STORY: A deadline for Ukrainian troops holed-up in Mariupol to lay down their arms came and went on Sunday (April 17).
Russia issued the ultimatum for the out-numbered soldiers who have been defending the smoldering Azovstal steelworks.
But several hours after the deadline, in the early hours of the morning, and there was no sign of surrender.
Azovstal – one of Europe’s largest metallurgical plants – has become a last stand for the defending forces.
Moscow says its solders have cleared the urban area of Mariupol and are almost completely in control.
Having failed to overcome Ukrainian resistance in the north, the Russian military is now focused on Donbas.
Capturing the eastern region’s main port city would be a major strategic prize for Russia – connecting territory it holds in Donbas with the Crimea region it annexed in 2014.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his government was in contact with the troops at Azovstal.
Speaking on Saturday (April 16) he accused Russia of trying to “destroy everyone” in Mariupol and said killing the soldiers would put paid to peace efforts.
It’s unclear how many soldiers are inside the steelworks. Satellite images have shown smoke and fire coming from the area, which is riddled with tunnels underneath.
Meanwhile Russia continued with long-range attacks on other locations in Ukraine, all part of what it calls a special military operation.
Local media reported an explosion in Kyiv, though the capital’s deputy mayor said air defense systems had thwarted Russian attacks.
The mayor of the nearby city Brovary said a missile attack had damaged infrastructure.
According to the RIA news agency, Russia said it had destroyed an ammunition factory near the capital.
Russia Loses Another General, Vows ‘Elimination’ of Resistance
Barbie Latza Nadeau – April 17, 2022
Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters
The dawn deadline Russia gave determined Ukrainian soldiers to surrender and lay down their weapons in Mariupol passed without incident on Sunday morning, as Vladimir Putin’s increasingly sloppy troops closed in on the strategic port city.
Russia’s defense ministry, still reeling from the loss of 8th Army Major General Vladimir Frolov in combat on Saturday, was just as determined, threatening to “eliminate” any Ukrainian and foreign troops trying to hold on to the battered city.
Russia has made considerable gains on the city after spending weeks trying to wipe it off the map. Western intelligence officials said it could fall to Russia soon, providing a key land bridge between Crimea and the eastern separatist regions it so desperately wants to take.
President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that his fighters had only a small part of the city under their control. “The situation is very difficult in Mariupol,” he said overnight Sunday, according to CNN. “Our soldiers are blocked, the wounded are blocked. There is a humanitarian crisis … Nevertheless, the guys are defending themselves.”
Russia warned in a statement Sunday that there were “up to 400 foreign mercenaries who joined the Ukrainian forces” huddling inside a steel plant, including many Europeans and Canadians who had come to support Ukrainian troops. “In case of further resistance, all of them will be eliminated,” the statement said.
Further north, heavy bombardment on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv killed and injured dozens of emergency workers and civilians, according to CNN which cited Kharkiv Regional Military Administration head Oleg Sinegubov. “They are currently receiving treatment in the hospital.” Sineguboy wrote on Telegram. “Thirty-one people were injured in Russian shelling, including four children.”
He also wrote that Russian forces were using aerial bombardment, after being pushed back on land. “The enemy cannot approach Kharkiv as our armed forces are holding strong positions and are even advancing in some directions,” he said. “Therefore, Russians resort to shameful shelling of residential neighborhoods.”
Bolstered by the gains in Mariupol and undeterred by the losses, Russian troops renewed efforts on Kyiv early Sunday, striking Brovary to the east. On Saturday, attacks on strategic targets further west in largely untouched Lviv also signaled that the war is at a turning point. Citing the Institute for the Study of War, the Washington Post reported Sunday that Russian troops were likely “setting conditions for a larger-scale, better-coordinated offensive.” Simply put, the worst may be yet to come.
Pandemic, war, and inflation has spurred some people to a life of ‘homesteading’ and ‘prepping.’ Here’s how these practitioners live off the land and plan for disaster.
Gabrielle Bienasz – April 16, 2022
The Green Gardens Homestead in Washington.
