Marjorie Taylor Greene Makes Alarming Promise About Ukraine If GOP Wins Congress
Lee Moran – November 4, 2022
Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday vowed to nix American funding for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion if the GOP retakes Congress in next week’s midterm elections.
“The only border they care about is Ukraine, not America’s southern border,” Greene said of Democrats at a rally in Iowa. “Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first. They don’t care about our border or our people.”
Greene’s pledge was met with cheers from the audience.
Outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) slammed Greene’s comment as being “exactly” what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants.
“If we’d had Republicans like this in the 1980s, we would have lost the Cold War,” Cheney wrote on Twitter.
The GOP is currently split over whether to continue financially assisting Ukraine against the invasion, which Putin launched in February. The U.S. has so far donated more than $67 billion to the Ukrainian cause.
But this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested U.S. pursestrings for the defense will be significantly tightened if his party wins control of the House and Senate.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “They just won’t do it.”
‘Final Destruction’: Russia Threatens Norway With Ugly Fallout
Shannon Vavra – November 2, 2022
Getty
Russia announced Wednesday that it views Norway’s work with other countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as provocative, warning that Norway’s efforts to bolster its military in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year will likely be the death knell for Oslo-Moscow relations moving forward.
“Oslo is now among the most active supporters of NATO’s involvement in the Arctic,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, according to TASS. “We consider such developments near Russian borders as Oslo’s deliberate pursuit of a destructive course toward escalation of tensions in the Euro-Arctic region and the final destruction of Russian-Norwegian relations.”
In her statement, Zakharova also warned that any further “unfriendly actions will be followed by a timely and adequate response.”
The news of Russia’s complaints about Norway comes just a day after Norway raised its military alert level in response to suspicious drone sightings. Norway has arrested several Russians, including one son of an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s, and accused them of illegally flying drones in Norwegian airspace or taking photos in restricted areas as concerns abound about potential Russian attacks on critical infrastructure. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre warned Russia to cut it out, according to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
NATO countries ought to be on alert to Russia’s aggression in light of the war in Ukraine, Støre warned Monday.
“Today, we have no reason to believe that Russia will want to involve Norway or any other country directly in the war,” Støre said. “But the war in Ukraine makes it necessary for all NATO countries to be more vigilant.”
Norway has previously hosted exercises and has long hosted rotational deployments of U.S. troops for arctic training. Russia’s announcement comes weeks after the U.S. Air Force participated in a combat arctic integration training exercise with NATO allies and the Royal Norwegian Air Force at Norway’s Ørland Main Air Station, according to the U.S. Defense Department. The allies worked to operate quickly across weapons platforms and systems to try to deter Russia along NATO’s eastern flank.
“The sum is that together, we can better defend not only Norway and the Nordic countries, but also Europe should the need arise,” Col. Martin Tesli, the 132nd Luftving Base commander, said in a statement.
The U.S. Air Force’s 90th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron deployed for the exercise was also able to work with the Air Force from Finland, which is in the process of joining NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow’s warning appeared to be just the latest Russian attempt to assert its own narrative as its relationships with countries across Europe and the West continue to deteriorate.
It’s not the first time Russia has tried to raise red flags over what it sees as provocative action from European countries and NATO cooperation. Moscow warned before it invaded Ukraine this year that it views the expansion of members in NATO—which was established to counter threats from the Soviet Union—as a threat to Russia. The Kremlin has maintained that Ukraine’s interest in joining the military alliance poses a threat to Russia, a claim it had repeated in recent days.
Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine and European nations is “the most serious security policy situation we have experienced in several decades,” Støre emphasized.
Norway has been working to help Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion since the outset of the war. The country has sanctioned the Russian government in an attempt to get Moscow to back off from the war and had provided Ukraine with military assistance. The assistance includes an air defense system, Mistral surface-to-air missiles, thousands of anti-tank missiles, protective gear such as bulletproof vests and helmets, and armored vehicles.
Oslo has also sought to ramp up its military budget. Just last month, Norway proposed boosting its defense budget for next year by nearly 10 percent, according to Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram. A chunk of the increase is dedicated to weapons for Ukraine’s defense against Russia.
“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a threat to Norwegian and European security. The war has already had major security political, economic, and humanitarian consequences,” Gram said. “The need for military support to Ukraine is necessary, extensive, and time-critical. This budget strengthens the Armed Forces and stands up for Ukraine.”
Norway is also helping to train Ukrainian soldiers alongside the U.K. and has promised to provide Ukraine over $1.1 billion (in USD) in financial assistance over the next two years.
Norway isn’t the only nation Russia has protested in recent days. Late last month Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Moscow sees no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Western states writ large.
Lavrov noted that Russia would like to focus its world diplomacy on countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, rather than work with the West.
“We will shift the ‘center of gravity’ to countries that are ready to cooperate with us on equal and mutually beneficial terms and look for promising joint projects,” Lavrov said.
Russian journalists defy Putin to report on casualties in Ukraine
Markus Ziener – November 1, 2022
The body of a Russian serviceman lies near destroyed Russian military vehicles on the roadside on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 26, 2022. (Sergey Bobok / AFP/Getty Images)
Soldiers from Buryatia, a small Republic in Siberian Russia, were among the first to be sent to the front lines in Ukraine. And they were among the first to die there.
When journalist Yelana Trifonova heard about a memorial service for the fallen, she immediately bought a ticket for the eight-hour trip from her home in Irkutsk to Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia. “I wanted to know what was going on there,” said the 46-year-old who works for the online platform Lyudi Baykal. “I wanted to feel the atmosphere, and I wanted to look into the faces of the relatives.”
Trifonova and fellow reporter Olga Mutinova, 44, reported the story of the funeral; Trifonova wrote it, and it was published on April 28 on the landing page of Lyudi Baikala, with photos and video.
Trifonova said she had to do the story, no matter the consequences. But the consequences of defying the Russian government can be steep.
One third of the roughly 1 million people of Buryatia, which shares a border with Mongolia, are ethnic Buryats and mostly of the Buddhist faith. The average monthly salary in Buryatia is about one-third of what people earn in Moscow, and the Russian military is an attractive employer for young people.
Beginning in early March, mourning ceremonies for soldiers who died in Russia’s war on Ukraine were held in the large hall of the Lukodrome, a sports complex in the center of Ulan-Ude. When Trifonova arrived, traffic police had already blocked off the entrance for cars.
A Buddhist funeral service is held for a Russian soldier in the city of Ulan-Ude in East Siberia, Russia. (Lyudi Baykal)
Inside, rather than the one coffin that was originally announced, there were four. The first held 24-year-old Naidal Zyrenow, a local student of the year in 2016, who served in the Russian army as a paramedic. Naidal’s hands were crossed on his gray uniform jacket. One hand was bandaged.
The second coffin held the remains of 35-year-old Bulat Odoev, who served in the 5th Armored Brigade and is survived by a pregnant wife and daughter. The body of Shargal Dashiev, 38, who left behind a pregnant wife and two daughters, was in the third. Vladislav Kokorin, 20, who grew up in a children’s home and then went into foster care, was to be buried in the fourth.
Three of the dead were Buddhists and were buried according to traditions associated with the religion. In her story, Trifonova wrote that three Buddhist lamas stood up and began to walk around the coffins — as did the relatives. Not one sound of weeping could be heard.
Buddhists, Trifonova wrote, are not supposed to mourn loudly. After death, the soul must make its way to heaven to then return — after 49 days — in a new body. Tears would block the journey of the deceased and prevent him from letting go.
