steadily expanding the scope of their military aid. The No. 2 Pentagon official met in Washington on Wednesday with the United States’ largest military contractors to discuss how ready they are to restock supplies and what new capabilities to send to Ukraine.

The meeting and a new package of weapons, including artillery and ammunition, is intended in part by the Biden administration to blunt criticism that it is not doing enough for Ukraine and is too hesitant to send long-range weapon systems.

Other NATO members are already sending Ukraine bigger and better weaponry than before, including T-72 tanks and short-range air defense systems from the Czech Republic.

The S-300 system from Slovakia is the biggest item a NATO country has sent so far. It was previously deployed in Nitra, a city east of Bratislava at the other end of the country.

From there, it was hauled by truck and train to Dobra, where the state-controlled rail yard has Soviet gauge tracks, wider than the standard in Europe, which means it can run trains to and from Ukraine, which also has Soviet tracks.

Other big items now under discussion for transport to Ukraine via Slovakia include aging MiG-29 warplanes and sophisticated, self-propelled Howitzers called Zuzana 2. Also under review is a plan for Ukraine to send hundreds of damaged tanks, some of them captured from Russian forces, across the border for repair in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland, all of which have experience fixing Soviet-made equipment.

Slovakia “is not going to send tanks because we don’t have any spare tanks,” Nad said, underscoring an issue confronting even Ukraine’s most eager backers. “We have to keep enough capabilities for our own armed forces.”

But Slovakia is transporting not only weapons from its own stocks into Ukraine. It is also sending military aid from many other countries, including the Czech Republic, Australia and what Nad described as “countries that claim that they are not sending military material to Ukraine.”

Hungary, Slovakia’s southern neighbor, for example, has declared itself neutral in the conflict and barred weapons from passing through its own territory to Ukraine — largely to avoid upsetting deliveries of cheap Russian gas — but it is believed to have quietly provided weapons through other countries.

Asked about this, a Hungarian government spokesperson in Budapest declined to confirm or deny that his country is providing military material, saying only that “Hungary’s standpoint is well known, and it has remained unchanged.”

Alarmed by the flood of weapons flowing across the borders of Slovakia, Poland and Romania, Russia has sought to stop or at least slow it by declaring all foreign arms destined for Ukraine a “legitimate target.” Russia’s foreign minister vowed last month that Moscow “will not allow” the transfer of Slovakia’s S-300 air defense system.

It is too late for that now, and after failing to thwart the delivery, the defense ministry in Moscow claimed on Sunday that Russia had already destroyed the Slovak missile system when sea-launched cruise missiles hit a hangar near the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Nad, the Slovak defense minister, dismissed this as a “fake news,” apparently aimed at saving Russia’s face and calming the nerves of Russian pilots sent on missions to bomb Ukraine. Nad said he had spoken with Ukraine’s defense minister on Monday and been assured that “this system is working and is working well” and was not in Dnipro.

Previous military cargo sent into Ukraine by rail through Dobra and the nearby town of Cierna nad Tisou contained mostly ammunition and basic military hardware.

A separate weapons conduit through Poland, the main route for American arms, has involved weapons like Javelin, NLAW and Stinger missiles, which are light, portable, high-tech and relatively easy to hide in trucks passing through Polish border crossings into western Ukraine.

An air-defense battery is too big to hide, particularly when it travels on trains with more than 120 wagons in full view of drivers blocked by their passage. The cargo was so bulky it took two days to deliver it just a few miles from Dobra into Ukraine in two separate trains.

“Everyone knows what is going on,” said Jakub Zsolt, a steel factory maintenance worker who lives across the road from the rail yard. He said his grandchildren were scared by all the commotion, but added that he had himself grown accustomed to the clatter of military helicopters and the rumble of trucks carrying weapons to the loading yard.

All the same, he said, he worries that Slovakia, a small country of just 5.4 million people, is now wading too deeply into Ukraine’s war with Russia.

“The Russians might attack us,” he said, adding that he did not understand why Ukrainians needed so much help when “they come here driving much nicer cars — Porsches and Mercedes — than we drive in Slovakia.”

Most refugees fleeing the war, nearly all women and children, don’t drive anything, but cross on foot carrying just a change of clothes.