Homesteading is living off the land, but social media influencers have added a modern spin.
After the pandemic, war, and inflation, it’s grown even more attractive.
Prepping, another survivalist-style niche, has overlap with homesteading and has seen an uptick, too.
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Five years ago, Nivek Anderson-Brown and her husband moved to Virginia, where they now raise chickens, grow crops, sell at farmer’s markets, and broadcasts content on TikTok as the Leaf and Bean Farm — all part of the life of a 21st century, live-off-the-land homesteader.
“People were like, ‘Are you crazy?’ when we first did it. And then, when the pandemic happened, they were like, ‘Tell us what you did!'” Brown said.
Greens of Brown’s homestead.
In a time of chaotic supply chains, rising food prices, inflation, and war anxiety, being able to provide for yourself has a new glow, whether it’s through “homesteading” or its close cousin, “prepping,” 10 of the communities’ online members told Insider.
The homesteading life
“Any small amount of trying to grow your own food or preserving. That’s homesteading,” says Ciearra Evans, of The Thrifted Planer homestead.
But the lifestyle tends to build upon itself, Brown said. For example, she started out growing and drying herbs, then realized she had enough land to forage.
Once she did, she found a patch of the mint-like plant horehound — which led to her making homemade cough drops.
“It was just like one thing rolling into another,” she said. “It takes on a life of its own.”
Preserving at Brown’s homestead.
The term “homesteading” has been co-opted throughout history, from 1970s hippie communes to formerly enslaved Black Americans seeking land in Kansas to fundamentalist Christians raising children off the grid, said Brian Cannon, professor of history at Brigham Young University and author of a book about post-World War II homesteading.
“I think we have, in the US, dating clear back to Thomas Jefferson, the conviction that rural life is wholesome,” he added.
Chickens at Brown’s homestead.
Homesteading also can be a form of political or social dissent, according to a 2016 dissertation Jordan Travis Radke on modern homesteaders, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It’s a way to “opt out” of systems that feel entrenched, from the government to climate change, she wrote.
Many homesteaders tend to be white, Cannon said, which is no surprise, considering land is a key (but not essential) element of homesteading, and many Black Americans have lost land throughout US history.
It’s something on the minds of Evans and Brown, who try to garden and create content as well as give voices to Black homesteaders online.
“There aren’t a lot of people that look like me that do this,” Brown said.
Homesteader’s cousin
For some, homesteading can eventually or immediately evolve into “prepping,” a term coined for another survivalist-type niche that focuses on preparing for a harder or possibly more dystopian future, the perception of which has come to pass for some.
More preserved food at Brown’s homestead.
In particular, prepping has seen heightened interest as inflation has grown worse and amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-driven anxiety about food shortages, prepper-influencers told Insider.
Tiffany Holloway, an apartment-style prepper on TikTok, said her following grew by about tens of thousands in March amid increasing inflation.
Holloway herself got into prepping after the 2021 ice storms in Texas. One of her neighbors ran out of baby formula. “I ended up having to nurse her baby for her,” via pumping, Holloway said. “This whole experience taught me that you have to prepare.”
Holloway now teaches prepping on TikTok for people with small spaces and lower budgets, as well as focusing on prepping for potential domestic violence as a DV survivor herself – i.e., having a bag with a burner phone, money, and financial and identifying documents.
However, there can be a darker side to the prepper community, as far as folks who lean too far into extreme anxiety or paranoia.
Holloway said she finds some of the content on TikTok fear-monger-y, though she said that’s not her niche.
“I try to keep it pretty positive on my page,” she said.
Most preppers isolate and stay silent about their stores, something known as the “gray man” trope.
“People will become desperate. Ninety-five percent of people don’t have food at their house,” said Cam Hardy of The Casual Preppers Podcast.
If they know you have food, “they’ll know exactly where to go,” he said
2.7 million disabled Ukrainians, including children, are ‘trapped and abandoned’ in desperate circumstances as war rages on, warns UN
Bethany Dawson – April 16, 2022
A woman sits on her wheelchair beside houses destroyed by Russian shelling amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in SumyREUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
The UN has warned that the lives of 2.7 million people with disabilities in Ukraine are at risk.
