Graves of civilians killed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are seen next to apartment buildings in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine. (Reuters)Pro-Russian troops drive armoured vehicles on a road outside the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine. (Reuters)
Watch: Ukraine says it has found more than 1,200 bodies near Kyiv
On Monday, the 36th marine brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces said it had been defending Mariupol for 47 days from Russian attack.
In a statement posted on Facebook, it said: “Today will probably be the last battle, as the ammunition is running out.
“It’s death for some of us, and captivity for the rest.
“The mountain of wounded makes up almost half of the brigade. Those whose limbs are not torn off return to battle.
“The infantry was all killed and the shooting battles are now conducted by artillerymen, anti-aircraft gunners, radio operators, drivers and cooks. Even the orchestra.”
A view of a destroyed armoured vehicle in the city of Mariupol. (Getty Images)The Ukrainian port city of Mariupol has seen intense fighting in the Russian invasion. (Getty Images)
The marines said they are doing “everything possible and impossible” to keep control of the city, but that they have been pinned down by the Russians.
The brigade said “the enemy gradually pushed us back” and “surrounded us with fire and is now trying to destroy us” in the the city’s port and iron and steel works.
The marines said there had been a lack of support from Ukraine’s military leadership “because we’ve been written off”.
Speaking via video link to South Korea’s parliament, he said: “Mariupol has been destroyed, there are tens of thousands of dead, but even despite this, the Russians are not stopping their offensive.”
A British defence intelligence assessment said WP had already been used by Russia in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Emergency workers outside a building destroyed by Russian shelling in the city of Mariupol, Ukraine. (Reuters)
White phosphorus is used for illumination at night or to create a smokescreen, but when it is deployed as a weapon it causes horrific burns.
The intelligence assessment published by the Ministry of Defence on Monday said: “Russian forces’ prior use of phosphorus munitions in the Donetsk Oblast raises the possibility of their future employment in Mariupol as fighting for the city intensifies.”
The MoD said Russian forces had continued shelling in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of eastern Ukraine, but Kyiv’s troops had repulsed “several assaults”.
Ukraine says tens of thousands killed in Mariupol, accuses Russia of slowing evacuations
Pavel Polityuk – April 11, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukraine said on Monday that tens of thousands of people have likely been killed in Russia’s assault on Mariupol and Russian forces have slowed down evacuations from the besieged southeastern city, where conditions are desperate.
“Mariupol has been destroyed, there are tens of thousands of dead, but even despite this, the Russians are not stopping their offensive,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to South Korean lawmakers.
Reuters has confirmed widespread destruction in Mariupol but could not verify the accuracy of his estimate of those killed in the strategic city, which lies between Russian-annexed Crimea and eastern areas of Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists.
If confirmed, it would be by far the largest number of dead so far reported in one place in Ukraine, where cities, towns and villages have come under relentless bombardment and many bodies, including of civilians, have been seen in the streets.
The head of the Russia-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, told Russia’s RIA news agency on Monday that more than 5,000 people may have been killed in Mariupol. He said Ukrainian forces were responsible.
Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to the mayor of Mariupol, said on the Telegram messaging service that numbers of people leaving the city had fallen, not because people did not want to escape but because Russian forces had slowed pre-departure checks.
Around 10,000 people were awaiting screening by Russian forces, he said. Russia does not allow military personnel to leave with civilian evacuees. There was no immediate comment from Moscow, which has previously blamed Ukraine for blocking evacuations.
Mariupol was among nine humanitarian corridors agreed with Russia on Monday to evacuate people from besieged eastern regions, but its corridor was for private cars only, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.
It was not possible to agree the provision of buses, she said.
Ukraine says Russian forces are massing for a new offensive on eastern areas, including Mariupol, where people have been without water, food and energy supplies for weeks. Moscow calls its invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation”.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; writing by Conor Humphries; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Ukraine says troops still holding out in besieged Mariupol
By Maria Starkova – April 11, 2022
LVIV, Ukraine, April 11 (Reuters) – Ukraine said on Monday its forces were still holding out in the port of Mariupol, where Russia was renewing its assault in a siege believed to have killed thousands of trapped civilians.
“Communication with the units of the defence forces heroically holding the city is stable and maintained,” Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said on Facebook.
“We are doing the possible and impossible for the victory and the preservation of the lives of personnel and civilians in all directions. Believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine!”Report ad
Earlier, a post on the Facebook page of a brigade of marines holding out in the city said they had run out of ammunition and were now facing death or capture, with Monday likely to be the “ultimate battle”.
Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to the Mariupol mayor, said on social mediathat the marines’ page had been hacked and the post was fake. Reuters could not independently verify it.
After having driven Russian forces away from the capital Kyiv this month, Ukraine is now preparing for a new Russian mass assault on eastern territory, which Russia now says is its main objective.Report ad
If the ruins of Mariupol finally fall after nearly seven weeks of siege, it would be the first major city captured by Russia since the war began. Russian forces advancing from Crimea would be able to link up with those pushing in from the east and turn their attention to encircling Ukraine’s main force in the area.
“There are tens of thousands of dead, but even despite this, the Russians are not stopping their offensive,” Zelenskiy told South Korea’s parliament by videolink, describing Russia’s assault on the city, which had 400,000 residents before the war.Report ad
Reuters could not verify the accuracy of his estimate, but the United Nations has also said it believes thousands of people have died in Mariupol, which has been completely cut off from food, electricity or water since February.