The ceremony brought clarity for Trifonova. “It became so clear to me why Russia was sending the Buryats first,” she said. “They belong to a small people in Russia, they are poor, they are humble, they are not Slavs — and they do not complain.”
Many of the families, she added, did not want to blame the government, even at the moment of their greatest grief.
“But this isn’t fair,” Trifonova said. “They don’t dare to take people from Moscow or St. Petersburg, so they turn to the ones who are showing the least resistance like Buryats, Tuvans or Dagestans.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia started to enjoy a lively and pluralistic media landscape. New journals and dailies sprang up, and some of the more established ones were shedding their roles as mouthpieces for the government. Even a government newspaper like Izvestia became informative and readable in the ’90s.
But when Vladimir Putin came to power, expressing dissenting views became increasingly difficult. Pressure on the media to conform with government regulations was stepped up. A number of journalists were killed in Russia, the most prominent of whom was Anna Politkovskaya, who reported about the war in Chechnya for the Novaya Gazeta and died in 2006.
A woman places flowers before a portrait of slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow. (Pavel Golovkin / Associated Press)
Eventually, the Russian government withdrew the licenses of the few remaining independent news organizations, and they had to shut down. A relatively new law forbids contradicting the Kremlin’s language rules, which prohibit the use of certain words (“war,” “invasion”) to describe the fighting in Ukraine.
Before moving to Lyudi Baykal, Trifonova and Mutinova worked for more than 10 years at Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda, a newspaper that was founded shortly after Russia’s October Revolution of 1917 and is based in Irkutsk. But in the last few years, it had been increasingly toeing the line of the local government.
“The censorship didn’t come overnight, it came gradually,” Mutinova recalled. “Ten years ago, it was still possible to criticize the governor. Five years ago, this was already a no-go.”
The limits on reporting became tighter every year as the newspaper became more dependent on state funding. “If we wanted to write about the conditions in the local prison or even mention the name of Alexei Navalny we crossed a red line,” Mutinova said, referring to Russia’s best-known dissident. “The same was true if we simply wanted to report on protests taking place in the main square in Irkutsk.” What was left to write were innocuous stories about nature or the local hospital, she said. “This is not the journalism we stand for.”
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears on a screen at Moscow City Court on May 24, 2022. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / Associated Press)
Shortly after the Russian war in Ukraine started, Mutinova and Trifonova assumed editorial responsibility for Lyudi Baikala. The website used to belong to Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda but had become independent thanks to a private investor. There they reported and wrote stories — concentrating their reporting on the Irkutsk/ Baikal region — about the dead and the wounded, about the tragedies of war, about the mobilization of soldiers and about cases of corruption.
“Once reporters were there to control the people in power,” Mutinova said. “This is what we are supposed to do.”
Now, however, the journalists have to publish behind an invisible curtain.
On April 16, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal media regulator, declared, without giving any reason, that it would block access to the news outlet. The website can be accessed only through a virtual private network, or VPN, which connects users to a private server that encrypts internet traffic and allows them to bypass restrictions. According to Trifonova and Mutinova, Russians are increasingly turning to VPNs to get independent information.
After Lyudi Baikala was officially blocked, Mutinova and Trifonova said donations rose and messages of encouragement and gratitude poured in. “The story about the funeral in Ulan-Ude was read about 80,000 times,” Mutinova said. “Some of our videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.”
Trifonova added: “People have been brainwashed for months by official propaganda and repeated their version of why we are at war with Ukraine” — that the operation was necessary to cleanse Ukraine of Nazis, to liberate the oppressed people of the Donbass and to show the West that Russians can’t be bullied around. “But now as the war is getting closer, and the victims and the sufferings can no longer be concealed, more and more are waking up.”
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, thousands of Russian journalists have paid a price for spreading “fake” news about the military. Sanctions have ranged from fines to sentences of five days in jail to years in prison.
Journalists who attended the funerals in Ulan-Ude were questioned by the police and told to stop reporting on them. On Sept. 23, Mutinova and Trifonova were handcuffed and arrested by local police in Irkutsk, and freed after three hours of interrogation. No charges were filed. A case is currently underway against them for allegedly distributing fliers that say, “No to war.”
Mutinova and Trifonova were arrested only two days after the partial mobilization of 300,000 Russian military reservists was announced. The measure led to many thousands of younger Russians fleeing the country to escape the draft.
A Buddhist funeral service is held for a Russian soldier in the city of Ulan-Ude in East Siberia, Russia. (Lyudi Baykal)
“The mobilization is the big game changer,” Olga says. “Now no one can claim that the war is none of their business. The war has arrived in every house, in every apartment.”
Lyudi Baikala is publishing a running list of the dead. So far, 336 Buryats and 78 soldiers from the Irkutsk Oblast have returned in wooden coffins. Russian authorities long ago stopped publishing any numbers.
Back in March, when the funeral ceremony at Ulan-Ude’s Lukodrome was drawing to a close, officials stepped up to the microphone. Bair Tsyrenov, deputy chairman of the government of the Republic of Buryatia, said of the fallen soldiers. “They died for the greatness of Russia, for the end of bloodshed in Ukraine.”
Ulan-Ude Mayor Igor Shutenkov announced: “They fell to defend the future of our country.”
Lt. Col. Vitaly Laskov, commander of the 11th Airborne Assault Brigade, added, “The paratroopers took their last leap into the sky.”
“There was no sobbing,” Trifonova recalls. “Only pain-filled silence.”
How Xi sacrificed China’s future in pursuit of total power
Szu Ping Chan – October 30, 2022
People watch a live broadcast of China’s President Xi Jinping – STR/AFP
They called it the Shanghai diet. Every morning during the two-month lockdown in China’s most populous city, Maggie found herself in a bidding war for spinach and pak choi.
At 8am, supermarkets would update apps with what was available on their virtual shelves that day. A rush to snap everything up would ensue.
“It was like a competition,” the marketing executive says from her Shanghai apartment. “Most of the food would be gone within seconds.”
While she was rarely left empty-handed, rationing meant most of her meals during the 70-day enforced confinement were either missing meat, vegetables or sometimes both. Maggie and her husband often did without. But they wanted to ensure their three-year-old son had enough to eat during the spring lockdown. “I actually lost a few kilograms,” she says jokingly.
The lockdown created an atmosphere of fear. “Everyone felt scared. Not of the virus. But about being sent to these makeshift Covid hospitals,” says Maggie, who didn’t want her surname to be used.
“You didn’t know where you’d be taken to, or how long you’d be there. Some people had their flats broken into in the middle of the night and were taken away. Or their homes were ‘sanitised’ when they were in quarantine and a lot of their belongings were ruined. I didn’t believe this would happen in Shanghai.”
But she believes she’s lucky. A white-collar job meant she could work from home. Others haven’t been so fortunate.
The world’s strictest lockdown has destroyed both lives and livelihoods – and there is no guarantee it won’t come back. But its architect has just become China’s most powerful ruler since chairman Mao.
New Politburo Standing Committee members Xi Jinping, Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang and Li Xi meet the media following the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China – TINGSHU WANG /REUTERS
Total control
Handed an unprecedented third term in office earlier this month, his political position unassailable and his every utterance carefully studied by adoring supporters, Xi Jinping is in total control of his country.
His power, and the sense that he is determined to enforce China’s cultural and military dominance even at the expense of prosperity, has sent a chill through domestic investors and the world order alike.