Many people with disabilities are trapped in their homes and have no access to medication or food.
Very few recorded refugees are disabled, indicating most were forced to survive inside the war-torn country.
The United Nations has warned that the lives of 2.7 million people with disabilities in Ukraine are at risk due to Russia’s invasion.
The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities statement said people with disabilities “have limited or no access to emergency information, shelters and safe havens, and many have been separated from their support networks.”
It added that “there are ongoing reports that many people with disabilities, including children, are trapped or abandoned in their homes, residential care institutions and orphanages, with no access to life-sustaining medications, oxygen supplies, food, water, sanitation, support for daily living and other basic facilities.”
While more than 4.8 million people have fled Ukraine due to the war, the UN committee notes that very few of these people — or even those who are internally displaced — are disabled, indicating few have been able to leave their homes.
He said, “transporting refugees with disabilities often requires a lot of special tools, knowledgeable workers, and accessible accommodations, which can be expensive. Many of the organizations catering to refugees are not equipped to deal with refugees with disabilities.”
Anna Kaminski, a volunteer at the Ukraine-Poland border, told Insider that she hasn’t “seen any special provisions being made for the arrivals of elderly or disabled people.”
US military is already using lessons from the war in Ukraine for training soldiers: report
Sarah Al-Arshani – April 16, 2022
A US Army soldier fires an AT4 anti-armor weapon during an exercise at the Vaziani Training Area in Georgia, August 7, 2019.US Army/Spc. Ethan Valetski
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine featured a disinformation campaign and attacks on civilian areas.
The US is already using those lessons in army training for possible future wars, The AP reported.
US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the whole military is trying to learn lessons from Ukraine.
US Army trainers are already using lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine to train soldiers for potential future conflicts with adversaries like Russia or China, The Associated Press reported.
“I think right now the whole Army is really looking at what’s happening in Ukraine and trying to learn lessons,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told The AP.
According to The AP, this month’s training at National Training Center involves role-players that speak Russian. The scenario’s focus is on enemy forces that use social media to create propaganda about US troops as well as forces that use missiles in their effort to take over cities.
Wormuth told The AP that the crisis in Ukraine shows how important the information domain is going to be for US forces.
Brig. Gen. Curt Taylor said that the goal is to train brigades on how to use all their tools in combat to wage a coordinated attack, including countering misinformation online.
Another part of the training will focus on dealing with an enemy that’s willing to use missiles to strike civilian areas, The AP reported.
Russia has attacked hospitals, and apartment buildings, among other civilian buildings. Ukraine, alongside numerous other countries, has accused Russia of war crimes in the targetting of civilian areas.
“We’ve got to be prepared for urban combat where we have an adversary that is indiscriminately firing artillery,” Taylor said.
Ukraine citizens die at the hands of Russian military
Dan Tackett, Lincoln Courier – April 16, 2022
Dan Tackett is a retired managing editor of The Courier.
We, the people who live within the borders of the United States, have it made. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, Black, Caucasian or “other,” rich, poor or in between, our lives are pretty decent. Christian, Muslim, Jew, agnostic, atheist, whatever your beliefs or non-beliefs are, you at least can find peace in our great land.
Travel the globe and you might not find that to be the case elsewhere. I’m referring specifically to Ukraine. The country is being ravaged by a bloody war waged by a power-hungry madman.
A month ago, Ukrainians had good homes, schools, hospitals, farm fields and sea ports. People there had quiet, peaceful nights of sleep, climbed out of beds in the morning and headed off to schools or jobs in offices, factories, farms and shipping terminals. They returned home daily to spend good and happy times with families and loved ones. Lives being led there were not that different than those lived across the ocean in America.