Zsolt’s jaundiced view of Ukraine highlights the success of opponents of the pro-Western Slovak prime minister, Eduard Heger, who last week said, “We need to help Ukraine in every possible way to win this war.” His foes, playing to a substantial segment of the population traditionally favorable to Moscow, have sought to turn public opinion against support for Ukraine and seized on the war as a political opportunity.

Robert Fico, a scandal-tainted former Slovak prime minister, upended the government’s efforts to keep the delivery of the S-300 battery secret until it had safely arrived in Ukraine when he posted a video on his Facebook page last Thursday that showed a train carrying the disassembled air-defense system on its way to Ukraine.

He denounced Heger as “a freak in American hands who will do whatever the Americans tell him to do” and demanded that the public immediately be told where the S-300 system was going.

Nad, the defense minister, said the delivery had been kept secret for security reasons. The opposition, he added, is playing “political games” against the interests of their own country and also Ukraine.

“Russia is killing thousands of people in Ukraine and I am not going to count the votes that I would lose — or gain — based on the decisions of the government to help. The only thing that I am counting is the lives we can save in Ukraine,” he said.

Pavel Macko, a retired Slovak general who served with NATO in Afghanistan and Germany, said the S-300 system delivered to Ukraine dated from the 1980s, when Slovakia was a member of the Warsaw Pact as part of Czechoslovakia, and was inferior to U.S.-made Patriot missiles. But, he added, Ukrainians know how to use it and will be able to reduce Russia’s mastery of the skies.

“This is not just symbolic but an important addition that could help make Russia change their plans,” he said.

The mayor in Dobra, Csoma, said he supported helping Ukraine, but was noncommittal when asked about the wisdom of sending a powerful weapon system like the S-300.

Miffed not to be informed in advance about the disruption to traffic caused by the S-300 trains, he said: “They don’t tell me anything. They should at least let me know about this kind of thing.”

Nobody really worried much about the war spreading into Slovakia, he said, but the authorities have nonetheless dusted off old civil defense plans, with police taking an inventory of potential bomb shelters. In the event of conflict, the mayor said, he had been assured that district authorities would send buses to evacuate his village’s 520 people.

“If something bad happens, we will all leave,” he said. “So there is no panic yet.”

The Week

Rainy weather could give Ukrainian military a boost in Donbas region

Catherine Garcia, Night editor – April 14, 2022

In Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, days of rain have soaked the ground, and this could give the Ukrainian military a leg up ahead of a planned Russian offensive, a senior Pentagon official said.

“The fact that the ground is softer will make it harder for [Russian forces] to do anything off of paved highways,” the official told Agence France-Presse. The rain is expected to last for several more days, and coincides with Russia seemingly concentrating its war efforts in eastern Ukraine.

Another senior defense official told reporters on Thursday that Russia has been moving artillery units and helicopters into the northern part of Donbas, and “they’re doing the things that we believe they believe they need to do to set the proper conditions for a renewed ground offensive.”

Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, and weather conditions affected troops in the northern part of the country; because the ground was not frozen hard enough, Russian tanks had to move in convoys on paved roads, making it easier for Ukrainian forces to use Javelin anti-tank systems against them.

Reuters

Powerful explosions heard in Kyiv after Russian warship sinks

Pavel Polityuk and Oleksandr Kozkukhar – April 14, 2022

KYIV/LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -Powerful explosions were heard in Kyiv on Friday and fighting raged in the east after Ukraine claimed responsibility for the sinking of the Russian navy’s Black Sea flagship in what would be one of the heaviest blows of the war.

The explosions appeared to be among the most significant in Ukraine’s capital region since Russian troops pulled back from the area earlier this month in preparation for battles in the south and east.

Ukraine said it hit the Moskva missile cruiser with a Neptune anti-ship missile. The Soviet-era ship sank on Thursday as it was being towed to port following a fire and explosions, Russia’s defence ministry said.

Over 500 crew were evacuated, the ministry said, without acknowledging an attack.