Proof of Xi’s apparent lack of interest in the economic consequences of his actions can be seen in the Communist leader’s choice for his second in command.
Striding out behind President Xi Jinping at the country’s recently ended Communist Party Congress last weekend, Li Qiang has become a symbol of China’s future.
Li Keqiang, the market-orientated premier, has been sidelined. As have central bank governor Yi Gang and China’s top trade negotiator Liu He. Technocrats are out. Loyalists are in.
“China has paid a high price economically in order to maintain low Covid infection,” says Vera Yuen, a lecturer in economics at the Hong Kong University Business School.
“That zero-Covid policy is likely to continue. That will affect China’s connectivity with the rest of the world.”
The emphasis at the congress on security, science and technology over economic growth and reforms also frightened investors. Not only was Xi unrepentant about lockdowns, but his tighter grip on power has paved the way for him to rule for life.
Ken Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), says this will put China on a path of slower growth and greater isolation.
“If you take the post-financial crisis period running to 2020, the IMF says China contributed more than a quarter of global growth,” he says.
“That’s phenomenal. But when China slows down, it’s going to have huge ripple effects. In Europe for example, which is very dependent on selling industrial and luxury goods to China.”
Economic struggles
The IMF warned this month that repeated lockdowns meant the Chinese economy would grow by just 3.2pc this year because of strict Covid controls. An ongoing property crisis has also triggered a wave of debt defaults.
Rogoff, now a Harvard economics professor, said that the economy will struggle to hit 3pc growth for many years. If he is right, the economy will struggle to overtake the US in nominal terms in the next few decades – a task that will become increasingly difficult as its population gets older.
Economic growth isn’t everything. But pulling back from the rest of the world is also likely to accelerate China’s slowdown.
Rogoff says Xi’s “Made in China 2025” initiative, which is designed to reduce Beijing’s dependence on foreign technology, will also struggle.
“China’s talking about catching up in technology. President Xi talked about that a lot. But it’s hard to see how that’s going to work when you’re cracking down on entrepreneurs. State-owned enterprises are not going to be making technological breakthroughs.”
They’re the basic building blocks inside all modern technology. Smartphones, laptops, televisions. Aircraft, cars, cruise missiles. All are powered by tiny chips that make it all possible: semiconductors.
There’s only one dominant manufacturer. And it’s based in Taiwan.
The island, which drives just 1pc of global economic output, punches well above its weight because it’s cornered a large share of the market. Just under 40pc of the world’s processor chip manufacturing capacity is Taiwanese, while its high-end dominance is even greater. Ninety-two per cent of the most advanced semiconductors are made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
While TSMC’s boss recently warned that advances in the technology are slowing down, nowhere else has been able to catch up yet. China has tried. But after a decade, it’s largely failed. Its global share of the market for semiconductors remains stuck below 20pc, according to Capital Economics.
“It hasn’t increased at all, despite all the money Beijing has spent trying to lure Taiwanese engineers to come over to China to help them,” says Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist at the consultancy.
“I think it just proves how difficult it is for others to replicate what Taiwan has done since it gained this comparative advantage,” he adds.
A decade behind Taiwan
It will take a long time to change this reliance. Precision engineering means building a semiconductor factory takes between two and three years, suggesting the rest of the world is at least another decade behind Taiwan.
Rogoff says it will take this long for the US to catch up, and even longer for China.
“It is remarkable what the Chinese have done,” he says.
“There are certain areas in technology where they are pretty easily on par with the United States. But in terms of private sector commercial activity, they’re behind and cutting themselves off. It’s not a recipe for growth. It’s very worrisome.”
The US is also doing its best to slow China down. It introduced strict export controls on semiconductors made with US technology in October, and also limited exports of manufacturing tools and advanced technology.
Chips for use in artificial intelligence and supercomputers can now only be sold to Beijing with a hard-to-obtain licence. Washington also introduced tough vetting standards for US citizens who want to work with Chinese chip producers. The aim is to stop China looking under the bonnet and stealing America’s intellectual property.
These developments mean the world will rely on Taiwanese semiconductors for longer, which also raises the stakes if geopolitical tensions boil over.
China’s Communist Party knows this. Beijing enshrined opposition to Taiwanese independence in its constitution last weekend, in another thinly veiled threat towards an island that has been governed independently since 1949.
Analysts fear a Chinese attack on Taiwan risks drawing the US into a war.
“If there was a war between Taiwan and China, you could potentially see a complete decoupling of trade between China and the US,” says Leather.
This would put $600 billion (£518 billion) of annual trade between the countries at risk. China is still by far America’s largest goods trading partner, with $559.2 billion sent to US shores in 2020, with machinery, toys, furniture and clothes the biggest imports.
Catastrophic consequences
And this has severe consequences for the rest of the world. “If you think about all the goods that we import from China, suddenly cutting them off would have quite catastrophic consequences for the global economy,” Leather says.
He believes a full-blown war is unlikely. “It is possible to imagine another scenario, for example, where China might, for example, want to have a blockade around Taiwan,” he says.
You’d assume that in this scenario, basic trade between the US and China would continue. But a semiconductor shortage would become apparent quite quickly.
Capital Economics says shortages will push up prices of everything from cars to computers around the world, as they did during the pandemic. It estimates that a 50pc rise in semiconductor prices would add around 2.5 percentage points to global inflation at a time when prices are already in danger of spinning out of control.
Countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany, which are key carmaking hubs, will suffer most from shortages, alongside Taiwan and South Korea.
Leather adds: “Without ready access to the fastest chips, innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence will slow.”
China may have sent missiles over Taiwan in August to send a message, but Leather believes it will maintain a cautious approach because the leadership has seen how a war can leave a country ostracised.
“Given how badly the war in Ukraine has gone for Russia, I think it will make the Chinese think very, very carefully about what they’re going to do with Taiwan,” he says.
“All the sanctions that the US has introduced has made China realise how difficult it could be.”
Creeping control
shanghai zero covid policy – ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
If there’s any doubt over Beijing’s desire to control citizens’ lives, look no further than the city’s Weather Modification Office. Officials here literally try to make it rain. And they’ve succeeded. There were clear skies during the July 1 Communist Party centenary celebrations thanks to a “cloud-seeding operation” that sprayed chemicals in the sky to bring downpours forward.
This idea of creeping control has also spread to Beijing’s grip on Hong Kong.
A security law introduced two years ago changed the lives of many Hong Kongers, and left a profound impact on the rule of law in the former British colony.
Thousands of international businesses have left or are considering leaving the city, while more than 100,000 Hong Kongers have been granted visas to the UK through a new scheme introduced last year.
Beijing has noticed the brain drain. Hong Kong’s new chief executive John Lee has been given access to a $3.8 billion fund to lure big business and top talent back to the city, but many have grown weary of repeated lockdowns and the uncertain political climate.
His plans largely failed to reassure investors. The Hang Seng share index is down almost 40pc this year alone. The Shanghai Composite index is down 20pc.
“Talent is leaving Hong Kong, mainly due to the stringent Covid-19 policy,” says Vera Yuen.
“This means its economic growth is more dependent on the Chinese economy than ever. More diversification and internationalisation will be needed for the city to continue to shine.”
Those left are also feeling the impact of slower global growth.
“Business hasn’t been that great,” says Herbert Lun, managing director of Wing Sang Electrical, which makes hair dryers and curling irons that are mostly sent to the US. Lun is based in the city and he also employs 500 people at a factory in Shenzhen.