That was then. Now, the world watches as the 24-hour news cycles describe on a daily basis how common life in Ukraine has turned into a bloodbath for its citizens. We expect soldiers to lose their lives in battles, but who among the civilized people of the world expects mothers, children, babies, the elderly and the defenseless to perish at the hands of an unflinching enemy? These aren’t isolated incidents involving the deaths of a few. Thousands have died at the hands of the Russian military.
It’s chilling to watch. People with hands bound and their bodies riddled with bullets as they lay dead on the streets. Large apartment and office buildings blown to bits. Entire cities reduced to rubble. Bomb craters pocking the once orderly landscape.
This isn’t Adolph Hitler’s Europe, but it resembles everything us Boomers have learned about those dark days of history. This is Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s doing, the vile, unspeakable acts carried out in the blink of an eye with no respect whatsoever for human life. So, this is war. It’s something our generation has never before witnessed.
Back in the good old U.S.A., we are preparing to celebrate and observe one of the most sacred of Christian holidays. Many Americans will don their finest Sunday garb and head to Easter services at the church of their choice. Lots of us will plop down at the dining table with families for a traditional holiday feast. We will linger after our meals and enjoy the peace and quiet and revel in the love of our families. No artillery shells or bombs will be exploding in our front yards.
Come Easter Sunday, will we even have thoughts during our peaceful celebrations about the hellish environment Russia has brought on Ukraine? About the deep miseries Ukrainians are experiencing over the loss of their homes and loved ones?
My Easter wishes for you, dear readers, is this: Do enjoy this blessed day and share your blessings with those you love. Love, after all, is a precious thing. But keep Ukraine and Ukrainians in your hearts and on your mind. They are fighting for a way of life that we Americans enjoy and too often take for granted. No, ours is not a perfect way of life. We have many scars and sore points that always seem to need attention. Sometimes attention is given; at other times, flames surrounding our divisive issues are only fanned.
If you are one who believes in prayer, say one for our fellow human beings in Ukraine.
And, a blessed and happy Easter to you all.
I’M NOT DISAPPEARING
This past week, I’ve received a couple of notes from readers who are upset that after April 30, The Courier will no longer print and distribute copies of its Saturday editions. Beyond that date, the Saturday newspaper won’t be a paper at all; it will only be available in digital, online form at lincolncourier.com.
The letter writers are aware of that change, but they have a problem: They don’t have computers or cell phones with Internet access. Specifically, they voiced concerns about their inability to read my column each week. I’m quite flattered.
I started writing columns for The Courier’s Saturday editions in 2012, after I had left the newspaper’s news staff after nearly 45 years, first as a wet-behind-the-ears cub reporter and at the tail end, as The Courier’s managing editor. Somewhere along those four and a half decades, my red blood had morphed into the midnight black of newspaper ink.
I was encouraged to write a weekly column by a Gatehouse executive who was involved with my departure from the staff. “It will be a way to stay connected with your readers,” he told me. The exec dangled a carrot – a slim carrot, mind you – of paying a few bucks for each column I produced. Carrots aside, I didn’t take him up on the offer.
I never wrote a single word for the newspaper until December 2012, when I received a phone call from Nathan Woodside, who I had hired as a reporter before my departure. He mentioned the death of longtime Lincoln Alderman Orville “Buzz” Busby. I had covered Lincoln City Council meetings for almost 40 years and had come to know and respect Busby for his outspoken ways during those meetings.
“We really need to publish an editorial or column about this guy, and nobody on staff really had any dealings with him,” Woodside said. “Nobody on staff knew him, not like you did.” He asked if I would do the honors. Yes, I replied, and what an honor it was. I truly thought Busby was one of the best aldermen during my tenure of covering city government. On Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, The Courier published the column I wrote about Busby and, since then, I’ve never stopped writing.
To address the concerns of those wonderful letter-writers, fear not! I’m not hanging up my pen, and I’m not turning into Digital Dan. Beginning May 4, my column will start appearing in the Wednesday print editions of The Courier. So, to those worried gals who sent me those notes, don’t do anything foolish such as buying a home computer or cell phone.