The ship’s loss comes as Russia’s navy continues its bombardment of Ukrainian cities on the Black Sea nearly 50 days after it invaded the country to root out what it calls far-right nationalists.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy paid homage to all “those who halted the progress of the endless convoys of Russian military equipment … Those who showed that Russian ships can go … down to the bottom.”

There were no immediate reports of damage following the explosions reported in Kyiv, Kherson in the south, the eastern city of Kharkiv and the town of Ivano-Frankivsk in the west.

Ukraine’s armed forces said Russian attacks on the towns of Popasna and Rubizhne, both north of the port city of Mariupol, had been repulsed and a number of tanks and other armoured vehicles had been destroyed. Reuters was not able to verify the reports.

MOSKVA

Whatever the cause of the Moskva’s loss, it is a setback for Russia and a major boost for Ukraine’s defenders.

Russia’s navy has fired cruise missiles into Ukraine and its Black Sea activities are crucial to supporting land operations in the south and east, where it is battling to seize full control of Mariupol.

The United States said it did not have enough information to determine whether the Moskva was hit by a missile.

“(But) certainly, the way this unfolded, it’s a big blow to Russia,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

Russia launched what it calls its “special military operation” to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24, in part to dissuade Kyiv and other former Eastern Bloc countries from joining NATO.

But in more setbacks for Moscow, Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, and nearby Sweden are now considering joining the U.S.-led military alliance.

Moscow warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland join, Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in a Russian enclave in the heart of Europe.

CIA Director William Burns said the threat of Russia potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine could not be taken lightly, but the agency had not seen much evidence reinforcing that concern.

BATTLE FOR MARIUPOL

Kyiv and its allies say Russia has launched an unprovoked war that has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad and killed or wounded thousands.

Russia said on Wednesday that more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines from one of the units still holding out in Mariupol had surrendered. Ukrainian officials did not comment.

If taken, Mariupol would be the first major city to fall to Russian forces since they invaded, allowing Moscow to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern Donbas areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014.

Ukraine said tens of thousands of people were believed to have been killed in Mariupol, where efforts were under way to evacuate civilians.

Russia’s defence ministry said late on Thursday that 815 people had been evacuated from the city over the past 24 hours. Ukraine said that figure was 289.

(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Rami Ayyub and Stephen Coates; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Reuters

Russia warns of nuclear, hypersonic deployment if Sweden and Finland join NATO

Guy Faulconbridge – April 14, 2022

LONDON (Reuters) – One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland joined the U.S.-led military alliance then Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in an exclave in the heart of Europe.

Finland, which shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, and Sweden are considering joining the NATO alliance. Finland will decide in the next few weeks, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Wednesday.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that should Sweden and Finland join NATO then Russia would have to strengthen its land, naval and air forces in the Baltic Sea.

Medvedev also explicitly raised the nuclear threat by saying that there could be no more talk of a “nuclear free” Baltic – where Russia has its Kaliningrad exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

“There can be no more talk of any nuclear–free status for the Baltic – the balance must be restored,” said Medvedev, who was Russian president from 2008 to 2012.

Medvedev said he hoped Finland and Sweden would see sense. If not, he said, they would have to live with nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles close to home.

Russia has the world’s biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads and along with China and the United States is one of the global leaders in hypersonic missile technology.

Lithuania said Russia’s threats were nothing new and that Moscow had deployed nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad long before the war in Ukraine. NATO did not immediately respond to Russia’s warning.

Still, the possible accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO – founded in 1949 to provide Western security against the Soviet Union – would be one of the biggest strategic consequences of the war in Ukraine.

Finland gained independence from Russia in 1917 and fought two wars against it during World War Two during which it lost some territory. On Thursday, Finland announced a military exercise in Western Finland with the participation of Britain, the United States, Latvia and Estonia.

Sweden has not fought a war for 200 years. Foreign policy has focused on supporting democracy and nuclear disarmament.

KALININGRAD

Kaliningrad, formerly the port of Koenigsberg, capital of East Prussia, lies less than 1,400 km from London and Paris and 500 km from Berlin.

Russia said in 2018 it had deployed Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, which was captured by the Red Army in April 1945 and ceded to the Soviet Union at the Potsdam conference.