British intelligence said Ukrainian forces had already pushed back several Russian assaults in eastern regions.
In Moscow, Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer became the first European Union leader to meet President Vladimir Putin face-to-face since the war began.
In a statement after the meeting, Nehammer said the discussion with Putin was “very direct, open and tough”. He added that his most important message to Putin was that the war in Ukraine must end because “in a war there are only losers on both sides”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin would not halt its operation for any new round of peace talks.
“A decision was made that during the next rounds of talks, there would be no pause (in military action) so long as a final agreement is not reached,” Lavrov said.
Russia now says its the aim of what it calls a “special military operation” is to support independence declarations by separatists it has backed since 2014, who have laid claim to the entire Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. That includes Mariupol and other cities long still held by Ukraine.
People fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine walk on a train platform at a railway station in Sloviansk, Ukraine, April 10, 2022. REUTERS/Marko DjuricaResidents carry their belongings near buildings destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict, in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 10, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander ErmochenkoMilitary sappers dismount a machine gun from a Russian tank destroyed during Russia’s invasion near the village of Motyzhyn, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 10, 2022. REUTERS/Mykola TymchenkoA resident walks near a building destroyed in the course of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 10, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander ErmochenkoA rescuer stands on the rubble of a building destroyed by Russian shelling, as they start searching for bodies, amid Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, in Borodyanka, Kyiv region, Ukraine April 10, 2022. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
Residents carry their belongings near buildings destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict, in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 10, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
Britain’s defence ministry said Russian shelling continued in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But Ukrainian forces had beaten back several assaults and destroyed Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery equipment, it said in its regular intelligence bulletin.
“WE WILL ANSWER”
Addressing South Korea’s parliament, Zelenskiy said Russia was concentrating tens of thousands of soldiers for the next offensive.
Russia’s defence ministry said its sea-launched missiles on Sunday destroyed S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems which had been supplied to Ukraine by a European country. The systems were concealed in a hangar on the outskirts of Dnipro in central Ukraine, it said. Reuters could not confirm this.
As Russian forces have retreated from the outskirts of Kyiv they left behind evidence of Ukrainian civilians killed under their occupation, in what Western countries have condemned as war crimes. Moscow has rejected the accusations and denies targeting civilians.
Last week, Russia also killed 57 people, according to Ukrainian officials, in a missile strike on a train station in the Donetsk region, where thousands of civilians were trying to flee the expected new Russian advance. Moscow denied blame for the strike. The Russian missile that hit the station had the words “for the children” written on the side.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai, speaking to Ukrainian television on Monday, said shelling in the region was increasing day by day.
“The most difficult situation is in Rubizhne and Popasna. They are being shelled constantly, round the clock,” Gaidai said, referring to cities in the region.
He urged all civilians to evacuate.
“Those that wanted to leave have already left, while now many are left in bomb shelters who are perhaps frightened to come out of the shelters, or scared to lose their possessions.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, speaking before a meeting of European ministers in Luxembourg, said Berlin saw “massive indications” of war crimes in Ukraine.
French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) became the latest company to retreat from Russia, agreeing to sell its stake in Rosbank and the Russian lender’s insurance subsidiaries to Interros Capital, a firm linked to billionaire Vladimir Potanin.
Several EU ministers said on Monday the bloc’s executive was drafting proposals for an oil embargo on Russia, although there was still no agreement to ban Russian crude. read more
The World Bank forecast the war would cause Ukraine’s economic output to collapse by 45% this year, with half of its businesses shuttered, grain exports mostly cut off by Russia’s naval blockade and destruction rendering economic activity impossible in many areas. read more
The bank forecast Russia’s economy would contract by 11.2% this year due to the Western sanctions.
Reporting by Reuters bureaus Writing by Lincoln Feast, Angus MacSwan and Peter Graff Editing by Stephen Coates, Nick Macfie and Tomasz Janowski
Russia Airs Its Ultimate ‘Revenge Plan’ for America
Julia Davis – April 11, 2022
Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
As Russia’s war of aggression continues to ravage its neighbor, the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus has been more blatant than ever in outlining the country’s goals for its biggest nemesis: the U.S.
Last week, American intelligence officials reportedly assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin may use the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as a pretext to order a new campaign to interfere in U.S. elections. Though AP reported that “it is not yet clear which candidates Russia might try to promote or what methods it might use,” Russian state media seem to be in agreement that former U.S. President Donald Trump remains Moscow’s candidate of choice.
The time is coming “to again help our partner Trump to become president,” state TV host Evgeny Popov recently declared. On Thursday’s edition of the state television show The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, Putin’s pet pundits offered an update on plans for 2024.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html
“We’re trying to feel our way, figuring out the first steps. What can we do in 2023, 2024?,” Russian “Americanist” Malek Dudakov, a political scientist specializing in the U.S., said. He suggested that Russia’s interference in the upcoming elections is still in its early stages, and that more will be accomplished after the war is over and frosty relations between the U.S. and Russia start to warm up. “When things thaw out and the presidential race for 2024 is firmly on the agenda, there’ll be moments we can use,” he added. “The most banal approach I can think of is to invite Trump—before he announces he’s running for President—to some future summit in liberated Mariupol.”