“Traditionally, manufacturing in China would peak at around June, July, August for the Christmas season. And the rush would run through to September,” he says.
“This year, we haven’t actually seen a peak. Since about May a lot of our suppliers and competitors have seen a lot of cutbacks and slowdowns. Everybody’s buying just enough to cling on.”
Lun has been forced to cut his prices to remain competitive, even as the cost of production has gone up sharply.
He says more Chinese businesses are looking to branch out overseas, where pay is lower and workers more abundant. He even considered it himself.
“It used to be all ‘made in China’,” he says. “Now it’s made everywhere. And so we have to make decisions that are best for our companies. And we have been focusing more on automation to essentially that labour shortage out of our equation.”
Rising rates
Rising global interest rates also make it harder to do business. Hong Kong’s monetary policy runs in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve because of a peg that keeps its currency in a tight range of 7.75-7.85 per US dollar.
“I think that’s going to depress a lot of investment going forward. If we look at past experience, where we had drastic rate increases, that always led to some sort of financial crisis in the rest of the world,” says Rogoff.
“Everyone is being a little bit more careful about taking on debt going forward and doing a little bit less investment. All of this is going to have a chilling effect on the economy. And I think that’s where the biggest uncertainty is going to be. How long is this rate hike cycle going to last? And how high will interest rates go?”
Rogoff believes the policy pivot will also transform the economy. “We’ve hit peak China,” he says.
“Historically China’s priority has always been giving people growth. And if you give people growth, they accept intrusion into other parts of their lives. But now growth is going to play second fiddle.”
Rogoff has led warnings about the dangers of a widespread collapse in Chinese property prices. While much attention has been focused on the country’s biggest cities, he says the smaller so-called “tier 3” cities, which account for more than three quarters of China’s housing stock and 60pc of economic output, have suffered from the biggest rates of overbuilding.
Any house price crash will most certainly begin here.
Against a gloomy global backdrop, all this suggests China may no longer be the powerhouse it was.
For decades, it served as the engine behind 90pc of economic growth in East Asia and the Pacific. But analysts at the World Bank now believe the economy will expand by just 2.8pc this year. Growth in the rest of the region is expected to average 5.3pc.
This puts China’s growth rate behind its neighbours for the first time since 1990.
While India continues to expand at a rapid pace, overtaking the UK as the world’s fifth largest economy this year, its trade links are far less established than its eastern neighbour. This leaves no obvious contender to pick up China’s mantle.
Either way, China’s fortunes will continue to be intertwined with the rest of the world.
Unsustainable situations
Economists at Axa believe a “crash-landing” scenario, where the world is plunged into a deep recession like the global financial crisis, will push China’s exports down by 20pc and result in a 3.5pc hit to the economy.
Unlike 2008, Beijing won’t be there to spend the world out of trouble.
But economists like Rogoff have warned about China’s troubles and its Great Wall of debt before. They were wrong then.
More than two decades after it joined the World Trade Organisation, China remains the world’s factory and a leader in payments technology. Rogoff concedes this, but adds that while a downturn may not be imminent, it is inevitable.
“There’s a famous saying from my thesis adviser, Rudi Dornbusch, that unsustainable situations go on for longer than you think,” he says.
“And when they collapse, that happens faster and harder than you think. It’s very hard to call the timing of these things. And China has seen remarkable growth. Their infrastructure is better than in almost any advanced economy. But you can’t keep the economy growing by just building more and more of it.”
Vaccines and lockdowns remain a crucial factor going forward. “Outbreaks have continued to flare up and mobility control has persisted,” says Wei Yao, an economist at Societe Generale.
“We think China needs much more preparation for a smooth exit, especially a much higher vaccination rate among the vulnerable. Currently, the three-dose vaccination rate for people aged over 60 remains insufficient and has been stagnant since summer.”
Commuters wearing face masks ride bicycles along a street in the central business district in Beijing – Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The shops and schools are back open in Shanghai, but many believe the city is far from open for business.
More than half of the Chinese companies surveyed by the US Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai believe the country’s economic management is in decline. Its poll last week showed a fifth are cutting back on investment as a direct result of its zero-Covid policy.
For Maggie, who was confined to her apartment yet again last week as part of the city’s aggressive contact tracing policy, nothing will ever be the same again.
“It has changed my life completely,” she says. “I can’t plan any more. I live with uncertainty every day. I worry my son will be taken away on his own to a quarantine hospital.”
She reflects on the future: “In our society, being obedient is very important. For your career, or to get ahead. It’s not about doing the right thing for other people, it’s about following the rules.
“But many people in Shanghai have completely lost their trust and faith in the authorities now. I always believed that Shanghai, my city, would get better. I thought we had better transparency, more justice and less corruption. I’ve lost this belief now.”
Takeaways from investigation of Russian general in Ukraine
Erika Kinetz – October 26, 2022
In this image from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Thursday, March 24, 2022, commander of the troops of the Russian Eastern Military District Alexander Chaiko speaks to Russian servicemen during a special military operation at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)In this image from surveillance video, Russian troops take over Yablunska Street in Bucha, Ukraine on March 3, 2022, where they set up a headquarters during their month-long occupation. When Russian troops crossed from Belarus into Ukraine in late February, pressing toward Kyiv, they were ordered to block and destroy “nationalist resistance,” according to the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank that has reviewed copies of Russia’s battle plans. (AP Photo)From right, President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Lt. Gen. Alexander Chaiko listen to Syrian President Bashar Assad during a meeting in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin via AP, Pool, File) Police investigate the killing of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine on the outskirts of Kyiv, before bringing the corpses to a morgue, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)Tanks participate in the Union Courage-2022 Russia-Belarus military drills at the Obuz-Lesnovsky training ground in Belarus, Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr., File)In this image from surveillance video, Russian troops take over Yablunska Street in Bucha, Ukraine on March 3, 2022, where they set up a headquarters during their month-long occupation. Police recovered nearly 40 bodies along Yablunksa after Russian forces withdrew at the end of March. (AP Photo)Journalists examine the site of a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Tuesday, April 5, 2022, after Russian forces left. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)
ZDVYZHIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — The carnage left by Russian soldiers on the road to Kyiv wasn’t random. It was strategic brutality, perpetrated in areas that were under tight Russian control where military officers — including one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top generals accused of war crimes in Syria — were present, an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” found.
Troops moving down from Belarus toward Kyiv had been ordered to block and destroy “nationalist resistance,” according to the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank that has reviewed copies of Russia’s battle plans. Soldiers used lists compiled by Russian intelligence and conducted “zachistki” — cleansing operations — sweeping neighborhoods to identify and neutralize anyone who might pose a threat.
The man in charge of this front of the war was Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko, who earned a global reputation for brutality as leader of Russia’s forces in Syria.
“Those orders were written at Chaiko’s level. So he would have seen them and signed up for them,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at RUSI who shared the battle plans with the AP.
While there is nothing necessarily illegal about that order, it was often implemented with flagrant disregard for the laws of war as Russian troops seized territories across Ukraine.
Witnesses and survivors in Bucha, as well as Ozera, Babyntsi and Zdvyzhivka — all places under Chaiko’s command — told the AP and “Frontline” that Russian soldiers tortured and killed people on the slightest suspicion they might be helping the Ukrainian military. Sweeps intensified after Russian positions were hit with precision, interviews and video show, and soldiers, in intercepted phone calls obtained by the AP, told their loved ones that they’d been ordered to take a no-mercy approach to suspected informants.