Ukraine’s biggest steelmaker vows to never work under Russian occupation
Sam Tabahriti – April 16, 2022
Ukraine’s biggest steelmaker vows to never work under Russian occupation
Metinvest, Ukraine’s leading steelmaker, vows that it will never work under Russian occupation.
The company is controlled by Rinat Akhmetov – the country’s richest man.
It said in a statement seen by Reuters that a third of production capacity was out of action.
Ukraine’s biggest steelmaker Metinvest vowed on Friday that it will never work under Russian occupation.
Reuters reported the news, citing a company statement, which was sent to the agency:
“We believe in the victory of Ukraine and plan to resume production after the end of hostilities. Metinvest’s metallurgical enterprises will never operate under Russian occupation,” the statement said.
Per Reuters, the company also said that more than a third of Ukraine’s metallurgy production capacity was out of service due to the siege of Mariupol.
“The country has therefore lost 30-40% of its metallurgical production capacity since the plants are not working. We have no doubt that their work will be resumed, but for this Mariupol must remain Ukrainian,” the statement added, according to Reuters.
Metinvest is Ukraine’s leading steelmaker, according to data published by Statista in September 2021. The company is controlled by Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s richest man, who has a net worth of $3.9 billion according to Forbes.
The company added that it had no way of gauging damages at present, due to the fighting taking place.
In a previous statement, which was released on their website Tuesday, the company said: “Assets in Avdiivka and Mariupol have reportedly sustained further damage from hostilities in the cities where they are located.”
It added: “Until the active stage of the Russian military aggression is stopped and reliable communications channels with the plants are re-established, it is not possible to assess its impact on the Group’s plants.”
Metinvest did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment made outside of normal working hours.
Russia faces pressure to turn the tide in Ukraine in time for country’s Victory Day
Henry Austin – April 16, 2022
Russia’s annual Victory Day, celebrated on May 9, arrives this year with the shadow of war in Ukraine looming over it.
The holiday commemorates Russia’s World War II triumph with a patriotic display of raw military power: Troops parade through Moscow’s Red Square alongside military hardware including intercontinental ballistic missile launchers. President Vladimir Putin has stood at the center of celebrations since 1999, either as president or prime minister, and has been joined by Soviet war veterans.
Image: Russian RS-24 Yars ballistic missiles roll in Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow on June 24, 2020. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP file)
Why is it so important?
Although Nazi Germany ended all its military operations at 23:01 Central European Time (5:01 p.m. ET) on May 8, 1945, Russia celebrated victory on May 9 because the change in time zone meant it came early that morning for them. Other former Soviet nations and some Eastern European nations do likewise.
For the former Soviet Union, the victory parade that followed was “very important because it gave it the status of world power, so they were celebrating that glory,” said Thornike Gordadze, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank based in London.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent economic hardship in Russia, Putin took office and tried to make the defeat of Nazism the country’s “founding myth to cement the population together and create a Russian identity,” Gordadze said.
Writing in 2015 about his personal experiences of the war, Putin said his infant brother Viktor was killed and his parents were seriously injured during the siege of Leningrad, which lasted from 1941 to 1944 in the city now known as St. Petersburg.
RUSSIA-HISTORY-WWII-ANNIVERSARY (Mikhail Metzel / Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)
Putin now uses his annual speech at the parade to “talk about contemporary security issues,” said Ben Soodavar, a political scientist in the war studies department at King’s College London. “It speaks to Russia’s purpose in world politics.”
For Putin, he said, it was a way of communicating to the Russian people that “he is the person to lead this country through adversity, as was the case in 1945 when Russia overcame Nazism.”
What will Putin do?
On Victory Day itself, Putin “can’t line up his soldiers and say they’re winning,” Soodavar said. “They have lost thousands.”
Members of Russia’s armed forces “may disagree with their leaders but they don’t do it publicly,” Soodavar he said. “It’s not just fear of retribution, it’s also a fear of being accused of disloyalty. It’s to do with keeping Russia’s pride intact.”
Will Victory Day affect the campaign in Ukraine?
The Russian military is facing pressure to deliver results in time for Putin’s Victory Day speech “because there are serious implications surrounding the key word ‘victory,’” Soodavar said.