Dmitry Drobnitsky, an omnipresent “Americanist” on Soloviev’s show, suggested that Tulsi Gabbard should be invited along with Trump. Dudakov agreed: “Tulsi Gabbard would also be great. Maybe Trump will take her as his vice-president?” Gabbard has recently become a fixture of state television for her pro-Russian talking points, and has even been described as a “Russian agent” by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.
If state television is any indication, the real agenda of the Kremlin’s operatives was never limited to boosting any particular candidates, but rather aimed to harm America as a whole. Dudakov stressed: “With Europe, economic wars should take priority. With America, we should be working to amplify the divisions and—in light of our limited abilities—to deepen the polarization of American society.”
Watch:Biden vows to ‘ratchet up the pain’ on Putin to increase economic isolation
He went on: “There is a horrific polarization of society in the United States, very serious conflicts between the Democrats and Republicans that keep expanding. You’ve already mentioned that America is a dying empire—and most empires weren’t conquered, they were destroyed from within. The same fate likely awaits America in the near decade. That’s why, when all the processes are thawed, Russia might get the chance to play on that.”
Dudakov’s Twitter feed, which he maintains despite the service being blocked in Russia, offers a glimpse into his own propaganda efforts. Tweeting as “Duderman67,” Dudakov focuses on criticizing U.S. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton—while boosting Trump.
On his Thursday show, host Soloviev argued that Russia wasn’t fighting against the United States with full competency just yet, and griped about losing the main weapon behind enemy lines: “the brilliantly working structure of RT,” the Kremlin-funded state TV network that was banished from U.S. cable stations last month.
He then offered up his own ideas about how to influence American voters without the help of RT: “I would act through various diasporas. For example, I would work with the Spanish-speaking media—since America is becoming predominantly Spanish-speaking, with the colossal influence of Latin America, I would work through their press, through those narratives, moving in that direction… they aren’t allowing us to work with American media directly, but we have many opportunities that we aren’t using thus far.”
Appearing on Soloviev’s show two days earlier, Vitaly Tretyakov, dean of the Moscow State University’s School of Television, complained that Russia: “had military hypersonic weapons, but we don’t have informational hypersonic weapons… all of our forces need to be dedicated to that. We don’t have info-weapons equal in strength to our hypersonic weapons… as opposed to what they have. You can’t survive in this world without winning an info-war. That is out of the question.”
Pundit Karen Shakhnazarov suggested: “I would find it useful to break diplomatic relations with the United States. I don’t see any point in maintaining them. And that would deliver a crushing blow to Biden. There are plenty of people in the U.S. who say that he is bringing us all to the edge of nuclear war. That will be a strong signal.”
That wasn’t the only talk of nuclear war on Soloviev’s show this week. On Thursday, Soloviev confirmed a well-known concept frequently aired on state media when he acknowledged: “De facto, we aren’t fighting a campaign against Ukraine, but against the entire West.” A parade of pundits recounted various ways U.S. sanctions are affecting the Russian economy, and the limited avenues for Russian retaliation. Soloviev resorted to pulling out his beloved trump card designed to intimidate the West: the threat of nuclear war. He asked: “Maybe it’s time we strike them? Since we’re already a pariah state, a war criminal, if everything is so bad.”
Short of nuclear holocaust, it is now clear that Russia is focusing its efforts on distracting America from its foreign policy objectives by threatening to meddle in U.S. internal affairs. Speaking about the upcoming midterm elections on Soloviev’s show last week, Konstantin Dolgov, the deputy chairman of the Committee on Economic Policy of Russia’s Federation Council, predicted that “the results will apparently not be good for the Democrats,” because of rising gas prices in the U.S. But the midterms, he emphasized, are “just a rehearsal. The main elections are further ahead and preparations for those are already underway.”
Putin accused of ‘massive strategic blunder’ that could boost strength of Nato
Kate Buck – April 11, 2022
Vladimir Putin made a “massive strategic blunder” in invading Ukraine, Western officials have said. (AP)
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a “massive strategic blunder” that could result in an expansion of Nato as early as this summer, officials have claimed.
According to the Times, US officials reportedly confirmed that membership of the alliance for Sweden and Finland was “a topic of conversation” during talks between Western foreign ministers last week attended by representatives of both Nordic countries.
It is thought the two nations could launch a bid for Nato membership in the coming months in the wake of Russia’s widely condemned military assault.
One former Finnish prime minister told CNN the move to join “was pretty much a done deal on the 24th of February, when Russia invaded.”
Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin said over the weekend it was time for her nation to seriously reconsider where they stand on their foreign policy. (AP)
Finland has been officially neutral since signing a pact with Russia in 1948, agreeing to never join a military alliance hostile to Russia, or allowing its territory to be in an attack against Russia.
But Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin said over the weekend it was time for her nation to seriously reconsider where they stand on their foreign policy.
A man with a bicycle walks in front of a destroyed apartment building in the town of Borodyanka, Ukraine. (AP)An emergency worker stands by the multi-storey building destroyed in a Russian air raid at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. (AP)
She said: “Russia is not the neighbour we thought it was. I think we will have very careful discussions, but we are also not taking any more time than we have to in this process, because the situation is, of course, very severe.”