Ukraine has indicted Chaiko for the broad crime of aggression — that is waging an illegal war on their territory. But it will take more specific evidence to land him in international court. Prosecutors would have to show that he played a key role in implementing illegal policies of the Russian Federation or should have known what his troops were doing and was in a position to stop, or punish, their behavior.
For now, Chaiko — a man implicated in some of the worst atrocities in both Syria and Ukraine — is still leading troops, once again as commander of Russia’s forces in Syria.
Here are four takeaways from the investigation:
MOM, I AM KILLING CIVILIANS
Russian soldiers openly discussed atrocities against civilians during phone calls with their mothers, wives and friends that the Ukrainian government intercepted near Kyiv.
On March 21, a soldier named Vadim told his mother: “We have the order to take phones from everyone and those who resist — in short — to hell with the f——.”
“We have the order: It does not matter whether they’re civilians or not. Kill everyone.”
The slightest movement of a curtain in a window — a possible sign of a spotter or a gunman — justified slamming an apartment block with lethal artillery. Ukrainians who confessed to passing along Russian troop coordinates were summarily executed, including teenagers, soldiers said.
“We have the order not to take prisoners of war but to shoot them all dead directly,” a soldier nicknamed Lyonya said in a March 14 phone call.
“There was a boy, 18 years old, taken prisoner. First, they shot through his leg with a machine gun, then he got his ears cut off. He admitted to everything and was shot dead,” Lyonya told his mom. “We do not take prisoners. Meaning, we don’t leave anyone alive.”
The Dossier Center, a London-based investigative group funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, verified the identity of the soldiers who made those calls.
IN CHARGE OF THE CARNAGE IN BUCHA
Ukrainian prosecutors say that a unit under Chaiko’s command — the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division — participated in a lethal cleansing operation on March 4 along Yablunska street, the deadliest road in occupied Bucha and the site of an important Russian command center.
In June, the U.S. State Department sanctioned the division and its 234th Guards Airborne Assault Regiment, as well as the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, for atrocities in Bucha.
Those units were all under the ultimate command of Chaiko during the early weeks of the invasion, Ukrainian authorities told AP.
NOT THE WORK OF ROGUE SOLDIERS
Russians transformed the village of Zdvyzhivka, an hour north of Kyiv, into a major forward operating base for their assault on the capital. From March 20 to March 31, Chaiko commanded the assault on Kyiv from this village. He was spotted about a kilometer (less than a mile) down a tightly controlled road around the same time as five men were tortured and killed in the garden of a house frequented by Russian officers. The transport of tied-up civilians to that house happened more than once, in broad daylight, within the security structures set up by the occupying forces, eyewitnesses said.
KEEPING THE BOSS HAPPY
There’s no sign Chaiko disapproved of what his troops were doing. Russia’s Ministry of Defense released a video of the general pinning medals on soldiers in Ukraine. “All units, all divisions are acting the way they were taught,” he said in the March 24 video. “They are doing everything right. I am proud of them.”
There is also no sign Moscow has sanctioned Chaiko for the very public atrocities committed on his watch. Instead, Putin praised Chaiko for his actions in Syria, awarding him the title “Hero of Russia” in 2020 and promoting him to colonel general in June 2021.
“Frontline” producers Tom Jennings and Annie Wong, co-producer Taras Lazer and AP reporters James LaPorta, Oleksandr Stashevskyi, Richard Lardner, Janine Graham and Solomiia Hera contributed to this report.
To contact AP’s investigations team, email investigative@ap.org
How long does it take for a great power to develop military amnesia?
Russia and America, the two former Cold War superpowers, should be better positioned than any other nation to understand the high costs – in money, equipment, reputation and worst of all lives – of fighting an extended war in which too many locals see you as murderous occupiers.
Lessons Russia should have learned
Among all nations, Russia should understand the danger of unpopular foreign intervention: For almost three years, from June 1941 to December 1944, Hitler’s Nazi army laid waste to large swaths of the Soviet Union during what Russians still call the Great Patriot War. The 872-day siege of Leningrad, Russia’s second-largest city now named St. Petersburg, was especially brutal. A million people died, most of them civilians, many from starvation.
Historians’ analyses of why Hitler’s Russia invasion failed carry eerie echoes of current experts’ analyses of the mistakes Vladimir Putin has made in invading Ukraine: There was poor strategic planning.
The Germans had no long-range plans for the invasion’s aftermath. Hitler believed that the Russians would capitulate quickly after the shock of initial losses. Most important, he failed to understand the primordial power of one word – “Родина” – for Russians: They were determined to defend their Motherland at all costs.
Americans can go back further in history for what might be called our collective military memory: British troops fought George Washington’s army for nearly a decade before withdrawing in disgrace.
The British failure taught the American colonialists important lessons, lessons their descendants, unfortunately, would forget over time.
It’s why Washington, in his famous 1796 farewell address, prepared after decades of public service in the military and as our first president, warned against foreign entanglements leading to unnecessary wars.
Now, for Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine, the deterioration MacArthur predicted began from the moment it invaded its neighbor this Feb. 24. Eight months later, Ukrainian soldiers are encircling Russian troops as they withdraw from key strategic positions.
As of late August, the Kremlin had lost an astounding 12,000-plus planes, tanks, armored vehicles, guns and other pieces of military equipment worth almost $17 billion, according to one estimate.
The forced mobilization of new recruits Putin announced last month and the protests they sparked across Russia recall the Vietnam War draft that sent young Americans into the streets more than a half-century ago.
A protest in front of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest on May 16, 2022.
Russia’s new annexation of four Ukrainian provinces making up 15% of the country, following sham referendums enforced at gunpoint and celebrated by Putin in a darkly comical rally at Moscow’s Red Square, is a sign not of his war’s success but rather of its desperation, one that makes even more certain the failure of his occupation.
No nation more than Russia should have foreseen all of this. The Ukraine invasion started almost 33 years to the day when the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan to end a disastrous decade-long war and occupation there.
A quick history lesson in Iraq
On the day that the first American soldiers entered Iraq in March 2003, I landed in Moscow to see whether I could learn lessons for U.S. civilian and military leaders. In interviews with a dozen veterans of Russia’s Afghanistan debacle, I heard the same certain prediction captured in one vet’s memorable words: If America stayed long in Iraq, it would come home “like a whimpering dog with its tail between its legs.”
Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don’t have the app? Download it for free from your app store.
More than eight years later, after losing nearly 4,500 troops, the U.S. occupation of Iraq ended in failure, just as the Russian vets had told me it would days after it began.
Military scholars can see clearly what sometimes blinds the civilian leaders of great powers. In his book “Occupational Hazards,” Georgetown University international affairs professor David Edelstein wrote: “Despite the relatively successful military occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II, careful examination indicates that unusual geopolitical circumstances were the keys to success in those two cases, and historically military occupations fail more often than they succeed.”
Putin appeared to have gotten away with his 2014 occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, which came during corrupt leadership in the neighboring country and prompted Western sanctions along with expulsion from the Group of Eight major economies.
Now Putin faces a united nation headed by a heroic leader in Volodymyr Zelenskyy, bolstered by billions in aid from the United States and other allies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a national flag-raising ceremony in Izium on Sept. 14, 2022.
No one knows when it will happen, but the history of great powers’ military occupations suggests that Russian troops will eventually leave Ukraine in defeat. There are different scenarios of what will happen on the road to defeat, from Putin dying or being overthrown to him declaring a false victory and withdrawing to still more months of bombing and killing.