The Iskander, known as SS-26 Stone by NATO, is a short-range tactical ballistic missile system that can carry nuclear warheads. Its official range is 500 km but some Western military sources suspect it may be much greater.

“No sane person wants higher prices and higher taxes, increased tensions along borders, Iskanders, hypersonics and ships with nuclear weapons literally at arm’s length from their own home,” Medvedev said.

“Let’s hope that the common sense of our northern neighbours will win.”

While Putin is Russia’s paramount leader, Medvedev’s comments reflect Kremlin thinking and he is a senior member of the security council – one of Putin’s main chambers for decision making on strategic issues.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anusauskas said Russia had deployed nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad even before the war.

“Nuclear weapons have always been kept in Kaliningrad … the international community, the countries in the region, are perfectly aware of this,” Anusauskas was quoted as saying by BNS. “They use it as a threat.”

Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States – by far the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.

Putin says the “special military operation” in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people.

Ukraine says it is fighting an imperial-style land grab and that Putin’s claims of genocide are nonsense. U.S. President Joe Biden says Putin is a war criminal and a dictator.

Putin says the conflict in Ukraine as part of a much broader confrontation with the United States which he says is trying to enforce its hegemony even as its dominance over the international order declines.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Nick Macfie)

Business Insider

Russia tries to scare Finland and Sweden away from NATO by threatening to deploy nukes in the Baltics, which it’s already done

John Haltiwanger – April 14, 2022

• Russia threatened to deploy nukes to the Baltics if Finland and Sweden join NATO.
• Lithuania scoffed at the threat, as Russia is already assessed to have nuclear assets in the region.
• Experts said it was an “empty threat” from Russia.

Russia on Thursday threatened to deploy nuclear weapons to the Baltics if Finland and Sweden join NATO, despite the fact it’s already assessed to have such assets in the region.

“If Sweden and Finland join NATO, the length of the land borders of the alliance with the Russian Federation will more than double. Naturally, these boundaries will have to be strengthened,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Telegram.

“There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic — the balance must be restored,” Medvedev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anusauskas responded by saying the Russian threat is “quite strange” given Russia currently has nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic sea, per Reuters. Kaliningrad is located between Lithuania and Poland, both NATO members.

“The current Russian threats look quite strange, when we know that, even without the present security situation, they keep the weapon 100 km from Lithuania’s border,”

“Nuclear weapons have always been kept in Kaliningrad…the international community, the countries in the region, are perfectly aware of this…They use it as a threat,” he added.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in 2018 published satellite images that it said showed “a major renovation of what appears to be an active nuclear weapons storage site in the Kaliningrad region, about 50 kilometers from the Polish border.”

Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, in a tweet said Medvedev’s warning was a “fairly empty threat” given the apparent presence of Russian nukes in Kaliningrad.

Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at FAS, also downplayed Medvedev’s nuclear threat and challenged the Russian politician’s suggestion that a “balance” would need to be restored if Finland and Sweden joined NATO.

“What balance? Even if Finland/Sweden join, there will be no nukes in east Europe,” Kristensen tweeted on Thursday. “This is a good reminder that Russia uses nukes to compensate for what it sees as inferior conventional capabilities. Ukraine flop and NATO expansion will likely reinforce that.”

Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed Finland and Sweden closer than ever to joining NATO. The leaders of both countries on Wednesday signaled a decision on whether to pursue membership in the alliance could be made in the near future.

The Los Angeles Times

The cycle of war in Ukraine’s south: drones, bombs, silence, death

Nabih Bulos – April 13, 2022

With an overcast sky offering a break from the ever-watchful eyes of Russian drones and the artillery barrages that often follow, a young Ukrainian soldier joined his squad for a bit of fresh air on the patio of what had been a cultural center.

“When it’s good weather the Russians can correct their targeting with the drones,” said Nesquik, a 26-year-old with the smooth face of a boy whose nickname comes from a chocolate drink. “Today, they’re just shooting where they think the targets are — they have artillery to spare.”

The thud of explosions rumbled somewhere in the distance.

You hear little else in Posad Pokrovske, a farming hamlet in southern Ukraine transformed into a tableau of destruction: Houses with gap-toothed roofs or entire wings gutted by artillery. A starving pig trotting down a crater-riddled street searching for food. The side of the village school slashed open by a blast, spilling concrete blocks and schoolbooks into the playground. And silence.