Sweden is in the midst of a review into its security policy which will finish at the end of May.
It is also in a long-standing neutrality agreement with Russia but recent polls have shown 60% of people favour joining Nato if Finland does.
The Swedish prime minister said two weeks ago: “I do not exclude Nato membership in any way.”
Putin made ‘big mistake’ invading Ukraine: NATO chief
NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg says that ‘Putin has made a big mistake’ invading Ukraine, as he arrives at a summit of the alliance in Brussels. –Duration: 00:19
Moscow has been clear that it opposes any chance for Nato to get larger.
Responding to the reports on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said joining the alliance would not bring any further security to Europe.
He said the bloc “is not that kind of alliance which ensures peace and stability, and its further expansion will not bring additional security to the European continent”.
Since invading Ukraine on 24 February, Nato has increased the number of troops on the eastern flank tenfold, stationing 40,000 from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told the Telegraph Nato is “in the midst of a very fundamental transformation” that will reflect “the long-term consequences” of Putin’s forces.
He added: “What we see now is a new reality, a new normal for European security. Therefore, we have now asked our military commanders to provide options for what we call a reset, a longer-term adaptation of Nato.”
Boris Johnson met with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a visit to Kyiv at the weekend (Reuters)
Russia has previously warned of “serious military-political consequences” if the two countries were to join Nato.
It comes amid reports Russia is planning to alter its strategy to target the south east of Ukraine after being thwarted in their attempts to take control of major cities.
A Western official said: “The Russian plan has been a failure at this point, and they are having to readjust.
“The strategy is obviously being adjusted and diminished considerably from where they started off and that is an enormous achievement on the part of the Ukrainian fighters and their government.”
The official said Moscow is looking to double or possibly treble the number of forces it has in the Donbas region as part of the next phase of the conflict.
Reports continue to emerge of war crimes being committed by Russian troops.
Mass graves have been uncovered after civilians were deliberately targeted, and there have been widespread reports of soldiers raping Ukrainian women.
Russian foreign minister says Russia’s war with Ukraine is ‘meant to put an end’ to US world domination, NATO expansion
Natalie Musumeci – April 11, 2022
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly said Russia’s war with Ukraine is “meant to” stop US-led global domination.
“This domination is built on gross violations of international law,” Lavrov said, according to RT.
Russia President Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Russia’s unprovoked war with Ukraine is “meant to put an end” to US-led global domination and the expansion of NATO, according to a report.
“Our special military operation is meant to put an end to the unabashed expansion [of NATO] and the unabashed drive towards full domination by the US and its Western subjects on the world stage,” Lavrov told the state-owned television news channel Rossiya 24, according to a translation from Russian state-run media outlet RT.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talks about the emotional toll of the Ukraine war, in an exclusive video interview with German newspaper BILD.
Additionally, Lavrov accused the United States of international law violations due to what he said were America’s attempts to impose its own “rules-based international order,” according to the report.
“This domination is built on gross violations of international law and under some rules, which they are now hyping so much and which they make up on a case-by-case basis,” Lavrov said during the interview, RT reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, with Russian troops surrounding and shelling towns and cities across the country.
When Putin announced his invasion of Ukraine, he said he was seeking the “denazification” of Ukraine, a country whose democratically-elected leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.
“The goal of Russia’s special military operation is to stop any war that could take place on Ukrainian territory or that could start from there,” Lavrov said, according to a tweet that was posted by the Russian embassy in London.
Since Russia invaded, Ukrainian forces have put up fierce resistance, resulting in heavy losses for Russian troops despite Ukrainian troops being largely outnumbered and outgunned by the Russians.
Russia’s War in Ukraine: How It Could End, A conversation with Anatol Lieven.
By Jon Wiener – April 11, 2022
Antonina Kaletnyk waits for the body of her son in front of a collapsed building in the town of Borodianka. (Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP via Getty Images)
Anatol Lieven is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He wrote the book Ukraine and Russia. His writing has appeared in Jacobin, the Financial Times, The American Prospect, and The Nation. This transcript has been edited and condensed.
JON WIENER: We’re speaking on day 40 of the war in Ukraine. Russia has pulled its forces back from around Kiev. Putin has been talking about victory in defending the Russians in the Donbas from the fascists who he claims were threatening them. That seems to point towards the possibility of some kind of settlement. On the other hand, all the news about Russian troops killing civilians has led Biden to say Putin should be put on trial for war crimes. That seems to make a settlement less likely. You wrote in November that we already had the outlines of a settlement in Ukraine. What was that proposal? Is any of it still relevant after 40 days of war?
ANATOL LIEVEN: Minsk II was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia brokered by France and Germany, whereby the two separatist parts of the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, which had rebelled against Ukraine with Russian support, would go back into Ukraine, but on the basis of full local autonomy. There were all sorts of problems about Minsk II, but the basic one was that the Ukrainians refused either to let the Donbas republics become independent or to pass the laws on autonomy which were necessary in order to implement the Minsk agreement—because they were afraid that an autonomous Donbas within Ukraine would act as a break on Ukraine moving towards the West. That was probably true, but of course it was only on the basis of autonomy that you could solve that issue.