Following his nation’s monumental sacrifices, there is no chance that Zelenskyy will accept a negotiated peace that leaves the Kremlin in control of the territories it has seized. Putin’s veiled threat of using tactical nuclear weapons is the empty bluff of a poker player holding a weak hand.
The Kremlin’s final failure is in the cards for one simple but powerful reason: Russia’s will to conquer is weaker than Ukraine’s will to save its homeland.
James Rosen is a former Pentagon reporter for McClatchy who earlier covered the collapse of the Soviet Union as a Moscow correspondent. He received awards from the National Press Club, Military Reporters and Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists, which last year named him top opinion columnist.
Russian authorities advise civilians to leave Ukraine region
Andrew Meldrum and Joanna Kozlowska – October 22, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine told all residents of the city of Kherson to leave “immediately” Saturday ahead of an expected advance by Ukrainian troops waging a counteroffensive to recapture one of the first urban areas Russia took after invading the country.
In a post on the Telegram messaging service, the pro-Kremlin regional administration strongly urged civilians to use boat crossings over a major river to move deeper into Russian-held territory, citing a tense situation on the front and the threat of shelling and alleged plans for “terror attacks” by Kyiv.
Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the nearly 8-month-long war in Ukraine. The city is the capital of a region of the same name, one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and put under Russian martial law on Thursday.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces bombarded Russian positions across the province, targeting pro-Kremlin forces’ resupply routes across the Dnieper River and preparing for a final push to reclaim the city.
The Ukrainian military has reclaimed broad areas in the north of the region since launching a counteroffensive in late August. It reported new successes Saturday, saying that Russian troops were forced to retreat from the villages of Charivne and Chkalove in the Beryslav district.
Russian-installed officials were reported as trying desperately to turn Kherson city — a prime objective for both sides because of its key industries and ports — into a fortress while attempting to relocate tens of thousands of residents.
The Kremlin poured as many as 2,000 draftees into the surrounding region to replenish losses and strengthen front-line units, according to the Ukrainian army’s general staff.
The wide Dnieper River figures as a major factor in the fighting, making it hard for Russia to supply its troops defending the city of Kherson and nearby areas on the west bank after relentless Ukrainian strikes rendered the main crossings unusable.
Taking control of Kherson has allowed Russia to resume fresh water supplies from the Dnieper to Crimea, which were cut by Ukraine after Moscow’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. A big hydroelectric power plant upstream from Kherson city is a key source of energy for the southern region. Ukraine and Russia accused each other of trying to blow it up to flood the mostly flat region.
Kherson’s Kremlin-backed authorities previously announced plans to evacuate all Russia-appointed officials and as many as 60,000 civilians across the river, in what local leader Vladimir Saldo said would be an “organized, gradual displacement.”
Another Russia-installed official estimated Saturday that around 25,000 people from across the region had made their way over the Dnieper. In a Telegram post, Kirill Stremousov claimed that civilians were relocating willingly.
“People are actively moving because today the priority is life. We do not drag anyone anywhere,” he said, adding that some residents could be waiting for the Ukrainian army to reclaim the city.
Ukrainian and Western officials have expressed concern about potential forced transfers of residents to Russia or Russian-occupied territory.
Ukrainian officials urged Kherson residents to resist attempts to relocate them, with one local official alleging that Moscow wanted to take civilians hostage and use them as human shields.
Elsewhere in the invaded country, hundreds of thousands of people in central and western Ukraine woke up on Saturday to power outages and periodic bursts of gunfire. In its latest war tactic, Russia has intensified strikes on power stations, water supply systems and other key infrastructure across the country.
Ukraine’s air force said in a statement Saturday that Russia had launched “a massive missile attack” targeting “critical infrastructure,” adding that it had downed 18 out of 33 cruise missiles launched from the air and sea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later said that Russian launched 36 missiles, most of which were shot down.
“Those treacherous blows on critically important facilities are characteristic tactics of terrorists,” Zelenskyy said. “The world can and must stop this terror.”
Air raid sirens blared across Ukraine twice by early afternoon, sending residents scurrying into shelters as Ukrainian air defense tried to shoot down explosive drones and incoming missiles.
“Several rockets” targeting Ukraine’s capital were shot down Saturday morning, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging service.
The president’s office said in its morning update that five suicide drones were downed in the central Cherkasy region southeast of Kyiv. Similar reports came from the governors of six western and central provinces, as well as of the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea.
Ukraine’s top diplomat said the day’s attacks proved Ukraine needed new Western-reinforced air defense systems “without a minute of delay.”
“Air defense saves lives,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on Telegram that almost 1.4 million households lost power as a result of the strikes. He said some 672,000 homes in the western Khmelnytskyi region were affected and another 242,000 suffered outages in the Cherkasy region.
Most of the western city of Khmelnytskyi, which straddles the Bug River and had a pre-war population of 275,000, was left with no electricity, shortly after local media reported several loud explosions.
In a social media post on Saturday, the city council urged local residents to store water “in case it’s also gone within an hour.”
The mayor of Lutsk, a city of 215,000 in far western Ukraine, made a similar appeal, saying that power in the city was partially knocked out after Russian missiles slammed into local energy facilities and damaged one power plant beyond repair.
The central city of Uman, a key pilgrimage center for Hasidic Jews with about 100,000 residents before the war, also was plunged into darkness after a rocket hit a nearby power plant.
Ukraine’s state energy company, Ukrenergo, responded to the strikes by announcing that rolling blackouts would be imposed in Kyiv and 10 Ukrainian regions to stabilize the situation.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, the company accused Russia of attacking “energy facilities within the principal networks of the western regions of Ukraine.” It claimed the scale of destruction was comparable to the fallout earlier this month from Moscow’s first coordinated attack on the Ukrainian energy grid.
Both Ukrenergo and officials in Kyiv have urged Ukrainians to conserve energy. Earlier this week, Zelenskyy called on consumers to curb their power use between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. and to avoid using energy-guzzling appliances such as electric heaters.
Zelenskyy said earlier in the week that 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed since Russia launched the first wave of targeted infrastructure strikes on Oct. 10.
In a separate development, Russian officials said two people were killed and 12 others were wounded by Ukrainian shelling of the town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region near the border.
Kremlin Says Everyone Must Suffer So Putin Will Win
Allison Quinn – October 22, 2022
Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via Reuters
With dozens of newly drafted troops already dead and Russian troops laying the groundwork for a retreat from a key Ukrainian city, the Kremlin has now revealed it is hoping to give its war a second wind by making ordinary Russians feel it as much as possible.
Sergei Kirienko, the first deputy chief of staff of the presidential administration, said as much Saturday in a speech to a national conference of teachers, declaring that the war the Kremlin has until now doggedly insisted is only a “special military operation” must become a “people’s war.”
“Russia has always won any war, if that war became a people’s [war]. We will definitely win this war: both the ‘hot’ one, and the economic one, and the very psychological, information war that is being waged against us. But for that it is necessary that it is precisely a people’s war, so that every person feels his own involvement. So that every person has the opportunity to contribute to our common victory,” Kirienko said.
His comments raised eyebrows on social media, where many noted this appeared to be the first time the presidential administration had dropped its absurd “special operation” euphemism, and others pointed out that millions of Russians had already fled the country in protest.