The tactical retreat by Russian forces from the areas surrounding Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv in early April make it “look like they’re defeated, like they couldn’t take over the key strategic objective that they were looking for,” he said.
As a result Putin “will need to sell this shambolic military campaign in some way,” Soodavar said, adding that the most immediate way to do this would be to take firm control of Ukraine’s Donbas region and other parts of the country’s east.
Image: Sukhoi Su-25 assault aircrafts release smoke in the colours of the Russian flag while flying over central Moscow during the Victory Day military parade on May 9, 2021 (Alexander Nemenov / AFP via Getty Images file)
However, he cautioned that Ukraine’s “best fighters are stationed there,” and have been fighting Moscow-backed separatist forces since 2014 when Russia threw its weight behind an insurgency in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions after annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
“They have been fighting on the front line for the last eight years. They are battle hardened, they know who their adversary is, they’re entrenched and they’re only emboldened by the Russian retreat from Kyiv,” he added.
This, he said, raised questions about whether Putin would be able to truly project the powerful image he has presented on Victory Day.
What about other Eastern European countries where Victory Day is celebrated?
In some former Soviet republics where Victory Day is also held on May 9, “they will do everything to celebrate but keep it away from Russian success,” Gordadze said. That’s also true of countries with large Russian-speaking populations like Estonia, Latvia and Moldova, he added.
A woman holds a portrait of a relative who fought in World War II on Victory Day on May 9, 2021, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Celestino Arce / NurPhoto via Getty Images file)
So “it is unlikely we will see Russian flags,” but people will mark the occasion and commemorate the dead, he said.
It will also be a big day in Ukraine and for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he said.
“Some Ukrainians believed when Zelenskky was elected that he was a pro-Russian candidate,” Gordadze said. “Now they don’t think so, because he’s the guy who represents the whole of Ukrainian society, including Russian speakers.”
Finland and Sweden appear to be edging closer to joining NATO, a move that leaders and experts see as the best way to confront Russia as it escalates its rhetoric on nuclear weapons.
The conflict in Ukraine has forced the two Nordic nations to reconsider their absence from the alliance forged after World War II, which commits members to defending one another if attacked.
“Mr. Putin is proving NATO relevant and necessary,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “If NATO didn’t exist, you’d have to invent it.”
“Finland in particular but also Sweden are very stoic on these matters and see Russia with clear eyes. And that’s why I think ultimately they will join NATO because they’ve seen Russia’s revisionist threat has been building. And now it has boiled over with the invasion of Ukraine, and there’s kind of no way back, and the best way for them to secure themselves against the threat posed by Russia is to join NATO.”
As politicians and poll results in the two countries have reversed course on the prospect — favoring joining NATO after decades of abstaining — Moscow has renewed its threat of using nuclear weapons.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and former president of Russia, wrote in a Telegram post on Thursday that “there can be no talk of non-nuclear status for the Baltic” if Finland and Sweden join NATO, adding that “the balance must be restored.”
He said that should Finland and Sweden become part of the alliance, Moscow would need to “seriously strengthen the grouping of land forces and air defense, deploy significant naval forces in the waters of the Gulf of Finland.”
It’s a particularly concerning threat to Finland, which shares an 800-mile border with Russia.
Finnish Minister for European Affairs Tytti Tuppurainen said Friday that it is “highly likely” her country will join NATO, calling Russia’s “brutal” war in Ukraine a “wake-up call to us all.”
That eagerness could also put more pressure on Sweden, which would be left as the only Nordic country outside the alliance and which would break its longstanding practice of neutrality by joining.
“The fact that these countries were not on track to join NATO three months ago and now they are is definitely a response to Russian aggression. Russia should realize its aggression against Ukraine has spooked a lot of countries, even to the point that a country like Sweden, which has a 200-year history of nonalignment, is now looking at actually joining NATO,” said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who also served as a special envoy on Ukraine.