The United States and the UN both endorsed the Minsk agreement in 2015. But the West did nothing really to push the Ukrainians into implementing it, or, on the other hand, allowing the Donbas to go. Along with that was the offer of NATO membership that was not really an offer of NATO membership. And Ukraine also refused to offer a treaty of neutrality. I must make very clear: Nothing can excuse the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it must be said that we and the Ukrainians also missed numerous diplomatic chances of averting this war.
JW: Let’s talk about neutrality for Ukraine. It’s usually regarded as something that would be a huge and dangerous sacrifice for Ukraine. Is that the way you see it?
AL: No. But the main point is what President Zelensky has said about it. In the run-up to the war he went to the leaders of NATO and the West and said, “Can you assure me that, within five years, you will offer NATO membership to Ukraine?” And they said, “No.” But they also refused to offer Russia a treaty of neutrality, and Zelensky could not offer this for fear of his own domestic opposition. Then Russia invaded. Zelensky has now offered a treaty of neutrality. But he is asking for security guarantees—that the West will go to war if Ukraine is invaded again. That’s a very understandable request from the Ukrainian point of view.
The British, my own country, have been among the leaders of solidarity with Ukraine. But a British minister came out immediately and said, “No, we’re not going to offer any security guarantees to Ukraine. Sorry.” In these circumstances where the West is not prepared to take Ukraine into NATO, and is not prepared to offer any security guarantees, neutrality is the obvious way out. What the Ukrainians can get is a cast-iron guarantee that, if Russia breaks the treaty and invades Ukraine again, the West will reimpose full economic sanctions. But that presupposes that, in return for a peace agreement, the West has suspended economic sanctions.
JW: The problem of course is that the United States has imposed sanctions on other countries and then left them in place for decades: Iran for 40 years, Cuba for 60 years. A lot of this is for domestic political reasons. Can you imagine a settlement of the war without an end to sanctions? Can you imagine that America would abandon sanctions?
AL: At that point this ceases to be about looking for peace or helping Ukraine or bringing about a Russian withdrawal. It becomes a mixture of a desire to punish Putin and Russia, and of the American geopolitical agenda of weakening Russia—not for the sake of Ukraine but to strengthen US primacy in the world by crippling a rival and weakening a key ally of China’s—at the cost of innumerable Ukrainian lives. I really do not see how that can be presented as a moral position. And especially because the only way to build retaliation into a peace agreement with a treaty of neutrality is to threaten sanctions. That presupposes the sanctions have been lifted.
I support full sanctions, because I deeply oppose this invasion. But logically they should be lifted in return for a reasonable and acceptable peace deal and in order to make that peace deal possible. If we want Russian withdrawal, we’ve got to give Russia incentives to do so.
JW: What’s the alternative to a negotiated cease-fire and a peace treaty? What would an open-ended military stalemate look like for Ukraine?
AL: Quite apart from the criminal aspect of this invasion, it’s been handled with utter incompetence by the Russians. Having failed to capture Kiev and having failed to frighten the Ukrainian government into running away or surrendering, the Russians are now pulling back from around Kiev in order to concentrate on conquering the whole of the Donbas. This is an important point: Before the war the Russians did not hold the whole of the Donbas region, but now they recognize these breakaway republics. So now they’re going to try and conquer the whole of the Donbas. Then Putin can proclaim victory. The Russians might then offer a unilateral cease fire and say “These are our negotiating terms,” and then take a defensive stance and challenge the Ukrainians to attack them in the East—because then the Ukrainians would start suffering very heavy casualties.
“If we want Russian withdrawal, we’ve got to give Russia incentives to do so.”
And if we then provide tanks and war planes to allow a full-scale Ukrainian offensive, then that would escalate the war to another level. What then might happen would be yet another unending conflict like the Donbas since 2014, but on a larger scale, or like Kashmir, in which maybe after a while there would no longer be full-scale war, but there would be endless clashes. That would be very sad because I think that 90 percent of a peace agreement is already in place, especially a treaty of neutrality with guarantees but not security guarantees. But look, the Austrians didn’t get security guarantees in the Cold War era’s Austrian State Treaty of 1955, and the Finns didn’t get any either after World War II. The Finish example is important, because a key reason why Stalin did not try to conquer Finland completely and incorporate it in the Soviet Union was that, at the beginning of WWII, the Finns had fought so hard against him. That’s true of the Ukrainians now. I very much doubt that any Russian government would want to repeat this experience, because it’s been a military disaster for Russia, as well as an economic disaster.
JW: How do you think years of sanctions will reshape Russia’s economy and society?
AL: Russia will inevitably become more and more dependent on China. China will replace Europe as the market for Russian gas and oil. China will then also determine the price of Russian gas and oil. And this will be a partnership very much on China’s terms. Within Russia, I think it’s very clear you will have a much more state-dominated economy, much more state capitalism, if you will. And the Russian state will become much, much more repressive.
Michael T. Klare and The Nation
JW: Do you see Europe going without Russian natural gas indefinitely? They say now they want to reduce imports by two-thirds. And maybe also Russian coal. Is this a temporary wartime situation, or is this something more permanent?