In the almost seven weeks since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade, Ukrainian troops have pushed back the front line in the south from the edge of Mykolaiv, a vital port nearly 70 miles northeast of the Black Sea city of Odesa, to the southeast toward Kherson, the first and — so far — only major city occupied by the Russians.

That drew the fight out of the dense urban areas and onto the plains astride the M14 highway, leaving wheat fields littered with the spent tubes of Smerch cluster rockets and antitank weapons. Farming villages with birch-lined streets and quaint cottages became sites of clashes of men and armor.

Posad Pokrovske, which lies almost exactly equidistant between Mykolaiv and Kherson, is the last point under Ukrainian control. Russian troops are less than a mile away on the village edge, but they were inside until March 13, when Nesquik’s group, which had mobilized from Odesa and was tasked with liberating a string of villages in the area, entered Posad Pokrovske and surprised them.

“They didn’t expect to see us here, but when they did, they came at us with technicals, tanks, artillery, infantry,” he said, nodding at a row of half-destroyed buildings down the street.

“Most of the damage you see is from that day.”

Since then, the fight in the village has become a game of hide-and-seek-then-kill, each side struggling to find an opening and drive the other back. But with Moscow reorienting its forces to focus on Ukraine’s Donbas region, the battle is set to change again: Rather than aiming for Odesa, Russian troops are hunkering down to secure their rear while they push toward the east in what may become the bloodiest campaign of the war.

“They’re not attacking. Instead, we’re seeing the Russians now build defenses, and we’re trying not to let them do this,” Nesquik said. “They understand that with the Dnieper River behind them in Kherson, they have nowhere to go. If they’re pushed out, they won’t be able to come back.”

Such is the hope of a young man with a gun and a country to save. Skirmishes have been replaced by artillery duels between the two sides, slowly denuding life from the territory one barrage at a time.

Posad Pokrovske once had some 2,300 residents; none remain. Over in Shevchenkove, a sleepy village four miles up the road toward Mykolaiv, more than two-thirds of the people have disappeared, said Father Pavlo, the priest presiding over St. John Church. That figure feels like a large underestimate.

With gilt-framed portraits of Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph looking down on him, Father Pavlo, a soft-spoken man in his late 40s with blue eyes and a pony tail, sighed and gave a wry smile when asked about the state of his parish.

“We have five different denominations in the village. This is an Orthodox church, but right now, we’re like a big family,” he said.

Around him were stacked boxes of rice, muesli, cookies, crackers and black pouches of something called “Coconutty Curry.” By way of explanation, he pointed at the boxes, saying that the church had become in effect a community assistance center.

“We started collecting donations from friends, from the Mykolaiv government. We have people with their cars delivering assistance, evacuating people,” he said. Those with houses still intact were hosting those whose homes had been damaged in the fighting, he added.

“We also try to help the injured, or take the dead.”

There had been no lack of both in recent days. A few hours earlier on Monday, a shell injured one man, and the evening before an artillery round killed another resident. Two were killed the day before that. Earlier in the war, the head of the local council was killed, local media reported, and the mayor was kidnapped by the Russians last month when he went to deliver aid to other villages. He’s thought to be held somewhere in Crimea. Then four days ago, a barrage snapped through some of the power lines, knocking out electricity and forcing whoever remained here to rely on generators.

Those events had joined a lengthening litany of afflictions and mourning for the dead. Asked about those who still remained, Father Pavlo’s eyes turned a shiny red and his lips quivered. He turned and walked away. He looked at a painting of one of the saints until he regained his composure.

“For 10 years I’ve tried to build the church,” he said. “It’s hard, of course. Now I’m happy when people leave to a safe area. I’m upset if someone returns because it’s too dangerous.”

Those still here, he said, “have no choice but to stay,” immobilized either because of ill health, old age or taking care of someone.

One of those in the last category was Natalya Steblina, 41, a surprisingly jovial woman who stayed with her 82-year-old mother, two grandsons, a dog and a cat.