Even as Kirienko made his comments, authorities in Belgorod on the border with Ukraine revealed they have erected concrete barriers to ostensibly keep the region safe from Ukrainians. And in Moscow, multiple media reports said local authorities had begun preparing bomb shelters in schools and hospitals—perhaps a theatrical move aimed at stoking fears of an attack in the capital.
Meanwhile, just one month after Vladimir Putin summoned tens of thousands of citizens to face death for him on the battlefield, at least 41 newly drafted troops have already been killed, according to a tally by Mediazona and the BBC. Among them were some who, by law, were not even eligible for the draft—including a Raiffeisenbank employee named Timur Izmailov, who was apparently tricked into visiting his local military recruitment office and then died six days after being tossed on to the frontline.
Bizarrely, Kirienko insisted that the “most important battle” for Russia right now is the “battle for the youth”—a strange priority to name given the thousands of youth already killed to prop up Putin’s delusional war against Ukraine.
An unnamed Russian soldier’s phone call to his mother offered perhaps the most succinct reply to Kirienko’s vision of a “people’s war.”
“Fucking scumbags! This fucking government pisses me off so much! They are so dumb, I am in shock,” he told her from the frontline in Ukraine, according to audio released by Ukrainian intelligence.
“This is how it will be: half the country will be jailed and half the country will go to war.”
After his mother tried to reassure him by predicting Russia will soon take land from Poland, her son shot back that it is Russia that should be worried about losing territory now.
“Yes, yes, yes, with this fucking government it’s already been made clear.”
Trump’s years-long crusade against Ukraine has finally come home to roost as Republicans call for abandoning Kyiv
John Haltiwanger, Sonam Sheth – October 20, 2022
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Trump’s years-long crusade against Ukraine has finally come home to roost as Republicans call for abandoning Kyiv
US aid to Ukraine could be in jeopardy if Republicans win the House in the midterms.
Several GOP lawmakers and candidates have signaled they would support reducing or cutting off Ukraine aid.
“Ukraine unfortunately has been hijacked sometimes in domestic politics. Now and then that happens,” a Zelenskyy advisor told Insider.
In a phone call with Ukraine’s president this month, US President Joe Biden pledged continued solidarity with Ukraine as it battles Russia’s military invasion and illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory.
But that level of support could be in jeopardy if the GOP gains control of the House of Representatives in this year’s midterm elections.
The warning signs have been building for months.
In April, 10 House Republicans voted against a bill allowing the Biden administration to more easily lend military equipment to Ukraine. The following month, 57 House Republicans voted “no” on a nearly $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. Both measures ultimately passed the chamber.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who’s favored to become House Speaker if the GOP retakes the chamber, recently told Punchbowl News. “They just won’t do it.”
Ukraine has repeatedly defied expectations since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion, delivering a blow to the Russian military’s prestige. With the help of Western aid and at a massive personal cost, Ukrainian forces prevented Russia from seizing Kyiv in the early days of the war and more recently launched a counteroffensive that’s shown major signs of success.
But a far-right faction of the GOP has increasingly pushed against continued assistance to Ukraine, saying the billions the US has provided to Kyiv is too costly and not worth the risk of sparking a wider conflict with Russia.
In this Sept. 25, 2019 file photo President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
A remarkable shift
The GOP’s gradual shift away from Ukraine and toward Russia has been years in the making, but right-wing hostility toward Ukraine hit a pivotal point during Donald Trump’s presidency.
In addition to peddling the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election, Trump was impeached in 2019 for withholding hundreds of millions in vital aid to Ukraine as it fought a war against Kremlin-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region.
While withholding the aid, Trump and his allies pressured Zelenskyy, a political neophyte who won the 2019 election in a landslide victory, to launch an investigation targeting the Bidens ahead of the 2020 US election.
Foreign policy experts said Trump’s actions — dangling security assistance in exchange for political favors — were a threat to the US’s national security and bipartisan support for Ukraine. But the vast majority of congressional Republicans rallied to Trump’s defense, and ultimately, just one Senate Republican, Mitt Romney, voted to convict the former president over his actions.
In the years since, Trump has continued to take a controversial stance on Ukraine, praising Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for invading as “genius” and “savvy.” The former president has often lauded the Russian leader, going out of his way to avoid criticizing Putin amid a historically contentious period in US-Russia relations.
Anti-Ukraine sentiment doesn’t just come from the top of the GOP. Putin has long been seen as a hero by the alt-right and white nationalists, and since Russia invaded Ukraine, many prominent right-wing politicians and media figures have moved in lockstep with the Kremlin, creating a feedback loop where each side amplifies and recycles the other’s propaganda.
On Fox News, for instance, the far-right host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly echoed a nonsense conspiracy theory, which originated in Moscow before taking root in the US, suggesting that Ukraine houses US-funded bioweapons labs.
Russian state-sponsored media outlets in turn frequently feature Carlson’s segments, and in March, Mother Jones reported that the Russian government instructed state media that it was “essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson” to spread negative information about Ukraine, the US, and NATO.
“When we see Fox News commentators, from our perspective, promote isolationist positions — that looks like support for Russia,” Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, recently told NPR.
Some GOP opposition to continuing aid to Ukraine is tied to Trump’s “America First” policy vis-a-vis foreign affairs. Trump embraced a non-interventionist stance and was often critical of US spending abroad, particularly when it came to NATO and European security.
It’s a remarkable shift for the Republican Party, which for years touted a hawkish position on foreign policy, especially as it related to leading adversaries like Russia. But under Trump’s stewardship, the party has become increasingly isolationist, and its growing opposition to aiding Ukraine is the latest and clearest sign of that.
Biden, meanwhile, has made the case that supporting Ukraine is part of a wider fight between democracy and autocracy. But a growing number of Republicans say sending aid to Kyiv should not be prioritized in Washington amid concerns over inflation and a potential recession.
“When people are seeing a 13% increase in grocery prices; energy, utility bills doubling … if you’re a border community and you’re being overrun by migrants and fentanyl, Ukraine is the furthest thing from your mind,” GOP Rep. Kelly Armstrong told Axios.
Democrats are more optimistic about retaining the Senate, but according to forecaster FiveThirtyEight, their chances have gone down in recent weeks based on polling in four key contests in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and North Carolina.
And in Ohio, GOP Senate candidate JD Vance has made it clear that he would vote against sending more aid to Ukraine, saying in September that “we’ve got to stop the money spigot to Ukraine eventually. We cannot fund a long-term military conflict that I think ultimately has diminishing returns for our own country.”
‘The cards have been dealt’
Ukrainian troops fire with surface-to-surface rockets MLRS towards Russian positions at a front line in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on June 7, 2022.Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
There are some in Kyiv who believe that US support to Ukraine will continue regardless of which party controls Congress.
“Ukraine unfortunately has been hijacked sometimes in domestic politics. Now and then that happens,” Tymofiy Mylovanov, an advisor to Zelenskyy who previously served as Ukraine’s economic minister, told Insider. “We try our best to stay away from this. We would like to stay away from this.”
“Despite all that rhetoric, the support has always been bipartisan,” Mylovanov said, adding that the amount of assistance Ukraine needs is a small fraction of the US GDP. “In terms of what it means in the budget — it means nothing. It’s not trillions of dollars,” he said.
The US has provided over $20 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. The Biden administration has sent Ukraine $18.2 billion in military aid, including roughly $17.6 billion since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in late February.
Other Western countries have provided important assistance to Ukraine, but the US has contributed the most of any individual country so far.