AL: Over time, the Europeans will move away from Russian energy supplies. This will take time, because the alternatives are not there except for Europe’s coal. At that point talk of serious action against climate change goes out of the window. As far as gas is concerned, if America really develops fracking further and tosses any environmental concerns out of the window, then, over time, Europe can be supplied. Of course liquid natural gas has to come in tankers across the Atlantic, which means a colossal investment in new infrastructure, whereas of course the Russian gas comes by pipeline. So this can’t be done quickly, it’s very expensive, and it’s terrible for climate change. And once you’ve built a huge new LNG infrastructure, it’s going to be even less likely that Europe will move away from natural gas.
But if the Russians are sensible and declare a cease-fire and basically accept all the Ukrainian conditions except the question of the borders of the Donbas, then I think you might see a split between some of the Europeans and America over whether to accept the Russian terms.
The issue of the Donbas is the most difficult of all the elements in a Ukrainian peace settlement, and has the capacity to wreck the prospects of a settlement for the foreseeable future. The Ukrainian government has expressed a willingness to shelve this issue pending future negotiation; but has also—very naturally—demanded that as part of any settlement Russia should withdraw from all the additional territory it has occupied since launching this invasion, including additional territory in the Donbas. Russia, however, has recognized the independence of the Donbas republics within the entire territory of the Donbas regions (which it has not yet managed entirely to conquer).
This is why it seems to me that we need to move to an early resolution of this issue (unlike Crimea, the formal status of which can be deferred indefinitely). It also seems to me that the only legitimate way to resolve it would be to hold an internationally supervised referendum on a district-by-district basis across the region, with a majority in each district deciding whether the district should remain in Ukraine or join the separatist republics. Such a solution would satisfy neither Russia nor Ukraine, but I honestly cannot see otherwise how we can possibly end the conflict over the Donbas.
Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.
Putin’s War in Ukraine Shatters an Illusion in Russia
Sabrina Tavernise – April 10, 2022
President Vladimir Putin of Russia projected onto the side of building during a speech in Moscow, on April 21, 2021. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
The last time I was in Russia, the summer of 2015, I came face to face with a contradiction. What if a place was unfree, but also happy? How long could it stay that way?
Moscow had blossomed into a beautiful, European city, full of meticulously planted parks, bike lanes and parking spaces. Income for the average Russian had risen significantly over the course of the previous decade. At the same time, its political system was drifting ever closer to authoritarianism.
Fifteen years earlier, Boris Yeltsin had left power in shame, apologizing on national television “for having failed to justify the hopes of the people who believed that we would be able to make a leap from the gloomy and stagnant totalitarian past to a bright, prosperous and civilized future at just one go.”
By the summer of 2015, his successor, President Vladimir Putin, had seemingly made Russia bright and prosperous. The political system he built was increasingly restrictive, but many had learned to live with it.
Many Russian liberals had gone to work for nonprofits and local governments, throwing themselves into community building — making their cities better places to live. A protest movement in 2011 and 2012 had failed, and people were looking for other ways to shape their country. Big politics were hopeless, the thinking went, but one could make a real difference in small acts.
There was another side to this bargain: Putin was seemingly constrained, as well. Political action may have been forbidden, but there was tolerance when it came to other things, for example religion, culture and many forms of expression. His own calculus for the system to run smoothly meant he had to make some room for society.
I lived in Russia for nine years, and began covering it for The New York Times in 2000, the year Putin was first elected. I spent lots of time telling people — in public writing and in my private life — that Russia might sometimes look bad but that it had a lot of wonderful qualities, too.
But in the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, I have felt like I am watching someone I love lose their mind. Many of the Russian liberals who had turned to “small acts” are feeling a sense of shock and horror, too, said Alexandra Arkhipova, a Russian anthropologist.
“I see lots of posts and conversations saying these small deeds, it was a big mistake,” she said. “People have a metaphor. They say, ‘We were trying to make some cosmetic changes to our faces, when the cancer was growing and growing in our stomachs.’”
I began to wonder whether Russia was always going to end up here, and we just failed to see it. So I called Yevgeniya Albats, a Russian journalist who had warned of the dangers of a KGB resurgence as early as the 1990s. Albats kept staring into the glare of the idea that at certain points in history, everything is at stake in political thought and action. She had long argued that any bargain with Putin was an illusion.
She said 2008 was a turning point, the moment Putin divorced the West, even invaded another country, and the West barely noticed.
“For Putin, it was a clear sign,” she said by telephone last month, “that he can do whatever he wants. And that’s exactly what he started doing. He behaved extremely rationally. He just realized that you don’t care.”
She was referring to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, which came shortly after President George W. Bush began to talk about NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. I covered that war, and spent the night with a Russian unit in the Georgian town of Gori and remember how invigorated the soldiers seemed, laughing, joking. The Soviet defeat in the Cold War had left a bitter sense of humiliation and loss. The invasion seemed to have renewed them.
“When Putin came, everything changed,” one officer told me. “We got some of our old strength back. People started to respect us again.”
Albats sounded tired but determined. The day we talked, she had traveled to a Russian penal colony to be present for the sentencing of her friend Alexei Navalny, Russia’s popular opposition leader, who used his allotted time to give a speech against the war.
“We now understand that when Putin decided to go into war in Ukraine, he had to get rid of Navalny,” she said, because he is the only one with the courage to resist.
Indeed, Navalny never accepted the turn away from direct confrontation and was building a nationwide opposition movement, leading people into the streets. He rejected the bargain and was willing to go to prison to defy it.