“Yes, I’m afraid, but what can I do? I hope it will be OK. I don’t want to leave. My grandsons, my mom, none of them want to leave. So we help each other,” she said. The cat rubbed against her leg (she wore shorts despite the cold) as explosions thundered somewhere over the horizon.

“When they want, they do that,” she said, cocking her ear at the sound of the barrage.

“Day, night, any time.”

Yet even in the relative safety of Mykolaiv, some 12 miles to the northeast, there is still fear. An industrial yet elegant ship-building hub on the confluence of two rivers, the city has regained some of its daily rhythms.

The weekend saw brisk pedestrian traffic on its avenues and riverfront boulevards, with people enjoying a sunny day and shrugging off the morbid thoughts of the first weeks of war. Many crowded into liquor stores (they only open on weekends) to load up. But night brought the familiar drumbeat of explosions once again, including a blast that sent windows across the city rattling and pushed Vitaliy Kim, Mykolaiv’s pugnacious regional governor, to issue a video the next day reassuring residents.

Meanwhile, for any who believe Mykolaiv is clear of danger, the wreckage of the regional administration building — the entire middle section was clawed out by a Russian ballistic missile late last month, killing 38 people, authorities say — stands as a powerful counterargument.

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich visited the site this week, squinting in the sun as he gazed at the pancaked floors and an air-conditioning unit suspended from a wire somehow still attached to the building’s roof.

“When people ask me if it’s safe to stay, I tell them 10 civilians died last week and more than 40 were injured. If that sounds safe to you, then stay. But I think you should leave, so we can fight more easily,” Senkevich said, adding that hundreds were being shuttled to the border with Moldova every day.

A onetime IT entrepreneur turned politician, Senkevich had traded his suit for gray tactical pants, a fleece sweatshirt and a short-nozzled AK-47SU equipped with a silencer and flash suppressor. It was a switch he had done in the run-up to the invasion, but he kept it on because he didn’t see a respite coming.

“We need to be prepared for any kind of situation, especially when we see the Russian troops are now regrouping,” he said.

“People even sometimes forget that there’s war. I would say that people feel too comfortable.”

Business Insider

Former Russian lawmaker fighting for Ukraine says he thinks Putin’s days are numbered because ‘no dictator can survive after losing the war’

Sophia Ankel – April 14, 2022

• A Russian politician who was ousted in 2016 is fighting alongside Ukrainian forces.
• Ilya Ponomarev told CNN Wednesday that he believed Putin’s days in power were numbered.
• He called Putin a dictator and said he was confident Ukrainian forces “will prevail.”

A former Russian lawmaker fighting for Ukraine told CNN Wednesday he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s days were numbered because “no dictator can survive after losing the war.”

Ilya Ponomarev has been living in Kyiv, Ukraine, since 2016 after he was ousted by the Russian parliament. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the former politician took up arms and joined the Ukrainian forces.

Speaking from Kyiv, Ponomarev told CNN he decided to fight alongside Ukrainian troops because he wanted “to defend humanity and Europe.” His role in the forces was unclear.

“No dictator can survive after losing the war,” Ponomarev said of Putin, adding that the Russian leader “has no way how he can win the war.”

“Putin will try to claim a certain victory — an imaginary victory — on May 9. I am absolutely certain about this, but the reality is that he is losing the war,” he added. “I think that the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people will not stop before Ukrainian territory will be free”

You can watch the full interview here:

Former member of Russian Parliament Ilya Ponomarev talks to CNN's @jaketapper about why he is fighting on the front lines with Ukrainian forces. pic.twitter.com/I6dnGuD4pl

— CNN (@CNN) April 13, 2022

May 9, otherwise known as Victory Day, is a major holiday in Russia that commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and is usually marked with a huge military parade in front of the Kremlin.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said last month that Russian troops were being told the war must end on May 9.

Western officials say Putin will want to have control of the Donbass and other eastern regions of Ukraine by that date, according to CNN.

Ponomarev, who has opposed Putin in the past, was a member of the Russian parliament from 2007 to 2016, Reuters reported. In 2014, he became the only member of the parliament to vote against annexing Crimea.

He was impeached for not performing his duties in 2016 and moved to Kyiv, according to the Russian news agency TAAS.