Weapons the US sent, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), have turned the tables on Russia by blunting its previous advantages in armored vehicles and artillery. If US aid to Kyiv suddenly dried up, it would likely curtail Ukraine’s ability to oust sizable Russian columns from dug-in positions.
Trump, meanwhile, called for a negotiated settlement to the war during a rally earlier this month. “We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine or we will end up in World War III,” he said at the time.
But Putin has shown little interest in negotiating, as evidenced by the drastic steps he’s taken in recent weeks. Beyond the illegal annexations, Putin announced a partial military mobilization — calling up hundreds of thousands of men — and imposed martial law in the regions Moscow claims are now part of Russia but does not fully control.
Russia has also ramped up missile and drone attacks against civilian areas while destroying key infrastructure across Ukraine.
But Mylovanov, the former economic minister who is also the president at the Kyiv School of Economics, said that while Russia wants Ukraine to surrender, the “Ukrainian people will not have it.”
“People think that what happens in Kyiv is decided either in Moscow or Washington or Brussels, or maybe Beijing. It is not, it’s decided in Ukraine,” Mylovanov said.
“The cards have been dealt,” he added, and it’s up to the US if it wants to be at the table.
Israel holds fire amid mounting pressure from Ukraine
Laura Kelly – October 19, 2022
Israel is rejecting desperate calls from Ukraine to supply advanced air defense systems to counter Russia’s use of Iranian kamikaze drones, intent on maintaining strategic ties between Jerusalem and Moscow.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Wednesday said that Israel “will not provide weapon systems,” but said that Jerusalem will continue to side with Western support for Kyiv.
“We have asked the Ukrainians to share information regarding their needs and offered to assist in developing a life-saving early-warning system,” he reportedly said in remarks to ambassadors from the European Union.
Israel has sent humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, publicly condemned Russia’s invasion and is reportedly sharing intelligence with Kyiv.
But it has held back on strategic military aid, hoping to preserve its Moscow ties.
Those ties include Israeli communication with Russia in Syria to target Iranian weapons transfers through the country, and Israeli concerns for the Jewish diaspora in Russia.
Gantz’s rejection of military assistance came after the Ukrainian Embassy in Israel officially appealed for air defense systems following two weeks of devastating attacks by Russia using the Iranian drones.
The Shahed-136, nicknamed the kamikaze drones, have killed civilians in their homes and on the street, and destroyed critical infrastructure that threatens the country’s electricity and water supplies as winter temperatures begin to take hold.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel, in a letter sent Tuesday, asked the Israeli government to enter into “mutual cooperation in the field of air/missile defense,” warning that Iran’s battlefield experience for its weapons systems is a direct threat to the Middle East.
“The request of the Ukrainian side to the Israeli side to support above mentioned proposals is based on the consideration that positive experience gained by Iran of using the above-mentioned weapons in Ukraine will lead to further improvement of Iranian systems,” the letter read, and reported by Axios.
The letter asks for Israel’s Iron Dome system, which last had a 97 percent success rate at intercepting nearly 600 missiles shot from the Gaza Strip over the course of a few days in August.
“We are a country at war ourselves, I don’t think we can afford emptying our warehouses,” said Uzi Rubin, founder and first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization in the Israel Ministry of Defense and a fellow with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
“We export weapons. We are one of the 10 largest exporters. But that means if you want an Israeli system, you have to contract for it and wait for it to be manufactured.”
Other air defense systems Ukraine requested in its letter are the Barak-8, David’s Sling and Arrow Interceptor — advanced and layered air defenses that can intercept medium- to long-range rockets and missiles, and are increasingly used to intercept drones.
Other requests, like the Iron Beam — a high energy laser weapon system developed by Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael — are not operational. And while the Ukrainians appeared to request a Patriot Missile Defense System from the Israelis, that system is made by the U.S. and is deployed in Saudi Arabia for missile and drone defense.
While the U.S. Army has possession of two Iron Dome batteries, the administration has not sent any signals it’s looking to send those to Ukraine.
Becca Wasser, senior fellow for the defense program at the Center for New American Security, said one reason the U.S. may not send its own Iron Dome is that it only has two, and only one is operational in Guam.
“A few years ago the [House Armed Services Committee] was talking about the U.S. sending one of its Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine, long before the recent events took place with Russia’s invasion,” she said.
“But at the end of the day … the United States does not have that many Iron Dome systems.”
But she added there has been a recent U.S. push “to have other allies and partners step up in providing air defenses to Ukraine.”
Seth Frantzman, author of “Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future,” said that early detection is more critical than expensive air defense systems, adding the Iranian-made kamikaze drone is slow-moving and “sounds like a kind of flying lawn mower.”
“Ukraine needs the right kind of radars to detect the drones,” he said, giving them time to decide how to shoot them down with war planes, shoulder-launch rockets or small arm fire.
Germany, Spain, NATO and the U.S. have sent, and are sending, more air defense systems to Ukraine, but Kyiv is pleading for more.
“Iranian drones that attack Ukraine were probably produced to attack Israel,” tweeted Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. “Israel knows better than anyone what it’s like to fight terrorists. We ask Israel to give us air defense systems and defensive weapons – they are critically important when dealing with terrorists.”
Frantzman said Israel is familiar with the ways Russia appears to be using Iranian drones.
“It’s actually being used by the Russians just to bludgeon and murder the civilian population and terrorize people. Israel has faced similar types of indiscriminate rocket fire and now a bit of drone fire, that’s why it built systems like Iron Dome,” he said. “So from Israel’s perspective, it’s like Israel’s already seen this.”
While the Biden administration has quietly pushed for Jerusalem to more firmly stand up for Ukraine against Russia’s aggression, it has held back from public calls that Israel provide critical military defense to Kyiv.
“We’ve said that we’ve been — pleased is maybe the wrong word — but we’ve been fine with Israel’s complicated relationship [with Russia],” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said in an interview with The Hill in September.
“It’s a little complicated for Israel obviously, but we push them every day,” he added.
A few isolated voices in Israel have said Iran’s drone sales and expected missile sales to Russia are reason enough to justify military deliveries.
“This morning it was reported that Iran is transferring ballistic missiles to Russia. There is no longer any doubt where Israel should stand in this bloody conflict,” Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai tweeted on Sunday. “The time has come for Ukraine to receive military aid as well, just as the USA and NATO countries provide.”
Rubin said for Israel, Russia’s use of Iranian drones could present an intelligence-gathering opportunity for future conflicts with Tehran.
“Of course [the Iranians] learn more — the conflict in Ukraine is a very high-intensity conflict, they learn from that. But at same time we also learn from how they’re being combatted, we see what’s happening and we learn from that too.”
And Russia has issued stark warnings of severing relations with Israel if Jerusalem shifts its position.
“It seems Israel will supply weapons to the Kyiv regime. A very reckless move. It will destroy all diplomatic relations between our countries,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and a key Putin ally, wrote on Telegram.
Rubin said that Medvedev’s threats resonated in Israel.
“Israel declared neutrality because we have relations with Russia. It’s something I don’t think we can easily give up,” he said.
Israel is set to go to elections in November, and there’s little public pressure for the government to more robustly support Ukraine. Polling data from March found that only 22 percent of Israelis supported sending military assistance to Ukraine, and that voters are largely focused on the rising cost of living.
“I, as an Israeli would like to keep our channels to Russia open, but I am a citizen, just a taxpayer and a voter, I’m not making the decisions,” Rubin said.