“Finlandization was coined as a word to describe the Soviet Union’s insistence that Finland not exercise its own choices on security. Now they’re going to do it anyway. So in that sense, these are definitely responses to Russian aggression, and it’s probably good for Russia to realize that,” he added.
NATO expansionists are hopeful the two countries will formally signal their intention before NATO’s June meeting in Madrid, where members could sign an accession protocol that would also need to be individually approved by each country’s legislative body.
Experts say they are likely to be welcomed into the alliance.
“They have advanced, modern militaries and are seen as security providers versus security consumers,” Monaghan said.
But beyond the practical defense implications, the move would also send a significant message.
“This takes place within the context of what President Biden has called the contest between autocracies and democracies. So certainly membership would project an image of Western solidarity, transatlantic solidarity and I think would be an injection of democratic values into NATO, so that would be visible to Russia as well,” said Gene Germanovich, an international defense researcher with the Rand Corporation.
Once newcomers are invited by NATO members, each of the 30 member countries would have to go through their own process for approving the treaty, a task that can last years but one that experts are hoping with proper motivation could take as little as a few months.
Volker said he was hopeful Sweden would complete its own internal decision-making prior to the June summit.
“NATO summit leaders … want to be able to make this decision once and then they want to close any gray zone between going to be a member of NATO but not yet a member of NATO and ultimately becoming a member of NATO — they want to close that gap as quickly as possible,” he said.
But there are a few potential sticking points.
Leo Michel, a former director for NATO policy at the Department of Defense, said Hungary is the international player most likely to slow walk the ratification, while any opposing word from former President Trump, a frequent NATO critic, could complicate getting consensus in the U.S. Senate, where a two-thirds vote for approval is needed.
“Given the closeness of Viktor Orban in Hungary to Putin, I could imagine at least that Hungary might be slow to ratify,” said Michel, now a fellow with the Atlantic Council.
“Given the way Trump treated NATO … I’m a little bit nervous that they will get all of the necessary Republican votes. Maybe they will in the end … [but] I actually don’t think it will be easy,” he said.
“If he finds this something else to attack the administration on, there may be some people who listen to that and don’t want to go crossways with him,” he added.
It’s not clear how Russia might respond to a NATO expansion, though experts view ground action as unlikely.
“If you look at Russia’s current predicament, from a conventional forces perspective they’re very occupied needless to say in Ukraine, so it would be difficult to redirect substantial forces to the North,” Germanovich said.
But Russia would seek to punish alliance members via other means such as disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks as well as potentially acting on its nuclear threats.
“Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons,” CIA Director William Burns said in a speech Thursday.
“While we’ve seen some rhetorical posturing on the part of the Kremlin about moving to higher nuclear alert levels, so far we haven’t seen a lot of practical evidence of the kind of deployments or military dispositions that would reinforce that concern,” Burns said. “But we watch for that very intently, it’s one of our most important responsibilities at CIA.”
Joining NATO would show Finland and Sweden do take Russia seriously, even as they buck any pressure from Putin.
“Presumably Mr. Putin will be unhappy with Finland and Sweden joining NATO. One of the purported reasons for going into Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, so if Finland and Sweden do join, he’ll have only have himself to blame,” Monaghan said.
“And there will be quite some kind of poetic justice, as it were, if NATO could prove the open-door policy that Putin wanted to slam shut,” he added.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 23: Mobile billboard commissioned by Media Matters for America circles Fox studio event warning advertisers about Fox News’ Russia coverage on March 23, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Media Matters for America) (Jesse Grant via Getty Images)
As Western leaders introduced sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said seizing personal property from Russian oligarchs went too far.
“No American government had ever done anything like that before,” he said.
While the segment was aimed at Fox News’ conservative audience, it found another audience in Russia. The argument was parroted beat by beat by RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, which wrote that “the average U.S. citizen is simply horrified by what is happening.”