Arkhipova pointed out that his mantra, that the fight was not of good against evil but of good against neutral, was a direct challenge to the political passivity that Putin was demanding.
Many people I interviewed said the poisoning of Navalny in 2020 and the jailing of him in early 2021, after years of freedom, marked the end of the social contract and the beginning of Putin’s war. Like al-Qaida’s killing of Ahmed Shah Massoud on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, Putin had to clear the field of opponents.
Greg Yudin, a professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, argues it was the political opposition’s success, which began to accelerate in 2018 and 2019, that tipped Putin toward war.
Yudin said it was inconceivable to Putin that there could be people inside Russia who wanted the best for their country yet were against him. So he looked for traitors and nursed an obsession with the idea that the West was after him.
“It’s a feature of this kind of regime,” Yudin said. “It recodes internal dissent into external threats.”
As for my 2015 question — how long can a place be unfree and also happy — perhaps we have lived into the answer. Many liberals have left. Many of those who have not left face fines or even jail. In the weeks after the invasion, police detained more than 15,000 people nationwide, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group, substantially higher than in the protests in 2012, when about 5,000 people were detained over 12 months, said Arkhipova, who studied that movement.
Albats has stayed and is angry at Russian liberals who have not.
The message, she said, is that “Russian liberals, they don’t have any tolerance for any problems.” She added, “They just run away.”
At the same time, she said, it’s an extremely hard choice. “Choosing between jail and not jail, I’d rather choose not jail,” Albats said, adding that she already faces thousands of dollars in fines just for reporting about the war.
Yudin said the choice was hard because the crackdown was complete, and because political opposition was now being pulverized.
“The best comparison is Germany in 1939,” he said. “What kind of democratic movement would you expect there? This is the same. People are basically right now trying to save their lives.”
Not everyone, of course. Lev Gudkov, a sociologist at Levada Center, a research group that tracks Russian public opinion, told me that about two-thirds of people nationwide approve of Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
“It is a less-educated, older part of the population, mainly living in rural areas or in small and medium-sized cities, where the population is poorer and more dependent on power,” he said, referring to those who rely on public funds like pensions and state jobs. “They also receive their whole construction of reality exclusively from television.”
He points out that “if you look at 20 years of our research since Putin came to power, then the peaks of support for Putin and his popularity have always coincided with military campaigns.”
One such campaign was the war in Chechnya, a particularly brutal subduing of a population that in 1999 was Putin’s signature act before being elected president the first time. We are starting to see some of the features of that war in Ukraine: bodies with hands bound, mass graves, tales of torture. In Chechnya, the result was the systematic elimination of anyone connected to the fight against Russia. It is too soon to say whether that was the intent in Bucha, Ukraine.
Now the bargain is broken, the illusion has shattered. And the country has been pitched into a new phase. But what is it? Yudin argues that Russia is moving out of authoritarianism — where political passivity and civic disengagement are key features — into totalitarianism, which relies on mass mobilization, terror and homogeneity of beliefs. He believes Putin is on the brink but may hesitate to make the shift.
“In a totalitarian system, you have to release free energy to start terror,” he said. Putin, he said, “is a control freak, used to micromanagement.”
However, if the Russian state starts to fail, either through a collapse of Russia’s economy or a complete military defeat in Ukraine, “unleashing terror will be the only way for him to save himself.”
Which is why the current situation is so dangerous, for Ukraine and for people in Russia opposed Putin.
“Putin is so convinced that he cannot afford to lose that he will escalate,” Yudin said. “He has staked everything on it.”
Chechen chief Kadyrov says Russian forces will take Kyiv
April 10, 2022
Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov makes an address in Grozny
(Reuters) -Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful head of Russia’s republic of Chechnya, said early on Monday that there will be an offensive by Russian forces not only on the besieged port of Mariupol, but also on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.
“There will be an offensive … not only on Mariupol, but also on other places, cities and villages,” Kadyrov said in a video posted on his Telegram channel.
“Luhansk and Donetsk – we will fully liberate in the first place … and then take Kyiv and all other cities.”
Kadyrov, who has often described himself as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “foot soldier,” said there should be no doubt about Kyiv.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html
“I assure you: not one step will be taken back,” Kadyrov said.
Kadyrov has been repeatedly accused by the United States and European Union of rights abuses, which he denies.
Moscow fought two wars with separatists in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim region in southern Russia, after the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. But it has since poured huge sums of money into the region to rebuild it and given Kadyrov a large measure of autonomy.
The Kremlin describes its actions in Ukraine as a “special operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” its neighbour and on Sunday Russia intensified its attacks in eastern Ukraine.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg; Writing by Lidia Kelly;Editing by Christopher Cushing and Stephen Coates)
How Do We Deal With a Superpower Led by a War Criminal?
By Thomas L. Friedman – April 10, 2022
Credit…Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
It is hard to believe, but now impossible to deny, that the broad framework that kept much of the world stable and prospering since the end of the Cold War has been seriously fractured by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In ways we hadn’t fully appreciated, a lot of that framework rested on the West’s ability to coexist with Putin as he played “bad boy,” testing the limits of the world order but never breaching them at scale.
But with Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, his indiscriminate crushing of its cities and mass killings of Ukrainian civilians, he went from “bad boy” to “war criminal.” And when the leader of Russia — a country that spans 11 time zones, with vast oil, gas and mineral resources and more nuclear warheads than anyone else — is a war criminal and must be henceforth treated as a pariah, the world as we’ve known it is profoundly changed. Nothing can work the same.