The narratives advanced by the Kremlin and by parts of conservative U.S. media have converged in recent months, reinforcing and feeding each other. Along the way, Russian media has increasingly seized on Fox News’ prime-time segments, its opinion pieces and even the network’s active online comments section — all of which often find fault with the Biden administration — to paint a critical portrait of the United States and depict its foreign policy as a threat to Russia’s interests. Carlson was a frequent reference for Russian media, but other Fox News personalities — and the occasional news update from the network — were also included.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has made several false claims about the war — including that Russia never attacked Ukraine — singled out Fox News for praise last month.
“We understood long ago that there is no such thing as an independent Western media,” Lavrov told the state television station RT, adding that “only Fox News is trying to present some alternative point of view.”
Mentions of Fox News in Russian-language media grew 217% during the first quarter of this year compared with the final quarter of last year as news coverage of Ukraine increased, according to an analysis by Zignal Labs, a media tracking company that reviewed social media posts, broadcast media and online websites. CNN, which has about three times the global viewership of Fox News, according to tracking company Similarweb, was mentioned more often but grew less, by 71%.
When reached for comment, a Fox News spokesperson pointed to segments in which Carlson was critical of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.
To better understand Fox News’ presence in Russian state media, The New York Times reviewed nearly 500 Russian-language articles mentioning Fox News between July and late March, sourced from the two largest state news agencies in the country — RIA Novosti and Tass — along with dozens of articles from other Russian-language media.
Here are four ways Russian media has used Fox News to bolster the government’s narrative about the war.
1. Blaming NATO Expansion
The echoing narratives were clear from the eve of the invasion. Putin warned that he would use “military technical measures” if threatened by NATO.
When Douglas Macgregor, a retired Army colonel, repeated Russia’s argument on Carlson’s show, it did not take long for Russian news media to cite him.
“He pointed out that Russia does not want to see American and NATO troops near its borders, just like the U.S. wouldn’t want to see Russian troops in Cuba,” said one article from Tsargrad, a pro-Putin Russian television channel. “This is a perfectly logical position.”
Tsargrad was started in 2015 with help from John Hanick, a former Fox News producer. Hanick was charged last month with violating U.S. sanctions. Federal prosecutors accused him of helping a Russian oligarch spread “destabilizing messages.”
2. Buttressing Conspiracy Theories
The unsupported idea that the United States was developing bioweapons in Ukraine has been nurtured for years in Russia. It found new resonance during the invasion of Ukraine.
After a Senate hearing on the matter, in which Victoria Nuland, an undersecretary of state, confirmed the existence of biolabs in Ukraine, Carlson used his show to suggest that the U.S. government was being untruthful about conducting bioweapons work in the country. Russian media seized on the segment.
“The U.S. baselessly accused Russia of spreading disinformation about biolabs in Ukraine because they later actually confirmed their existence, TV presenter Tucker Carlson told Fox News,” Radio Sputnik wrote in an article summarizing Carlson’s lengthy segment for a Russian audience.
3. Questioning the West’s Goals
Interviews with pundits and politicians were also used to undermine the West’s support of Ukraine. Joe Kent, a Republican candidate for the House from Washington state, said on Fox News that the West’s support of Ukraine was killing people, because the support was giving Ukraine an incentive not to agree to a peace deal with Russia.
Tass quickly repeated his criticisms.
“According to the Republican, whose candidacy was supported by former U.S. leader Donald Trump, the escalation in Ukraine is ‘a great way to divert attention from the political crisis’ within the United States,” the article said.
4. Criticizing President Joe Biden
Russian media frequently highlighted stories from Fox News that were critical of Biden.
Nearly 400 Russian-language stories mentioned Fox News the week that Biden directed an under-the-breath expletive at Peter Doocy, a Fox News reporter, according to Zignal Labs. The exchange was repeated for weeks in stories criticizing the president’s fitness for the job.
As the invasion began, attention shifted to questioning Biden’s motives. One article by Prime, a Russian news agency, detailed Carlson’s argument that Biden had encouraged the conflict to make “fossil fuels unaffordable for the average person and that way, people would have no choice but to switch” to renewable energy.
“The broadcaster said such reforms would jeopardize American industry, impoverish entire cities and make the United States dependent on Chinese solar panels,” the article said.