How does the world have an effective U.N. with a country led by a war criminal on the Security Council, who can veto every resolution? How does the world have any effective global initiative to combat climate change and not be able to collaborate with the biggest landmass country on the planet? How does the U.S. work closely with Russia on the Iran nuclear deal when we have no trust with, and barely communicate with, Moscow? How do we isolate and try to weaken a country so big and so powerful, knowing that it could be more dangerous if it disintegrates than if it’s strong? How do we feed and fuel the world at reasonable prices when a sanctioned Russia is one of the world’s biggest exporters of oil, wheat and fertilizer?
The answer is that we don’t know. Which is another way of saying that we are entering a period of geopolitical and geoeconomic uncertainty the likes of which we have not known since 1989 — and possibly 1939.
And it promises only to get worse before it gets better, because Putin is now like a cornered animal. He not only got so much wrong in his Ukraine invasion; he produced the opposite of so much he was aiming to achieve, making him desperate for any war achievement, at any price, that can obscure this fact.
Putin said he had to go into Ukraine to push NATO away from Russia, and his war has not only reinvigorated what was a stagnating Western military alliance, it has also guaranteed NATO’s solidarity and weapons modernization for as long as Putin is in power — and probably another generation after that.
Putin said he had to go into Ukraine to remove the Nazi clique ruling in Kyiv and bring both the Ukrainian people and their territory back into the arms of Mother Russia, where they naturally belonged and, in his imagination, longed to be. Instead, his invasion has made Ukrainians — even some formerly pro-Russia Ukrainians — bitter enemies of Russia for at least a generation and supercharged Ukraine’s desire to be independent of Russia and embedded in the European Union.
Putin thought that with a blitzkrieg takeover of Ukraine he would earn the proper respect from the West for Russia’s military prowess — ending the insults that Russia, with an economy smaller than the state of Texas’, was just “a gas station with nukes.” Instead, his army has been exposed as incompetent and barbaric and needing to enlist mercenaries from Syria and Chechnya just to hold its ground.
Having gotten so much wrong, and having launched this war on his own initiative, Putin has to be desperate to show that he produced something — at least uncontested control of eastern Ukraine, from the Donbas region, south to Odesa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and connecting with Crimea. And he surely wants it by May 9, for Moscow’s giant annual Victory Day parade, marking Russia’s victory over the Nazis in World War II — the day when the Russian military recalls its greatest glory.
So, it appears that Putin is gearing up for a two-pronged strategy. First, he’s regrouping his ravaged forces and concentrating them on fully seizing and holding this smaller military prize. Second, he’s doubling down on systematic cruelty — the continued pummeling of Ukrainian towns with rockets and artillery to keep creating as many casualties and refugees and as much economic ruin as he can. He clearly hopes that the former will fracture the Ukrainian Army, at least in the east, and the latter will fracture NATO, as its member states get overwhelmed by so many refugees and pressure Kyiv to give Putin whatever he wants to get him to stop.
Ukraine and NATO, therefore, need an effective counterstrategy.
It should have three pillars. The first is to support the Ukrainians with diplomacy if they want to negotiate with Putin — it’s their call — but also to support them with the best weaponry and training if they want to drive the Russian Army off every inch of their territory. The second is to broadcast daily and loudly — in every way we can — that the world is at war “with Putin” and “not with the Russian people” — just the opposite of what Putin is telling them. And the third is for us to double down on ending our addiction to oil, Putin’s main source of income.
The hope is that the three together would set in motion forces inside Russia that topple Putin from power.
Yes, that is a high-risk-high-reward proposition. Putin’s downfall could lead to someone worse at the helm in the Kremlin. It could also lead to prolonged chaos and disintegration.
But if it leads to someone better, someone with just minimal decency and an ambition to rebuild Russia’s dignity and spheres of influence based on a new generation of Tchaikovskys, Rachmaninoffs, Sakharovs, Dostoyevskys and Sergey Brins — not yacht-owning oligarchs, cyberhackers and polonium-armed assassins — the whole world gets better. So many possibilities for healthy collaborations would be resurrected or forged.
Only the Russian people have the right and ability to change their leader. But it will not be easy because Putin, an ex-K.G.B. officer — surrounded by many other former intelligence officers who are beholden to him — is nearly impossible to dislodge.
But here is one possible scenario: The Russian Army is a prideful institution, and if it continues to suffer catastrophic defeats in Ukraine, I can imagine a situation where either Putin wants to decapitate his army’s leadership — to make them the scapegoats for his failure in Ukraine — or the army, knowing this is coming, tries to oust Putin first. There never has been any love lost between the Russian military and the K.G.B./S.V.R./F.S.B. security types surrounding Putin.
In sum, having the Russian people produce a better leader is a necessary condition for the world to produce a new, more resilient global order to replace the post-Cold War order, which Putin has now shattered. What is also necessary, though, is that America be a model of democracy and sustainability that others want to emulate.
When Ukrainians are making the ultimate sacrifice to hold onto every inch and ounce of their newly won freedom, is it too much to ask that Americans make the smallest sacrifices and compromises to hold on to our precious democratic inheritance.
Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award.
